"Welcome to Cabu, we welcome you directly to his living room, to his office, this magnificent brothel which was his workspace",
prided himself Jean-François Pitet, curator of the exhibition
Le Rire de Cabu
at the Town Hall. from Paris, Thursday morning.
Read also: For Cabu, the boards have a purpose
The reconstruction of this merry bazaar where heaps of press clippings are intermingled with the notebooks and drawing sheets of Jean Cabut, alias Cabu, offers a tasty preamble to the retrospective orchestrated by the City of Paris, associated with Véronique Cabut, the widow of the one who was assassinated in the premises of
Charlie Hebdo
, in 2015. Rich in 350 drawings, some of which are unpublished, the exhibition presents, until December 19, the prolific work of the man who devoted himself to his art since childhood.
The beauf and his wife watching TV: "Should we help the Third World?"
», Appeared in Le Canard enchaîné, 1984 V. Cabut
Le Grand Duduche, La Fille du principal, Le Beauf,
caricatures, exclusive boards produced for the City of Paris, drawn reports, sketches at Club Dorothée ... In a thematic scenography, divided into eight chapters, the exhibition both edifying and moving, plunges the visitor into the incisive, sometimes ferocious and so funny world of Cabu.
The peregrination recalls in particular the tender bond which united Cabu and Dorothée, when for ten years he drew what came to his mind in
Récré A2
.
A video presented to the public shows all the mocking and tender spirit of the designer who gave the host an unforgettable nose.
The Nose of Dorothea, 1986
V. Cabut
A spirit coupled with a visionary gaze highlighted in his caricatures published in the satirical press.
A large drawing published in
Charlie Hebdo
in 1976, entitled
Open Days in Public Assistance Hospitals,
shows that Cabu knew how to pinpoint with brio and acuity the flaws in a system which is still subject to problems today.
The exhibition salutes the indefatigable chronicler of French society, whom he scrutinized from the end of the 1950s. It presents one of his first unpublished drawings of international politics produced in 1950, in which he depicts Stalin and Truman like the masters of the world ready to give instructions to their students Vincent Auriol, Charles de Gaulle and many others.
The designer was then 12 years old.
The policies, Cabu has largely sketched them.
As a worthy heir to Daumier, he captured the comic substance of heads of state.
A frieze showing all the caricatured faces, from Vincent Auriol to Emmanuel Macron (not yet president but Minister of the Economy in 2014), convinces us of this.
To read also: Chirac, Pompidou, Giscard, Sarkozy ... When Cabu crunched the presidents
"Emmanuel Macron, the right hemisphere of Holland ... which takes up all the space?
»V. Cabut
To end this enchanted stroll, the exhibition pays tribute to the “friends” who fell under the bullets with him.
Through a drawing by Bernard Maris, Honoré, Charb, Tignous or Wolinski on Cabu, the visitor will be able to perceive a team united by a deep bond where all the art of drawing and laughter triumph.
Le Rire de Cabu, exhibition in the Saint-Jean room, Paris City Hall, from October 9, 2020 to January 9, 2021. Free admission. The exhibition catalog is available from Michel Lafon editions, 20 euros.