Marco De Angelis

The interview

1 - A memory of Salone and Bordighera

I have many good memories, starting from the first evening, in 1975, when I arrived at Chez Louis as a twenty-year-old designer, without knowing anyone yet, and was immediately welcomed by the veterans with great cordiality. Cesare Perfetto himself introduced me to some designers, both Italian and foreign, with whom I quickly became friends, so much so that some played an important role in my professional experience. It was the beginning of a beautiful and great adventure that would mark the path of my life.

2- What did you like the most about Salone

The Salone was the only way to see original drawings by authors from all over the world, especially those extraordinary artists from Eastern European countries, whose production or publications at the time were practically impossible to know. But what I liked most about Bordighera was meeting the other artists personally and spending days with them chatting about our work, sharing our professional experiences, as well as having fun together in the cheerful spirit that permeated the Salone. It was an important professional school, in times when there was no internet, and therefore it was very difficult to have an open window onto world humor. At the time there were no schools specialised in illustration or comics and everything was based on self-taught training, on the essential artistic bases provided by high school.

3 - What is it the humour for you?

For me, humor is a state of mind that places us in a transversal way towards others and the world, observing them in a light and critical way at the same time. For me, it is a sort of philosophy of life that has always allowed me to see through facts and people, often with a self-therapeutic effect. Ideal humor should stimulate reasoning as well as laughter, without emotional clouds, but by empathizing with the topic discussed. It becomes satire, then, when it uses its critical force to comment, send messages, make people think, to the point of assuming journalistic value, if placed in current events, and therefore expanding its role by combining a smile with the usefulness of information.

4 - Your life as a humorist, if you look back what cartoon do you see?

Of the thousands of drawings I have made, I believe that the one that is most significant to me is the drawing that won the Palma d’Oro at the Salone in 1997: mind you, not because I am talking about the Salone and therefore do not consider many others, but precisely because it was one of my most important stages, a professional milestone, which recharged me and gave me a further push forward after more than twenty years of activity. Furthermore, it is a drawing about war, refugees, international politics, which unfortunately proves to be even more than current thirty years after it was made.

5 - Were you born humorists or did you become such?

Who knows… For me, many of us are born with a potential sense of humor, perhaps part of our genetic inheritance, unlike others, but it depends on the environment around us, on our family, on our experiences, whether it develops, whether it is cultivated properly and becomes part of our character, or whether it remains in a basic state or, unfortunately, becomes extinct.

6 - Risk or caution, what has characterised your professional life the most?

Working a lot in satire and in particular in political satire, risk has been a constant element in my production. You can't do satire if you don't dare to attack characters or criticize events. Certainly, however, a journalistic commentary, even if graphic, must always take into account sensitive topics, to be treated critically, but with skill.

7 - One of your cartoons that you'd like to dedicate today to the Salone, why?

Perhaps the one I created for the 43rd Salone, dedicated to Columbus, and for which I received the Council of Europe Award. Columbus doing the tightrope walker walking on the void, on a tightrope between two worlds, ultimately makes me think of the Salone itself discovering the world of humor, which it has revealed and made known in all its aspects. Ultimately, even now, when the Salone has returned after many years, a new exciting adventure has been undertaken.

8 - The poster of Salone you like the most, why?

The posters of the Salone have been created by many of the world’s greatest authors, but the one that is fixed in my mind, also because it corresponds to the edition in which I participated for the first time, in 1972, is that of Jacovitti. In this poster there is all of Jacovitti, but there is also all of the Salone, its internationality, the playful spirit of the Bordighera days, the healthy madness of humor among palm trees, sea and drawings.

9 - Humor today: its state of health. And behind the curve what do you expect?

Unfortunately, humor is not in good health. The crisis of the printed press sees fewer and fewer humorous and satirical drawings published in newspapers, which in the reduction of collaborations and compensations include less and less the use of drawings, apart from those purchased from agencies at very low cost. Furthermore, humorous newspapers are almost extinct, due to the lack of advertising, production and distribution costs, with only the online monthly Buduàr ​​surviving, precisely because it lives on the web, as well as some local newspapers. Social media have partly played a role in spreading humor and satire, with a globalization of information and humor, but to a large extent they have also put low-quality material online, both graphic and content-wise, and have led to an ever greater tendency to violate copyright in various ways. I really don't know what awaits us around the corner, given that now Artificial Intelligence has also appeared to make the road increasingly treacherous.