Elzo Durt: Shouting Polychromy

April 18, 2017

By Lelo Jimmy Batista

Like everything from Belgium, Elzo Durt often turns up without warning. He appears with an unlikely idea tucked under his arm, unruffled, a huge grin slapped on his face. He seems to have something permanently up his sleeve, something ready to cause massive chaos, always at the edge of an indecipherable savagery. A linchpin of nightlife in Brussels and one-half of Teenage Menopause Records, Durt is primarily an illustrator, known for his shrieking, multi-hued screen printing and his long-time collaboration with Parisian label Born Bad, for whom he has created numerous record sleeves and posters over almost ten years.

From his first flyers to his current work, Durt’s work has become more powerful and his compositions are now more streamlined, yet the foundation of his technique has remained the same – collages of elements laid out in an occult order, assembled with obsessive precision and recounting, in a series of blinding flashes, the history of a world governed by an endless folklore of mutant divinities. Elzo Durt is Gee Vaucher without the heavy-handed symbolism, Virgil Finlay trapped under a wall of blinding neon lights, Gustave Doré dancing on a bed of razorblades, Terry Gilliam lying on Franquin’s drawing board with his throat slit – in a nutshell, sheer terror, running free at breakneck speed, parties that will never end – what an explosive mess!

Born Bad are now publishing Elzo Durt - Complete Works 2003-2016, a monograph bringing together all his previous works. Several weeks before the opening of an exhibition devoted to his work in Paris, at Agnès B.’s Galerie du jour, we asked Durt to tell us more about ten of his most impressive illustrations.

For me, portraits are quite constraining, as they force me to get straight to the heart of the matter. I can’t pile up layers and details, as I do with my usual work. Here, everything hinges upon two or three ideas, often very simple ones. In this instance, I started with a walnut of sorts, but it took on a completely different aspect once I colourised it. The idea of a series soon became very clear to me because it’s a truly fascinating task. For a start, you can say many different things with a face, the possibilities are endless. What’s more, it’s fun to play with this format, as you can shake up the codes, mess with the background. And finally, as we were in the context of an exhibition, I thought it would be quite interesting to have this wall of portraits staring back at the visitor. Elzo Durt

I did this one for a Spanish design mag. They were organising a competition on the theme of the seven deadly sins, and there was a €5,000 prize for the person who came first, which was pretty cool. But I won second place, so I got these Posca markers and some caps… I was delighted [*laughs*]. The composition is quite simple: It’s a series of vistas representing one of the seven deadly sins. Some are really easy to get, others require a bit more guesswork. And Satan is there in the middle. Elzo Durt

This is a poster created for a Franco-Belgian exhibition mostly featuring children’s illustrators. They asked me to create a Belgian flag, which would be hung at the entrance – another illustrator was in charge of the French one. Naturally, a Belgian flag with Marc Dutroux [notorious head of a local pedophile ring], was out of the question. Shame, because I liked that idea. And then there were the Smurfs, our other great national symbol. Like most Belgians, I was highly affected by this comic, which I read prolifically throughout my childhood; not so much today. Nowadays I buy comics strips to create sources for my work, not to read them. Elzo Durt

I often used Bin Laden on my posters in the days when he was active. What’s great is that he’s an instantly recognisable character and you can represent him quite easily. On this poster, I used this 18th century etching and I just clipped the beard and gave him a squint. That’s what I liked, too, as by poking fun at Bin Laden, I was also poking fun at the USA, as the two were connected. And in the background there’s the Raëlian logo, a swastika inside a Star of David. I understand why some people might be shocked, but I think it’s funny. The Raëlians, Bin Laden, the USA - three aspects of the same absurdity, of a gigantic farce. The message works perfectly here. It’s direct – no need to have a degree in politics to work it out. Elzo Durt

The Teenage Menopause logo – a label I founded in 2011 with my French acolyte, Froos. It was originally a commissioned job, a poster for a French medical organisation to illustrate the message “Pills Kill.” In the beginning, I’d done this thing with Elvis, and it was turned down, but it figures in the book. Then I got this idea of using a pill with people trying to climb back up inside it, people who didn’t want the effects to wear off. Problem was, it didn’t really fit with the message anymore [*laughs*]. But it did embody the spirit of Teenage Menopause, and we were launching the label at the time. This idea of climbing back into a pill, keep on going, never grow old… Elzo Durt

The cover of the *Carrion Crawler / The Dream* EP by Thee Oh Sees, released in 2011. I met John Dwyer, leader of the band, in the US, when I went on tour with Magnetix, a garage duo signed to Born Bad. I’d have these mini exhibitions each time they played. Dwyer bought quite a lot of my stuff at their San Francisco gig, including this drawing. He immediately wanted to turn it into the sleeve of his new record. I couldn’t imagine the record today without this cover, but if the band had commissioned a specific drawing for the album, I’d have done something completely different. I think it’s great that they chose something simple, that said, because if he had asked me for an illustration, it would’ve done my head in – it is Thee Oh Sees, after all, one of the greatest bands on the modern garage/psych scene. Maybe I’d have done something with more colour and details and it wouldn’t have worked as well. Elzo Durt

Another record sleeve, this time for La Femme’s debut. This one opened a good few doors and that’s how the public at large got to know my work. However, it was all done in a huge rush – I think I did it all, back and front cover, in three days. And weirdly enough, it was quite easy. Sometimes I spend weeks on a job, tearing my hair out, but that time, it all came to me very quickly. La Femme are a band with quite a big lineup, and almost every band member had a different idea for the sleeve. They couldn’t agree on anything, so JB [Guillot, head honcho at Born Bad, who released the vinyl version of the record – Barclay were in charge of the CD] settled things by handing the cover design over to me. As this record sold well and the group were all over the media, the cover got seen in some unlikely places. I think it’s quite a success, completely in line with the album’s title, *Psycho Tropical Berlin*, and with the music La Femme make. I’ve been working with JB for almost ten years and this book is a way of celebrating that as well, since he’s the one publishing it. We work together really well and spend a lot of time on the phone; I send him my leads, my sketches, and he always gets back to me within an hour, it’s very fast-paced. Above all, he’s someone who can see the potential in the stuff you show him. He doesn’t block you by saying things such as “I don’t like it” without explaining why – in fact, he’ll say stuff like, “I’m fond of this one, you should go down this road.” Elzo Durt

I’ve only ever made two film posters: one for a French documentary, *Danger Dave*, and this one, for a Belgian film, *Je Me Tue À Le Dire* [*Death by Death*]. Xavier Seron, the director, got in touch with me. He showed me the film, which was in the post-production phase, and suggested I design the poster. I really fell in love with it, so I said yes immediately. Unfortunately, it was rejected by all the distributors [*laughs*]. That said, it’s just been used for the DVD edition, so it hasn’t completely gone to waste. I think it’s a real shame that we no longer have these illustrated cinema posters, as was the case in the ’70s and ’80s. It’s something I just don’t understand. In Belgium, the poster they ended up using was okay, but in France it was a real disaster, and I reckon that a good drawing is a thousand times better than a photo edit. Seron agreed with me. He was a really cool guy and that’s also one of the reasons I agreed to work on this project. Relationships are the cornerstone of my work. Even if I’m doing a gig for a brand, I have to get on well with the person I’m working for, we’ve got to be on the same wavelength – otherwise it ends up running off course. Elzo Durt

This poster is pretty typical of the direction I want to go in at the moment. It’s based on much more contemporary elements, mainly graphic novels. Here, for example, I was inspired by a Frank Miller character. I’m also inspired by stuff that was published in Métal Hurlant [Seminal ’70s comic/graphic magazine] and by Les Humanoïdes Associés [comic book publishers], but also by obscure black-and-white American fanzines, and tacky sci-fi comics – I mix them with prints to give them a more modern, livelier aspect. The sources all come together: It’s less like a collage and looks sleeker. Elzo Durt

A poster with perfect timing. Unfortunate, but perfect. It was for this night I was putting on in Brussels with five Belgian bands. We were on a Level 4 alert, so the reference seemed like a no-brainer [*laughs*]. The concert took place on March 12th. A few days later, Salah Abdeslam was arrested in Molenbeek and on the 22nd, there was a terrorist attack in Brussels. It would have been difficult, even impossible, to use the poster after that, as our own prime minister Charles Michel is easily recognisable on the illustration. But it was fine then. Belgium is just about the only country where you can laugh at that kind of thing. I created 250 posters for that concert, and pasted them all over Brussels without the slightest problem. Now I’m in the process of putting the finishing touches on a series of skateboards featuring caricatures of Belgian politicians Elzo Durt

April 18, 2017 By Lelo Jimmy Batista

On a different note

April 18, 2017

By Lelo Jimmy Batista