In the debate on the birth of comics, the recent Naissances de la bande dessinée Smolderen Thierry (Les impressions nouvelles, sl, 2009) is a contribution not perfect but very important.
Why, "not perfect"? Simply because Smolderen devotes much attention to definitions and things marginal, or wrong. The book has the subtitle "de William Hogarth à Winsor McCay, and, of course, being the starting point, the work of Hogarth is one of the things Smolderen focus more. However, his argument is strange: Hogarth is important not because his recordings are comics (are not), but because the sue opere sono costruite per essere decifrate (sono "diagrammatiques") e combinano elementi di tradizioni grafiche diverse in un modo che ricorda la polifonia bachtiniana del romanzo dell'epoca. Entrambi questi aspetti diventeranno importanti nel secolo successivo, e saranno alla base del protofumetto dell'Ottocento. In Hogarth convivono, secondo Smolderen, in questo modo:
"Cherchez le diagramme!" est le mot d'ordre, la règle du jeu. Quel que soit son parcours dans l'image, l'oeil découvre à chaque lecture de noveaux rapports, de nouvelles articulations ironiques. Car c'est là que réside toute la modernité d'Hogarth: sa vision polémique de la société anglaise s'exprime par diagramme interposed, by playing all layers of the graphic language of his time. The implementation of this "Polyphonic" graphic is what brings the inventors of the modern novel as Henry Fielding and Laurence Sterne, who similarly confronted in their work all the veins, all records of spoken and written at the time ( p. 15).
Gli Aspetti che in questa Tornano Ricostruzione sound obvious. Innanzitutto the "decifrabilità delle opere è una costante delle arte grafiche, di non un'invenzione Hogarth! E is the "Polifonia", sarà davvero da passata ad Hogarth authorized e Grandville Dore come? Può anche darsi, in my darker side mid Realta Hogarth non molto "Polifonico"; in some cases is clearly imitated by later artists, but to show that he is at the root of everything ... Well, it would take at least another book!
objectionable comments are then in other parts of the book. Indeed, it is curious, at least for me, see how often oscillates between Smolderen convincing analysis (for example, when showing the sharp opposition between the formal and Little Jack McCay's Little Nemo ) and other ... less. But the feeling is not the end of a book that does not work. Beyond the (many) points that are not convincing, the author has certainly hit the main problem. In response to a historical cartoon that in the graphic production of the nineteenth seek only embryos of modern comics, Smolderen reconstructs a complex environment. Identifies a wider range of "ancestors" of the graphic narrative to which few have thought about before: from the repertoires of facial expressions of the actors in the service until the early photographic sequences designed to reconstruct the phases of the fast movements. On these points also
Smolderen, rather than tell, show: the illustrations of the book is just amazing, and it all seems the result of research at first hand. The cover does not do justice to this amazing gallery, never seen around, and often very beautiful.
From my point of view, then, one of the most interesting (even if marginal in this discussion) is the way many nineteenth century authors link the work on the stylized image of a theoretical reflection. In search, of course, a "grammar" of gestures and expressions. The examples taken from Cruikshank and Grandville, at pp. 36 and 37, are the most fascinating, but not the only ones, and go along with the many attempts to codify the time and "write" so many things that, unlike the language, then have proved very refractory to schematization. However, even if you try that much can not go, see how some brilliant personalities try to address the problem is indeed very informative!
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