Bande dessinée, 1964-2024, https://www.centrepompidou.fr/en/program/calendar/event/9htHbj4
Corto Maltese: Une vie romanesqu, https://www.centrepompidou.fr/en/program/calendar/event/h0PE028
La BD à tous les étages,
https://www.centrepompidou.fr/fr/programme/agenda/evenement/zozduYP
Paris: The Centre Pompidou. May 29 - November 4, 2024. https://www.centrepompidou.fr/fr/programme/la-bd-a-tous-les-etages
The cartoon has taken over the Pompidou Center in Paris. The facility itself advertises that there are cartoons on all floors. The entirety of the exhibitions is exceptionally extensive, even by Pompidou’s own scale.
It is also exceptional in the history of comics. The world’s most famous and prestigious museums of modern and contemporary art are probably Pompidou and Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. Neither has had anything similar before. “There have been big comics exhibitions in France, but nothing like this. In the early 1990s, MoMA had an exhibition called ‘High and Low: Modern Art and Popular Culture,’ which included the cartoon. But cartoonists led by Art Spiegelman criticized it for its condescending attitude,” says comics scholar Thierry Groensteen. Groensteen (born 1957) is known for, among other things, his book Systéme de la bande dessinée (1999); he has also managed the comics museum in Angoulême and founded the publishing house Éditions de L’An 2. Spiegelman (born 1948), who won a Pulitzer Prize for the comic book Maus, is not only an artist, but also one of the most authoritative comics experts in the United States. Reached at the end of May after the opening, Spiegelman applauded the Pompidou exhibition. “Beforehand, I was afraid of the worst, but this advances the status of the comics in years,” Spiegelman stated. Groensteen has curated some of France’s previous major exhibitions and is one of the four curators of the Pompidou exhibition.
The demarcation of the main exhibition, “Comics 1964-2024” (or “Bande dessinée, 1964-2024”), is interesting. The 60-year period covers the development arc of contemporary comics. Cartoons have long been considered children’s culture. In the U.S., newspaper comics were aimed at adults or the whole family. Comic magazines that only appeared in the 1930s were mostly made for children. In Europe, the early Tintin and a large part of the rest of the comics were aimed at children. Similarly, manga production in Japan swelled after World War II. The heyday of children’s cartoons lasted mostly from the 1930s to the 1960s.
After that, creators in so many different parts of the world, who grew up with cartoons for children and young people, started making cartoons for adults. That’s where Pompidou’s main exhibition begins. “The counterculture then highlighted arts that were previously neglected. The boundaries between high culture and pop started to break down,” Groensteen explains.
In France, one of the milestones was Jean-Claude Forest’s erotic science fiction comic Barbarella. In the U.S., Robert Crumb and others broke taboos in underground comics, and in Japan, Yoshihiro Tatsumi and others developed manga into gekiga, dramatic illustrations in Garo magazine. They didn’t see themselves as part of the manga industry.
Groensteen continues,
It was my idea to start from the 60s and not from the beginning of the history of comics. At first, I thought I’d stop at 2000, because it’s hard to choose the most relevant ones from the latest developments. Then we would have gone from Barbarella to Persepolis, but very few women would have come along. Most of the female artists have only established themselves in the 21st Century.
Marjane Satrapi’s autobiographical success, Persepolis, would indeed have been a rarity in an exhibition limited to the 20th Century.
Although the exhibition is breathtakingly extensive, it only scratches the surface. The three main regions of the comic--U.S., Europe, and Japan--appear side by side for the first time on such a large scale. But the Nordic countries are represented only by Sweden’s Joanna Hellgren. Groensteen explains, “I’m the only one of us curators who knows Nordic cartoons at all. To be honest, we didn’t even consider the others. We had a list of over 200 must-have artists, but we had to whittle it down to about 130. The artists’ home country was never a selection criterion. I would have liked to include Africa as well, but I ran out of space.”
For Groensteen, it was important that next to well-known artists, new artists were exhibited for the general public. He brought along, among others, the German Anke Feuchtenberger and the Austrian Ulli Lust. Groensteen came up with the idea that “Comics 1964-2024” be divided into themes. Chronological order would have brought out the historical development arc, which now remains obscure. The division into themes also brings other small problems. For example, Crumb and Satrapi are not to be found in the room of autobiographical comics--or personal stories, as they are called at the Pompidou. Crumb is in the room of underground and other taboo-breakers, and Satrapi is in comics about history. Of course, they also belong to them, but, many themes are strangely lacking when the artists belonging to several compartments are in some other compartment.
If you’re familiar with comics at all, you’ll miss one of your favorites at Pompidou, even though you’ll find many others. Groensteen says that he has a meter-long list of those left out. One of the key messages of the exhibition is that cartoon art is so broad that even a giant exhibition does not cover nearly everything.
Groensteen participated in its preparation only in discussions, not as an actual curator. The temporal limitation has been waived there. Among others, Winsor McCay, George Herriman, and George McManus have had their own fine booths.
The works of 15 contemporary comic artists are hung side by side with the big names in art. For example, David B., the creator of the Epileptic comic, is placed next to the surrealist André Breton, and Joann Sfar, the creator of The Rabbi’s Cat, hangs with Jules Pascin. “However, the purpose is not to justify the position of the cartoon in the museum, because it is no longer necessary,” Groensteen emphasizes.
Hugo Pratt’s Corto Maltese has been given its own exhibition in the museum’s library. Marion Fayolle, the author of surrealistic studies on interpersonal relationships, has set up a wooden village for the whole family on the platform of the lobby.
The main exhibition, “Comics 1964-2024” is an even slightly chaotic kaleidoscope that doesn’t even stay within its own limits. The all-time favorites, Asterix, Tintin, and Lucky Luke, are included. “After all, they are rather from a different generation than the core of the exhibition, but, in France, it would never have been forgiven if they were missing,” Groensteen explains.
Among the achievements of the exhibition are the large number of Japanese originals. Traditionally, it is very difficult to get them for exhibitions. There are also funny features. Maybe only the French think of putting Guido Crepax’s erotic comics in the geometry department, even though they fit there because of the special grid arrangements on the pages. Erotica doesn’t have its own department.
The share of actual experimental comics remains somewhat small. For example, Yuichi Yokoyama is prominently involved. And the experimental magazine, Lagon, whose authors include Joe Kessler and Olivier Schrauwen, has received its own extensive exhibition in the basement.
The huge collection of exhibitions was created relatively quickly, in 16 months. Groensteen says the biggest credit goes to Laurent Le Bon, who became director of the Pompidou Center in 2021, stating that, “Le Bon is a big fan of comics. For years, he and collector Édouard Leclerc dreamed of a big comics exhibition. Previously, they hoped for it in the Louvre or d’Orsay. Leclerc has a huge collection, from which about a third of the originals in the exhibitions come from.”
Of course, there have been cartoon exhibitions at the Pompidou before, but the giant entity became possible when Le Bon was chosen as the director of the house. Most of the exhibitions are on display beginning November 4; after the exhibitions, the entire Pompidou will be closed for extensive and long renovations. The Pompidou Center has also started acquiring its own collection of comic book originals. The works of ten artists have been acquired first, featuring David B, Edmond Baudoin, Blutch, Nicolas de Crécy, Emmanuel Guibert, Benoit Jacques, Éric Lambé, Lorenzo Mattotti, Catherine Meurisse, and Fanny Michaëlis.
[Versions of this article have previously appeared in Finnish newsmagazine Suomen Kuvalehti and will be published in the Swedish Comics Society’s newsmagazine Bild & Bubbla. This article was translated using Google, edited by John A. Lent, and then approved by the author.]