Karas Gallery, Praška 4, Zagreb

12.01. - 31.01. 2010.

DAVOR ŠTAMBUK - FROM THE PARISIAN POT

Davor Štambuk, a cartoonist, journalist, and author of entertaining television programmes, was born on 29 December 1934 in Split.

He studies law (1953-55) and art history (1955/1956) in Zagreb and Split when he begins to work as sports reporter with the Zagreb sports daily Narodni sport and the magazine Sportska panorama. As a reporter, he moves to Arena, which during these years changes from a film magazine to the first domestic tabloid. In 1963, he leaves for France where he temporarily works at the Paris gallery of paintings Janelle. Although he made cartoons before, he began his professional career in Paris in 1968 after having been awarded Grand Prix Belleus for one of his first published works by the France Dimache weekly editorial board and the French press trade union. A year later, he moves to high-circulation Parisian tabloid Ici Paris where he regularly publishes until his retirement in 1999. Before returning to his homeland, he periodically publishes in all more significant French weeklies/monthlies (Nouvelle Observetaur, Elle and Paris Match…). He signs a contract with the Geneva news agency Berger so they distribute his cartoons in Western Europe, as well as overseas as far as Japan. In 1980s, he frequently co-operates with the news agency Mayer Presse from Graz. They buy his drawings for northern Europe – Sweden and Denmark. He regularly publishes in then high-circulation Start and Nedjeljna Dalmacija as well as in many other publications in the region of the former country such as the Maribor daily Večer, Belgrade Večernje novosti, and Skopje humour magazine Osten.

His first individual exhibition took place in Paris in 1972. The editorial board of the Ici Paris organized it. His first Croatian exhibition was held in 1979 at Zagreb Student Centre gallery. In his native Split, he had his first exhibition in the Diocletian Palace under structures in 1981. There followed the exhibitions in Vienna in 1993, two years later in Lussac – St.Emilion, 1999 in Pag, 2000 in Supetar on Brač, 2002 in Korčula, 2003 in Nairobi and Đakovo, 2004 at Novi Sad gallery Tableaux and in Zemun, 2006 in Zagvozd and at Belgrade Kolarčev univerzitet, 2007 in Osijek, 2008 in Jerusalem, Lion, Zagreb French Cultural Centre (opened by the French ambassador to Croatia B. Saint-Paul), in Kaštel Kambelovac, at Belgrade gallery New Moment, and in early 2009 at Šibenik City Library. The great monograph exhibition “Four Seasons” organised by the French Cultural Centre and displayed at Zagreb KIC 2001/2002 is particularly significant.

He exhibits at numerous home and foreign cartoon festivals, where he receives awards and recognitions: 1987 Legnica (Poland); 1988 Amsterdam (Holland); 1989 Ljubljana (Slovenia); 1990 Cuneo (Italy); 1991 and 1992 Tokyo (Japan); 1993 Cuneo (Italy); 1994 Lussac – St. Emilion (France); 1995 Bjelovar; 2000. Blato on the island of Korčula , 2000 Jakarta (Indonesia); 2001 Bruxelles; 2002 Haifa (Israel); 2004 Jonzac (France); 2004 Zemun (Serbia and Monte Negro), 2006 Solin and 2008. Jonzac (France). In 2000, The Croatian Society of Cartoonists awarded him Oskariko for the most awarded Croatian cartoonist at the international cartoon festivals that year.

In 2003 The French Ministry of Culture invested him with the “Chevalier dans l’ Ordre des Arts et des Lettres” for art and literature, and in 2007, the President of the Republic of Croatia invested him wit Order of Danica Hrvatska with the face of Marko Marulić.

Davor Štambuk published six albums of cartoons: “Hajdukovci u karikaturi i pjesmi“, (Slobodna Dalmacija, Split 1954), “Sex Made Man” (Le Hameau, Paris 1979), “Sex & …“(August Cesarec, Zagreb 1992), “Summertime“(Zagreb, 1994), “In vino veritas” (Antibarbarus, Zagreb, 1995) and “Split Tease” (Slobodna Dalmacija, Split, 2002). The prestigious French publisher Le cherche midi included his drawings in the album of cartoons to the theme bed and glasses in 2007 and 2008.

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Defence of Being Human

This retrospective exhibition is the latest Štambuk’s project realized as a thoroughly thought concept. Without losing any of its original values or its documentary character of an interesting little image from a particular time and place, each cartoon becomes a “pixel” of its own bearing a piece of information of the new whole image

Written by: Zlatko Gall

Davor Štambuk’s work, in its retrospective edition which is now more obvious than ever –indeed represents a defence of humour as token for being human and his witty quip and gag on the other hand reflect his deep conviction rightness of the thesis that everything of value in life is on the other side of petty-bourgeois conventions and moralist standards. There is the cartoonist oddity, seldom immoral, often banned, too, yet always “deadly unserious”. Knowing that Davor has been defined by his two residences - Split and Paris – this is not at all strange. Like all great personalities from this part of the Balkans and Mediterranean, Štambuk has proved the possibility of being both one’s own person and a part of a broader civilisational circle. For, although Štambuk’s idea of humour and gag, as well as of the life itself, has only one source – the humour of Split or rather Mediterranean bearing the tiniest grain of so called “Splitianism” even when using the universal signs and stereotypes – his thematic focus has been sharpened in the streets of the late 60s and “lively” 70s liberal Paris. The characteristic “Splitianism” – warm and bitter as in Uvodić and Smoje and at the same time rabble-rousing strong and whining mild – mixes with the cosmopolitan charm of Paris, its libertine and escapist spirit born on the ruins of “1968 dreams”. The points of Štambuk’s “Bermuda Triangle” are named: Paris – Matejuška and “Fife” – and a reserve yet important address – Špica or “Charlie” in Zagreb. With one foot not only physically but also spiritually in Split, and another in Paris and his cartoons published both in home magazines and in French tabloids like the famous Ici Paris where he worked until his retirement, Štambuk could allow himself to be a real citizen of the world.

If his themes could be called “mixed meat” as they consist of all kinds of things, from different situations in life, unavoidable sex and wine, in all of them Davor is – unserious. Or to be more honest, he is hilariously funny.

Towards a New Image

In this vast retrospective set before you as well as in complete Štambuk’s works it is easy to notice the “constants”. For example, regardless of the topic he is telling about, Štambuk never lectures, he does not moralise or preach – he gives a witty account. His aim is always the same: to make the audience laugh and if possible with the message “Don’t let yourselves be seduced to a life of virtue”. Because there – it is boring.

When a few years ago his monograph Split tease was published, he divided the selected cartoons in four units inspired by the seasons. This was not without reason, because the change of seasons as well as the phases of the moon – as Jean Chevalier and Alain Gheerbrant’s great theorem says - emphasise the rhythm of life and phases of a development cycle. More precisely, they point their finger at the unavoidable sequence: birth, growth, maturity, life extinction; the common destiny of people, their states, cultures, civilisations… Visually shown seasons – say the two scholarly authors, are nothing but image interpretation of the myth on eternal return, and also the symbols of eternal exchange of life and death.

Štambuk has planned the organisational structure and conceptual frame of the present retrospective in the similar way, without paying attention to chronological sequence, but to the dramaturgy of his exhibited saga. Seemingly, it is “yet” another thematic arrangement of historic phases in a row with cartoons speaking about the Genesis (Adam and Eve), the Flood, and Noah, mythological creatures, mediaeval knights, and priests. Then, after pointing out at the importance of the French Revolution – as symbolic announcement of a new liberal era – there follows a series of works dedicated to “contemporary” themes: love, adultery, sex, wine… Not at all by accident, has the series concluded by the themes of Christmas and Easter. Why it this so?

We are simply talking about the same idea woven into the earlier cycle of seasons; it is another warning about human mortality that can see a new beginning only having won its own salvation. For Štambuk, it is only possible in pleading for life lived drawing deep breaths and laughing!

It is no wander then that Štambuk wanted to mock the strict moralist interpretation of general biblical places and human history offering like a new age author of “Biblia pauperum” (”Paupers’ Bible”) “saintly pictures” and historic truths… Moreover, he wanted to make them speechless, arranging pictures in a row, simple – even ascetically – reduced drawings, the only holly aim of which, whether they were originally black and white and later painted – to make laugh.

Štambuk’s works have been created during almost five decades long period. In the presently exhibited context – although with clear changes in style – they become a tiny part of the new comprehensive mosaic structure of an interesting story having its first run. We are actually talking about an ambitious and demanding Štambuk’s project realized as a thoroughly thought concept. Without losing any of its original values or its documentary character of an interesting little image from a particular time and place, each cartoon becomes a “pixel” of its own bearing a piece of information of the new whole image.

Perverted Imagination and Low Passions

The cartoon with Adam, who in the Garden of Eden, disregarding the Serpent and Eve’s making noise, wholeheartedly consumes juicy apples illuminates Štambuk’s philosophy of life. The mentioned cartoon – I have already written about in one of my reviews on Štambuk’s works – is not merely a typical “stambukian” gag teasing with general places or ridiculing them interpreting freely a myth or an established picture but a real letter of the author’s intentions. Namely, looking at Štambuk’s interpretations of Adam, it is difficult not to bring into memory that he was not only the “primordial man” but also “the first among men” or, the “most human one among men”. Adam and Eve’s “situations” in which Štambuk puts them are the same “situations” that like a thread run through all eras and stages towards contemporariness. The Fall of Man – Štambuk seems to say – is not a reflection of devil’s own conspiracy and immanent human corruption but, on the contrary, the reflection of being human and of the real human nature. His, irresponsibility, inclination to sensual pleasures, intemperance, refusal to depend on higher life objectives… With Štambuk both not Adam and all later Adams and Eves, are symbols of divine but of human imperfection magnificent precisely for being of this world. As the result of “perverted imagination and low passions” without which, let us not deceive ourselves, the life would be frightfully boring.

Has Štambuk dealing with Adam and Eve, Noah’s ark, angels and demons and lustful priests slipped and crossed the border that divides wittiness from bad taste and blasphemy? Not in any way. Moreover, these chosen themes are not only part of logical civilisational and cultural luggage he picked up in “lively” Paris in the midst of his liberalisation and “sexual revolution”, but also a winning and benevolent message which not only says “there are no holy cows” but also says: both priests and saints are “only human!”. They “cheat” smuggling the guardian angel as monk football team goalkeeper or indulge in lustful thoughts… Regardless of their being protagonists of Štambuk’s gags adulterers and debauched persons, drunkards, impotent exhibitionists, impetuous monks or dissolute ladies, the basis of a gag make “only” the structure of comical originating from life situations. Yet, behind gag and game “to the first ball”, there is seldom also interesting “lower level” so that the story of Noah carrying to the ark two piggy banks under his arm, can be a caustic comment of “saving” Church and its donations…

On Sex and Wine

Štambuk always knew how to use his instinct for witty and unexpected even in the most common themes from everyday life. In the same way in which his gags are created as unexpected visualised quips, the whole cycles are born. In any of his retrospectives where he has decided on exhibiting a thematic series it is not difficult to reconstruct the author’s procedure and find out the embryo of gag. Namely, from once constructed comical situation, Štambuk knows how to draw a whole range of hilariously witty sequels using either the same characters (monks, knights in armour engaged with chastity belt, magicians, drunkards, satyrs…) or the same themes (sport, adultery, addiction to drinking, hunting…), situations (rain, flood, snow) and misanscene.

The greatest part of Štambuk’s works belong to sex and wine; the universal themes that skip the epochs and also extend in the retrospective exhibition from the biblical cycle to the present day. This may be the reason his drunkards are winning merry men and not arrogant bullies and sex is never vulgar but in one-to-one game and as “ménage à trois”, pledge of warm humanity. Warmed – and now also coloured – by the Mediterranean and reckless charm of cosmopolitan Paris to which, systematically, from one drawing to another, Davor has raised a monument.