Loisel

This year, the public face of Angoulême is Festival President Régis Loisel, winner of last year's Grand Prix award. The winner of that prize is selected each year by the Academie des Grands Prix, composed of previous Grand Prix winners, to serve as Festival President the following year. The Festival President serves three functions: he designs the festival poster, he is featured as the subject of a major exhibition, and he suggests programming to the Festival's organizing committee. This year's Festival comes after a public quarrel between Loisel and festival organizers. Following the December 9 press conference announcing festival prize nominees, the Montreal-based Loisel told a reporter for the daily Charente Libre (local to Angoulême) that he wasn't at the press conference because he hadn't been invited to participate in the announcement. Further, he complained that he hadn't had any contact with festival organizers since he returned to Canada in June, that he hadn't heard anything from them since he delivered his poster artwork, and that he didn't see any sign of his suggestions in the Festival program.

Thévenet minimized Loisel's complaints, citing the artist's remoteness as a mitigating factor, and emphasized that the festival committee is solely responsible for the bulk of the programming. It must be noted, as the festival charts a new course, that friction between the committee and the President — an outsider selected by a closed body of outsiders — has been a trend in recent years. An article on the BD website Actua BD reporting Loisel's complaints characterized 2003 President Schuiten as "particularly demanding." Beaty surmised tension himself, noting that last year's "Schuiten exhibition was not what one would have expected given the exhibitions he's done in the past."  continue...