The exhibition “Le Chat déambule”, in the open air on the Champs-Elysées, is a real breath of fresh air while culture is currently at a standstill. Meeting with Philippe Geluck, the artist behind the facetious Chat.
Philippe Geluck is indeed one of the rare artists to manage to be exhibited in these times of Covid. And for good reason, his traveling exhibition “Le Chat Déambule”, which presents 20 bronze statues of his famous Cat, is visible free of charge and in the open air in Paris until June 9, between Concorde and the Rond-Point des Champs- Elysees. A whiff of poetry and humor that is good for morale! Meeting with the creator of Le Chat, who tells us about his installation, but also about his future museum project in Brussels.
Discovering your famous 2-meter-tall bronze statue cat is a new experience. Did it inspire you to continue making life-size sculptures of your work around the world?
Philippe Geluck: Obviously, the answer is yes. It’s hard to resist a call like that. I produced 8 new ones these last years, because it was necessary to reach the figure of 20 sculptures. Here I am embarking on two new sculptures. Earlier, someone was considering ordering me one 6 meters high, in bronze. The Statue of Liberty better watch out!
Through your sculptures, we discover ecological or militant messages. Are there any statues with a more subliminal message that would deliver some hope in these difficult times?
P.G.: The three “militant” sculptures are those on road violence with the car crushed by the Cat, ecology with the sphere of plastic bottles carried by the Cat, then the martyrdom of the cat which is a tribute to the cartoonists murdered and martyred around the world. These are the three conscious messages of the exhibition, which have nothing subliminal about them.
Initially, there is no hidden message. We can talk about poetry, surrealism or humor. But since we set up the exhibition, I realize that there is a general message, effectively aimed at young people, but also towards all audiences, which is perhaps inscribed in the DNA of the Cat, but which is simply a message of joy, hope, dialogue and fraternity. All you have to do is look at the people who visit the exhibition, to observe the children who take the poses of the cat, who question their parents… I realize more and more that the Cat touches everyone, but at this point, it is truly impressive.
We are trying to calculate the number of people who have already seen the exhibition: we have already exceeded one and a half million visitors. I say this, half joking but so many people have told me, the satisfaction index is 99.99%. We haven’t met anyone who wasn’t happy to be there. We see people smiling behind the masks, we hear them commenting, laughing, talking and so I think that the beautiful messages in art are those that should not be formulated.
Life-size sculptures in the open air, it is indeed a more accessible art form for the youngest, which could make them want to continue discovering your work…
P.G.: Indeed, for the youngest, it can be a step up. I also spoke with teenagers, some in difficulty, who never in their young life would have thought of going to the museum to see an exhibition. It’s also true that I’m falling into a very particular moment. In the midst of a pandemic, I’m pretty much the only accessible exhibition, so obviously we’re talking about it… But hey, I think we would have talked about it too if everything had been open. If it hadn’t been for this pandemic, there would have been millions of tourists in Paris who would have come. We make do with it, and fortunately, for the Parisians, it’s a real breath of fresh cultural air. And those who live 10 and a half kilometers and more are angry that they can’t come. The Belgians are desperate!
Among the Cat sculptures, one is a parody of a masterpiece by Colombian painter and sculptor Fernando Botero. Are there other parodies of famous works?
P.G.: From memory, there are 6 quotes to other artists: the titan Atlas who carries the globe on his shoulders, which is an ancient sculpture, the Discobolus, an ancient statue attributed to the famous Greek sculptor Myron, the crashed car, which is despite everything a quote from the sculptor Cesar and his Compressions, the dancer, which is necessarily a reference to the dancer of Botero, and the Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian, which is an iconic painting of the Renaissance represented by several painters.
And then there is a quote from Rodin, for the only talking sculpture of the Cat with its two phylacteries, which says: “Rodin chose ease with his Thinker, Geluck raises the bar with his talker”.
These exhibited bronze sculptures are offered for sale to partly finance your future Cat Museum in Brussels. Will they all eventually join the private sphere?
P.G.: Among the statues exhibited in “Le Chat Déambule”, some have been acquired by collectors, so will join the private sphere after the tour. The owners are very excited to see their sculpture exhibited first on the Champs-Elysées, then in Bordeaux, and maybe even further, later… They are well aware that they have participated in the realization of this project. Before recovering their piece, I believe that they are happy and proud to tell themselves that it will be seen by millions of people. It will be “one” of the sculptures that will have been in such and such and such a place, and that it is in their garden that it will continue its life…
After Paris, these 20 sculptures will continue to be exhibited in the Provinces (Bordeaux this summer, then Caen in the fall) before arriving at their destination in Brussels in 2024, where your future Cat Museum will see the light of day. Will the installation be wandering overseas in the meantime?
P.G.: The tour is planned, but not yet fully scheduled, since with the Covid everything has been shaken up. I have to renew ties with cities that were committed, but whose majority of teams have changed since last year… There is talk of these Cat sculptures continuing to wander around Marseille, Milan, Geneva and Montreux in Switzerland, in Luxembourg. And for the past few weeks, we’ve been talking about Montreal and New York. We even received a request from South Korea.
But the Cat does not have this international audience through his books, even if he is known. Overall, it is not as well known in other countries as in the French-speaking world, even if it is translated into fifteen languages. That said, the sculptures being silent, they speak to everyone, without pun intended, and they risk speaking again, visibly, when we see the reports of German, Italian, Spanish or even Israeli television, which would not have never turned their camera to the Cat for a classic exhibition or for an album.
Was it more difficult for you, when you made the models of these sculptures (small formats of 50 centimeters), to go from 2D drawing to 3D?
P.G.: Sculpting is something I’ve been doing for a long time. The first bronze that was made after one of my sculptures was presented in 2008 in the Pascal Lansberg gallery in Saint-Germain-des-Prés. So that’s where I presented my first sculpture, and it was an immediate success. Obviously, that encouraged me to do a series behind it. Sculpting is obviously a much longer process than drawing, which takes a few minutes, or a few hours if it’s complicated. A canvas is done in a few days… Whereas a sculpture takes weeks. Not in the creative act (the wire model), nor in modeling with clay, all of this takes place in a few days of work. But then I entrust the baby to very great professionals for the finishing work which will take him many days, and for the work of molding, waxing etc. It’s no longer me who takes care of it, it’s professional founders, who are craftsmen, all around me. This is real teamwork.
And there, it took 2 years to make these 20 sculptures…
P.G.: Which is nothing, when you think about the amount of work. And even 18 months to produce the 20 large formats. Also, when I started the project, I hadn’t sculpted the last 8 yet. I launched the process on those that had already been created in previous years and for which we already had a reference model.
The small formats of your sculptures are currently exhibited in the Huberty Breyne gallery on avenue Matignon, do you also plan to put them up for sale?
P.G.: The original formats of “Chat Déambule”, bronzes of 50 centimeters, have already been made for 12 of the sculptures in the installation. It’s a real success, most are sold out. These are closed prints, in 8 numbered copies (it’s a tradition, for a very long time). So yes, it interests collectors and I will obviously continue to do so.
The Musée du Chat et du dessin d’humour in Brussels will present three sections: a part devoted to your Cat collection, another on the cat through the ages, from Ancient Egypt to today, and a part devoted to cartoonists that you like. Will there be room to represent emerging artists?
P.G.: Yes, and how! This museum will be a tribute to both the great elders and contemporaries, but also a springboard for the following. Of course I would also like to be a talent scout. The condition for being part of the adventure will be to work on humor. But it can be drawing as humorous creations. If a contemporary conceptual artist does things that make me laugh, I would like to exhibit them, like Sophie Calle for example, who is a contemporary artist who does things that make me laugh. It would fit perfectly in the museum. The condition is laughter: people have to get out of there with the banana, which is not always the case when you visit FIAC or contemporary art galleries.
Concerning the section on the history of the cat, people should be warned that this is not an anthropological museum on the animal, even if there will be a moment of the mummies of cat, or the cat in the sculpture Japanese or whatever else… The three sections of the museum will be flexible, more or less large depending on the temporary exhibitions of the moment. I will continue for my part to feed my own collection in this museum, with new paintings, new sculptures, archive documents that I will renew. We’re not going to make a dusty museum. On the contrary, I would like those who have seen the museum to discover new things a year later, when they come back.
Where will your museum be located in the city of Brussels?
P.G.: It is planned to be located near Place Royale, in the historic museum district of Brussels, near the Magritte Museum and the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium. We received this morning the announcement of the building permit! So it should start shortly.
The Cat is almost 40 years old. How did it come to you to create this character, who is a bit of your spiritual double? Do you have a love for cats?
P.G.: There are several things. It seems that when I was very small I said that I was a cat. Then there was a cat in my life when I was a child too, who was very, very big, quite clumsy, who was called Passe-Partout. But in fact, he was going nowhere. Then there is – I remembered this 3 days ago, but I haven’t told anyone yet – one of the pieces of music that is part of my childhood and my musical culture: Pierre et le Wolf by Sergei Prokofiev. When I was a kid, I learned to play the clarinet, and in Peter and the Wolf, each instrument symbolizes a character, and the clarinet is the cat. And then in 1980, when I drew this famous wedding card where I represented my wife and I, to thank the friends who had made gifts, I represented us in the form of cats mating. I had first drawn two rabbits, and we found that a little too first degree, then I drew two dogs, it was not very pretty, not necessarily appetizing, and then I drew two cats, and there we found that it was poetic and that it represented us well. And it’s three years later that I invent the character. So there’s a connection through it all.
And we add to that two puppets, drawn and designed for a television show in the years 1979-80: Poulou, the happy puppet and Moka the complainer. When I see the drawings I did at the time for these puppets, it’s already the Cat. He just has a slightly elongated nose. He was less fat, but he was already so dumb. This Cat character, I must have already had it in me, it burned my fingers. It would not have come out for the daily Le Soir in March 1983, it would have come out on another occasion.
With the Chat, you didn’t want to ride the Covid wave like other artists were able to do, is that intentional?
P.G.: I don’t want to add a 200 thousandth book on the subject. Everyone threw themselves into the niche. This is a reason for me not to go there. I released an emergency album last October, and I just had two drawings related to the epidemic. I don’t think people want to go and distract themselves with these daily worries. I think that the exhibition on the Champs-Elysées is all the more joyful as it is removed from this preoccupation. If I had made 20 Cat sculptures with masks, syringes etc., people would have thought: “Oh no, not that again!”.
Do you have a message to pass on today, if you had to speak instead of the Chat?
P.G.: What I would say, but that goes for all times, but particularly during this pandemic, is to think of others. During last year’s confinement, a tremendous movement of solidarity was created between neighbors. Older people could not go out and suddenly, the young people of the neighborhood would do their shopping and bring them home. There have been many demonstrations of support for the nursing staff who are being mistreated. Strangely, this year, we no longer applaud them. But they are exhausted and the issue of salaries and staffing has still not been resolved. When I say “think of others”, it is obviously in terms of solidarity, but also in terms of respect for health rules. If you don’t take care yourself, it doesn’t just concern yourself, but everyone else, at the risk of compromising the health and lives of many people around you. I understand a generation that can’t take it anymore, but I just want to tell them a little more patience, it should be better.
You are a protean artist. You do sculpture, drawing, painting, but you have also been a radio and TV columnist… Can you imagine transposing the Cat to the big screen?
P.G.: I have a really good idea for a feature film with the Cat. But I think I’ll leave it in my drawer, because it’s another job. Or else I pass it on to someone who can do something good with it. But I’m not getting into writing a screenplay or a novel either. I don’t think that’s my mode of expression. I realize that I am good at the brief format. With all that I still have to do in my clearly artistic profession, it may be a bit of a headache. I don’t have enough time in my life to try an 8th job when I’ve already practiced 6 or 7.
So you could give the Cat to a director to make a movie out of it?
P.G.: And why not! I should talk about it, but I think my wife is going to say to me, “Wait, stop. You’re doing enough, there’s no need to add another arrow to your quiver!”
The “Le Chat Déambule” exhibition is being held on the Champs-Elysées until June 9 before moving to Bordeaux this summer. For those who will not be lucky enough to see it, the exhibition catalog album presents more than 300 unpublished documents (120 photos and 180 drawings) and reveals the atypical career of the protean artist.
