Leopold Shawo
In the 1980s, Michel Coche, a French librarian who occasionally saw Léopold chauveau, went to great lengths to publish three of his children's works; soon after, the Gospel Museum, a Japanese children's book publisher, introduced them; in 2005, animation director Koji Yamamura made "The Life of a Lonely Old Crocodile" into an animated film and won an international award; in 2010, Michel Coche, who had always been obsessed with Shawo's work, raised funds for it." In June 2020, during the days of the covid-19 pandemic, a number of art media released a news: "The Musée d'Orsay in the seventh arrondissement of Paris will reopen on the 23rd, when two exhibitions will be arranged, one is the work of French painter James Disso and the other is the art exhibition of French sculptor Leopold Shawo, both of which will last until September 13." All visitors over the age of 11 must wear a mask. "The Shovor exhibition will include 18 sculptures and 100 paintings, recreating the fantasy world of the surgeon and artist, who has almost disappeared into the shadow of history." More than a year later, before the epidemic had passed, a two-volume Chinese edition of "Shovo Strange Stories" was published. At this time, it had been eighty-one years since Shawo's death.
Poster of the Exhibition of Shovo at the Musée d'Orsay
How did a surgeon become a great painter, sculptor, and writer of children's literature?
Leopold Shaw was born in Lyon, France, in February 1870, and his father, Auguste Shawo, was the principal of the prestigious Veterinary School of Lyon and also participated in the creation of the Lyon Medical School. The Lyon Veterinary School was the world's first veterinary school, founded in 1761. After Auguste's death, the veterinary school erected a monument to him, which still stands in this prestigious school. Leopold did not like medicine, he liked literature and art, and wrote many works, including novels, watercolors and sculptures, but was forced by his strong father to enter medical school and eventually earned a doctorate in medicine. His doctoral dissertation was entitled "A Study on middle ear tympanic surgery for deafness in patients with chronic ear mucosa inflammation without suppuration." After graduating, he practiced medicine in several cities and was called into the army during World War I. After the war, he wrote Behind the War, a truthful account of what he saw and heard during the war and the various difficult surgeries he performed as a field doctor, including the real names and surnames of wounded soldiers or officers.
Except for the years of World War I, Shawo's life was normal and peaceful, with a stable income from practicing medicine, and his wife came from a family of diplomats, giving him four lovely sons. But three consecutive family disasters ruined his life: first, in September 1915, when his sixteen-year-old son drowned while on vacation at the seashore, whether by accident or suicide; three years later, his wife died of depression; and four months later, he personally performed a minor operation on his favorite son, Runo, who had just turned twelve, but unfortunately let his son die of sepsis. He wrote in his diary: "The war is over, and the killing and bloodshed are a thing of the past... But I lost three of my relatives at this time! And, what I can never find comfort in is that they all died in a senseless way..."
The world war and the family disaster brought a double psychological trauma to Shawo, which was difficult to get rid of, and he was panicked all day, and even "lacked confidence in his own hands", and finally had to completely give up the surgical career that he had struggled for most of his life, and turned to art and literature to find a cure for the shadow of the soul. This may be the will of Heaven in the darkness: to reduce the number of conformist surgeons in the world and one more artist to do their own thing.
When the youngest son, Runo, was alive, he always pestered him and asked him to tell stories. He was impatient to repeat the classic fairy tales that everyone knew, but he could not be entangled, so he "made it up" himself. He found that his son liked to listen to the stories he had made up, and he was very energetic. For example, he blindly said that the snake originally had four legs, and like other animals, it was later worn off because it ran too much; for example, he said that the turtle was originally the fastest animal, but then offended the rabbit, the rabbit begged the crow to help retaliate, the crow used the world's sticky paste to stick the turtle's house to it, and it could not be separated from it; such as the malicious saw shark, the hammer shark and the inherently difficult ogre...
Of course, sometimes—rarely—his story doesn't appeal to Runo, who is distracted and sleepy, and he immediately gives a surprising change to the plot of the story, such as the protagonist suddenly dying, falling down the mountain, being eaten, and so on. Runo immediately tensed up, got refreshed, and his eyes widened again—anyway, he made it up blindly, and then if there was a need, he would let the protagonist come back to life. Like "A Tree That Can Eat Three Children at a Time," it's terrifying, but in the end the lumberjack cuts down the trunk of a big tree, "The hole in the trunk is the stomach of the big tree." The trunk of the tree broke, revealing all the children who had been eaten. The children have become very, very small, half the size of the little finger. Most of their bodies have been digested by the tree, and the rest is something that the tree has not yet had time to digest. "After these little bits were brought back to the village by the loggers in their trouser pockets, they ate a lot of nutritious things and returned to their original size...
Shawo's stories are born one by one, they are all very strange and bizarre stories, they focus on fictional life scenes, on the surface there is no sublime or right or wrong, but it highlights the frankness and childishness, full of strong interest and hidden philosophy, the story is over, and it seems to be over.
In fact, every time he told a story, he wrote it down first and read it to Runo, and some random changes on the scene were not added later. After abandoning his profession as a surgeon, he recalled over and over again the scenes when he told his son stories, trying to write the story more perfectly and then with illustrations. At first, the illustrations were drawn by his painter friend Pierre Bonnard and others, mostly pen and watercolor. Later, he tried to draw by hand with a black ink pen, portraying the image with fine lines, resembling woodcuts or copperplate plates, with an innate simplicity and relaxation. Maybe the knife and the pen originally had some kind of connection? Isn't it, surgery is a knife, woodcuts and copper plates are also carved with knives, ancient editions of books and inscriptions are also carved with knives - this is only from the point of view of the utensils than the annex, in fact, from the spiritual level, surgeons and painters, writers may be closer, for example, all need a subtle knife (pen) method, all need a compassionate heart.
The life of a lonely old crocodile
As he painted, he missed Runo, as if He were leaning on his knees, still listening to his story, his eyes wide open. His brushes, with divine help, stroke by stroke, one by one, drew nearly three hundred illustrations for fifteen stories!
At the very beginning of the illustrated storybook, he wrote the words "In Memory of Runo Shawo" in memory. This is the best memorial to my son. "The children's story he wrote to little Runo is like a father-son dialogue under the Nine Springs, which is nothing less than a way for the father to be relieved and to keep his children alive."
Shovo lived in an era when post-Impressionist painters were active, with a group of distinctive painters such as Cézanne, Gauguin, and Van Gogh, with whom Shovo met and participated in various art salons, especially with the sculptor and painter Georges Lacon, and the writer Martin Du Gar (who won the 1937 Nobel Prize in Literature for "The Thibaud Family").
In contrast, Shovor's sculptures may be more chic and have a long time span, starting before world war I. They are all imaginary statues of monsters: cat-faced penguins, long-finned squirrels, fish with strange heads, monkey-bodied birds of prey, or images that cannot be said at all, but they express human emotions: loneliness, loss, indifference, heartfelt cries... One comment suggested that "there is a certain unsettling atmosphere emanating from this long list of depressing things". This may be the portrayal of Xiao Wo's heart, empathizing with the inexplicable small statues, and his spiritual shadow is somewhat dissolved. "Here, all suffering is transformed, and in the strange life forms, the goodness of human nature is replaced by a rough simplicity, while the evil from which there cannot be escaped is compassionately forgiven."
Shovor sculptural works
During World War II, Shawo and the Red Cross organized a reception center in Belgium so that a large number of Belgian and French refugees could have a place to stay and receive minimal care when passing through the area. Refugees are pouring in. He worked day and night, sometimes for days without sleep, and was exposed to heart-wrenching images every day, leaving him mentally and physically exhausted. He died suddenly— on June 17, 1940, just before France surrendered to Nazi Germany. He was buried in a local cemetery. After the war, Martin du Gall paid for a tombstone at his own expense, but the grave was gone.
Shovo was a buried genius, and the spread of his artwork was cut off by World War II until decades after his death, when the French rediscovered him. Martin du Gard said: "Shovo comes and goes freely in the hazy, complex and inexhaustible field of art, starting from reality and eventually falling into fiction. He focuses on concrete images, but he is also naturally obsessed with whimsy... In his case, only by falling into whimsy, or even into frightening imaginations, can he truly embody his personal genius. ”
The Shovo Art Exhibition at the Musée d'Orsay in the 7th arrondissement of Paris has long since been discontinued, and the journey of Shovo art back into the public eye has only just begun.
Author: Wang Jiaming
Editor: Xie Juan