Jean Plantureux (born March 23, 1951, in Paris), who goes by the professional name Plantu, is a French cartoonist specializing in political satire. His work has regularly appeared in the French newspaper Le Monde since 1972. [1]
Jean Plantureux (born March 23, 1951, in Paris), who goes by the professional name Plantu, is a French cartoonist specializing in political satire. His work has regularly appeared in the French newspaper Le Monde since 1972. [1]
Jean Plantureux received his Baccalaureate from Lycée Henri-IV in 1969. Though he initially intended to pursue the study of medicine, he soon gave this up and moved to Brussels, where he enrolled in drawing courses at the École Saint-Luc.
Plantu returned to Paris and attempted to sell his cartoons to the French daily newspapers. He was hired by Bernard Lauzanne of Le Monde and his first cartoon, about the Vietnam War, was published on October 1, 1972. In 1974, Claude Julien, then-director of Le Monde Diplomatique , also began publishing Plantu's drawings.
In 1980 Plantu began to work with Le Journal Phosphore , a relationship which would continue until 1986. In 1982, André Laurens and Claude Lamotte, respectively the director and editor in chief of Le Monde, asked him to begin drawing cartoons for the Sunday edition of the newspaper. In September 1987, Plantu appeared on the television show Droit de Réponse, with Michel Polac, on TF1.
In 1985, the head of Le Monde, André Fontaine, started to publish Plantu's cartoons daily, saying that this would return political satire back to its former standing as a French tradition.
In 1988 Plantu received the Mumm prize for his cartoon "Gordji chez le juge", followed by a prix de l'humour noir in 1989. In 1991, Plantu began to publish a comic in the weekly magazine L'Express , which allotted him its entire third page every week.
In 1991 Plantu met Yasser Arafat during a showing of his cartoons in Tunis. Arafat liked Plantu's cartoons so much that he drew a Star of David on a Plantu cartoon, colored it in and signed it. The following year, Plantu traveled to Israel and met Shimon Peres, whom he convinced to sign the cartoon as well. This was the first time that signatures from both the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Israeli government had been affixed to the same document.
Le Monde changed its methodology in 1995, causing Plantu to lose control over the subject matter of his cartoons. In 1996, Plantu had a showing of his cartoons and sculptures at the Cour de cassation (French Supreme Court) in Paris. Later that year he received the Spanish Gat Perich (International Caricature Prize). Some of his drawings and sculptures were auctioned at the Hôtel Drouot in Paris, and he received exposure in Argentina through the Alliance Française of Buenos Aires.
In 1997 Plantu opened a gallery in Khartoum, Sudan. In Budapest, the president of the Hungary, Árpád Göncz, inaugurated an exhibit of Plantu and Gabor Papai. He also opened a new gallery at the French Arts centre of Mexico City. Finally, a collection of his work was exhibited at CRAC in Valence, France.
In 1998 a stamp worth three French francs was produced by the French postal service, with the proceeds dedicated to Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders). A total of 8.5 million stamps were produced. To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, UNESCO published several foreign collections illustrated by Plantu. His drawings were translated into Chinese, Japanese, Ukrainian, and other languages. That same year he opened a gallery at the French Institute of Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
In 1999, Plantu opened a gallery at the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka. Some of his drawings were exhibited in Iran at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Teheran; in the Hotel of Rohan; at the Museum Jean-Jaurès de Castres; and at the French Arts centre of Singapore.
In September 2000 a controversy arose involving the distribution of a Plantu drawing showing Jacques Chirac copulating with a sleeping Marianne. An exhibit of Plantu and Daumier written by curator Cyril Dumas opened in the Museum of Yves Brayer les Baux de Provence. The exhibition described traits shared by both caricaturists. Another installation opened that year at the French Arts centre in Yaoundé, Cameroun.
Plantu's art was featured in the Festival of the Caricature in Ankara in 2001. In 2002, he met United Nations Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, to discuss an upcoming international conference of news cartoonists in Paris. A thesis was published by Rémi Pézerat entitled "La signification politique des dessins de Plantu (1972-2000)"(The Political Significance of the Cartoons of Plantu (1972-2000)). Plantu celebrated the publishing of his 15,000th cartoon and his thirtieth anniversary with Le Monde, and launched his own website.
In 2003 an exhibit of his drawings was opened at the Carnavalet Museum. Toward the end of the year another exhibit opened at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Egypt, as well as a street exhibition in Angers, France.
In 2004 his drawings were shown to the French National Assembly in February, and his 40th book, Ils pourraient dire merci! was published.
On February 3, 2006, he responded to the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy by publishing a drawing in the first page of Le Monde representing Muhammad using many copies of the sentence "I may not draw Muhammad".
In 2009, another controversy occurred when the group America Needs Fatima launched a vast e-mail campaign against Plantu because of a drawing on Jesus distributing condoms, instead of loaves of bread, to poor people in Africa. [2]
In 2015, his cartoon, which shows an IDF soldier firing his gun at Palestinian civilians, joined by a stereotypical religious Jew, depicted with a long beard, hat and coat, and even a rifle on his shoulder made a serious scandal and rose emotions on a 'Blood libel' accusation against Israeli Jews.[ citation needed ]
A cartoon is a type of visual art that is typically drawn, frequently animated, in an unrealistic or semi-realistic style. The specific meaning has evolved, but the modern usage usually refers to either: an image or series of images intended for satire, caricature, or humor; or a motion picture that relies on a sequence of illustrations for its animation. Someone who creates cartoons in the first sense is called a cartoonist, and in the second sense they are usually called an animator.
An editorial cartoonist, also known as a political cartoonist, is an artist who draws editorial cartoons that contain some level of political or social commentary. Their cartoons are used to convey and question an aspect of daily news or current affairs in a national or international context. Political cartoonists generally adopt a caricaturist style of drawing, to capture the likeness of a politician or subject. They may also employ humor or satire to ridicule an individual or group, emphasize their point of view or comment on a particular event.
A political cartoon, also known as an editorial cartoon, is a cartoon graphic with caricatures of public figures, expressing the artist's opinion. An artist who writes and draws such images is known as an editorial cartoonist. They typically combine artistic skill, hyperbole and satire in order to either question authority or draw attention to corruption, political violence and other social ills.
A caricature is a rendered image showing the features of its subject in a simplified or exaggerated way through sketching, pencil strokes, or other artistic drawings. Caricatures can be either insulting or complimentary, and can serve a political purpose, be drawn solely for entertainment, or for a combination of both. Caricatures of politicians are commonly used in newspapers and news magazines as political cartoons, while caricatures of movie stars are often found in entertainment magazines.
Honoré-Victorin Daumier was a French painter, sculptor, and printmaker, whose many works offer commentary on the social and political life in France, from the Revolution of 1830 to the fall of the second Napoleonic Empire in 1870. He earned a living throughout most of his life producing caricatures and cartoons of political figures and satirizing the behavior of his countrymen in newspapers and periodicals, for which he became well known in his lifetime and is still known today. He was a republican democrat who attacked the bourgeoisie, the church, lawyers and the judiciary, politicians, and the monarchy. He was jailed for several months in 1832 after the publication of Gargantua, a particularly offensive and discourteous depiction of King Louis-Philippe. Daumier was also a serious painter, loosely associated with realism.
Patrick Bruce "Pat" Oliphant is an Australian-born American artist whose career spanned more than sixty years. His body of work as a whole focuses mostly on American and global politics, culture, and corruption; he is particularly known for his caricatures of American presidents and other powerful leaders. Over the course of his long career, Oliphant produced thousands of daily editorial cartoons, dozens of bronze sculptures, as well as a large oeuvre of drawings and paintings. He retired in 2015.
Jean Ignace Isidore Gerard was a prolific 19th century French illustrator and caricaturist who published under the pseudonym of Grandville. He has been called "the first star of French caricature's great age", and Grandville's book illustrations described as featuring "elements of the symbolic, dreamlike, and incongruous, and they retain a sense of social commentary." "His perverse vision sought the monster in everyone and took delight in the strangest and most pernicious transfigurement of the human shape ever produced by the Romantic imagination." The anthropomorphic vegetables and zoomorphic figures that populated his cartoons anticipated and influenced the work of generations of cartoonists and illustrators from John Tenniel, to Gustave Doré, to Félicien Rops, and Walt Disney. He has also been called a "proto-surrealist" and was greatly admired by André Breton and others in the movement.
René Pétillon was a French satirical and political cartoonist and comics artist. As a cartoonist he was most famous for his work in Canard Enchaîné. As a comics artist his best known and longest-running series was the humoristic comic strip Jack Palmer, about a goofy private detective.
Charlie Hebdo is a French satirical weekly magazine, featuring cartoons, reports, polemics, and jokes. The publication has been described as anti-racist, sceptical, secular, libertarian and within the tradition of left-wing radicalism, publishing articles about the far-right, religion, politics and culture.
Henri Julien, baptised Octave-Henri Julien, was a Québécois artist and cartoonist noted for his work for the Canadian Illustrated News and for his political cartoons in the Montreal Daily Star. His pseudonyms include Octavo and Crincrin. He was the first full-time newspaper editorial cartoonist in Canada.
Jean Maurice Jules Cabut, known by the pen-name Cabu, was a French comic strip artist and caricaturist. He was murdered in the January 2015 shooting attack on the Charlie Hebdo newspaper offices. Cabu was a staff cartoonist and shareholder at Charlie Hebdo.
The Scottish Cartoon Art Studio is a commercial art studio based in Glasgow, Scotland, made up of a group of professional cartoonists working on a collaborative basis. In this respect the Studio is unique in Scotland.
Jacques de Caso is a French-born American historian who specializes in the literature and history of pre-modern art in Europe, principally late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century French and German neo-classicism and Romanticism.
Ali Farzat or Ali Ferzat is a Syrian political cartoonist. He has published more than 15,000 caricatures in Syrian, Arab and international newspapers. He serves as the head of the Arab Cartoonists Association. In 2011, he received Sakharov Prize for peace. Farzat was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine in 2012.
Stéphane Jean-Abel Michel Charbonnier, better known as Charb, was a French satirical caricaturist and journalist. He was assassinated during the Charlie Hebdo shooting on 7 January 2015.
Daniel Brustlein (1904–1996) was an Alsatian-born American artist, cartoonist, illustrator, and author of children's books. He is best known for the cartoons and cover art he contributed to The New Yorker magazine under the pen name "Alain" from the 1930s through the 1950s. The novelist John Updike once said his childhood discovery of Brustlein's cartoons helped to stimulate his desire to write for the magazine and one of Brustlein's cartoons has been repeatedly cited for its skillful and witty self-reference. Although they have not received the same public acclaim as his humorous drawings, his paintings drew strong praise from influential critics such as Hilton Kramer, who said Brustlein's work had great refinement showing "beautiful control over the precise emotion he wants it to convey" and "complete command of color and form handled with a remarkable delicacy and discretion." In October 1960 a painting of Brustlein's appeared on the cover of ARTnews and his reputation as a "painter's painter" appeared to be firmly established after he was the subject of an article in that magazine four years later.
Nadia Khiari is a Tunisian cartoonist, painter, graffiti artist and art teacher. She is best known for her chronicles and cartoon collections about the Arab Springs, particularly for her character 'Willis from Tunis', dubbed the "Cat of the Revolution" in some sources.
Daniel Delamare is a French businessman who formerly owned an Art Gallery.
Toons Mag is a cartoon magazine that offers a global online platform for publishing editorial cartoons, comics, caricatures, illustrations, and related news. It is a multilingual publication and organizer of an international cartoon contest and exhibitions. It was founded in 2009 by cartoonist Arifur Rahman, based in Drøbak, Norway.
Kambiz Derambakhsh was an Iranian designer, illustrator and graphic artist.
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