We all know the street art of Banksy, but since twelve years, Lausanne and other Swiss streets are embellished by another, less known ‘pirate artist’: Léon Missile (not his real name – the artist is represented by Eric Martinet).
Léon Missile makes use of commercial posters in the city, glues a white sheet over them and makes his paintings. He picks out the uglier posters: he will not paint over a museum poster, he told the newspaper ‘24 heures‘ a few years ago.
At this moment, you can see a 44 meters long homage to the Jonathan series along the Avenue d’Enchallens in Lausanne – one painting for every album. Because of the ‘illegal’ character of the works, it is impossible to know how long they will be visible. I hope they will stay there for a while!
Galerie Barbier in Paris has an exposition with works of Cosey that opens this Thursday, 20 April. The expo is open until 20 May. You may expect original drawings of the ‘Aire Libre’ albums.
At the same time, Galerie Barbier publishes the second volume of ‘Même poursuivi, le papillon jamais ne semble pressé’, a collection of albums from the ‘Aire Libre’ albums (published by Dupuis), in a black & white edition. The first album appeared in 2020.
This volume 2 contains the following albums:
Zeke raconte des histoires
Une maison de Frank L. Wright et autres histoires d’amour
Le Bouddha d’Azur
Cosey himself will be present during the vernissage on Thursday 20 April, starting at 19.00. On Saturday 22 April, Cosey will be at the Galerie to sign copies of the new book, from 15.00 till 17.00.
The German publisher ‘Edition Alfons’ is a publisher of ‘graphic literature’. Among other, they make the magazine ‘Reddition’. The theme of number 77 is Swiss comics.
84 pages of Swiss artists like Derib, Zep, Töpffer and Cosey, of course. Below, you see two of the pages dedicated to Cosey.
Titeuf, the comics characters and series by the swiss Zep, celebrates his 30th birthday this year.
Last weekend, during the festival Art Carouge (Switzerland), the Galerie Séries Rares opened an exposition about Titeuf. You can not only see and buy originals by Zep, but also some ‘hommages’ by other artists, like Cosey.
Above, you see the drawing Cosey made for the occasion – a variation on a theme, you could say.
The exposition is open until April 1st, 2023. For more info about the expo and opening hours, please visit the website of Galerie Séries Rares.
I recently discovered polish editions of the first two Jonathan Intégrales, published by Wydawnictwo Ongrys. The albums were translated by Daniel Pánski.
There is an interesting story behind these polish Jonathans. In 2020, publisher Ongrys asked readers which comics they would like to read in polish. Jonathan ended on de sixth position in the ranking, but was one of the first series to be translated. One of the reasons behind this decision was that the Intégrale albums were available, so the polish publisher could start with a decent body of work.
In June 2021, the first album was published, the second album in December 2022. I hope the sales figures will meet the expectations of the publisher.
During the Comics Festival in Angoulême, Lombard announced a one time comeback of the ‘Journal Tintin’. The unique issue will be in shops in September 2023. The publication marks the 77th birthday of the ‘Éditions du Lombard’ – a figure that refers to the legendary subtitle of the magazine.
In the magazine, we will read 50 short stories, written by new comic artists and some of the classic artists, like Hermann, Turk, Dany and… Cosey.
From what I understand from an article in Le Figaro (by Olivier Delcroix), Cosey will make a short Jonathan story. Interesting!
One of my dear correspondents sent me some great materials from the Cartoonmuseum Basel. Above, you see a promotional folder for the exposition ‘Cosey – vers l’inconnu’.
The Cartoonmuseum also organises a contest. On the frontside (shown above) you can draw your own destination, on the backside there are a few (not so hard) questions. You can win prizes, but I don’t know what, and I don’t know the conditions for participations.
A set of postcards that is for sale at the museum. I wonder how many different ‘À la recherche de Peter Pan’ postcards there are…
Cosey – Vers l’inconnu 12 November 2022 – 26 February 2023
Cartoonmuseum Basel – visit their website to check opening hours and entrance fees
Cosey visiting his own exposition. I have seen several expositions of works of Cosey, but I think the one in Basel is very special due to the murals and decorations.
Last Friday, the exposition ‘Cosey – Vers l’inconnu’ in de Cartoonmuseum Basel was opened. Unfortunatley, Basel is too far for me to visit the exposition, but the Cartoonmuseum sent me some great pictures. Above, you see the entrance to the expo – you enter the exposition via an avalanche!
The Cartoonmuseum has made several murals, so you are immersed in the world of Cosey. I read somewhere that the museum has been closed for two weeks to get it ready for the exposition.
A space dedicated to the Mickey and Minnie albums. All in all, the exposition looks great – I wished Basel was a little bit closer to my home. Maybe it is time for a first exposition of Cosey works in the Netherlands…
Cosey – Vers l’inconnu 12 November 2022 – 26 February 2023
Cartoonmuseum Basel – visit their website to check opening hours and entrance fees
From 12 November till 26 February 2023, you can visit the Cosey exposition in the Cartoonmuseum in Basel (Switzerland). Title: ‘Cosey vers l’inconnu’ (Cosey to the unknown) – strange enough, they have chosen a french title for the first Cosey exposition in a german speaking environment.
What can we expect to see: original drawings, among which pages of the latest Jonathan, photos, sketchbooks, films and religious objects from Tibet.
On 11 November, at 18.30, we can all visit the vernissage of the exposition – an evening with lectures and music. Cosey will be present.
This month, my website ‘The World of Cosey’ celebrates its 20th birthday! In september 2002, I had some vacation days left when I changed jobs. I decided to spend the time realising an idea I had for some time: a web site dedicated to the works of Cosey. I suspected that Cosey himself wouldn’t start an adventure in the virtual universe (I was right about that), and I felt he deserved a presence on the worldwide web.
And that was how it started…
Over the years, many Cosey fans have sent me messages, e-mails, chats but also ‘real post’: news about Cosey, posters or publications that were missing from the ‘Other Works’ section of my site, wine labels, lottery tickets (no prizes won), links to interviews on tv, radio or newspapers, etc. With some of them, I have had wonderful conversations by mail about many aspects of Cosey’s work. I want to mention and thank some of them here – my apologies to anyone else who has mailed me – Bernard Matthey-Doret, Dinu Logoz, Philippe Regottaz, Ralph Doumit, Jean Christophe Defline and Thomas Geertz. Thank you all!
It has been an incredible experience to receive messages about Cosey from parts of the world where it must be very hard to get your hands on albums by Cosey. I wonder if these fans can actually read the albums – as far as I know there are very few english translations, let alone Bengali or Japanese. It must be these formidable drawings of Cosey that speak to everyone.
The amount of visitors to ‘The World of Cosey’ is astounding, I find. I have sound statistics on my site since 2016 and since then, my site was visited almost 90 thousand times. In years with a new album (like 2021), I have on average 52 visits every day, in years without new albums (like 2020 or this year), still 33 visits are made to my site every day, on average. Highest daily scores were reached in January and February 2017, when Cosey received the Grand Prix in Angoulême.
“Incroyable Roger Klaassen, fidèle avec son World of Cosey, malgré les années et ma participation quasi inexistante! D’autant plus impressionnant qu’il réalise lui-même de très belles aquarelles de voyage.” Bernard Cosey, september 2022
Finally… Cosey himself. Very soon after publication of ‘The World of Cosey’, he contacted me about my site. He was very kind and positive about it, and he immediately authorised any use of his artworks on the website. Although Cosey writes about a ‘participation quasi inexistant’, we cooperated in making ‘virtual expositions’ and interviews in the weeks up to publications of albums, from 2008 onwards. I have learned that I must never ask him if he is working on a new project – everything is secret until the publisher announces a new album.
I met Cosey only once, in Angoulême in 2018. We walked from his hotel to the exposition ‘Une quête de l’épure’ and talked about the expo and about Calypso, which had been published a few months before… but Cosey preferred to talk about my water colour drawings, as he does in the text he wrote to celebrate this 20th birthday of ‘The World of Cosey’.
Modest about his own phenomenal achievements, generous towards others, that is typical of Cosey. I hope I can maintain this website for many years to come and – although I grant Cosey all the free time and rest he wants – that I can add many novelties to the site.
Thanks to all contributors, to Cosey and to all visitors!
