Mariscal-Cobi a jester in Barcelona.

MARISCAL-COBI
UN BOUFFON À BARCELONE
Le dessin de Mariscal,
tout un univers.
Par Andy Robinson
442
II a fallu la présence de Kim Ock-Jin, vice-president du Comité
Olympique Coréen, e t l e c l i m a t c h a r g é d ’ e m o t i o n d e l a
cérémonie de lever du drapeau olympique à Barcelone, il y a tout
juste deux ans, pour confirmer le retour au bercail catalan de la
brebis égarée Javier Mariscal. Sans oublier le chien Cobi, la
mascotte olympique du créateur valencien, qui a été Iâchée d’une
plate-forme sur le port. La foule attendait un monstre. En fait, c’est
un chien souriant qui a surgi des eaux calmes, un chien que
chacun aurait aimé ramener chez soi s’il n’avait pas mesuré 400
mètres carrés.
ART ET SPORT
T
andis que I’énorme ballon s’élevait et
que les cinq anneaux montaient en
volutes dans la brise méditerranéenne, on
pouvait presque palper le changement
d'attitude des cent mille Catalans, massés
autour des palmiers et ponts basculants en
acier de la promenade nouvellement aménagée. Le museau « cubiste » de Cobi était
plutôt mignon et son œil qui semblait cligner avait quelque chose du génie catalan
Juan Miro.
Quand COOB’92 avait opté pour la
mascotte de Mariscal, la réaction du public
avait été moins favorable. Les temps ont
changé depuis I’accueil enthousiaste de
Barcelone pour l’expressionnisme avantgardiste d’Antonio Gaudi et la revolution
artistique déclenchée par Pablo Picasso. Le
chien cubiste de Mariscal, qui semblait
sourire dans une direction et renifler dans
I’autre, rompait avec une tradition sacrée
qui voulait que toutes les mascottes olympiques fussent façonnées à la manière Disney, et avait suscité les critiques acerbes de
la presse populaire. Seul Manuel Vazquez
Montalban, auteur de romans policiers,
avait pris la defense de Mariscal.
« Je suis pro Cobi », avait-il déclaré, « il
est un hommage à tous les chiens écrasés
au péage de I’autoroute de Barcelone. »
Mariscal n’était pas étranger à cette
levee de boucliers. Depuis son arrivée à
Barcelone, en 1971, et la popularisation
desa bande dessinée les « Garriris », des
chiens amateurs de fêtes, que publie régulièrement le magazine d’avant-garde « Vibora », il n’avait été que rarement oublié
du public.
UN UNIVERS DE BOUFFONNERIE
L’univers fantaisiste des Garriris était gouverné par le divertissement. Jamais auparavant dans I’histoire de la bande dessinée,
trois chiens n’avaient ingurgité autant de
rhum-coca, baratiné autant de filles, fait
autant de virées en Vespa, ou attrapé
autant de poissons que Piker, Fermin et
Julian. Les bouffonneries des Garriris
avaient pour toile de fond un décor qui
évoquait les années 50 dans tout ce
qu’elles avaient de plus kitsch, célébrant la
culture populaire de la « costa » espagnole
où « bon goût » et couleurs deuces sont
des denrées aussi rares que les plages
désertes.
« Les années
50 exercent une
immense fascination sur les Valenciens. En
1957, le fleuve a inondé un grande partie
de la ville, et il a fallu construire de nouveaux bars et magasins. C’était en 1958, et
tout était done en formica et de couleurs
fluorescentes. Cela n’était pour déplaire
aux Valenciens qui apprécient tout particulièrement les couleurs vives. Les Valenciens
peindront leur maison en vert piscine plu-
Les chiens de Mariscal aiment la
fête, mais, de la joie au chagrin,
ils passent par tous les
sentiments.
443
ART AND SPORT
Some of the mascots which did
not get chosen.
The presentation of Cobi : Javier
Mariscal, left, and José Maria
Trías, who made Mariscal’s
creature three-dimensional.
where there’s a great feeling for loud
colours. Valencians would paint their
houses swimming pool green rather than
brown; a Valencian woman would paint
her lips bright scarlet and nails electric pink
rather than mauve. It’s a bit like a little
Hollywood.”
Once Mariscal had completed the setting for his world of dog-faced party goers,
he began to try his ideas out in the new,
democratic Barcelona. A series of posters
publicizing
council-sponsored
events
emerged which depicted Barcelona as a
city brimming with nervous energy, frantically enjoying itself as though time and
space were scarce. They were appropriately claustrophobic graphics for a city with
the highest population density in Europe.
Mariscal’s iconography was Barcelona’s
architecture. He developed a baroque
alphabet in which the characters were all
taken from the city landscape.
A VISUAL CODE
APPROPRIATE TO BARCELONA
Before long Mariscal’s graphics had evolved
into furniture and interior design. Chairs,
tables, lamps and bar interiors sketched in
the reckless world of the Garriris were
worked into reality. The pop themes implicit in his cartoons and his penchant for ’50s
kitsch combined to form a visual code
which was strikingly appropriate to the
Barcelona of the 1980s where the cerebral
culture of the previous decade had given
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way to the abandoned pursuit of fun and
pleasure. His concentration on animal
motifs gave his work a popular appeal
which went beyond the esoteric world of
design.
“Nobody thinks my work goes over his
head”, he says proudly.
The facility with which Mariscal has
debunked the myth that ‘tasteful’ design is
only understood by a select few has also
fashioned his attitude towards the commercial exploitation of his design, which he
regards not only as inevitable but welcome.
“I’m constantly looking for a balance
between art and design... for new frontiers
between the shop and the gallery. I make
things that are sold as art when they are
actually commercial products and which
sell as commercial products when they are
really art.”
All of which made the competition for
the design of the Barcelona ‘92 mascot
particularly appealing to Mariscal. In the
‘Garriris’ strip he had always had a soft spot
for crustaceans and his original ideas ‘for
Cobi resembled the ‘king prawn’ sculpture
on the roof of his seafood bar at the far
end of the Moll de la Fusta promenade.
But the millenia of evolution which separated the prawns simple physiognomy from
multi-event Olympics proved
today’s
impossible to span.
“I just couldn’t think of a way to show
a prawn doing a show jump. So it had to
be a dog.”
The final design looked very much like
Julian, the Garriri who had won the hearts
of so many young ‘Vibora’ readers. The
reaction of the Catalan press was rabid.
Cobi looked more like a cat than a dog. A
child of five could have drawn it. How can
we make Olympic mascot cuddly toys out
of ‘modern art’ like this ? In design circles
the new mascot was well received as a graphic but Barcelona’s design magazine Ardi
asked whether it would work in three
dimensions. Mariscal was confident,
“It will work in four dimensions”, was
his mischievous retort.
And he would seem to be right. Within
a few months the public had warmed to
Cobi’s avant-garde charm. The shocked
‘Aaaargh !‘s that rang out when the design
first appeared were soon drowned by
young girls admiring the array of Cobi paraphernalia in shop windows and exclaiming
‘Aaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh !
mono !”
Qué
(“Aaaahhh! What a cutie !“) The revenue
from the commercial exploitation of the
Olympic logotype and Mariscal’s Cobi has
doubled that of Los Angeles and Seoul.
Cobi T-shirts, tie pins, towels, key rings,
cufflinks, badges, you name it, weigh down
the shelves not only of the tourist souvenir
shops in the port but of the sophisticated
design shops on the Paseo de Gracia. A
new video English course just been
launched with Cobi as teacher.
Transformation ! The little dog
has not only become trendy but a
well-trained potential Olympic
athlete.
“It will be the only English course in
which the teacher speaks with a strong
Spanish accent”, says Mariscal.
Cobi is the final word in Mariscal’s bid
to take design from the elite to the masses.
A. R.
445