This exhibition brings together a series of photographs taken in 1973 by André Soupart of the famous creator of Tintin, who was also a great art lover. For this one and only time, Hergé agreed to be photographed at home surrounded by his private collection of works of art.
It was 1973. At that time, I was working on the scenario for a film project with Luc Monheim, a sculptor friend who afterwards also became film director and made two artworks that were part of Hergé’s collection.
At that time it wasn’t easy to be a film-maker or a sculptor in Belgium and, as we were able to distribute illustrated articles through a friend’s press agency, Luc and I had the idea of asking Hergé to show us the works in his private collection to be published as a magazine article, since it was a unknown side of the creator. Hergé accepted, knowing that this exclusive story would give us a nudge in the right direction.
It was the only time that Hergé opened the doors for the collection to be photographed, which made my pictures invaluable. So we went to photograph him in his apartment at Vert Chasseur in Uccle, one of the Brussels townships, and afterwards at his studio in the Avenue Louise.
The conversation was so engrossing that Luc forgot to record it. The article was never written because Luc was a long way from being a writer and the recording of the conversations were lost. So the photos stayed in my drawer for almost 30 years.
From among the large series of photographs, which I shot twice with my Pentax cameras, one loaded with black and white negative film and the other with colour transparency film, I chose 20 photographs that formed the body of an exhibition. It was shown in Louvain la Neuve, at Moulinsart’s request to complement a show taken from the book The Castafiore Emerald, and during “Brussels, my discovery” in Boitsfort, the district where Hergé lived, as well as in Rotterdam.,
Four photographs in particular seem to me emblematic of Hergé’s personality. The first is this portrait with, in front of him, an original artwork of Zig and Puce that was given and dedicated by Alain Saint Ogan. Hergé appears serious, attentive, you can feel his interiority, his ability to listen.
Another emblematic photo from this series (photo n/bl.01) is one where he is holding the long picture by the American artist Kenneth Nollant. It’s worthy of the spirit of “the clear line”. I like this photo because it’s structured, symmetrical, very simple and effective, the horizontal lines contrast with the verticals of the curtain in the background. And I also like Hergé’s complicit smile as he participates in the mise en scene, for which we had to move the armchairs and even the sofa because I didn’t have enough room to get the shot.
There is an almost identical photo, in colour, with his cat rubbing against his legs. I learnt much too late, when giving the photos to his widow, Fanny, that they had called their cat Bacchus because the end of his nose was always red… In front of the fireplace in his living room is the loving collector of art, passionate and eclectic who is surrounded by a canvas by Fontana (of which he’s particularly fond), a watercolour by David Hockney as well as a geometric gouache by Herbin, all framing a gilded Egyptian wooden head of the 18th dynasty. Hergé could talk as much about this Egyptian head as about the Fontana or his Poliakoff, one of the most beautiful that I’ve ever been able to get near.
Another among the emblematic photos to my eyes is the one where he is brandishing this sceptre of Ottokar like an eternal child, filled with wonder, with a radiant smile. For it he has gone into the glass cabinet in the entrance hallway of the Studios in the Avenue Louise. In this glass cabinet you recognise objects that are reminders of Tintin’s diverse adventures and which were useful to him for documentation along the Ottokar’s sceptre, the Harmony banner of Moulinsart , the models of planes or the rocket from “Explorers on the Moon”, from which, in his concern for accuracy and realism, he made sketches from different angles.
Hergé had just returned from the US. There he met the Indian chief “One Feather” (“Une Plume” as he said to us in French) who had given him a pearl necktie that he showed us putting it around his neck. Then he slipped away and returned wearing a Stetson brought back from his trip that he wore while commenting the works hanging in the hall: a nude by Tom Wesselman and a small maritime painting by Roy Lichtenstein. But you can also see, in the background a canvas by Lypsick behind a Bambara piece .
Another photo worthy of “the clear line”, for its simplicity and its composition is this one where Hergé is talking about the trompe l’oeil in bas-relief by Tsoclis, hanging on a wall in the Studio in the Avenue Louise. At that time, Hergé was fully occupied with the creation of the album Tintin and the Picaros. He showed us the pencil drawings. I am a great admirer of Hergé as a draughtsman. For me he is with Ingres and Hans Holbein whom I admire, but especially Delacroix for his skilled pencil stroke.
Here he is showing how he asks his colleagues to pose so that he could sketch Tintin’s position exactly. There, when you arrive at the studio you are greeted by an overcoat and the bowler hats of the two Thompsons, then at the end of the corridor, this green forest with a stuffed parrot and the totem of Sir Francis Haddock, ancestor of the Captain. On looking again at my photographs, I realise that when I was shooting them, I focussed on the artworks rather than on Hergé because it was the works that interested us. We probably didn’t realise the chance we had, with regard to his fame, because today I would certainly focus on Hergé himself.
André Soupart
André Soupart, Hergé collectionneur
From 2nd to 28th February 2017
Galerie Artcube
9 place Furstenberg
75006 Paris
France
http://www.artcube.fr/
