"There was a legitimate reaction against an attitude that was unacceptable," the minister told the press, who was visiting the International Comics Festival.
An exhibition where Bastien Vivès was preparing to display unpublished drawings was to be held there.
But in mid-December, while comic book authors and associations fighting against child pornography proclaimed their hostility to this tribute, the management reluctantly canceled this exhibition.
"Bastien Vivès, as a man, nevertheless made unacceptable remarks", underlined Ms. Abdul Malak.
"He took extremely serious matters lightly. He made insulting remarks on social networks which are in themselves very reprehensible".
“It is normal, somewhere, that these remarks he made caused this outcry, even years later when they were brought out. Because they are unacceptable, he recognized it himself”, insisted the minister.
But she reiterated that she would have preferred to see the exhibition open as planned.
"The difficulty is that it got mixed up with an exhibition that no one had seen (...) We'll never know what was in it. I find it regrettable that the subjects got mixed up" , she explained.
French Minister of Culture Rima Abdul-Malak arrives at the Sorbonne University Palace in Paris, January 22, 2023 © Ludovic MARIN / AFP/Archives
"Things took place at such a rapid pace that this debate ultimately could not be held. But it continues in society," she said.
"I would have been curious to see what other drawings he was going to present in a setting like the 50th anniversary of the Angoulême Festival. We won't know. But he still had an attitude that didn't make things any easier" , she concluded.
At the beginning of January, a preliminary investigation for the distribution of child pornography images was opened against Bastien Vivès and two publishing houses that published his works mixing minors and pornography, Glénat and Les Requins Marteaux.
© 2023 AFP