Imaginary interview with Roland Moisan
by Charactorium · Roland Moisan (1907 — 1987) · Visual Arts · Society · 6 min read
Paris, a closing Thursday, in a small studio near the editorial office of Le Canard enchaîné. On the slanted drawing board, a wash still drying depicts a general in coronation attire. Roland Moisan sets down his pen dipped in India ink and agrees to look back, over a coffee, on forty years spent sketching the powerful figures of the Republic.
—How did you find yourself, in 1945, walking through the door of Le Canard enchaîné?
France was barely emerging from the Occupation, and the newspaper was reappearing after being gagged throughout the war. I arrived with my pen and my round silhouettes, without guessing that I would stay for nearly forty years. What struck me was that smell of ink and paper, that newfound freedom of a weekly without advertising, where you could mock a minister in the morning and a marshal in the afternoon. I set up my drawing board in a corner of the editorial office, and I understood that satire, after 1944, had become an honorable profession again. We had almost forgotten that a drawing could disobey. I think I never stopped savoring that privilege afterwards.
We had almost forgotten that a drawing could disobey.
—You started under the Fourth Republic. What could a cartoonist possibly draw from those years?
A delight, believe me. The Fourth Republic changed governments as often as others change shirts: I had barely finished sketching a Prime Minister when he fell, and I had to start over with his successor. That ministerial ballet, that perpetual instability of the post-war period, was an inexhaustible source for me. I drew puppet theaters, trapeze artists missing the bar, queues of candidates for power. The reader laughed, but also learned not to take too seriously those who claimed to govern them. In 1958, when all that collapsed to make way for a single man, I felt that my work table was about to change scenery.
I had barely finished sketching a Prime Minister when he fell.
—Speaking of that single man, it was de Gaulle. How was your famous series "La Cour" born?
De Gaulle had a way of ruling that was not that of a simple president: something solemn, majestic, almost royal. So, in La Cour, I adorned him with a crown and a scepter, placed him on a throne, surrounded by courtier ministers bowing as if at Versailles. It was my way of reminding that a modern Sun King remains a king, and that a king is there to be mocked. Gaullism had that sacred aspect that my pencil could not ignore. The funniest part is that the General, reportedly, did not really take offense — a monarch tolerates laughter at his court, as long as he is recognized as its center.
A modern Sun King remains a king, and a king is there to be mocked.
—The kepi keeps appearing in your drawings of the General. Why that detail?
Because a good caricaturist always looks for the shortcut, the object that says everything without a word. For de Gaulle, it was the kepi: by itself, that military cap evoked the soldier, the man of June 18, the immense stature. I just had to place that kepi on a crown, or on an empty throne, and the reader immediately understood who I was talking about. That's the secret of the trade: reduce a powerful figure to three recognizable strokes out of a thousand. The nose, the silhouette, an accessory — and there you have an entire power summarized. The kepi, for me, was worth more than a caption under the drawing; it had become, over time, a character in its own right on my boards.
—After the General, you sketched the entire presidential gallery. Were some faces more generous to your pen than others?
A caricaturist never complains about a new face. From 1958 to my last board, I saw the whole gallery pass by, from the General to Mitterrand, via Giscard elected in 1974. Each one offered me his prey: a jaw, a way of smiling, a stiffness. In 1981, when the left came to power for the first time under the Fifth Republic, I had to relearn a new forehead, a new demeanor. That's what it means to be loyal to a newspaper for so long: you end up keeping a drawn chronicle of an entire country, a true gallery of French power where men pass and only the armchair remains. I sketched the Republic like others keep a diary.
Men pass, and only the armchair remains.
—What did one of your workdays actually look like?
It started early, with newspapers spread on the table and the radio in the background. I looked for the angle, the idea that would hit the mark in the next issue: a reshuffle, a speech, a phrase too many. In the afternoon, I moved to the board, first a sketch with a grease pencil, then inking with the pen, sometimes with a wash to lay down shadows. All under the threat of the closing deadline: the time when the newspaper goes to print and waits for no one. It happened, in the evening, that a late political twist forced me to redo a cartoon already started. Editorial cartooning is that: a permanent race against the news and against the clock.
Editorial cartooning is a permanent race against the news and against the clock.
—You speak of that threat of the clock. Isn't it exhausting to start over every week?
Exhausting, yes, but it's also what keeps you alive. Politics never stops, so my pen never stopped either. Each week, I had to turn a crisis, a reshuffle, a speech into a funny and telling image — and start over seven days later, as if nothing had happened. It requires as much the eye as the hand: knowing how to observe, capture the ridiculousness of a posture, then fix it with a stroke before closing. An editorial cartoon lives only for an instant, the life of one issue, and yet, laid end to end, these instants end up telling an era. I think it was that very impermanence that gave value to each board. Nothing is more perishable, nor more faithful, than a news drawing.
—A drawing by Moisan is instantly recognizable. How would you describe your line?
Chubby characters, round silhouettes, a dense drawing where every corner of the board is inhabited. I've been told it recalls 19th-century caricature, and I'm rather proud of that. I never sought the clean line, angular modernity; I liked abundance, the good-natured roundness, that somewhat old-fashioned way of loading the scene with small details that make you smile. My line was fierce, no doubt, but never mean — good-natured, if you will. I think you can scratch a powerful person without hating them, mock them while keeping a certain tenderness for the human being that remains beneath the function.
You can scratch a powerful person without hating them.
—You mention the 19th century. Do you feel you are someone's heir?
Of a whole lineage, yes. France has a long tradition of satirical press, that of Daumier and the illustrated newspapers of yesteryear, those sheets where they sketched bourgeois kings and potbellied deputies. When I dip my pen in India ink, I feel I am prolonging that gesture, more than a century old. Caricature is not an invention of my time: it is a French art that crosses regimes, survives censorship, and is always reborn. I see myself as a modest link in a chain. Others will come after me, with other heads to sketch and other regimes to mock. The line changes, but the insolence remains.
The line changes, but the insolence remains.
—Wasn't diverting royal imagery to mock a republican playing with fire?
Fire is the satirist's fuel. Placing a crown and a scepter on the shoulders of a president of the Republic was highlighting a savory paradox: here was a regime born against kings, whose leader sometimes behaved like a monarch. In La Cour, I diverted the imagery of the Ancien Régime precisely because it clashed with the stated values. Laughter arises from that discrepancy, from that solemnity caught in the act of grandiloquence. Le Canard gave me full freedom for that, and the reader understood the subtext. Mocking the consecration of a power that claims to be of the people is still a way to serve the Republic — by reminding it not to take itself too seriously.
—After more than forty years, what does that pile of accumulated boards represent for you?
When I look back, from the Liberation to the Mitterrand years, I see thousands of weekly drawings, one board after another, almost uninterrupted. Taken one by one, they are topical jokes, forgotten the following Monday. But gathered together, they form something else: a drawn chronicle of post-war France, a visual memory of the Fourth and Fifth Republics. I did not write History, I sketched it on the margins, in the small panels of a weekly without advertising. And if you want to know not what those rulers did, but the air they had while doing it, my boards perhaps say more than a textbook. That is my modest pride.
I did not write History, I sketched it on the margins.
This imaginary interview was generated by artificial intelligence from sources documented in Roland Moisan'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.