Archives : Benoit

Ted Benoît, the graphic artist who is credited with the invention of Californian “Ligne Claire” style, is working on a new album. The imaginative rendering of the world of his mythic character, Ray Banana, draws upon the imagery of this Californian style. His preference for large formats finds expression in his diptych “Ray Banana – Piscines” (“le maillot rouge” and “les quatre chaises”). Champaka is pleased to launch ECRAN TOTAL, the collection with large-scale ambitions.

Why this fascination with large formats?

Ted Benoît: I’ve always been fascinated with enlargements of my drawings and the chance effects these enlargements can bring out, such as the abstraction that can emerge from a detail rendered just as isolated zones of colour (as in the enormous screen prints featuring the “Quick” on the Place de la République). If the “Ligne claire” style is an attempt to render reality in a flat perspective, then the larger the tint area, the greater the impact.

Why did you choose to do a diptych?

Ted Benoît: It was one of those occasions where a simple one-plus-one equation gave an outcome greater than two.

The two images are off-centre…?

Ted Benoît: It’s primarily about getting the emotion across in the composition, and ensuring that, in BD, the essence isn’t what’s confined within the frame, but what’s between the frames (Chaland’s “la comète de Carthage” being the first book where that notion is explicit). In the same way, an image draws its force from what is not shown, but rather is left to the viewer’s imagination.

And if you were asked to define “Californian New Clear Line”?

Ted Benoît: It’s a combination of the style known as “Clear Line” and imagery drawn from Hollywood (swimming pools, convertibles, pin-ups, LA style…). It’s a particular blend which, I suppose, was first exploited by cinéphile artists such as Loustal and myself, and which appealed to what you might call the Séguélan model of advertising executive, and to many advertising illustrators who had run out of ideas.

Source: Champaka News n°2, January 1993