Georges Goursat

Georges Goursat

Georges Goursat, known as SEM (born November 23, 1863 at Perigueux, died in 1934 in Paris) was a poster artist, cartoonist, worldly columnist, illustrator and writer. It opened in 1900, a Parisian career that continues today in showrooms in New York or Japan. His close relative was (1914-1991), a leading founder of the Emmanuel Community.

Life and works of SEM

Throughout his life, Sem responded with art to various situations, ranging from news to advertising through the creation of albums that are his trademark. He accompanied the mutation carriers at the turn of the century, renewing the life of images, creating and using new practices, increasing the imaging media such as advertising sales on the rise. In a creative appetite that does not bother borders applied arts - visual arts, it contributes to the rise of new uses, accompanying the debut of what will become of visual communication. From this point of view, it is entirely in his time, trying in this new century to make a synthesis of the arts and to connect industry and artistic expression.

Sem became Parisian in 1900, when he was thirty-seven years old and confident in his style. His signature is attached, Georges Goursat SEM has become, in tribute to Amédée de Noé (known as Cham) said he admires the work. If away from tradition and master satirist Cham is a unique treatment of the cartoon, halfway between portrait in situ and caricature. A very readable summary representation: solid colors outlined in black, use of colored backgrounds with character in the foreground, are effective and aesthetic vocabulary. Flat areas of color and contour lines of nervous going to gradually replace the characters head giant Lilliputians, inherited the tradition of caricature.

The press is a must for all designers. After Perigueux, his hometown, Bordeaux and Marseille, where he showed the local figures, women and men with little, street workers, gentlemen of the bar, reviewed in local newspapers, Sem confronts Parisian life. Self-taught, it's popular with readers of the local press and the enthusiasm of Bordeaux albums that give legitimacy to continue its path. He took the golden age of caricature, and is in the drawing figures, the object of his work. It will bond to caricature the aesthetics of the genre that has been defined as an art without art. The Parisian press forward to hosting his drawings. They will find resonance among audiences fond of pictures, portraits of personalities. In spring 1900, Sem Expo arrives in the middle. Paris intends to demonstrate its power on the eve of the First World War. The Colonial Exhibition, a showcase of France with a rich and wide empire and a flourishing industry which is able to contribute to the development of arts, holds all the Parisians.

Week will embark on this excitement and help forge the myth of the early twentieth century: belief in modernity and the conquests of progress. With this album Le Turf that will conquer Paris .

1900-1914

The racing world gives Sem his passport to worldly life, the field of survey of all production.

Wk after the rich and worldly society in the territories, he will produce in a few months the portrait gallery that provides its models to Proust, Sacha Guitry or Jules Renard. In January 1906, Snapshot, illustrated supplement of the Journal Weekly has a photo on which the great little man already stands alongside the great Chaliapine, who dominates a head, one arm around her shoulders.

His first album, yet singular object editorial, will propel him to the forefront of the worldly scene. He will find support for his work, his clients and friends, so paradoxical. This company leads the carefree all places fashionable Parisian cafes and theaters, beaches, Deauville, casino in Monte Carlo. The album, from a very small number of copies of one hundred to five hundred, are sold by the printer.

In 1909, the success of Sem is established in Paris, he organizes Street Royale Roubille a diorama, installation very popular at the beginning of the century. Anonymous silhouettes cut plywood, animals, horses, carriages form a parade route for the races.

1914-1918

War correspondent for Le Journal, his writings gathered in Un pékin sur le front, will the naive tone of the hero of Stendhal's Waterloo, and the sincere emotion that will surprise a society that sends its men to the battlefield, as the last fashion show. The illustrations that accompany these texts back to a classic design, treated with charcoal pencil and watercolor heightened. Week will see the front than the Grande Muette wants to show him: but the spectacle of men and animals mistreated, moves. We can criticize his lack of vigor in denouncing the conditions of life in the trenches, when the artists involved in the war critics violently slaughter of 1914-18. But the pencil Week begins serving a sincere emotion palpable even today. In 1918, he will sketch 68 hearing in the trial .

1918-1934

In the aftermath of the war, Shem will resume his notebooks and observe a changing society: the car replaced the horse, women's dresses and outfits for men have changed, jazz, tango burst into a Paris that seeks to Capital pleasures again, turning their backs on the horrors of war. The magic of electricity changed the lives of Parisians. New faces are on the stage, industrial, sports. Week in Earl makes the albums entitled Le nouveau monde, he published alongside La Ronde de Nuit. The centers of the arts move to Montparnasse and Montmartre. Sem is less present on the art scene.

However, his participation in the salon de l’Araignée hosted by , connects it to a community of young artists back from the front, which will form the European avant-garde. Sem will be exposed repeatedly confirming that still counts among the artists of his era.

In 1927, Sem releases its latest album, White Bottom. At the end of his life, he will multiply the trips to England. He has delivered thirty albums, composing the saga of a medium that will pass, but he has remained at a distance.

He died in 1934, hailed by all the press as an artist and a man of spirit which has marked an era gone for a few years of the Second World War.

Global Approach

We discovered today in the guise socialite fixed cartoonist Sem's been a remarkable artist, even if no claim nor Sem cartoonist or artist. Middle English "artist-craftsman", who assume the design and manufacture of their works, Sem is closely monitoring the production of albums. From a very thorough work, research, graphics, editing, folding, collage, he produced the original design, which Cocteau said: "It's beautiful as any work where work and join spontaneity." These are the characteristics of the work of Sem. The apparent ease of his plot is belied by the observation of its layers or studies, which show repentance recovery, he took the sharp eye of the artist to make selections before the rigorous final prints. The same care is taken in producing albums, and works with artisans aesthetes, buys the paper itself, for economic reasons on the one hand, but also aesthetic. He surrounds himself in his meticulous work of professionals, including colorist , colorist and master craftsman illuminator, which makes his stencils, but also those of Rodin, , Devambez, Maurice Pillard.

Press

Along with his album, Sem has benefited greatly from the golden age of illustration in the press. In Paris, he worked regularly in the Journal, the Gaulois, L’Illustration, the Figaro and the Excelsior. It reserves the Journal reports illustrated on distant subjects current events and politics. Its discretion on the major societal debates such as the Dreyfus affair does not prevent him from engaging in through his columns, and for Turkey, a different picture than expected after the picturesque Pierre Loti. Sem is not an analyst, his gaze does not change the world, but the show as he feels. His contemporaries did not complain; historians of the press to be their own expense, unless seeking a witness in Sem history of manners.

Posters

The poster has his masters when Sem produced its first posters. Chéret, Cappiello, Mucha guns have defined and shaped the public's taste. Sem will simplify the design, taking the synthetic style inaugurated by Toulouse-Lautrec, who favors the gesture on the decorative aspect.

Advertising

Sem has found very different styles and adapt its design to meet the needs of the advertising. He knows how to direct its output in the service of selling and uses the graphic novel, or not supported by the text, with spirit. This adaptability has earned plastic for renewal until the last years of his life.

Books

Sem was a late activity of illustrator and writer, he has set a tone of stories far columnist agreed and the picturesque expected in this genre. His publications: La Ronde de Nuit (Fayard, 1923), La Cathédrale de Reims (Plon, 1926), Un Pékin sur le Front (Lafitte, 1927), are sensitive stories, and as incisive as drawings sketched on the spot of Sem. He illustrated Les Ronds de Cuir by Courteline. There are many different designs of Sem in books published after the war: Dans le monde où l’on s’abuse (Fayard, 1926), Hier à Paris by Max Aghion, pref. Francis Carco (Marchot 1940), special issue on the caricature of the journal Arts et métiers graphiques 1932, Special Issue (29) The magazine Le Crapouillot on La Belle Epoque (1955), and more recently: Bordeaux, l’art et le vin (chimeric Horizon, 1995).

In 1979 was published by Ed Fanlac Perigueux, SEM by Madeleine Bonnelle and Marie-José Meneret, an extensively illustrated biography that unfortunately does not find that library. The book is again available from editions Fanlac Périgueux: new edition completely revised in 1990, ISBN 2-86577-144-X.

SEM and his contemporaries

Throughout his life, he accompanied the creation of successive movements. Driven by a great curiosity, he is attentive to the emergence of new, whether the contributions of photography, film, fashion. Any athletic feat, no innovation or artistic creation do not let indifferent production will feed constantly in the news. His many interests and curiosity make him come across different worlds, he knows how to keep a distance. , journalist and critic said of him in the preface to Bordeaux Album: "He hates the servility, the trick of the trade The 'Mr. Artist', he dislikes to cause processes with indifferent or jealous of profane epithets distilling art. ... The warm shower compliments him that inspires smiles slow or sorry. He looks in his English correction, elegant dash, a small sportsman which a bettor would try in vain to wrest the pipe of the day. It is a modest and quiet." He will remain abroad to Cubism in art and movement up, even if he feels close to the Surrealists. Heir Cheret, linked to Cappiello, the friend fashionable painter Boldini, near Helleu and , Sem remains a unique way on a line at a time heir to the nineteenth century and including, sometimes anticipating personal way the contributions of the twentieth century. Sem intersect, during his thirty years on the art scene, the figures that will switch the century modernity, and will share with these changes celebrities of his day, whether the art world (Cocteau, Foujita, Rodin), fashion (Coco Chanel, Paul Poiret), theater (Mounet-Sully, , Brasseur, Sardou, Rostand), literature (Colette, Jules Renard, Valéry, Tristan Bernard). Pierre Loti , " Retiree recalcitrant "that depict dressed academician in the magazine Le Rire in 1898. Like his elder brother and a model Ham, nothing around him would not let indifferent. The sporting life, which will become a real social fact, the novel, the original figures captivate him, as evidenced by its commitment to including Santos-Dumont.

Conclusion

The work of Sem glue at a time so that it can make sense seems to be out of contextualization, where its appearance is evidence of a bygone era. It develops, however, an internal consistency that can be read through this desire to see and understand the spirit of his time, through those who have marked and shaped. Paradoxically, the presence of a subject and a subjective view which never climbs out of things seen, is an eminently modern position. The position of the cartoonist in the middle of the performance, as evidenced by the many self-portraits, means the pervasiveness of the author, motivated by a desire to seize almost panoptic reality, but not melt. This arrangement places the production of Sem in a very contemporary issue. No separation between the artist, production, and the conditions of his release. Shem represents the model of a singular path: that of a creator who is dealing with the artistic reality of his time. Far from the romantic illusion of a work to defend the atypical choices he has made to cartoons and caricature an artistic dimension, and changed the status of caricature by moving the horizon of expectation public in respect of this kind.

Museum SEM

Tributes

There are three streets named Sem, one in his hometown of Perigueux, as well as streets in Deauville and Bordeaux.

References

External links

• Artist's site

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