“People who talk about ‘cultural appropriation’ bother me. “No one can appropriate something that belongs to no one.”

The evidence to say that Liniers He is a surrealist with a license, it is obvious. In his famous manifesto, a few months before turning 100, the French poet André Bretón defined the four bases of this artistic movement: psychic automatism (expressing the subconscious through automatic drawing); collaboration with other artists; the influence of Sigmund Freud, and the expression of the irrational and the absurd.

We reviewed the latest volume of “Macanudo”, number 15 to be exact. And these four conditions are met in each strip published by the Argentine Ricardo Siri. And on the other side of the table, Liniers laughs and accepts the four checks. Although he confesses: he has never read the “Surrealist Manifesto”.

And since we’re in the middle of content analysis, let’s do the math. In “Macanudo 15″, certain characters have been leaving their place to let others assume a refreshing role. Thus, of the 525 strips that make up this title, 113 correspond to the adventures of Enriqueta, the girl reader. And secondly, 49 focus on the strange imaginary monster that repeats “Olga”, as the only response to the child who accompanies him. While her iconic penguins and elves only appear in 35 and 29 strips, respectively. An example of this regression appears in a vignette in which a monster challenges the reader by saying: “Are you waiting for a penguin?”

— Are the times we live in better expressed with monsters than with friendly penguins?

I’ve never done a breakdown by book before! [ríe]. I can tell you that the inclusion of the characters in the strip is intuitive. I don’t force his presence. There are characters that, out there, at the time, people liked. One that drew a lot was called “Z-25, the sensitive robot” and also “Oliverio, the olive”, but I felt like the joke was already done, there wasn’t much more to say. They are fraying, while others are gaining presence. When I started drawing Olga, I thought I was going to get ten strips: a monster whose only dialogue said Olga didn’t give me many options. And look, there are 49 in this book alone! Since everything starts as an experiment, I’m not sure what will work and what won’t.

—But it is very interesting that children as characters have gained so much space in your work. Does it have to do with your parenting routines?

I really like it when children read to me. “Macanudo” I don’t do it thinking about them, it is the strip that I would like to read myself. I have children’s books, which I make thinking they are for children. I would like the little one who reads one of my books to later want to read another book. Because she found him funny or because he scared her…

— Speaking of fear, monsters have a significant presence in your latest books…

I remember a lot of the things that happened to me as a child. The book “What there is before there is something” addresses one of my first memories: my parents telling me “Good night, Ricardito” before turning off the light in my room. Seeing everything dark, I thought the ceiling had disappeared. It’s about walking the bridge to childhood and not losing it.

— This year marks the centenary of the “Surrealist Manifesto.” I wanted to appeal to your more serious side to touch on a topic that has nourished all your work…

It’s a movement that I always liked. Surrealism, pataphysics have a strange sense of humor. In the history of art there is not much humor. There may be funny things hidden in a canvas, but Caravaggio is not funny, nor is Michelangelo. But in surrealism and dadaism there is. You see it among Dalí’s fried eggs, a humor that cannot be explained. And obviously that bothers me a lot. I always read those paintings as jokes that were left on the other side. It is a type of humor that is there, in the absurd. I guess it also comes from existentialism. We are all floating on a rock in the middle of nowhere for a little while, and that is absurd, funny and without explanation. There is no ending. You die without understanding what the joke was.

— Bretón wrote the “Surrealist Manifesto” in 1924. Some time later, when he saw that many surrealists were not communists like him, he wrote another manifesto to establish that surrealists were only those who thought like him…

It always happens with philosophical and theoretical movements. Having points in common does not mean that you think the same about everything. Let us remember the three Mexican muralists, Siqueiros, Rivera and Orozco, with a similar drive, but very different politically. But we, as consumers, and also critics, need to put them together. It is logical. But bands, like the Beatles, don’t last. And it’s OK. The best thing about art is its absolute freedom.

— In your work you have a very present reference to the Belgian surrealist Magritte…

I visit a lot of Magritte, Munch, Mondrian, and let’s not talk about Picasso! There are artists who are so iconographic that you don’t have to explain anything, they are part of our life. And what we comedians, writers or film directors use is what happens to us in life, what we consume. So, if I want to say something about art, Picasso is a shortcut. If I put the Belgian James Ensor, no one will have any idea who he is. With Magritte it happens that his pipe, the little hat or the floating apple are part of a universal code, as happens with Kafka and the cockroach or Van Gogh and his ear. They are little gods for artists. It’s easy and fun to go play in those gardens.

— In one of your vignettes, in one of the labyrinths drawn by Escher, your character wonders where he left his keys. Don’t you run the risk of some reference being far-fetched?

I think everyone already knows Escher. I never underestimate the reader. I never say: “I am so educated that I know this, but the readers are not going to know it.” For starters, everyone has a phone that explains everything to you. And second, I’m not that cultured.

—How much false modesty…

Oh really! [ríe] The ceiling of my culture is the nonsense that appears in “Macanudo”.

—There were surrealists before the term ‘surrealism’ was invented. For example, at the end of “Macanudo 15″ you illustrate a poem by the writer and illustrator Edward Lear…

Yes. Another previous surrealist is Winsor McCay, with his “Little Nemo in Slumberland”. And “Krazy Kat,” by George Herriman, which was a huge influence on surrealist writers. Imagine at the beginning of the 20th century finding in the newspaper, after the news, the full-page spread of “Little Nemo”, and the delirious dream world of it. The newspaper surprised us with a cartoon that blew our minds, and I think we have lost that feeling. Now the comic strips come out very small.

— Tell me about Edward Lear. How do you find out?

I discovered it because of a Lori Anderson song, “The Owl and the Pussycat.” Angie, my wife, grew up in Ireland and consumed very Saxon children’s literature. And she had it very much in mind. I really like her drawing. It’s not necessarily good, but it’s funny. And drawing funny is, for me, a rarer talent than drawing well. Many draw well, but few draw funny. And there are those who draw well and funny, who are the least, like Quino or Bill Watterson. Matt Groening doesn’t draw well technically, but he draws funny. We all identify with characters like Homer, Bart Simpson or, in my case, Milhouse. Edward Lear had that, a very effective drawing on a humorous level.

— Another recent tribute in your work is even more far-fetched: the Brazilian painter Tarsila do Amaral, another surrealist…

She is an artist who intuitively came to surrealism. Like José Guadalupe Posada and his Mexican skulls. It is my way of thanking you because you gave me another tool for my laboratory. I love that painting by Tarsila do Amaral, the one with the giant foot.

— One hundred years later, do you think that surrealism finds a stronghold of resistance in comics?

I think surrealism is everywhere. Never in the history of humanity have so many people told stories at the highest narrative level. And, for the same reason, it is difficult to find new places to go. And surrealism is a good tool to find freedom.

— The curious thing is that the surrealists claimed that, after World War II, the movement had ended. However, it accompanies us to this day.

All the time people want things to be neat, to start and end. And it is not like that. Nothing begins and ends. Once something starts, it splashes everywhere. That’s why people who talk about “cultural appropriation” bother me a lot. At first it seems like an oxymoron to me: no one can appropriate something that belongs to no one. And culture belongs to no one. The tango is not mine because I am Argentine. It’s more of the Japanese who dance it all day! Now it’s said that you can’t do reggae if you’re not Jamaican. The balls! Culture is shared. But there is a kind of new idea coming out of the universities of the United States that talk about property in cultural terms. The Yankee is like that little boy who doesn’t like the puree to touch the Milanese, you see? That’s where their racism and their obsession with separating come from.

—Is it a reality that you suffer living there?

I don’t care about anything, but there are things that move me. For example, near where I live, in New York, there is a place called The Center for Cartoon Studies, where cartoons are studied a lot. And the students started saying that you couldn’t draw manga if you weren’t Japanese because it would be “cultural appropriation.” And I asked the students: what is the most outstanding detail of the manga? We could say that the large size of the eyes. And why do they have those big eyes? Well, because Osamu Tezuka and his friends were fans of Walt Disney. The big eye in the manga comes from Bambi’s eyes! I think culture moves when we appropriate it. It grows and transforms.