astien Vivès, born in Paris in 1984, is a young graphic novelist and illustrator, considered as one of the most interesting talents of the French comic scene. He has studied animation at the Gobelins School and graphics at the ESAG Pnninghen. He did his first comics work through his own studio in Paris. Under the name Bastien Chanmax, he published the online comic “Poungi la Rataille”. He came to attention with the graphic novels he created for Casterman’s KSTR collection since 2007, including “Elle(s) – Alice, Charlotte & Renaud”, “Le Goût du chlore” (2008), “Hollywood Jan” (with Mickaël Sanlaville, 2008), “Dans mes yeux” (2009), “Amitié étroite” (2009). When Vivès is compared to other contemporary cartoonists, the name that most frequently seems to come up is Gipi. This is not surprising. Each has a very supple drawing style that is loosely romantic. Probably, Gipi is still way out in front of Vivès in terms of storytelling (actually, he’s way out in front of just about everyone…), and this is where Vivès most needs to close the gap. Nonetheless, and despite these reservations, there are very few so young artists who deserve as close a look as Bastien Vivès. What is unusual is the way he tells his stories, that other way can be considered maybe trivial, his peculiar point of view.
“Le Goût du chlore” (2008), multi-awarded at the Angoulême festival 2009, is a simple story of rare sobriety. Because of his back, a very young man, begins to attend a pool on the urge of his therapist. There in the basin, both anonymous and reassuring, where individuals are no more than swimming bodies in the monotonous rhythm of armfuls, he meets a girl with a nice body and a seductive smile. “Le Goût du chlore” is the tale of their tenuous relationship, described through silences, gestures, shy and stylized actions, with lightness and a remarkable sense of narrative throught pictures … A modest and intimate narrative, shaped by the nuances and the unspoken. The main character of the story is the swimming pool where the protagonist goes to swim, because you can be hesitant to jump into the water, but once inside, you no longer want to leave … With an extensive palette of blues, blue-green and blue turquoise, Bastien Vivès also gives us a catalog of emotions. It is precisely this saturation of cool colors that seduces the reader and reminds him which feelings can produce the pool: temperature, odors, drafts, echo, sounds that differ when you have your head above water or below the surface, dizziness too … With the calculated lengths of his narrative, Vivès reflects the loneliness of the swimmer, without wanting to slide in deep reflections: focused on his movements, when he watches the skylights on the ceiling, the young man doesn’t plan any strategy to find his new swimming instructor. But once it reaches an edge, he looks, he waits, tryes to recognize her under the cap that makes her similar to all the others … He seeks her. Everything is very sensual, very delicate, but without frills. The girl is there to swim, not to flirt. And perhaps even the guy wouldn’t be able, beginner, naked, in this element still not well tamed. And gradually, as the weeks go by and the complicity of the two is stronger, you would expect there will necessarily be a relationship. But the taste of chlorine is like an afternoon at the pool: at a given time, it closes. And you go back into the “real world” with a head full of questions, the kinds of questions directly related to the heart and skin chills.
Published the next year, “Dans mes yeux” (2009) is a story about a guy and a ginger-haired girl’s first meeting, the beginning of their relationship, their dates and conversations. Everything is told by only one point of view: the boy’s eyes, a narrative expedient that gives to the reader the impression to see what happens from his look. Narrow visual fields are delineated with intense pastel signs, while backgrounds are often confused, out of focus, the only clear figure is she, the girl the protagonist is looking at. Colors are vivid: her red hair, blue eyes, the tones of her complexion. Colors and hues are also often used as a background, a tool to underline the intensity of the emotions felt by the protagonist. But we can only imagine what they say to each other, the only words we can read are those spoken by her.
This time Bastien Vivès – who usually works digitally – draws the entire story with pastels, giving “Dans mes yeux” a sense of simplicity and spontaneity that perfectly fits the narration. Both in “Dans mes yeux” as in “Le Goût du chlore”, with his very sensitive and poetic drawing Vivès tells us, implicitly, through his subjective viewpoint, how occurs seduction, desire, and birth of feelings. “These books talk about feelings: when they end, you can release the characters, with no need to know where they are going to or coming from”.
After teaming up in 2010 with Merwan to create ‘Pour l’Empire’ in the Dargaud collection Poisson Pilote, in the beginning of 2011 Vivès published a new graphic novel for KSTR, “Polina”. Through this fluid, slender, sometimes just outlined graphic novel we follow the dense story of the young Polina Oulinov, future star of the dance. “Polina” is the result of more than two years of hard work. “I especially wanted to talk about student-teacher relationship,” says Vivès. The result exceeds all expectations. Polina is a small masterpiece of light, graceful and yet so dense in its content. As stated in the book by Polina’s teacher, “If you are not flexible when 6 years old, you will be even less when 16. Flexibility and grace cannot be learned. It is a gift.” In comics, too, and Vivès demonstrates he has got it.
