Voutch

“I’m always wary of the first idea, and even more so of the second.” Voutch (Olivier Chapougnot) has searched for ideas throughout his life, firstly as an art director in advertising for around fifteen years, then as a cartoonist from 1997. His first book Tout s’arrange, même mal (Relax, it’s only a disaster), which he self-published, was a complete financial failure (its cost price was more than its retail price!) but quickly attracted the attention of the press. Marie-Claire Pauwels gave him a page in Madame Figaro (a colour supplement of the Sunday newspaper Le Figaro), with Playboy, Le Point and Psychologies quickly following suit. For Voutch – just like the New Yorker cartoonists who he has always admired - a cartoon is the ideal way of depicting developments in society and highlighting its paradoxes and absurdities. Voutch uses watercolours to create his cartoons (in what he himself calls a patate) and his generally thin long nosed characters typify his graphic style. He has published ten or so books of his drawings as well as four children’s albums, all of which have been bestsellers. Read less