Olivier Schrauwen (Bruges, 46 years old) is sitting in a cafe in the center of Valencia.
He is torn between seeing a mascletá for the first time or having a good rice at Malvarrosa.
He has just participated in the city's Comic Fair, one of the busiest in Spain.
“Whenever I see myself at fairs like this, surrounded by people dressed in cosplay, I wonder;
'What is my place in all this?' he reflects.
For some fans, that place is clear: he is the most interesting European author of the present.
We don't say it, it is proclaimed by
The Comics Journal,
the reference publication in the sector.
It is also endorsed by authors Art Spiegelman
(Maus),
Chris Ware
(Jimmy Corrigan, the smartest boy in the world)
and Daniel Clowes
(Ghost World),
who point to Schrauwen as an inexhaustible source of inspiration.
“It's something I prefer not to think about, because he makes me nervous.
They are very generous by speaking well of me,” he says with sincere humility and a hopelessly shy look.
Olivier Schrauwen, fulfilling the Fallas ritual of eating some churros while passing through Valencia.
/ Courtesy of the publisherCésar Sánchez
This Belgian cartoonist based in Berlin is one of those rarities that from time to time contribute to expanding the boundaries of the graphic novel.
He tried it with
Arsène Schrauwen,
a prodigy in which he recounted the invented adventures of his grandfather in the Belgian Congo, and now corroborates it with
Flemish Sunday,
whose title is a very free translation of the original
Sunday,
in a nod to the origin of the author proposed by its Spanish publisher, Fulgencio Pimentel.
From now on, a candidate to top the lists of best comics of the year.
Where Spiegelman turned the Holocaust into a fable, Ware built a new visual architecture and Clowes tested the limits of bad temper, Schrauwen addresses a whole feat of postmodern narrative: the definitive treatise on tedium, absurdity and human stupidity.
Its almost 500 pages, originally published in different notebooks between 2017 and 2023 and collected here in a single volume, reflect exactly what its title announces: any given
Sunday
, from dawn until midnight, in the life of the protagonist, embodied by a fictional version of Olivier Schrauwen's own cousin.
In the words of its author, “a master at doing nothing and doing it badly.
At least on the specific day that the comic reflects, which he also understands as his last day of freedom because he is about to turn 36 and that night his girlfriend returns from a long trip.
The case of Thibault [the cousin] is particularly frustrating: the more things he sets out to start, the more difficult it is for him to do so,” he outlines.
The protagonist of 'Domingo flamenco' intends to spend the day at home without interruptions from the outside world.
To everything that happens in his own house, from which he refuses to leave all day (which is what his Sunday is for), is added what flows through his head and the parallel experiences of those close to him: family, friends. , neighbors, a cat and a mouse;
in his neighborhood and thousands of miles away.
What could literally respond to the original intentions of its author, that is, to become a Tostón sovereign, rises in his virtuous hands and his delirious imagination in a monument to the epic of everyday life.
Things as banal as deciding whether to masturbate or not, humming songs, turning over that WhatsApp message a thousand times, picking up a book and not going beyond the first line, gossiping about profiles on the networks, indulging in dipsomania alone, cooking with the first thing what catches, watching the worst movie in history (in this case,
The Da Vinci Code)
and, above all, avoiding any interruption from the outside world at all costs are part of the collective biography.
In other words: “The protagonist may be irritating and a jerk, but the truth is that he could be any of us on a stupid day.
We all have prosaic and repetitive thoughts.
I wanted to observe this, moment by moment, stopping at the small details.
That was the challenge: to make the most insubstantial comic possible without being boring for the reader, to start from something very undramatic and force myself to make it stimulating.
There is a polarization among readers: there are people who say 'I can't stand this guy' and others who think 'let's keep reading, let's see what this idiot does now.'
The graphic novel 'Domingo flamenco' stands as an ode to procrastination.
Some enthusiasts already point to him as
Schrauwen's
Ulysses .
He dismisses the flattery.
“Beyond the fact that everything happens in one day, my work has nothing to do with Joyce's.
In my comic there are many more jokes about farts,” he says, honoring the jocularity that comes through in his cartoons.
“I recognize that my sense of humor is not for everyone.
But that's okay: if you don't like it, you can always put down my book and spend your time doing something else."
And this, which also sounds like a joke, he says very seriously.
Time has precisely been an essential factor in the maturation of Schrauwen's work.
He confesses that until his thirties, when he tamed his peculiar style in
The Man Who Let His Beard Grow,
he did not feel like an 'author', nor even an aspiring to make a living from this.
In fact, he points out that his current sales allow him to live in an austere way.
“Each project consumes me so much that I always forget along the way the practical part: making money.”
He grew up with two posters in his room (of Magritte and Dalí), imitating the lines of the comics that André Franquin, Hergé and Jean Giraud / Moebius collected at home.
His parents, an architect and a nurse, watched with concern as he decided to pursue a career in this.
“My mother told me: 'Everything is very nice, son, but please, can you make comics that people understand?
This way you're not going to get anywhere.'
Even today, when I get really upset, I remember his words.
Forcing myself to tell a linear story allowed me to deconstruct to become more and more experimental again.”
Olivier Schrauwen restricts the preparation of his pages to the use of just two inks to enhance his creative abilities.
Schrauwen's creative method involves, in addition to always looking for inventive ways to include his
alter ego
in the stories, collecting sketches in the notebooks that he always carries with him and printing in risograph, a homemade technique widely used in the publishing of fanzines. .
“I am color blind, I confuse grey, blue and green.
Hence it plays with two-color limitations.
“This way I have greater control.”
His most colorful comic to date, the hilarious compendium of speculative memoirs
Parallel Lives,
uses only ten inks, the maximum that a Riso printer supports.
After a lifetime of food work, from illustrations in
The New York Times
to animations for advertising and video clips, he is now working on what will be his first animated series, for which he is seeking financing and for which he does not give up.
Meanwhile, he continues to test the effectiveness of his comics by scrutinizing the face of his girlfriend, artist Ada Van Hoorebeke, when she gives them to him to read.
Having him so close, it would be fascinating if Schrauwen would one day dare to draw a parody of the art world.
He disagrees.
“There are already many films that have tried it, but none have achieved it in a genuine way.
Those who parody it best are the artists themselves.
In any case, I would dare to laugh at the world of comics, which is my field.
And I would put myself in the foreground represented as an absolute idiot, of course.
I would like to think that
Domingo Flamenco
is the last idiot that I put as the protagonist, but I would be fooling myself.
Faced with such a declaration of intentions, we can only let him go to the mascletá so that he can continue taking notes on human imbecility.
With 'Domigo flamenco', Schrauwen also seeks to delve into our inability to often connect with others.
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