GOTLIB - Lot 121

GOTLIB MARCEL GOTLIB Les Dingodossiers, Dargaud 1967 Les Grands Enfants, original double plate prepublished in the April 7, 1966 issue of Pilote. India ink and blue pencil on paper 41 × 54.5 cm (16.14 × 21.46 in.) René Goscinny was in the habit of observing the mores of his contemporaries with "a little offset". Le Petit Nicolas describes an adult world from a child's point of view. Les Dingodossiers follows the same approach: it's a manual of gai savoir put together, as Goscinny writes, "without documentation, and with the help of contributors who knew nothing about the subject". Here, the idea is entirely Swiftian: to lend adults the behavior of children. Gotlib does more than simply "illustrate" the scenario. He adds gag to gag. Note his graffiti "Charlier est un caphteur", which seems to have been written by the student Chaprot. With the "Gotlib & Co Bank", he ironizes the rather precarious status of cartoonists at the time. Finally, the drawing itself demonstrates a unique talent for making people laugh. Gotlib, like Goscinny, understood that they were appealing to the childhood in all of us.