Among the 12 dead and 11 wounded in today’s cowardly and loathsome attack on the offices of the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris were four cartoonists: Georges Wolinski, Jean Cabut, Charb (Stephane Charbonnier) and Tignous (Bernard Velhac).

I dug up what I could quickly find on the four cartoonists, and have included relevant links below. Most of them don’t seem to have a dedicated web presence, but my French is weak, and I’m not certain where to look. (I also have not taken the time to translate the text in the drawings above, so I’m not certain what they say. I was just trying to quickly find some representative artwork.)

Charlie Hebdo (Charlie Weekly) is known for it’s provocative cartoons and mocking satires of religious fanatics (across the board), political corruption and whatever they find worthy of ridicule. They have pissed off just about everyone, but they have particularly come under attack from professed Muslim extremists (I say “professed” because claiming you are something does not make it true, and certainly does not give you the right to speak for others). The Charlie Hebdo offices were firebombed in 2011, supposedly in response to cartoons about the Prophet Muhammad.

To those who are tempted to respond to this kind of act with anti-Muslim sentiment, I’ll point out that in doing so, you are handing these terrorists their victory. They want nothing more than to incite kneejerk, reactionary anti-Muslim sentiment in the West, and fan the flames of religious and cultural intolerance on all sides. To do so allows them to think they are warriors in a holy war, rather than the rat-like, delusional petty criminals they are.

Those who are doing the most to defeat their aims are spreading messages of tolerance and acceptance, not returning hatred for hatred.

Supporters of freedom of expression are using the phrase “Je Suis Charlie” (I am Charlie) and the hashtag #JeSuisCharlie in messages of solidarity around the world.

[Images above: “Je Suis Charlie” from Charlie Hebdo website, Georges Wolinski, Jean Cabut, Charb (Stephane Charbonnier), Tignous (Bernard Velhac)]

[Via The Comics Reporter]

[Addendum: Slate has been publishing some of the responses to the tragedy, in the form of cartoons, from cartoonists in France and elsewhere: #JeSuisCharlie: Cartoonists Raise Their Pencils in Solidarity With Charlie Hebdo.

Also, reader julien has contributed an account of Cabu and the history and place of Charlie Hebdo in French society, with insights only available to someone living in France. See this post’s comments.]

Étienne Pierre Théodore Rousseau was one of the first of the French painters to be attracted to the gnarled trees, bolder-strewn hillsides and deep forests of Fontainebleau, and after visiting frequently, one of the first to move to the small nearby village of Barbizon, where he became one of the premiere painters of the Barbizon School.

After early acceptance at the critical Salon, Rousseau’s predilection for Romanticism ran afoul of the Classicists in control of the Salon at the time, and kept him from acceptance for a number of years, earning him the unenviable nickname of “le grand refusé”.

He managed to impress patrons sufficiently to carry on, however, and eventually regained acceptance, though he was consistently denied the kind of official recognition due a painter of his ability.

As a leader of the Barbizon School, his often dark and moody canvases with their roughly scumbled surfaces and open brushwork, contrasted with those in which he applied sensitive glazes, helped usher in modern styles of painting.

It would be a stretch to think of Rousseau as an actual Tonalist, but the Barbizon painters exerted considerable influence on the American painters of that style, and I see in Rousseau’s compositions — particularly those of illuminated skies seen through the framing of dark masses of foreground trees — many of the compositional conventions taken on by painters like George Inness.

Unfortunately, reproductions of Rousseau’s work on the web seem to suffer more than some of his contemporaries. The widest selection is probably at WikiArt, though the images are not large, and The Athenaeum has a decent selection. The best reproductions are probably those of the excellent collection of Rousseau’s work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the National Gallery, London.

You can also go to Artcyclopedia and search through the links to individual museums.

There is currently an exhibition of Rousseau’s work at the Morgan Library and Museum in NY, the first of its kind in the US. Titled “The Untamed Landscape: Théodore Rousseau and the Path to Barbizon“, it concentrates on his drawings and plein air oil sketches, forms at which Rousseau, much like Constable, excelled. The exhibition runs until January 18, 2015.

If you visit, and come out wanting to see Rousseau’s more finished work, the Met is just a cab ride away.

For over 40 years, Tony Auth was a glimmer of sanity amid the news of the day, in the form of his cartoons on the opinion pages of the Philadelphia Inquirer.

In 2012, Auth — a winner of the Pulitzer and Herblock Prizes — moved to the local PBS affiliate, bringing his cartoons to their NewsWorks website.

Auth’s cartoons, drawn with a wonderfully sketchy line, and little pretense, carried his commentary straight to the point, often skewering left and right alike, though most would count his politics as liberal (if only because he wasn’t rabidly right wing).

Auth died this month, on September 14, 2014, at the age of 72.

Tony Auth was also an illustrator of children’s books. You can find a number of them, along with collections of his editorial cartoons, on Amazon.

I, for one, will miss his visual voice and that occasional breath of sanity amid the screaming and finger-pointing, particularly now.

For more, see my previous post on Tony Auth (from 2006).

Much to my delight, and considerable surprise, GoComics, the online repository of newspaper comics from both Universal and United Media syndicates, has been placing online the wonderfully off-kilter and reality-warping cartoons of B. Kliban.

If you’re not familiar with Kliban, it’s worth noting that The Far Side’s Gary Larson, Bizzarro’s Dan Piraro, the New Yorker’s Jack Ziegler, and other cartoonists who mine the veins of absurdist cartoon humor, owe much to the legacy of B. Kliban (as Kliban, in turn, owes a good deal to Saul Steinberg).

I’ll be the first to suggest that Kliban is not everyone’s cup of tea — there are times he can leave even dedicated Kliban aficionados scratching their heads — but for those of us who find delight in his tilted vision, terrible (wonderful) puns, surreal non-sequiturs and brain-stopping inversions of the normal, this is good news indeed, particularly as his publisher has long let most of his collections of drawings (they’re not always “cartoons”) languish out of print.

There is a GoComics archive of Kliban drawings from his collections (as well as some not in the collections, drawn from other sources), and a separate archive of his cat drawings, which have found a more mainstream audience.

GoComics is adding three drawings a week. I don’t know how long this will go on, as they must have a couple of hundred online already; and there are — sadly — a finite number of B. Kliban drawings in the world.

Among them are some of my all time favorite cartoons by anyone, including the one shown above, at bottom, which I’ve had on my bulletin board at various times since I was in my 20s.

For more (and another of my favorite cartoons), see my previous post on B. Kliban.

[Via MetaFilter]