Claire Bretécher has recently acquired an international reputation as the cartoon creator of the truly horrendous teenager, Agrippine, both pecularly French and universally recognisable as an enfante terrible. First making her appearance aged 13 or 14, Agrippine is insufferably streetwise, able to manipulate father, mother and boyfriend with equal dexterity. Agrippine exploits her mother’s desperate attempt to keep on her wavelength by humiliatingly correcting her use of out-of-date slang. She constantly demands, and receives, large sums of money from her father. She delights in putting down her genuinely intellectual boyfriend, Modem. In Agrippine’s recent return, ‘Allergies’, Bretécher portrays her as a 17 or 18 year old, cutting her toenails in bed, wandering around perpetually half dressed, and apparently in love with Prince William.
Bretécher has shown herself to be a perceptive observer of social change and the shortcomings of her contemporaries. In Les Frustrés and Les Mères, an album on pregnancy and motherhood, she has broken fresh ground in the portrayal of women – and some men – in a comic strip.
Bretécher was born in Nantes and began as an art teacher. She got her first break as an illustrator when René Goscinny asked her to provide the artwork for The Rhesus Factor. She went on to work for several popular magazines, and in 1969 invented the character ‘Cellulite’ for the magazine, Pilote. Of her many prestigious awards, she is said to value most that of Best French Author at the 1975 Angoulême International Comics Festival.
www.clairebretecher.com
