SKIN DEEP MAGAZINE • 29French artist and tattooer D-Grrr
commemorates in a very personal
way the end of World War I with the publication
of his new book of drawings: Chair de Fer
(‘Flesh of Steel’). In this industrial and human
disaster, he found the perfect scene to project
his usual obsessions of fetishism, death and
pornography. By extracting unexpected resources
from the rudimentary and laborious technique
of the Bic pen, that he keeps exploring, he
gives to the conflict spectacular illustrations
of its cruelty, madness and absurdity.
The Mighty Bic
D-GRRR.com (under construction)
BaronDenisGRRR
denis_grrr
It is the first that you’re dealing with History.
Where does the theme of WWI comes from?
In the end of 2013, with the celebration of the century of
this great massacre ideas came up and I did a first illustra-
tion titled: ‘Der Stalhelm Schlucken’, which represented
a guy with an artificial leg having a blowjob in a brothel. It
combined with my taste for the ‘degenerate’ artists like
Otto Dix (1891-1969) or George Grosz (1893-1959) who
painted and condemned this fucking war. Then, I had
access to the photo archives of my grandfather. He was
a french aviator in 1917, in the Spa26 of the famous ‘Es-
quadrille des Cigognes’ (a French squadron of military
planes). I wanted to mark the occasion, and tell my vi-
sion of this industrial disaster, without choosing a party
though, considering everybody got fucked. Blood, cum,
pain, cock, glory, piss, it was a schrapnell’ (a type of shell
who liberates bullets when it explodes) to illustrate.
Did you do any research for that?
Yes, and especially regarding the uniforms, the weapons,
the ships and the planes. In order to add a realistic side
to this fucked up evocation. I already had some material
about the facially disfigured war veterans and the medical
of the time. I like to do research on the internet complete
with books and magazines.
This war is also an opportunity to show tattoos
from that period. Did you approach them with the
same attention for authenticity?
Yes, especially for the ones on French prostitutes, chosen
according to the circumstances. We can see for instance:
‘P.L.V’, which means ‘Pour la Vie’ (For Life). It was gen-
erally associated with the name of the pimp, underlined
sometimes with small words. The two very rare books of
Jean Lacassagne ‘Tatouages du Milieu’ (1934) and ‘Du
Tatouage Chez Les Prostituées’ (Leblond/Lucas-1899)
have been precious in that case to understand the sub-
mission that pimps were monitoring: tattoos were com-
manded, proving belonging and dependency. Sometimes,
some tattoos like the vache (cow) was a punishment’s
sign, a humiliation. Can’t we see the masochistic side of
the painful love in the painful needle ... ?
No tattoos on the French soldiers though.
No, except the prisoners in Africa —the famous ‘Bat d’Af.'
(for :‘Bataillons disciplinaires d’Afrique'), militaries sent Word
s:^
Pasc
al^
Bagot