European Comic Art

Throughout the history of comics, there has been dialogue between comics and other arts: architecture and literature, caricature and cartoons, painting and music, film and photography, and so on. Some of these, such as architecture, caricature and painting, were present from the very beginnings of comics as a modern art form, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. For example, the importance of architecture was already apparent in the Northern Looking Glass in a page from 23 January 1826 featuring a cross-section of a building as the framework for a cartoon plate resembling a comics page, though without the sequentiality of the latter.

This article examines the reciprocity between satirical and academic modes of image making, and locates that relationship within the context of an emergent bourgeois public sphere. The cultural and commercial imperatives of that sphere enabled its inhabitants to engage with conflicting modes of cultural output, consuming grotesque and bawdy satire as an exercise in political autonomy, while simultaneously emulating 'elite' politeness. In particular, the commercial growth and increasing visibility of satirical prints challenged the polite hierarchy of art as it was understood by the nascent academies and societies of art established in the same period. This process of establishment needs to be re-framed in the context of satirical intervention, and will be examined via two paintings that provoked distinct satirical responses: Benjamin West's The Death of Wolfe and Francis Hayman's The See-Saw. Correspondingly, satirical print culture itself can be reframed in light of its use (and parody) of academic visual tropes and techniques.

Initially, being mass produced and sequential, comic art was excluded from fine art museums. Some comics artists themselves have expressed ambivalence about the value of inclusion (but counter-arguments are proposed, challenging the perception of incompatibility). However, a pivotal element in the break from the ranks of artistic modernism has been the appropriation of comic art motifs for use in museum-grade pop art, figuration narrative and their successors. In counterpoint, comic art is replete with examples of museum art being appropriated in order to obtain diegetic enrichment of various sorts, either for the purpose of parody or in relation to plot construction. Against this backdrop, and abetted by the twin challenge that art museums are facing to remain relevant and to increase revenue, a game-changing development is afoot, leading to a co-operative re-positioning of art museums and comics artists. With the Louvre taking the lead, many art museums in France and Italy are now commissioning works of comic art based on the museum's own collections, often launched with companion exhibits. The resultant 'art within art' lends itself readily to rich experimentation with themes incorporating intertextuality and parallel narrative.

This article concerns the eight albums currently available in a series of bandes dessinées commissioned by the Louvre from established, well-respected bédéistes and co-published with Futuropolis since 2005. This successful, high-profile series has elicited positive critical response, but that response has also exposed persistent mutual antagonisms between bande dessinée and the establishment art world as represented by the Louvre Museum. These tensions between 'high' and 'low' culture can be read within the narratives of the albums themselves, in which we see reflexivity used to highlight bande dessinée's artistic value, and various types of obstruction and sensory impairments (realist and supernatural) are used to disrupt quotidian relationships to museum space.

This article examines two graphic novels published in 2011, Portugal by Cyril Pedrosa and La Commedia des ratés [Holy Smoke] by Olivier Berlion, within the thematic and technical context of the French 'return' road movie, an increasingly prevalent category. Recent debates in political, cultural and academic spheres have focused on competing conceptions of Frenchness – traditional republicanism and multiculturalism – as well as the place of the 'second- or third-generation' descendants of immigrants. This article argues that Portugal and La Commedia des ratés, as quasi-autobiographic 'return' to origins narratives, represent compelling insight into the subjectivity of second-generation diasporic populations in France. I will also examine how these works employ the 'ninth art' to create fresh twists on the 'return' story. Finally, I will explore the graphic and narrative depictions of travel in each work, adapting Teresa Bridgeman's theory of 'world building' and 'world-switching' in bande dessinée. I argue that Portugal offers a compelling approach, re-creating on the page the effect of the cinematic 'traveling montage'.

FESTIVAL AND CONFERENCE REVIEWS

Angoulême 2013, Festival International de la Bande Dessinée (FIBD), 31 January–3 February

The 2013 Joint International Comics and Bande Dessinée Conference, Scotland, 24–28 June

2012 American Bande Dessinée Society Conference, Miami University, Oxford, OH, 2–3 November

BOOK REVIEWS

Groupe ACME, L'Association: Une utopie éditoriale et esthétique [L'Association: An Editorial and Aesthetic Utopia]

Thierry Groensteen, Entretiens avec Joann Sfar [Conversations with Joann Sfar]

Jean-Marc Pontier, Lectures de David B. [Reading David B.] and Nicolas de Crécy: Périodes graphiques [Nicolas de Crealcy: Graphic Periods]

Vicent Sanchis, Tebeos mutilados: La Censura franquista contra Editorial Bruguera [Mutilated Comics: The Franquist Censorship of Editorial Bruguera]

Elisabeth El Refaie, Autobiographical Comics: Life Writing in Pictures

Jean-Noël Lafargue, Entre la plèbe et l'élite: Les Ambitions contraires de la bande dessinée [Between Plebs and the Elite: The Contradictory Ambitions of Comics]