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GIARDINO ORCHESTRATES AN ENCOUNTER BETWEEN TWO ´FIFTIES´ SYMBOLS

“Clear Line” style is international, and Vittorio Giardino provides intelligent proof of this with each successive album. The Italian author has shown a fine appreciation for Brussels, a city he has visited many times. Shock, horror – he has set the Atomium in a working-class neighbourhood…!

By profession an electronics engineer, Giardino abandoned his first occupation in order to dedicate himself to bande dessinée, echoing somewhat the career of E-P Jacobs, the Old Master whose graphic style Giardino’s most closely resembles. He discovered the Atomium as an adult, on his first visit to Brussels. Deciding whether the monument is closer to the “Marcinelle” or “Bruxelles” school of bande dessinée is, for him, a dilemma. “In 1958 I was just a child and, for me at that time, Belgium was the country to which many Italians emigrated to work in the mines. In my childhood memory, “Marcinelle” is not a term for a “school” but for a tragedy in which a large number of miners met their death.”

For the creator of “Max Fridman”, the Atomium remains a baffling construction that illustrates how fine is the line between the sublime and kitch. “The celebration of atomic science in monumental form is a projection into the future. And yet, the spectre of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is quite near. It was a time when hopes of a bright future, underpinned by technological advances, were more developed. The war was not long over and people were experiencing a time of hope in the possibility of renewal.” Giardino remembers his first visit: “When one sees it with one’s own eyes, it’s the enormous scale that is most striking. The question that immediately came to my mind was: “Why was it created on such a massive scale?” I didn’t have an answer.”

The author of “Jonas Fink” agrees that the concept of the screenprint L’Atomium et Mr Hulot suggested itself quite quickly. “Like all symbols, the Atomium offers many possibilities if you want to pay it homage.” Giardino was soon concerned to explore the widespread astonishment that would ensue should ordinary townspeople be confronted with the strange, unfathomable silhouette of a gigantic structure of unknown purpose. “Had the Atomium been erected in a working-class area of Brussels, Monsieur Hulot would perhaps have passed by on his Solex. He would doubtless have halted, stunned by the site of such a monument. His entire known world, modest but comfortable, would have seemed out of tune with this “modern” future. He would possibly have felt like a survivor from the past, a species condemned to extinction.” And yet, strangely enough, the music of Playtime would most likely provide the perfect soundtrack for the “Atomium” years…