Baptiste Virot: Where Dogs Spin Records and Summer Finds Its Rhythm
There are many ways to describe summer. Long afternoons. Cold drinks. Vinyl records spinning lazily in the background. And, apparently, a dog behind the decks with a cocktail in hand.
French illustrator and comic artist Baptiste Virot seems to understand the brief rather beautifully.
Based between Strasbourg and Brussels, Virot trained at the Arts Décoratifs de Strasbourg before developing a visual language that feels at once nostalgic, mischievous and unmistakably contemporary. His work occupies that delightful territory where illustration, comics, pop art and graphic design decide to stop behaving themselves and have a party.
His signature aesthetic is wonderfully surreal without becoming self-important. Bold, flat colours, gangly lines, comic-book pointillism and deliberately brash colour combinations give his characters a slightly off-kilter energy. Nothing appears to take itself too seriously, yet everything is carefully considered.
And then there is the dog.
Rendered in Virot’s characteristic flat colours and playful linework, his image of a dog spinning vinyl while holding a cocktail manages to say rather a lot without saying anything at all. It is music, leisure and summer mischief distilled into one wonderfully improbable scene. The dog is not merely listening to music. He is clearly in charge of the evening.
Perhaps that is the charm of Virot’s work. Surrealism here is not gloomy or cerebral. It is light-hearted, colourful and faintly absurd, as though everyday life has slipped sideways and decided to become a comic strip.
A Love Affair with the 1980s
Virot’s visual vocabulary owes much to the graphic language of the 1980s, an era when colour was rarely accused of being subtle. Vibrant hues, geometric shapes and punchy compositions sit comfortably alongside the tactile imperfections of traditional printmaking.
He is particularly drawn to screen-printing, offset printing and Risograph techniques, processes that give printed images a physical character that can be difficult to reproduce in an increasingly polished digital world.
There is something rather refreshing about that.
In an age of immaculate pixels and endlessly adjustable filters, Virot’s work reminds us that an image can be more interesting when it retains a little evidence of human hands, ink, texture and happy accidents. The slight irregularities become part of the personality.
His fascination with print also connects naturally with his work as a publisher. Virot co-runs the small publishing house Animal Press with his girlfriend, Jinhee Han, creating another space for independent illustration and visual storytelling to exist outside the machinery of mainstream publishing.
Where Comics Meet Pop Art
There is a distinctly comic-book sensibility running through Virot’s work, but it is not confined to conventional panels or narratives. His characters often seem caught in a moment just before or just after something has happened, leaving the viewer to invent the story.
That quality gives his illustrations a peculiar musicality.
Like a good bassline, the image does not necessarily tell you everything. It establishes the groove and lets you fill in the rest.
The use of pointillist textures and bold graphic forms recalls the visual vocabulary of vintage comics and pop art, while the surreal characters prevent the work from settling too comfortably into nostalgia. This is not simply an exercise in recreating an old aesthetic. Virot borrows the language of the past and gives it a contemporary French twist.
The result is playful rather than precious.
A Dog, a Record and the Perfect Summer Mood
For Music Press Asia, Virot’s vinyl-spinning dog feels particularly apt.
Music has always had a peculiar talent for turning ordinary moments into something slightly cinematic. Put on the right record and suddenly making a drink becomes a scene; sitting by the window becomes a memory; an otherwise unremarkable afternoon acquires a soundtrack.
Virot’s illustration captures precisely that spirit.
The dog, the record and the cocktail form an unlikely little trio, yet somehow the image makes perfect sense. It suggests a summer where the rules are relaxed, the music is good and nobody is particularly concerned about whether the evening makes logical sense.
And perhaps that is the point.
Virot’s art invites us to loosen our grip on reality for a moment. To enjoy colour. To enjoy rhythm. To let a little absurdity into the room.
After all, if a dog can spin vinyl while holding a cocktail, perhaps the rest of us can afford to take the afternoon slightly less seriously.
Baptiste Virot Instagram
