A semi-serious portrait of the work (not only artistic) that we all experience.
You know those days filled with non-existent contracts, late payments, and requests for urgent work, with people who have connections always getting ahead of you? Well, La Signorina Illustratrice experiences them every day… and puts them on paper.
Someone recently asked me, “Why don’t you make a book with your cartoons?”
The book actually already exists: the first edition, published almost ten years ago by a publishing house created by fantastic people that no longer exists, is already a record-breaking book: NO ONE wanted to present it.
Having regained the copyright, last spring I decided to revisit the endless material I had accumulated: La Signorina had appeared every day on Facebook for three years, with one cartoon a day.
Thus was born the second edition, revised and expanded, of La Signorina Illustratrice, now available on Amazon.
Perhaps some of you already know it, because for over a year I have been publishing a cartoon every Sunday here on Substack. When the first edition came out, a few bookstores offered to present it… only to back out after reading it, because I was “too critical.”
This new edition has twice as many cartoons, so—in theory—twice as many problems for anyone who wants to host me. (But, I confess, being very shy, that’s fine with me: in fact, don’t do it, it’s better, leave me in Banksy-like limbo). I’ve kept the price almost identical to the first edition, so anyone who wants to read it can do so without having to empty their pockets.
As you read it, you will soon realize that you will find yourself in Signorina Illustratrice: between irony, small stumbles, and sharp thoughts on work and everyday life, between those who try to survive and those who try not to take themselves too seriously. Outside of any advertising or rankings, this book lives through those who read it. If you recognize yourself in even one cartoon, let yourself be tempted and pass it on: word of mouth is the only review that matters.
Read the presentation below and tell me if you haven’t experienced living in a surreal working world at least once in your life.
La Signorina Illustratrice is a girl without shoes.
She thinks, talks, and works within the four walls of her small studio. The city is out there. It’s difficult for someone as sensitive as her to socialize. And when she tries, the results are hilarious. She uses a computer but remembers perfectly the days when cell phones and PCs didn’t exist. However, she is not nostalgic for the past. On the contrary, the internet is an excellent channel for connecting her with the rest of the world: at the speed of an email, she sends her resume and offers her services as a freelancer. But she doesn’t always get the responses she would like, especially since the world out there is tragicomic, and she is well aware of this.
Bare-bones or articulate (even ridiculous) rejections, vague job offers, surreal responses from clients, publishers who say everything and its opposite, hallucinatory suggestions, narcissistic and inattentive writers who, between requests for illustrations, ask for a little text editing (free of charge, of course), or ordinary people who promise to pay if one day they sell at least one copy of their masterpiece.
Collaboration proposals arrive fragmented, laborious, work without schedules or certainties, without any gratification other than gratuitous compliments in large quantities.
The world of work inevitably influences the private life of the Illustrator.
Alone, troubled by this difficult artistic universe, she talks to an imaginary cat, to a hypothetical inner self, to her desk, her pencils, the blank sheet of paper, a god above her head, a universe that does not love her enough.
She often sits on armchairs that seem to have a life of their own (yes, they have shoes) and that induce her to imaginary psychoanalytic sessions.
The young lady rarely uses the phone, and when she does, she is so insecure that she occasionally pretends to be someone else. The internet is her real channel of communication and her desk is her plan of action. But it is a syncopated communication.
She does not hate the world out there, she is disconcerted by its hypocrisy. She pokes fun at it with small daily doses of fierce sarcasm. She does not use offensive words, but seeks with gentle sagacity to unmask the gross atrocities of a globally inattentive and angry world, with that sharp, slightly snobbish elegance, as brilliant as it is innovative, that Franca Valeri recited on the radio a few decades ago (from whom she draws inspiration).
How much of the author is there in La Signorina Illustratrice?
It all began in September 2014, with the fortieth (or fiftieth?) rejection of the author’s first illustrated book. She had worked for two years, almost every night, in absolute silence and secrecy, cherishing the idea that her work was perfect (or perfectible).
She was in love with what she had created and thought she just needed to send the package to get some positive feedback. Instead, she received a flurry of responses: resounding rejections, awkward silences, conflicting opinions, even strident ones. An absurd Babel, a granite, inflexible, frightening failure. And, of course, a devastating blow to the author’s self-esteem.
La Signorina Illustratrice becomes her cross to bear and her delight on a particularly dark and stormy evening: two pen strokes on a white card and the author’s voice, under pressure, emerges from underground and decides to express itself. Miss Illustrator begins to say what she thinks while the author denies everything day after day, for over a year. In a schizophrenic self-healing (of whom?).
And what happens is incredible. Her web page begins to be followed by men and women who even leave comments, identify with her, cheer her on, and comment.
Are we all being sucked down by a lack of self-esteem despite our frenzied exhibitionism? Does the world no longer communicate but connect us to each other without letting us say anything? Are we all caught up in the arduous task of asserting ourselves? Why does work no longer ennoble us? Why is the feeling that we are not suited to any job role, that our age is always wrong, like our resume, becoming increasingly vivid?
Ten years later, La Signorina Illustratrice returns in a more substantial version, like a good wine that decants in barrels, like letters forgotten in drawers, like certain sudden blooms of cacti.
For those who missed it, for those who leafed through it to the last page, and for those who kept asking, “You’re going to reprint it, right?”
Here it is: a collection that closes (and rounds off) the circle.
