Imaginary interview with Piem
by Charactorium · Piem (1923 — 2020) · Visual Arts · Performing Arts · 6 min read
A Sunday in the late 1970s, in a bright apartment in the Paris region cluttered with sheets of paper and markers. Piem, in a sober jacket with a mischievous smile, moves aside a drawing board still marked by a line to make room for us. On the table, a bottle of India ink and a stack of albums wait for us to talk about his life with a pencil.
—Let's start with the name: where does the 'Piem' that signs your drawings come from?
There's no mystery, and it always disappoints people a little! My name is Pierre de Montvallier, born in 1923 in Saint-Saturnin, a village in Auvergne clinging to the Puy-de-Dôme. When you sign a drawing squeezed into the corner of a page, a long surname won't fit: you need something short, that catches the eye. So I took my two initials, P and M, and I pronounced them out loud: 'pee-em'. That was it. My Auvergne roots stayed in the pseudonym like a lava stone under the varnish: discreet, but I know they're there.
When you sign in the corner of a page, a long surname won't fit.
—What does an ordinary day look like for a press cartoonist?
In the morning, I open the newspapers and listen to the news, like a fisherman watching for ripples. What I'm looking for isn't the information: it's the angle, the little twist that will make people laugh. Once I've found the idea, I sit at my board, I sketch lightly first, then I ink — with a marker for the frankness of the line, with India ink when I want deep black that will hold up in print. The afternoon flies by in this struggle with the paper. And always that clock in my head: I have to deliver before the deadline, take my drawing to the editorial office before the newspaper closes. The newspaper waits for no one, not even the one who makes it smile.
What I'm looking for isn't the information: it's the little twist that will make people laugh.
—The marker rather than the brush: is it an artist's choice or a constraint?
Both, as often. Press cartooning is an art of speed: you don't have the time or the luxury of a painter's second thoughts. The marker gives the line that immediate readability — the reader has to understand in a second, between two subway stops. But I also love India ink, its density, its black that doesn't cheat. People forget that a drawing, before being funny, must be seen, printed clearly on cheap newspaper paper. A weak line, a gray caricature, and the joke dies before reaching the reader. My job lies in this paradox: putting years of skill behind a gesture that must seem done in three seconds.
A drawing, before being funny, must be seen.
—Then television came along. How did you come to draw live in front of the cameras?
Thanks to 'Le Petit Rapporteur', that show from the mid-1970s where we sketched the guests and the week's news every Sunday. They set me up in front of my board and studio easel, and the camera transmitted my gesture to millions of people. The general public discovered me there, not as a signature at the bottom of a page, but as a hand at work. It was a turning point in my life: until then, people saw my drawings; from then on, they saw me drawing. The difference is immense. A published drawing is a finished object; a live drawing is a little theater, where the audience holds its breath waiting to see what the line will become.
Until then, people saw my drawings; from then on, they saw me drawing.
—Drawing without a safety net, without an eraser: isn't that terrifying?
Terrifying is the right word. Live, there's no eraser and no right to make a mistake: once the line is drawn, it can't be taken back, and if your hand trembles, ten million viewers see it tremble with you. It's a tightrope act. People think I draw fast; in truth, I think fast and I lay down the line slowly, surely, because I already know where it's going. That tension, believe me, you never quite get used to it. But it's precisely that vertigo that made my reputation: people didn't just come to see a successful drawing, they came to see a man risk making a mistake in front of them, and pull it off. The tightrope walker on his wire, you only watch him because he might fall.
Once the line is drawn, it can't be taken back, and if your hand trembles, ten million people see it tremble.
—You've lived through half a century of illustrated press: which publications mattered to you?
I was lucky to have a long career, which for a cartoonist means many editorial offices visited. Paris Match offered me its pages to comment on the spirit of the times with wit; Le Figaro, Télé 7 Jours and many others welcomed my drawings over the decades. Such longevity isn't a merit, it's almost a miracle of mutual loyalty: the newspaper keeps me, I keep the newspaper. And then there are my albums, those collections where I gather my best drawings. Because press cartoons have the life of a butterfly — published in the morning, forgotten by evening, wrapping tomorrow's fish. The album, on the other hand, holds onto what deserved to last, like a herbarium preserves flowers that would otherwise fade without a trace.
Press cartoons have the life of a butterfly: published in the morning, forgotten by evening.
—What did the cartoon as a weapon represent for you, from the spring of 1968 to more recent debates?
In May 1968, I saw posters and drawings become weapons of protest, plastered on walls, torn down, covered up. It reminded me that our profession is never entirely innocent: a line can make people laugh, but also scratch, wake up, anger. As for me, I never chose the side of ferocity — my humor remains more gentle than biting. But I respect those who draw in the thick of it. The pencil is a strange tool: light as a feather, and yet we've seen the powerful fear it. Those who think a drawing is just entertainment have never felt the weight a simple line can carry — for the best, sometimes for the tragic.
The pencil is light as a feather, and yet we've seen the powerful fear it.
—You're known to be a devout Catholic. How do faith and humor coexist under your pencil?
Many people ask me if you can be a believer and make people laugh, as if the two were mutually exclusive. I spent years proving the opposite, by drawing for the Christian press: the daily La Croix, the weekly Le Pèlerin. For me, faith was never rigidity: it is rather a source of benevolence. My humor remained gentle, more caressing than cruel, because I believe you can smile at human flaws without despising them. Laughing at someone to belittle them never tempted me; laughing with them at our common weaknesses, that's more my style. You can love your neighbor and sketch him with a mocking line: it's not a contradiction, it's a form of tenderness.
You can love your neighbor and sketch him with a mocking line: it's a form of tenderness.
—Are there things a benevolent cartoonist refuses to draw?
What I refuse isn't a subject, it's an intention: I don't want to humiliate. You can draw anything — politics, the Church, the flaws of my time — as long as you don't aim below the heart. The cruel line seeks to wound; the gentle line seeks self-recognition — that little laugh from someone who, seeing themselves sketched, says 'that's really me, that big fool'. In the pages of La Croix and elsewhere, I've always preferred that smile. It may be less spectacular, less glorious than the caricature that strikes down. But I'm convinced that a drawing that reconciles people with their own ridiculousness does as much good as a drawing that accuses.
The cruel line seeks to wound; the gentle line seeks self-recognition.
—Did that little boy from Saint-Saturnin imagine he would become a television star?
Never in a million years! When you're born in 1923 in a village in Auvergne, the small screen doesn't exist — television won't enter French homes for decades, in the fifties. The kid I was scribbled in his notebooks without suspecting that one day his doodle would go through a camera. That's the great coincidence of my generation: we saw almost everything that defined the century being born — radio, television, color on screen. I went through these changes with a pencil in hand, as much a bewildered spectator as an actor. From the oil lamp in the village to the TV studio, there's only one man's life — mine — and it's dizzying to think about.
From the oil lamp in the village to the TV studio, there's only one man's life.
—If a reader opened one of your albums in a century, what would you want them to find?
Ah, what a strange idea to imagine being leafed through a hundred years from now! If that were to happen, I'd like that unknown reader not to find a history lesson in my albums, but a mirror. My drawings are portraits of a France in full transformation, captured not by its great men but by its small daily quirks — the queue at the post office, the bar argument, the prim look of the local notable. I'd like them to smile and say to themselves: 'deep down, they were like us.' Because fashions change, mustaches and hats come and go, but the human comedy never ages. If my pencil has captured a bit of that eternal drollery, then I won't have wasted my ink.
Mustaches and hats come and go, but the human comedy never ages.
This imaginary interview was generated by artificial intelligence from sources documented in Piem'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.