New Yorker
Sempé has signed more than 110 covers of the “New Yorker”.
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MEDIA – With his fragile and delicate line, he captured ” a wide range of the simple pleasures of life “. These words are those, in 2019, of the writer and artistic director of the New Yorker Françoise Mouly with regard to Jean-Jacques Sempé, famous French designer who died on Thursday August 11 with whom the prestigious magazine has long collaborated.
On Instagram, this Friday, the publication paid a symbolic tribute to the creator of the Little Nicholas, recalling that the latter is the author of more than 110 front pages of the title. Many of them featured the city of New York, can we read in the caption. ” I love the colors of New Yorksaid Sempé. They are alive: bright yellows, greens, reds and blues. Paris, where I live, is beautiful, but it is always gray there. I like Paris too, but it’s not the same thing. »
The story of Sempé and the New Yorker goes back a long way. As he explained to Figaro, in 2017, this is when, as a teenager, he worked as a wine broker. In particular, he delivered wine samples to the American Information Center. ” There I could watch the glossy New Yorker. I was dazzled. It seemed to me like a distant, imaginary and inaccessible world. It was a dream.” he confided.
Then budding designer, he fell in love with the finesse of the drawings, the humor of the contributors, the gags without speech bubbles or words. Work for the New Yorker is a dream. A dream that he will realize thanks to one of his friends, the American cartoonist Edward Koren. Passing through in 1970, the latter introduced him to one of the weekly’s journalists, Jane Kramer.
« She had come to Paris on the occasion of legislative electionshe recalled, there too in the columns of the Figaro. She asked me a few questions and left with one or two of my albums. » Back in New York, she showed them to the manager. Neither one nor two, he quickly wrote to him, telling him: ” Send me what you want, what you can. » Sempé says he was terrified “. But there, ” I couldn’t back down ».
He signed his first front page drawing in 1978. It was the drawing of a man on the windowsill of a building, hesitating to take flight,” he said, becoming the first designer to collaborate with the title.
Sempé’s melancholy drawings crunched the big apple with full teeth.
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They gave it the colors of each of its seasons.
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And this, day and night.
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The illustrator has not missed any of his melodies.
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The “frenchie” knew how to impose his style on the New Yorker, even if the requirement of the newspaper and its former director, William Shawn, sometimes terrorized her. ” He was crazy about his newspaper, he loved the drawings, he loved his journalists. Besides, over there, we didn’t say journalist, we said writer. And we didn’t say designer, we said artist “, he reminded himself.
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New York City has not only stamped his work. She upset the man he was. And especially his first visit: I remember, it was in the middle of winter, a freezing winter, I had no gloves, no muffler and yet I walked through Central Park with ecstatic happiness. I was almost 50 years old, I would have given myself 20. For the first time in my life, I existed. »
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His work full of bonhomie has often transcribed this feeling of smallness in the middle of gigantic spaces.
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One thing is certain, Sempé’s poetic pencil stroke will not fade from our memories.
See also on Le HuffPost : In the New York subway, he draws stunning portraits of strangers
