Maestro of the Black Humor Roger Testu and His Erotic Designs
Roger Testu/Tetsu (1913-2008) was a French painter and cartoonist who began his career in the 1950s. Besides his obvious talent and skill, the reason why we pay attention to this honored master of caricatures is that his works remind us of both Roland Topor and Georges Wolinski, whom we passionately love and to whom our previous articles were devoted. Although, the circle of amusing associations we cannot but mention here is far vaster.
Fig. 1. Photograph published in “Tetsu – Cardboard, Les cahiers du dessin d’amor” Number 10, 1980 (magalerieaparis.wordpress.com)
The All-Round Man
Having attended the painting courses of Maurice Denis and Georges Desvallières in his youth, Tetsu started contributing to magazines only in his forties. Before this, he had worked as the director of a soap factory, a fine arts dealer, and a kitchen designer. In 1953, his schoolmate working in a newspaper helped him get an overnight job as a cartoonist. Since that time, he had worked with popular press such as France Dimanche, Ici Paris, Jours de France, Le Figaro Magazine, Lui, VSD, and also with Hara-Kiri, which covers we reviewed in one of our two-part articles. Following his bent, Tetsu was honored with numerous awards, including the Grand Prix de l’humor noir. As Topor wrote in his poem devoted to Tetsu, “Glory to you / O Tetsu / Whose face remains nice even when it is black / Ah your ink certainly makes the cuttlefish pale/ Dry of despair /Recognizing his squid on your blotter.”
Fig. 2. The cover of “La Vie Est Belle” (magalerieaparis.wordpress.com)
La Vie Est Belle
The first book of Tetsu entitled The Life Is Beautiful depicted the life of a bourgeois couple. In one of his interviews, the artist said the following: “When I am in front of my blank page, I am in my little world of bourgeois satisfied with themselves, full of resentment all the same against society. They are very happy, they have their little car; they have their fridge (…) the actor swallows his character, he is inhabited by him, I am inhabited by my characters, when I draw them, I draw them from within” (magalerieaparis.wordpress.com). The same world of little content people can be observed in cartoon-like drawings and sculptures of the Croatian artist Vasko Lipovac (check out our articles on his works if you haven’t done this yet!). However, bourgeois people from the erotic designs of Tetsu show themselves as far more sophisticated and liberated in terms of earthly pleasures than the “buttoned-up” characters of Lipovac with their casual sex in missionary pose.
Fig. 3. Dessins des que et des Q (honesterotica.com)
Fig. 4. Dessins des que et des Q (honesterotica.com)
Fig. 5. Dessins des que et des Q (honesterotica.com)
Fig. 6. Dessins des que et des Q (honesterotica.com)
Fig. 7. Dessins des que et des Q (honesterotica.com)
Fig. 8. Dessins des que et des Q (honesterotica.com)
Fig. 9. Dessins des que et des Q (honesterotica.com)
Fig. 10. Dessins des que et des Q (honesterotica.com)
The Spirit of Shunga
The bizarre imagination of Tetsu makes his sets similar to works of Topor and even more to shunga pictures of Shozan, Hokusai, or a member of Utagawa school. The portfolios Dessins des que et des Q published in 1960 in a limited edition of 275 copies and Les belles manières released twenty years later contain motifs familiar to any shunga lover. Tetsu’s ladies and gentlemen use various devices to please themselves. Here we can see genitalia-dolls comparable to Sambaso Dancer by Hokusai and long-nosed masks reminding of Tengu, whose nose often serves as a dildo in the spring pictures. The common ground for shunga, Dessins, and Les belles manières is that characters enjoy their sexuality and live in a sensual utopia. There are no taboos or restraining barriers, only bizarre BDSM games with improvised tools. Tomi Ungerer’s Fornicon is a distant futuristic relative, a final stage of this little happy world with its’ cozy apartments and inexhaustible sexual fantasy of the inhabitants.
Fig. 11. Dessins des que et des Q (honesterotica.com)
Fig. 12. Dessins des que et des Q (honesterotica.com)
Fig. 13. Dessins des que et des Q (honesterotica.com)
Fig. 14. Dessins des que et des Q (honesterotica.com)
Fig. 15. Dessins des que et des Q (honesterotica.com)
Fig. 16. Les belles manières (honesterotica.com)
Fig. 17. Les belles manières (honesterotica.com)
Fig. 18. Les belles manières (honesterotica.com)
Fig. 19. Les belles manières (honesterotica.com)
Fig. 20. Lesbian scene involving a mask. Les belles manières (honesterotica.com)
Fig. 20b. A woman pleasing herself with a Tengu mask, Utagawa school.
Fig. 21. Les belles manières (honesterotica.com)
Fig. 22. Les belles manières (honesterotica.com)
Fig. 23. Les belles manières (honesterotica.com)
Fig. 24. Les belles manières (honesterotica.com)
Fig. 25. Les belles manières (honesterotica.com)
Fig. 26. Les belles manières (honesterotica.com)
Fig. 27. Les belles manières (honesterotica.com)
Fig. 28. Les belles manières (honesterotica.com)
Fig. 29. Les belles manières (honesterotica.com)
Fig. 30. Les belles manières (honesterotica.com)
Fig. 30b. Illustration by Tomi Ungerer (sexispure.com)
Fig. 31. Les belles manières (honesterotica.com)
Fig. 32. Les belles manières (honesterotica.com)
Fig. 33. Les belles manières (honesterotica.com)
Fig. 33b. ‘Sambaso Dancer’(c.1810s) from the series ‘Brocades of the East (Azuma nishiki)‘ by Katsushika Hokusai
Fig. 34. Les belles manières (honesterotica.com)
Fig. 35. Les belles manières (honesterotica.com)
Fig. 36. Les belles manières (honesterotica.com)
Fig. 37. Les belles manières (honesterotica.com)
Fig. 38. Les belles manières (honesterotica.com)
Fig. 39. Les belles manières (honesterotica.com)
Fig. 40. Les belles manières (honesterotica.com)
Fig. 41. Les belles manières (honesterotica.com)
Fig. 42. Les belles manières (honesterotica.com)
Click HERE for the sharp cartoons on sex, politics, and society of Georges Wolinski….!!
Most of the above images came from Honesterotica.com…!!
Sources: Wikipedia.org; honesterotica.com, magalerieaparis.wordpress.com
What do you think about the cartoons of Roger Testu? Leave your reaction in the comment in the box below…!!