Imaginary interview with Georges Wolinski
by Charactorium · Georges Wolinski · Visual Arts · Society · Performing Arts · 6 min read
A Parisian workshop cluttered with drawing boards, the smell of fresh India ink on the drafting table. Georges Wolinski, his forelock disheveled and a wry smile on his lips, pushes aside a pile of morning papers to make room. He speaks quickly, with that slightly disillusioned tenderness of those who have laughed at everything so as not to cry.
—What do you remember from your very first years, before France became your country?
I was born in Tunis in 1934, into a Tunisian-Italian Jewish family, under the bright sun of the protectorate. My father was murdered when I was two years old — I have no memory of him, only a void, a silhouette I was told about. You grow up strangely with a dead person you never knew: he follows you without ever speaking. After the war, the family packed up and moved to Nice, on the Mediterranean, the other shore of the same blue. There I learned French, made friends, drew in the margins of notebooks. I think all my work comes from that: a uprooted child who understood very early that you could survive anxiety by putting it on paper rather than brooding over it.
You grow up strangely with a dead person you never knew: he follows you without ever speaking.
—How did that boy from Nice end up with a pen in hand, in Paris?
Nice was high school, the light, Mediterranean carefreeness. But a cartoonist always ends up going to Paris, where newspapers and anger are made. I arrived with little more than the desire to draw lines that sting. In 1960, I walked through the door of Hara-Kiri, that 'stupid and nasty newspaper' founded by Cavanna and Professor Choron. There I met Reiser, a bunch of cheerful savages who wanted to say everything, especially what wasn't said. That's where my style found itself: provocative, a bit roguish, with women everywhere and the powerful whom we undress. We were poor and free. For an exile, that was already huge.
We were poor and free. For an exile, that was already huge.
—Do you remember the moment when, in 1968, drawing became a weapon for you?
May 1968. Cobblestones were flying, walls were covered with slogans more beautiful than many poems. With Siné, we founded L'Enragé, a newspaper that displayed protest in full pages. Suddenly, drawing was no longer a Sunday pastime: every line weighed, provoked, struck. A well-placed drawing could infuriate a minister more surely than a speech. That year I understood that caricature was a true political force, not a decoration on the fringes of current events. It was exhilarating and a bit frightening: we discovered that the pencil had weight, that you had to handle it like a match near gasoline. Libertarian, I already was; then, I was it with my hands in the grease.
A well-placed drawing could infuriate a minister more surely than a speech.
—What attached you so much to that libertarian spirit, rather than to a tidy political party?
A libertarian is someone who loves freedom so much that they distrust all those who claim to organize it for them. I never tolerated being told what to think, not by priests, not by colonels, not by petty office bosses. After 1968, when the enthusiasm faded, many traded revolt for a career. I kept drawing because I didn't know how to do otherwise. Doubt seemed more honest to me than certainty: those who no longer have doubt always end up wanting to deprive you of it as well. I kept that spirit all my life, one foot in commitment, one foot in mockery. Laughing at the powerful, including those in your own camp, is still the best democratic hygiene I know.
Those who no longer have doubt always end up wanting to deprive you of it as well.
—Tell us about an ordinary day at your work table.
In the morning, I read the newspapers — all of them, even the bad ones, especially the bad ones. Current events are a goldmine: a lying minister, a couple breaking up, a distant war, and there it is, the day's drawing taking shape in a corner of my mind. In the afternoon, I sit at the drawing board, the pen dipped in India ink, that black that gives the line its nervousness. I work quickly, often in the urgency of the deadline, when the printer is calling and I have to find the punchline before evening. The line must remain spontaneous; if you rework it too much, it dies. In the evening, I meet up with fellow cartoonists, we remake the world while laughing. It's there, in that cheerful disorder, that the next day is prepared.
The line must remain spontaneous; if you rework it too much, it dies.
—Your drawings of women are said to be inseparable from your drawings of politicians. Why this strange couple?
Because they are the two great theaters of life: desire and power. My women are free, talkative, insolent; they say out loud what men dare not think. My politicians, I undress literally — a naked powerful person puts things in perspective. Between the two, there is the same subject: who commands whom, and who is putting on a show. I have paraded this little people for over fifty years, from Hara-Kiri to Charlie Hebdo, in dozens of albums. I was criticized for my women; sometimes rightly, often wrongly. I drew them as I drew death and politics: with tenderness and without illusions. The line mocks, but it also loves.
A naked powerful person puts things in perspective.
—How does an anarchist at heart accept drawing for L'Humanité, the daily of the Communist Party?
Ah, I was teased enough about that! In the 1980s, I illustrated L'Humanité, the newspaper of the Communist Party. A libertarian among communists is like a cat in a kennel: it growls, but you observe each other with curiosity. I never took out a party card, I never obeyed a line. But my sympathies were on the left, with the workers, the little people, those who are crushed. I liked the idea of bringing my pencil where equality was talked about, even if it annoyed the guardians of dogma. A cartoonist is loyal only to his own eye. I always kept a reserve of irony for my hosts themselves: revolution, yes, but without having to shut up.
A libertarian among communists is like a cat in a kennel.
—What would you say about that Legion of Honor you received in 2005, you the scourge of the powerful?
In 2005, the Republic made me a knight of the Legion of Honor. Imagine: me, the kid from Tunis, the anarchist from L'Enragé, pinned by the State I had spent my life teasing! I found it irresistibly comical. People asked if I would refuse, for consistency's sake. Refusing would still be taking the thing seriously; accepting it with a smile was funnier and freer. A medal never stopped me from continuing to sketch ministers without leniency, the next day as before. I don't think I was bought that day: I was simply recognized, which is not the same thing. A decorated person can remain insolent — it's even the only elegant way to wear a ribbon.
A decorated person can remain insolent — it's the only elegant way to wear a ribbon.
—Why did you make humor, precisely, the substance of an entire life?
Because it's my way of surviving anxiety. I come from a murdered father, from exile, from a world where death arrives without warning: very early on, I knew I had to choose between laughing at it or dying from it. I chose to laugh at it, but not with a stupid laugh. I often say: “Humor is an elegant way of saying desperate things.” People think comedy is light; on the contrary, it's what remains when you've looked everything in the face — politics, relationships, old age, death — and you refuse to look away. A good drawing is a tear that has been made up into a smile. That's my job: to make up tears so they become bearable, and even shareable.
A good drawing is a tear that has been made up into a smile.
—Deep down, what still drives you, after so many years, to sit down every day in front of a blank sheet?
The simple truth: “I draw because I don't know how to do anything else, and because it allows me to say what I think.” It's not false modesty, it's an admission. I have neither the talent of orators nor the patience of activists; I have a pencil, and a sketchbook that I fill day after day, as others keep a diary. I throw in ideas, faces, anger, without knowing which ones will be used. As long as the hand obeys and current events provide its monsters, there is no reason to stop. A cartoonist does not retire: he falls with the pen in his hand, in the middle of a sentence, leaving on the page a last idea barely begun.
A cartoonist does not retire: he falls with the pen in his hand.
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Sources
This imaginary interview was generated by artificial intelligence from sources documented in Georges Wolinski's profile. It dramatises what the figure might have said based on what we know about them, but does not constitute attested historical testimony. For primary sources and factual documentation, refer to the full profile.