Single panel images do not count as la “bande dessinée.” To qualify as part of the ninth art, a collection of images and text must be assembled in a sequence. But this requirement does not capture the whole spirit of Franco-Belgo-Dutch obsession with graphic literature. It is a necessary but not sufficient definition of the art.
Catherine Labio’s definitional musings point us towards the essentials of the format. It can be funny, and/or cheap. It can have thought bubbles. Crucially, It is “formally and geographically hybrid,” a little bit American, a little bit Japanese, and somehow right at home in the print culture of 20th century northwest Europe.
There’s a feel and a style announced in the work of Rodolphe Toepffler, recognized as inventor of the format. A directness, a didacticism, of a piece with mass-printed editorialism and the associated muckraking and conflict-mongering. You couldn’t imagine BD without Zola and Stendhal and Verhaeren and a whole Euro-vernacular preoccupied with the action of everyday life.
When I was in the Saint Louis Art Museum a couple of months ago I was attracted to Frans Masereel’s Return of the Fishermen. Inky, smudgy blocks of paint evoked coal dust and told a surprisingly developed story. Men at the end of their exhausting workday march home. They’re packed tightly as they move, but there is a subtle individuation to the glances thrown over their left shoulder. They are looking at a woman in a periwinkle blouse who makes the universal gesture of sexual availability. Behind her is an illuminated window, and if you have an erotic imagination you can piece together some of the doings that might soon be visible through there.
But the real drama of the picture lies in the top third of the composition. The tense march of the fishermen is echoed by the built environment. It’s amplified to industrial proportions by a skyline of towers and ships. Up in the sky there’s a frenzy of action still more jazzy and libidinal than the street scene. This was true even though the sharp colors on the above digital copy aren’t as vivid in real life.
So later as I was checking out Masereel, with whom I was not familiar, it pleased me to see him described as “the first woodcut novelist.” The gritty realism of Masereel’s pictures has won him contemporary acclaim and has situated his work amongst kinetic artforms like movies and comics. He took up la question sociale but didn’t lose sight of the aesthetic sublime.
The Centre Pompidou in Paris has a great collection of Masereel’s and did not fail to note his influence on the graphic novel.
Further Reading: Joris van Parys, The ‘Silent Novels’ of Frans Masereel: Godfather of the American Graphic Novel.