Not George ... Wilhelm Busch!

Let's be honest: I love the Japanese culture under all its aspects, beginning with the writing; and here you can notice how eccentric Japanese can be, daring to borrow from their old Chinese enemy their Kanji. Japan is also the country of Hiroshigge and Hokusai, to mention only those two. If you do not know who are/were Hiroshigge and Hokusai, let's make a quick research on the Internet. But if there is a thing, which I do not like at all in Japan, it is that sort of commercial mix-up just made of 'junk-culture' for stupid teenagers all over the world. Let's mention for instance the mangas. Here you have nothing, but bad drawings and stereotyped stories. And yet, the world's youth adores those things, avoiding at the same time the finest artworks of our greatest museums!

Actually I would readily advise our young consumers of mangas to show a little more intellectual curiosity, trying to endeavour to discover new things, unknown artists, nice music to which they are not accustomed. That is what we call 'eclecticism'.

Let's consider Wilhelm Busch. His works are not well known in France. For my part, I discovered him during a linguistic stay in Germany. A very interesting feature of that artist is that he was not only a designer, but also a poet; for instance for 'Max and Moritz' Busch realized both the drawings and the text in vers. Did I already tell you that I find the works of Wilhelm Busch much more enthralling than all the Japanese mangas?

By the way, Busch was also a painter. Here we have some samples, with some interesting archives of the drafts of some of his famous works.