Gaspard Thaumas de La Thaumassière in Bourges, Cher (18)

Gaspard Thaumas de La Thaumassière (1631-1702) was born in Sancerre and died in Bourges. He wrote a number of works about France's ancient laws, but he was also a local historian and produced a series of volumes about the history of Berry.

The Writing on the Wall in Bourges, Cher (18)

Sometimes the only way to protest and for the maximum number of people to understand your message is to write it on the wall. I translate this in the same breathless, completely unpunctuated way in which it is written: 'i remember the time when i was little we lived in a block of flats that no longer exists today [sic] with the progressive destruction and reconstruction of the town its as if a part of our memories has been torn from us'.

'Les Fesses de la cathédrale' in Bourges, Cher (18)

It's like something you'd see in a book called, say, 'Cher insolite', in fact it probably makes some people think there's been some Photoshopping going on, but no, there it is on the south face of Bourges cathedral: an arse with prominently dangling scrotum. No one knows anything about it, if is was discovered soon after the event, or not. But why is it there? Was the worker bored? Or more likely, is this how he showed his hatred for receiving very little pay? Needless to say, for those who know it's there, it's a huge attraction!

Marcel Bascoulard in Bourges, Cher (18)

I've written about Marcel Bascoulard (1913-78) before, after I read the huge beau livre about him, telling of how his mother shot his tyrannical father dead from the back, of how Bascoulard (in his late teens at the time) went on to lead the existence of a down-and-out. He was, though, a much loved figure in Bourges, noted for riding an elongated tricycle, wearing women's clothing, having a number of cats, but most of all of course for his artwork. He did few abstract paintings, but most of his art was meticulously sketched works of Bourges cathedral, or of the town's old streets. It was a great shock to the town to  learn that he was strangled by an unstable man in his twenties in a wreck of a van someone had given Bascoulard, and in which he lived on wasteland. But he received the posthumous honour of having a square named after him, with in the centre a bust of him by the sculptor André Bézard (1921-98): a tall stone with a representation of the man in a bronze bust.

He also received a decent grave, although I suspect that not many people have seen where Marcel Bascoulard is buried: online it's possible to find the exact location of it, although none of the cemetery divisions is marked, and if you visit (as we did) when the gardien is having his lunchtime break, the chances of finding him are remote. However, I spoke to a man watering the graves and he knew exactly where Bascoulard's is: there are now two pot cats on it.

Marcel Bascoulard (artwork); Patrick Martinat (text): Bascoulard: Dessinateur Virtuose, clochard magnifique, femme inventée (2014)

Bascoulard is an enormous book in more ways than one: this hardback (49 euros and well worth it) won't fit onto the average bookshelf with the spine legible, it probably weighs about two kilos, and the number of pages is about three hundred. Many would describe this as a coffee table book (or beau livre in French), but that expression just suggests something pretty to look at, with little to read, and invariably of a very well-known subject.

Certainly the text in this book (by Patrick Martinat) is very soon read, and there are a great number of photos in it of the artist Marcel Bascoulard (1913–78) and his work, but from there it parts company from the regular coffee book, in fact it subverts the coffee table book: outside central France (the Bourges (and Sologne) areas to be specific), how many people are aware of Marcel Bascoulard, who has his own square with his bust in Bourges, as well as a street named after him in Saint-Florent-sur-Cher, where he spent his youth?

Shortly after his mother Marguerite, when her elder son Marcel was nineteen, shot her violent husband dead in the back and was institutionalised, he moved to Bourges and began painting. He didn't fit in with society, and I won't even bother involving psychological analysis, which he would (quite rightly, I'm sure) have detested. Marcel grew away from conventional society, being unconcerned with the trapping of success, unconcerned with money or fame to such an extent that he wasn't interested in a roof over his head with running water and electricity, and traded his paintings for food and suchlike to feed his cats and dogs as well as himself. His mother had been the main love of his life, and no one else.

And yet Bascoulard was a gifted painter, first a realist depicting in minute detail the city of Bourges (particularly the cathedral), including the few other places he visited, although they were very few and probably the furthest he ever ventured was Paris. He later introduced odd colours to his townscapes, even painted abstract pictures, but they weren't welcomed, although he didn't care, he wasn't interested in painting to order, in being commissioned, he preferred his outsider, tramp status, although he didn't see himself as a tramp: after all, how many tramps dress in female clothing, for example, or ride tricycles that they've designed themselves? OK, many may live on wasteland, but what of it?

Marcel Bascoulard saw his death coming in the form of the twenty-three-year-old social reject Jean-Claude Simion, but no one else in Bourges did, otherwise they'd have protected him. Such a waste.

Bascoulard is a magnificent book, one of the few which you must have in your possession even if you don't speak French, as it so evidently speaks for the outsiders, the outcasts who have so much to tell us. Only Bascoulard wasn't an outcast, he was loved in spite of the dirt he lived in, in spite of (even because of) his anarchism, and his death was a great blow to Bourges: after all, how many other people have played such a role in putting the town on the French map?

My criticism is that Patrick Martinat glibly dismisses Marcel Bascoulard's writing, quotes from it very briefly, and gives it virtually no space. Fascinating as photos of Bascoulard are, as his painting and sketches are, as his precise maps are, many photos here would have lost nothing by their exclusion, although so much could have been gained by the inclusion of Bascoulard's writings, no matter what Martinat think of them: he is no expert in literature, and should not pretend to be one. It would have been very interesting, for instance, to give just one example, to have read 'Maternelle réhabilitation' in full.