On the back cover of Erotissiné, published by Maurice Sinet’s good friend Jean-Jacques Pauvert in 1980, Pauvert writes ‘As the novelist and humourist Marcel Aymé said when he first presented this cartoonist’s work to the public twenty-five years ago, Siné was already the foremost, and was for a long time the only, practitioner whose reputation was so well known and loved. It remains so today, and it remains unique.’
Erotissiné, out of print for too long, includes many of Siné’s best erotic cartoons from 1953, ‘when he first discovered sex’, to the 1970s by which time he had learned to enjoy it in all its weird and humorous ways. It also includes three pages of text written to explain the artist’s relationship with the material, which we include here in facsimile, along with an English translation:
Genesis (by Way of a Crappy Preface)
The first twenty drawings in this album, which I have the honour and distinct advantage of presenting to you today in the cold light of day, were knocked out by hand and published for the very first time 27 years ago! Bloody hell, that doesn’t make you feel younger! It was 1953. Back then, the vice squad (the bastards) didn’t mess around with anyone who played with their own willy or anyone else’s. Getting them published was no walk in the park! Jean-Jacques Pauvert, whom I was already knocking around with – all above board, nothing funny going on, you lot of obsessives – wouldn’t hear a word of it:
– I’ve got enough shit to deal with as it is! he told me.
Fair enough – at the time he had an unfortunate habit, among other things, of attracting coppers like flies. They’d lurk around craftily and come crashing down on him viciously at the slightest misdemeanour.
– But what I do isn’t porn, it’s just a laugh ... I argued.
– My arse it is. I didn’t argue with this authoritative and final verdict.
– What I can do, though, is find you an underground printer
– I know loads of them!
– But I haven’t got a sou to my name: I’m young, I’m just starting out ... I whined.
– I’ll give you a small advance if you put together a book of printable drawings!
And so my first two twins were born: one, Complaintes sans paroles, perfectly respectable, in which I only take the piss out of priests, cops and soldiers – the other, disgusting, and wall-to-wall arse! The first sold in bookshops; the other from under the counter. Brave but, like Pauvert, not foolhardy, I’d decided to stay anonymous and had printed it stingily in a run of just 250 copies ... on pink paper (to make it feel filthier and therefore sell it for more). I hadn’t anticipated that a load of dodgy publishers (forgive the tautology!) would use it to flood the market with a heap of pirate editions without slipping me a single sou, the bastards!
Thirteen Years Later!
It was 1966. Sweden and Denmark were liberating themselves: porn was in the process of acquiring a certain respectability. A savvy publisher over there brought out my book – signed this time – and adorned on the cover with a magnificent fig leaf, chaste yet provocative. I supplemented the anonymous edition with twelve previously unpublished drawings (I was set on having 32, don’t ask me why) but the publisher censored the nun (poor thing – reproduced here on page 36). I had to stuff her back into my underpants and replace her at the last minute with some other filth ... phew! While I was at it, I took the opportunity to touch up another one (opposite page): the bust of Marshal Joffre replaced that of Victor Hugo! That particular choice had shocked Jacques Prévert thirteen years earlier, and I’d promised him I’d make amends at the first opportunity. After all, he was right: Victor Hugo didn’t deserve that! I insisted that export of the book be strictly prohibited, because I was absolutely bricking it about the trouble I’d get into back in France!
Three years earlier, I’d copped a two-month suspended sentence for ‘outrages against public decency’ from the 17th chamber (criminal court – not a place you’d want to shack up in!). The drawing that had earned me this honour – which I could well have done without – had appeared in ‘Siné-Massacre’ and was genuinely tame stuff (I’m even embarrassed by it!) compared to these. I was shaking at the thought of the punishment hanging over me if I were caught red-handed: life in the penal colony, castration, God knows what else... and you can be sure de Gaulle, the pompous old stuffed shirt, wasn’t going to pardon me! Ah well, I’d made my peace with it: my Complete Works (to be published one day in 75 volumes by Jean-Jacques Pauvert) would forever be missing this nonetheless important facet of my talent: the arse!
Pauvert Knocks Again! (and at the Right Door!)
Three weeks ago, Jean-Jacques (him again!) who, through various incarnations, had got his mojo back, rang me up:
– What if we dug out your mucky stuff again?
– You reckon? It’s not as funny now that everything’s allowed!
– Maybe it won’t last... better be careful!
– Why? You think Marchais might actually win?
– You never know ... we should get a move on and make the most of it ... put together a fantastic album ... with new stuff ... we’d get invited on Pivot’s show on telly ...
Maybe he had a point ... times really had changed! This whole escalation left me in a bit of a daze – me, who as a kid had nothing to get himself going with except the La Redoute catalogue (women’s thermal underwear section) and a glimpse of Edwige Feuillère’s tits in La tour de Nesles, which I’d seen ten times at the pictures! Now sex was everywhere... flooding everything... sex shops, live shows, dirty films, inflatable dolls ... arse was front-page news, all the rage ... even Wolinski, notorious communist that he was, had jumped on the bandwagon: ‘It’s all I ever think about!’ he’d proclaimed without a hint of shame! Me, at least, in my day, I was embarrassed about it: I only did my little scribbles on the sly, on the quiet, in invisible ink ... I kept them for an elite few and didn’t go splashing them all over L’Humanité!
So I fished out from its hiding place my ‘cock notebook’ – a little sketchpad in which I’d been furtively jotting down my filthy musings whenever they’d struck me (outside working hours). Leafing through it, I was momentarily tempted to reproduce it as-is, but driven by some kind of professional conscience and also because I had no desire to be completely rumbled (certain drawings being really rather too personal), I felt compelled to copy out about twenty of them ‘neatly’ and to publish only seven pages of my private diary. In my opinion, they already reveal quite enough about me! My heirs can publish the rest, if they dare – the scoundrels!
