by Mark Zoarob | Staff Writer
For much of his cartoons, Bernard Hage restricted himself to a black-and-white palette. However, in his latest alluring artwork The Philosopher, Hage manages to combine themes of identity, memory, trust, and social interactions, among others in a new colorful approach.
Bernard Hage more commonly known by his artistic pseudonym The Art of Boo launched his comic on November 19, 2022, in his first visit back to Lebanon. The work was exhibited on the first floor of As-Safir Newspaper’s headquarters, displayed against a bare wall at the end of the room reflecting the palpable tactility and bareness of the human themes explored in the comic. In the comic, a philosopher ruminates on society during his morning stroll, while analyzing human behavior. His internal monologue reveals his outlook on his environment, both in theory and in practice. The Lebanese illustrator and cartoonist gained popularity for his satirical minimalistic cartoons in which he sarcastically sheds light on and criticizes Lebanon’s economic and political collapse.
The presentation is funded by Comic Art Europe; a collaboration aiming to strengthen the European comics sector of which the Lakes International Comic Art Festival is a project partner. Julie Tait, LICAF artistic director and producer, opened the exhibition by declaring that from more than 200 applications The Art of Boo was chosen by Comic Art Europe, as one of five winners of the 2022 Open Call on the theme “Living Together”. She expressed her admiration for Hage by mentioning that when she asked to write down her top 3 preferences out of the 5 winners, she filled all three ranks with Hage’s name. As a winner of the Comic Art Europe 2022 Open Call, Hage was awarded a two-week residency.
The scenes in the comic were influenced by Hage’s time in Kendal where he wrote the comic in the Lakes District, United Kingdom, during his art residency; and his source of inspiration was his environment. In fact, the philosopher’s walk in the comic is inspired by Hage’s interactions with his surroundings and locals while walking around Kendal. He video documented his own walks in Kendal and used them as references and sources of inspiration for this comic.
“Of course, like any artist you need to edit,” He explained when I asked him whether the dialogue included in the work was extracted from reality (based on his actual strolls in Kendal) or fiction. He explained that “the main thoughts are general thoughts that I had but I edited and reassembled them in a way that would fit a certain narrative.”
The comic’s title “The Philosopher” is inspired by Ambrose Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary where he identifies philosophy as “a root of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.” For Hage, this definition perfectly encapsulates the life of a philosopher where one overthinks certain topics. Speaking from personal experience, since his father is a philosopher, he comments “they tend to be idealistic in their views on the world. But in reality, they’re imperfect themselves. That contradiction is what interests me in a philosopher. That is why I chose the protagonist to be a philosopher because I was aiming to show the contrast between living together as a concept and living together as a reality.”
The launch then continued with journalist Jorn Decock moderating a talk with Hage, asking him questions about the comic, his move to Germany, and his recent activities after a long silence.
During the height of his fame, especially after the launch of Anatomy of a Hummus Plate, Bernard Hage left Lebanon and moved to Berlin. Hage revealed that the reason behind that decision was that he “wanted to be bored for a while because Lebanon is giving him too much inspiration.” Yet Europe proved too boring for him and pushed him to embark on this new
project. After arriving in an unfamiliar environment, he found himself questioning his position in his new community and began studying and observing this new home. This consequently broke the “boredom” and prompted him to create.
In contrast to his black and white minimalistic cartoons, The Philosopher takes a more extensive stylistic approach than his simple “5 word” cartoons. With all the time he had alone, the boredom manifested itself in more detail in his illustrations. He wanted to advance his style from the minimalist cartoons depicting daily life in Lebanon and try something else which,
according to Hage, is a natural reaction of his immigration. He feels that the new thoughts and problems which he is experiencing in his new life cannot be expressed in minimalistic cartoons. This comic is a transformation point for him in his artistic journey from single line cartoons to delving into something more extensive and detailed. He now plans to follow the comic with a booklet and is currently working on a short animation film.
In a previous Q&A during Hage’s takeover of the Mahmoud Kahil Award Instagram page, I asked him why he draws most of his cartoons in black and white. He mentioned that one of the reasons is that he is not good with colors. However, I have realized that he started to include color in his cartoons, especially the newer ones which he released after a prolonged silence. When I asked him about the point of transformation from avoiding colors to using them in many of his cartoons, particularly in The Philosopher, he sarcastically replied “European Boredom.” He then followed it by explaining: “I had time to really assess my own work and think about where I would take it next. Because as an artist you reach a point where you get bored of your own work. No matter how consistent your style is and no matter how much people love it. You have to be honest with yourself. If you start to feel bored with your own style, then it is the time to do some changes or experiment with different details and different styles.” He views this project as a trial to experiment with one color before experimenting further with multiple color schemes. I later asked him about the choice of color. He revealed that it is only for aesthetic purposes. “I just like the combination of orange, black, and white. And I couldn’t use orange here for obvious reasons. I’m finally happy to be outside of Lebanon and have the freedom of using colors again without any associations. Hage also feels his humor in his previous cartoons was getting repetitive. “I’ve reached a point as a cartoonist where I think it’s not funny anymore”, he comments. “How many jokes can you make about someone not capable of forming the government? Reality here has become more absurd than fiction. They literally put me out of job.”
Hage was the voice of many Lebanese citizens, using his cartoons as a medium to highlight and criticize the things that were wrong in the country. Before this evolvement in his artistic style, he drew inspiration from the circumstances in the country. Now, he is diving into his own head.
In fact, The Philosopher is a line of thought that stretches from him landing in Berlin to the present. He starts by discussing memory, a central theme in the comic, because this has been a really important issue for him and the real reason behind his departure. Hage believes that “memory is who we are” and coincidently the protagonist of The Philosopher agrees with Hage’s
views, mentioning it in one of the comic’s panels. He further elaborates: “I believe I am what I know, and my knowledge depends on what amount of information I can store, it depends on my memory. Whenever you start losing your memory, you start losing your identity. This is how I see myself. The thing is memory manifests itself in objects. It can be a picture of someone in your wallet, a scarf with a certain perfume, a building…these objects help boost your memory to reassure you that it’s not just in your head, it actually happened, it’s there. For me when I talk about memory, it’s really condensed in one narrow street, which is Gemmayze and Mar Michael.” He lived his entire life on these streets; he spent his school years there, had his first coffee, his first kiss, his first date, his first breakup, his first job, and he launched his art career in these streets. That is why these streets serve as objects “to validate my identity” as he puts it.
When the Beirut Port explosion took place, he was devastated to see the whole street gone. He was “overwhelmed with a feeling of numbness.”
“You cannot relate anymore to anything, and it is like all your memories have been shattered in a way. I could not relate anymore to my surroundings, and I felt as a stranger in the city which is what pushed me to take the decision to leave”, says Hage.
Colonialism is another theme explored by The Philosopher’s protagonist. During his stay in Europe Hage was astonished by Europe’s “greatness”, denoting its sheer architectural magnificence. This pushed him to ponder on the reason behind that “greatness”. This line of inquiry led him to countries with a colonial past. “These are the things that I never thought about here because my mind was like a really cluttered room with the Lebanese problems. These are the kind of things that you start thinking about when you just give time to yourself and relocate yourself in the world.”
“I ask this every morning. Who am I? What am I? Then I open Instagram and get distracted until the next morning.” By leaving Lebanon, he dove into the unknown. He compares it to “floating in limbo.” After thinking about his life and choices, he is “healing from the toxicity” he experienced while in Lebanon. He started looking at Lebanon in a different, more objective, light. “I don’t want to put that behind me. I want to keep working with that one way or another while protecting myself. I don’t want to be as involved as before. I don’t want to change the system…which is why I took on many projects about Lebanon. Ironically, I have spent the last year and a half in Berlin simply working on projects about Lebanon. One of them was about gender inequality…” He is also currently working on another project entitled Malaise – Diaries from the Paris of the Middle East, which he announced a few months prior to the launch of the comic in November. It is a compilation of texts, letters, drawings, poems, and music which helped keep him afloat during the last three years. He explains that he wants to publish them to normalize and “encourage conversation about mental health in Lebanon” because he believes mental health “is the darkest side of the Lebanese crisis and its repercussions will probably outlive the economic and financial crisis.” Hage reveals that Malaise is “the behind the scenes of my last book.” In Anatomy of a Hummus Plate, he documented “the collapse of the state.” In Malaise he documents the collapse of his own mental state.