Artists theyve collaborated with
Vibrantly screenprinted, with
Recent books include; Burning
Caroline et Ses Amis, which takes
In Noeud, by Moulinex, we find
Group Sex Explosion by Andy Bolus,
Mike Dianas Sketchbook illustrates
Whilst at art school in 1993,
Relocating to Marseille in 1995
Hopital Brut #4 Megazine is a
The 45 minute Video features
Hopital Brut-the Exhibition features
Such a prolific output brings
With half a dozen new books already
range from unknown europeans with unlikely pseudonyms, Moulinex, Blex Bolex
and Y5P5! to established figures like Gary Panter. Ignored by the French
art establishment and treated like genuine outsider artists Le Dernier
Cri have been forced to built up their own network of misfit artists by
seeking out and publishing comic art delinquents from around the world.
Le Dernier Cri books provide a home and outlet for a disparate selection
of artists working away from any critical spotlight, whos work straddles
the high art /lowbrow culture divide, confuses critics and curators and
isnt in danger of becoming fashionable or trendy anytime soon.
elaborate fold-out pages Le Dernier Cri publications are hand made in editions
of 150 copies, selling for just £15-20, in a fancy bookshop they
could easily sell for twice as much as limited edition, signed, numbered
collectors items Le Dernier Cri stick to their principles and sell at affordable
prices, it would be pointless for them to make books they couldnt afford
themselves.
Monster by 1980s RAW magazine alumni and designer of Pee Wees Playhouse,
Gary Panter, this collection of ultra-scratchy, almost self-obliterating
sketches of monsters and monster trucks alongside holiday and wedding scenes
reminds me of those biro-scrawl encrusted B&H packets found on pub
tables.
its title from a famous childrens book is Caroline Surys obsessive, scratchy
sketchbook wonder around Marseille, calling in at the Post Office and Boulangerie,
running the gamut of loitering track-suited youths and dropping in on numerous
bars and friends studios along the way.
ourselves in a fantastic forest of menacing phallic tree creatures where
trees sprouting hands and tenderly embracing saplings.
is a collection of repellent yet fascinating porno collage comic strips
and mutant orgies, interspersed with fake ads for fearsome looking sex
toys, this man clearly has too much time on his sticky hands, and a bookcase
which only has a top shelf.
why his infamous Boiled Angel comics were found so offensive by a Florida
Court that they actually banned him from drawing for several months!
Pakito Bolino immersed himself fully in the Paris underground arts scene,
playing in lo-fi/punk bands and hanging out at Un Regard Modern bookshop,
meeting artists and bookmakers who sold their publications and exhibited
at the shops monthly exhibitions. Energized by the do-it-yourself spirit
Bolino set up a screenprint workshop in a large squatted building in the
Paris suburbs, and the first incarnation of Le Dernier Cri was born, and
with plenty of creative squatters around to help out, started printing
his own work and inviting friends and artists whose work he admired to
collaborate on books.
Le Dernier Cri embarked on a prolific publishing schedule which has culminated
over the last 2 years with the mammoth Hopital Brut project. Hopital Brut-conceived
as an asylum for artists has taken the form of a touring exhibition, Video
and annual Magazine.
300 page monster of a publication with foldout posters, a boardgame, and
multiple small booklets and comics bound within its covers, printed in
a myriad of colours this showcase publication provides secure accomodation
for the rantings and scribbles of 80 graphic reprobates, a worldwide selection
of misfit artists from Europe, Japan the UK and USA.
25 short lunatic animation sequences and takes the form of a visit to the
Hopital Brut calling in at each of the wards to observe the heavily medicated
inmates/artists. It was originally commissioned by national French TV channel,
Canal Plus, who got a little bit more than they bargained for, and eventually
decided to show only half the material they had paid for.
paintings, prints, sculpture and animation props from the video. Entirely
self organised and without any outside funding, the Hopital Brut exhibition
worked along the lines of a punk band tour, picking up momentum and new
venues as it travelled, with visitors who saw the exhibition in one location
saying Hey why dont you bring Hopital Brut to my town/country Pakito Bolino
performed a live soundtrack for the Video at each show, collaborating with
local musicians. To date the exhibition has been seen at 13 venues in Slovenia,
Belgium, Holland, Finland, Switzerland and Germany. There are plans to
pack everything into a large van and bring it to Londons Chamber of Pop
Culture, Bloomsbury in 2001.
to mind the image of a manic army of screenprinting splatterpunks permanently
zonked-out on ink fumes, but amazingly the core of Dernier Cri is just
Pakito and partner Caroline Sury with a couple of hardworking volunteers.
in production, plans for 2001 include further animation projects in a new
dedicated studio space, and a catalogue for the entire Hopital Brut project.
When asked for a statement, Pakitos message is simple; Send your Dirty
Drawings. if he likes them theyll be included in the next Hopital Brut
Magazine and if he REALLY likes them, you could end up with your own book!
French-filtered transgressive graphics at Track 16.
The French expression le dernier cri translates idiomatically as "the
When I first encountered its lavish, hand-screen-printed
Sury was in Los Angeles to collaborate with contributing artist and
LDC's only obvious precedent is RAW magazine, a beautifully
Of course, the way things are going, you probably won't be seeing
The violence, sexuality and angst of much of this work may be
Perhaps the most accomplished unknown championed by the LDC
While individual artists have their relative strengths, much of the
Nowhere is this element of Gesamtkunstwerk - "total artwork" -
LE DERNIER CRI: Legendary Publishers of the International Underground | Track 16
latest fashion," but literally as "the last cry," as of a dying culture.
The French DIY publishing collective that goes by that name has, over
the past 10 years, managed to tread a fine line between the two -
issuing a torrent of urgent, violently apocalyptic picture books
that showcase the most exciting international graphic artists
around in a medium rooted in the independent production and
distribution strategies of the '90s zine underground.
collections of comix-based images, I assumed that Le Dernier
Cri was some kind of deep-pocketed vanity project instigated by a
wealthy collector/patron in Europe, where comic art has always received
a certain respect and support, both institutional and popular. How else
could an independent publishing concern manage to produce what
amounts to bound limited-edition albums of original prints -
averaging more than a dozen uniquely designed titles per year -
and sell them for peanuts? I recently learned the answer, from
LDC co-founder Caroline Sury: Do all the work yourself, and
never give up in the face of indifference, whether from the high
art world, or the low.
"West Coast Ministress of Propaganda" Georganne Deen on the first
U.S. exhibition of Dernier Cri artifacts at Track 16 Gallery in
Bergamot Station. LDC began when Sury, who had been producing
a post-punk industrial zine called Hello Happy Taxpayer, met
multimedia whirlwind Pakito Bolino and relocated with him
from Bordeaux to Paris and then to Marseilles to set up a studio and
explore and combine their interests in the laborious, relatively high
end medium of serigraphy and the further reaches of comix art. At
first LDC primarily showcased the couple's own work, but soon
found itself serving a rapidly expanding global community of
underground artists.
offset-printed comix anthology edited by Art Spiegelman and Francoise
Mouly in the 1980s. Some of the most interesting artists who came up
through RAW - like Gary Panter of Jimbo/Pee-wee's Playhouse fame and
Mark Beyer of Amy & Jordan (both of whom have published in the L.A.
Weekly) wound up working with LDC as well. But after the first few
issues, RAW began to take on more and more of the kind of upscale
East Coast toniness that led to a Pulitzer Prize (for Spiegelman)
and a gig at The New Yorker (for Mouly). Which is cool. But you're
never going to see the work of expatriate Minnesotan and LDC
regular Stu Mead on the cover of that venerable publication.
Mead's work being published anywhere in these United States. Mead's
art - like that of many LDC favorites - tends to the transgressive,
specifically a penchant for surreal, voyeuristic scenes of salacious
middle-aged men and exuberantly perverse schoolgirls, a recipe for
unwanted official attention in America. Mead caught heat for his
zine Manbag and has since moved to Berlin. Mike Diana, the only
American ever forbidden by law to make art, has done several books
for LDC. Fredox, Jonathan Rosen, Laetitia, and Henriette Valium
(whose own Montreal-based silk-screened comix led to an early LDC
alliance) have contributed to the photo-collage house style revolving
around medical atrocities and sexual torture.
provocative, but the Grand Guignol tradition has played an important
role in both post-punk industrial culture (even from before Nine
Inch Nails) and comic books from the EC horror era to the
phantasmagorical debaucheries of Zap. (And Marseilles is, after
all, the hometown of archetypal expressionist madman Antonin
Artaud.) Compared to the remarkable formal accomplishment,
the shock value seems beside the point.
is Moulinex, a French artist whose inexhaustible visual vocabulary
and seemingly effortless painting and design skills overflow in his
four-part series, Art-pute Carnet. The fact that someone so obviously
gifted in traditional visual art has come to any public attention
only through the sponsorship of a renegade group like LDC is
testimony to the cultural xenophobia that characterizes The
Art World. Although LDC has recently started issuing actual
wall-hanging framable prints, its inroads into The Art World still
consist pretty much of . . . a show at Track 16. And Moulinex isn't
alone - flipping through any issue of LDC's ongoing anthology zine
Hopital Brut (which has to date printed work by artists from 100
different countries), you are continually startled by the daring,
the beautiful and the completely unexpected.
integrity of the LDC catalog lies in its visual consistency: Most of
the photographic work leans toward the purplish
bleached-by-the-sun-in-the-drugstore-window end of the spectrum,
while the work that exploits silk-screen's unparalleled affinity for
layering usually employs garish fluorescent orange and pink or metallic
inks. This consistency of palette is a result of the DIY nature of
LDC - most of the color choices are made during the printing
process by Bolino, Sury and whoever else happens to be working
the screens. In many ways, Le Dernier Cri can be seen as one
large collective artwork- collaborative in nature but funneled
through the distinctive aesthetics of Bolino and Sury.
more apparent than in the feverish compilations of animated sequences
produced since 1997 by LDC's cinematic arm, Le Plateau Symetrique,
and screened in Track 16's tiny back gallery. With dense, careening
experimental soundtracks assembled by Bolino and friends, these
relentlessly paced mishmashes of costumed live action, puppetry
and every imaginable form of animation this side of Pixar are
nevertheless utterly cohesive. This is partly due to each having
a rough narrative structure - Le DernierCri (1997) walks us
through the publishing process (if by "walk" you mean to
stagger through a waterlogged carnival freak show with a
headful of acid), while Hopital Brut (1999) offers almost
an hour's worth of vignettes set inside a nightmarish
psychiatric facility. This fall (in addition to at least three
new books and a revamped Web site at www.lederniercri.org),
a new film anthology on the theme of "savage religions" will
tour Europe, if not L.A. C'est dommage!
Gallery, 2525 Michigan Ave. C1, Santa Monica | Through August 16 | 2003 | (310) 264-4678