KRISTIAN ART IS A SUBSTITUTION FOR A MISSING PART (PROTHETHIS)

Reflections of an Artist:

How I see Art:

Art is a form of support rather like a substitution of a missing part which helps us to live. Moreover, it makes us believe that our level is above that of a vegetable, a snail or every other living species in this planet.

My Art:

I draw because I could not see myself doing anything else. I mean I could not bare to do anything else, except perhaps do nothing. In my drawings, I try to show the world as I see it. To make a reader smile, to give food for thought, to break the humdrum. When I manage to do this I have done my job. It is a very appealing vocation.

Drawing for the press is a world unto its own and meeting up with Kristian and his cartoons has completely opened it up.

When looking at Kristian’s amusing drawings, as straightforward as the artist is a completely acceptable reality faces us because it is full of incongruity. “....Chronicler of what is transitory and witness of what is fundamental into two or three talented strokes, he sketches the complexity of a problem and by the same token makes it less alarming.” (Jacques Laurent – Editorial Director, France 3 Côte d’Azur)

Kristian’s wish “To make a reader smile: to induce thought” has been accomplished even if it just means his drawings had made people stop and look. This kind of art is such a part of our way of life, of our routines that many of the magazines and newspapers have opened up to some of the greatest cartoonists, one of whom is Kristian.

“My work in Japan is very important to me: I have been working and taking part in exhibitions for 16 years: and I stay there every year. Since last year, there is a cartoon of mine every week in the most widely read national weekly newspaper, THE SHINCHO (10 million readers)”.

Today thanks to the technology of his disposal, exchanging drawings between the artist and different media is a piece of cake. Nevertheless, as he pointed out to me “In my career, although I work both in Paris and abroad I have always lived here and worked from here (my house and workshop are in Cabris). This can be done easily nowadays with the use of the internet: but it was totally impossible for a press cartoonist when I started back in 1980 and yet I managed”.

All of his characters start off from Cabris and are scattered in all corners of the globe.

What I personally love in his sketches are his VOYEUR aspects.

In fact, whenever the cartoon presents this sort of situation even in different sketches I catch a glimpse of the artist’s hidden well placed eye which misses nothing that is going on.

As we are all a little bit peeping tom from birth (even the most righteous nuns have to admit this fact at the bottom of their hearts. The invisible aspect of his cartoons feeds our hunger).

The artist’s eye casts on current events can become un untainted milestone free from any sort of conditioning.

Actually it is not a good idea to speak about drawing and the artists: it is easier to look at them and everything falls into place because everything is within.

D.G.QUARTIERI