Julie Doucet, Stripburger
58 "AUTOBIOGRAPHY CAN BECOME A BAD HABIT, A TRAP, A MENTAL ILLNESS!" Mrs.
Doucet will remember well this year thanks to a double
homage to her work from Slovenian cultural institutions.
Apart from having her
first graphic novel My New York Diary translated into
the Slovenian language,
she’s a special guest and jury member at this year’s
international animation
film festival Animateka in Ljubljana as well. How come
so much attention to
her? Must be something about personal acquaintance and
connections, but also
because she’s an artist with many different talents.
Although she’s into
animation and other art forms now, she was also famous
for her elaborate comics
that she created in her own recognizable style and
without a hint of shyness or
decency. Then she said ‘adieu’ to the world of comics
and ventured into other
arts, but nonetheless left a huge impression on the
international comics scene.
It is too early to evaluate her eventual influence on
the following generations
of comics artists, but an artist that appears in Crumb’s
Weirdo magazine right
after a few self-published DIY zines cannot be taken
lightly.
We
saw on your homepage that you create both
illustrations
and poetry using the technique of collage, where words
and images converge into
‘textual images’ and ‘imaged text’. This is still
quite close to the world of
comics. What kind of relation in your opinion exists
between images and words
in your creative context? Words and images are the essence of
my work. They both will
be present, whatever the art form or technique I will
use. This was not that
clear when I was drawing comics, but with time and
experience and experiments,
it has become obvious. I’d say that words: narration is
more important than
pictures in my work - comics included, and is becoming
increasingly more and
more important. Quite close to the world of comics ... I
don’t think so. That’s
what you want to see. I don’t feel it is. I am writing
poetry, visual poetry
made with cut-out words from magazines. All of what I’ve
written since I quit
comics is in poem form: short texts, full of imagery
(but not lyrical at all), plays
on words ... the words I use in actual collages are not
narrative at all.
For
your collages you’re using the material taken from
women’s magazines. Why do you find them so
inspirational? You’re transforming
stereotypical images from these magazines into witty
and critical collages.
With the change of context comes the change in
meaning. What is your message
here? I started to use these old women’s
magazine for this one
writing project, which was my autobiography from 0 to 15
years old, all written
with cut-out words. It makes 200 pages and is written
sort of like poetry. I
like these old magazines because there is a big variety
of fonts in them. Not
as much in modern ones, and very often in those the
texts are in the middle of
a photo, which is not good. Also for the vocabulary: the
words you can find in
a fridge advertisement from the beginning of the 60’s
are exquisite. You can
create very good poetic accidents with these and that’s
what I was after. I
guess the topics were close enough of what I wanted to
say, childhood, young
love ... Picture-wise I guess I prefer the aesthetics of
those days. I also use
architecture magazines, hobby magazines ... Pictures are
easier to cut out for
the same reason as for the words: there are too many
words in the photos
nowadays, it spoils it all. I don’t think there really
is a deep message in my
using women’s magazines ... They are fun and easier to
find. I am a very down
to earth, practical person. You
stopped making comics (your fans presumably already
know
why, we’re not going to delve into this) and focused
on linocuts, silkscreen
printing, collage and other graphic arts. What’s
responsible for this
genre-hopping? Is it a disillusionment with the genre
and medium, some kind of
artist’s formation & development through different
approaches, pure desire
to experiment, financial viability/lucrativeness or
something completely
different? What do you think of a contemporary
artist’s professional career
development nowadays? Can’t a cartoonist remain a
cartoonist, does he or she
really need to do other things as well? It is mostly the desire to
experiment, to try different
things, which I didn’t have time or energy to do when I
was drawing comics. I
wasn’t making tons of money out of comics, which means
that I had to work all
the time. It seems natural and obvious to try different
art things when you
come from the contemporary arts milieu, but for some
reason not at all when you
come from the comics crowd. You are met with quite a lot
of unwillingness of
understanding. Maybe disbelief is a better word. I used
to say quitting comics
is like being a priest who defrocks: it’s scandalous,
it’s unforgivable.
EVERYBODY would tell me “You’re going to come back to
it”. Well ... 12 years
later ... here I am, not drawing comics. I have to admit
I was tired of the
comics crowd. I didn’t feel comfortable in this male
environment anymore. I
used to be, of course, but I needed to move to something
else in general. It
certainly wasn’t a financial decision! I have been since
then in the (local)
contemporary arts field, but more as a satellite, I
don’t feel a part of it. I
am not sure how it is elsewhere but here in
Québec the artists have become very
much like entrepreneurs, very business-like, into
promoting themselves through
texts about their own creative reasoning. An awful lot
of them have a masters
degree in fine arts. It is the norm, now. It seems like
you have to have one to
get anywhere, or so they think. A friend of mine, who’s
also a satellite but in
her case coming from the music field, says they are
domesticated. I think it
describes it well. It’s not for me, really. I do my
things, see what happens.
What happens is more often a book. You
went to a Catholic high-school for girls which is not
the most obvious background for a rather controversial
artist. You’re saying in
your biography that it was only in college that you
started reading and doing
comics. What have you been reading back then, then?
What are the artists that
have influenced and inspired you the most? I can’t
imagine much thought and
inspiration inducing literature in a library of such a
school, but we know that
Christian religious press made heavy use of comics to
spread its teachings and
convey their message. Since you went straight from
there to printing arts, you
must’ve at least known about the comics medium. Are we
wrong? You are not wrong. I started to read
comics as a child.
Strange but true: my mom was the one who was bringing
comics at home. She loved
Tintin, Astérix and Lucky Luke. She was also
buying Pilote magazine, which had
more adult content. They published Bilal, Moebius,
Druillet and many more. So
quite young I was exposed to the strangest comics
authors. I was also reading a
lot of literature, just like my mom. I would go to the
public library with her
every week ... I have to say my main influence as an
artist is this French
woman writer Christiane Rochefort. I
read her for the first time at 12. It was the very first
time I felt I could
totally identify with a female character. Rochefort
wrote with a very sharp
sense of humour, she was so angry, but in a constructive
and positive way.
Anybody, anything goes in her books. So much freedom ...
I never stopped
reading comics, though. Eventually I discovered the
French cartoonist F’murr,
who is definitely the one who inspired me to draw
comics, who made me think I
could do it. Everybody think I have been influenced by
Robert Crumb, but not
really. I started to read American comics later, after I
was already on my way
to self-publish. I loved his comics, of course, when I
finally got to read
them Your
comics stories are mostly autobiographical. Do you
find
it hard to share your intimate world with others? Is
this about some kind of
exhibitionism, typical for artists in general, or is
it perhaps about the authenticity
of the autobiographical material? On the
other hand: female comics artists seem to make use of
their first-hand
diary-like experiences more often than their male
colleagues. Would you agree
with that? Do you think this distinction on male and
female artists is relevant
at all? No, I don’t find it hard, but I do
have my limits. There are
some things I would have never touched in the comics
form, like: family. I did
later with writing ... somehow it was OK to do so. You
have to realize that I
choose only one or two aspects of ‘one event-story’ and
put the rest aside. So
in a way it is edited, even though the facts are 100 %
true. The one story I
regret doing is My first time (from My New York Diary).
I now feel that that
one goes too far, I am a bit embarrassed about it. Way
too intimate! Oh well ... of course artists are
very self-centered and
draw from their own life experience. I guess that makes
good stories, right? In
my case I started to draw comics using my own
character/persona to tell rather
imaginary over the top stories. Then I illustrated my
dreams. In both cases I
don’t consider it is autobiographical. I came to
autobiography because I needed
to move on to something else. One must not make a career
out of autobiography,
one MUST explore! It’s true that female cartoonists tend
to use it more than
men. Why? I don’t really know ... Fortunately it’s
changing, there is an
evolution towards fiction. Autobiography can become a
bad habit, a trap, a
mental illness! You’ve
become known as a controversial, critical, even
feminist comics artist. Also, we’ve recently published
your My New York Diary.
Do you think this work of yours captured the spirit of
some other, past times
and if yes, how can it be relevant to the contemporary
reader as well? What is
the status/condition of comics and other female
artists today like? My influence and relevancy, that is
definitely not for me to
tell. I don’t know how it is like today, I have been out
of it for too long,
but Dan Nadel, the publisher at Picturebox Inc in New
York told me a couple of years
ago that female cartoonist’s books are still way harder
to sell than men’s
ones. I was rather shocked. Still! I am not sure the
comic artist’s status has
changed that much ... People hear more about them, yes,
but still think they
are some sort of clowns, not to be taken too seriously.
That’s what I get, at
least.
You’re
the main guest at the Animateka international
animation film festival in Ljubljana this December.
What was your transition
from a static medium to a dynamic one like? We presume
you didn’t learn about
animation for your printing arts degree ... was this a
sort of natural
transition, if not evolution, to a different kind of
storytelling, or just a
contingent random decision that you happened to like? I did a short film project with the
French film maker Michel
Gondry. He is a great inspiration ... The collaboration
was rather frustrating
and the result OK, but not amazing, but still, it made
me want to try to make
animation films. An animator friend of mine, Amy
Lockhart, taught me how to do
it in a very DIY way with any digital camera and free
animation software. I was
very surprised to find out that the notion of rhythm is
completely different
from comics to film. You can’t think a project the same
way, can’t make a
decoupage the same way. So no, it wasn’t as natural as I
expected, not at all.
I was rather lost, I have to admit. Also the technical
aspect of it all nearly
drove me crazy and I wanted to quit every two days. I am
used to pen and ink
and total independence, to not have to spend money to
make art. That part I
found very hard to take too, indeed even absurd! I liked
the repetitive drawing
part, had no problem with that. I love to see my
drawings move, it’s totally
magic. The best part is my collaboration
with the local sound artist
Anne-Françoise Jacques. I wanted her to create
soundtracks that would take a
lot of space in the films, a 50-50 thing between sound
and image. A perfect
collaboration. It turned out exactly that way ... my
films totally came to life
with her music. I had to mention it. We
know your work mostly from Dirty Plotte and My NY
Diary,
where you dealt with issues like relationships, sex,
drugs, comics and an
artist’s professional maturing, if not coming of age.
What are your themes and
topics now that you create animation films? Is it the
same issues from a
different, perhaps wiser perspective, or are you
dealing with other things in
your work now? What is your recent work actually
about? What can we expect to
see on this year’s edition of Animateka from you? My animation films are mostly
abstract experiments or words
that move ... not always very narrative ... often only
one sentence. It’s hard
to talk about them, about their content. They talk a lot
about the absurdity in
life, I guess, despair, but expressed with humor, as
always ... In their forms
they are drawings, except for one, which is a series of
words on photocopies
that are crumpled.
Oh, yes, and ink on
film, letraset on film. You have to go to the exhibition
and watch them! |