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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN COMICS AND GRAPHIC NOVELS
SEEING COMICS
THROUGH
ART HISTORY
Edited by
Maggie Gray · Ian Horton
Palgrave Studies in Comics and Graphic Novels
Series Editor
Roger Sabin
University of the Arts London
London, UK
This series concerns Comics Studies—with a capital “c” and a capital “s.” It
feels good to write it that way. From emerging as a fringe interest within
Literature and Media/Cultural Studies departments, to becoming a minor
field, to maturing into the fastest growing field in the Humanities, to becom-
ing a nascent discipline, the journey has been a hard but spectacular one. Those
capital letters have been earned.
Palgrave Studies in Comics and Graphic Novels covers all aspects of the
comic strip, comic book, and graphic novel, explored through clear and infor-
mative texts offering expansive coverage and theoretical sophistication. It is
international in scope and provides a space in which scholars from all back-
grounds can present new thinking about politics, history, aesthetics, production,
distribution, and reception as well as the digital realm. Books appear in one of
two forms: traditional monographs of 60,000 to 90,000 words and shorter
works (Palgrave Pivots) of 20,000 to 50,000 words. All are rigorously peer-
reviewed. Palgrave Pivots include new takes on theory, concise histories, and—
not least—considered provocations. After all, Comics Studies may have come a
long way, but it can’t progress without a little prodding.
Series Editor Roger Sabin is Professor of Popular Culture at the University
of the Arts London, UK. His books include Adult Comics: An Introduction
and Comics, Comix and Graphic Novels, and he is part of the team that put
together the Marie Duval Archive. He serves on the boards of key academic
journals in the field, reviews graphic novels for international media, and consults
on comics-related projects for the BBC, Channel 4, Tate Gallery, The British
Museum and The British Library. The ‘Sabin Award’ is given annually at the
International Graphic Novels and Comics Conference.
More information about this series at

https://link.springer.com/bookseries/14643
Maggie Gray • Ian Horton
Editors
Seeing Comics through

Art History
Editors
Maggie Gray Ian Horton
Kingston School of Art London College of Communication
Kingston University University of the Arts London
London, UK London, UK
ISSN 2634-6370 ISSN 2634-6389 (electronic)

Palgrave Studies in Comics and Graphic Novels
ISBN 978-3-030-93506-1 ISBN 978-3-030-93507-8 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93507-8
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature
Switzerland AG 2022
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher,
whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation,
reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any
other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation,
computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt
from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this
book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the
authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained
herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with
regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Cover illustration: Mark Beyer’s Duck-Rabbit / John Miers
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank our commissioning editor and all-round legend Roger
Sabin for his support and encouragement for this project and tireless support
for comics scholarship in the UK and beyond.
We also owe a great debt of thanks to our editor Camille Davies, and Jack
Heeney, Immy Higgins and Liam MacLean at Palgrave Macmillan.
We thank Jessica Bauwens-Sugimoto, Jaqueline Berndt, Felix Giesa and
Christina Meyer organisers of the Comics|Histories conference 16–17 July
2021; Ian Hague and Hattie Kennedy organisers of the Comics Forum confer-
ence on Art and Design 7–8 November 2019; and the organisers of Storyworlds
and Transmedia Universes, the Joint International Conference of Graphic
Novels, Comics and Bande Dessinée 24–28 June 2019, where papers related
to this project were delivered and insightful feedback received.
For their feedback we thank our anonymous peer reviewers, and for their
support and advice, Josh Rose, Guy Lawley for all matters about print, Jared
Gardner and the Caricature, Cartooning and Comics 1620–1920 crew, and all
the other members of the Comics Research Hub (CoRH!!). We also thank all
those who submitted proposals for this volume we were unable to include.
We would like to take this opportunity to express our sincere gratitude to all
our contributors for their work and commitment, particularly in light of the
extraordinary challenges of dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, and its
impact on research and more importantly on everyday life, family, friends and
communities.
Maggie would like to thank Ian for being a joy to collaborate with and for
putting up with her ropey Wi-Fi. And Ed for everything.
Ian would like to thank Maggie for making editing such fun. And Bettina,
Oscar and Sasha for putting up with the piles of comics and dusty art-historical
tomes taking over our home.
v
Contents
Ways of Seeing Comics: Art-Historical Approaches to the Form 1

Maggie Gray and Ian-Horton
Part I Old Skool Art History 11

The Lives of the Artists 13
Tobias J. Yu-Kiener

Connoisseurship, Attribution, and Comic Strip Art: The Case of
Jack B. Yeats 33
Michael Connerty

Reading Comics with Aby Warburg: Collaging Memories 53
Maaheen Ahmed
Part II Perception, Reception and Meaning 73
Psychologies of Perception: Stories of Depiction 75

John Miers

Aesthetics of Reception: Uncovering the Modes of Interaction in
Comics 97
Nina Eckhoff-Heindl

Reading Richard Felton Outcault’s “Yellow Kid” Through
Perception of the Image121
Christine Mugnolo
vii
viii CONTENTS

Colour in Comics: Reading Lorenzo Mattotti Through the Lens
of Art History141
Barbara Uhlig
Part III The New and Newer Art Histories 161

Feminist Art History as an Approach to Research on Comics: Meta
Reflections on Studies of Swedish Feminist Comics163
Margareta Wallin Wictorin and Anna Nordenstam

Towards Feminist Comics Studies: Feminist Art History and the
Study of Women’s Comix in the 1970s in the United States185
Małgorzata Olsza
Real Queer Bodies: Visual Weight and Imagined Gravity in Sport

Manga207
Ylva Sommerland
Part IV Comics for/Beyond Art History 223

Afrofuturism and Animism as Method: Art History and
Decolonisation in Black Panther225
Danielle Becker

What Is an Image? Art History, Visual Culture Studies, and
Comics Studies247
Jeanette Roan

From Giotto to Drnaso: The Common Well of Pictorial Schema in
‘High’ Art and ‘Low’ Comics269
Bruce Mutard
VAST/O Exhibition (De)Construction: Exploring the Potentials of

Augmented Abstract Comics and Animation Installations as a
Method to Communicate Health Experiences289
Alexandra P. Alberda, João Carola, Carolina Martins, and Natalie Woolf

From Tableau to Sequence: Introducing Comics Theory Within
Art History to Study the Photobook313
Michel Hardy-Vallée
Index337
Notes on Contributors
Maaheen Ahmed is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at Ghent

University, where she leads COMICS, a multi-researcher project on connec-
tions between children and comics funded by the European Research Council.
She is author of Openness of Comics and Monstrous Imaginaries: The Legacy of
Romanticism in Comics (2016 and 2020).
Alexandra P. Alberda is the Curator of Indigenous Perspectives at the
Manchester Museum (University of Manchester). Her doctoral thesis, Graphic
Medicine Exhibited: Public Engagement with Comics in Curatorial Practice and
Visitor Experience since 2010 (2021), explores the intersections of the comics
medium, health and exhibition to understand potential methodological
approaches and sociocultural values of these experiences. Her collaborative
projects have explored such topics as public health, health exhibitions, data
storytelling and visualisation, comics, and creative-led knowledge exchange. As
a research illustrator, she has worked on a number of projects, such as The Data
Storytelling Workbook (2020).
Danielle Becker is a South African art historian who is primarily interested in
art historiography and the way in which the discourse has developed in relation
to colonial, postcolonial and decolonial forces. Becker completed her Masters
in Art History at the University of Manchester (2010) and her PhD at the
University of Cape Town (2017) with a thesis titled South African Art
History: The possibility of decolonizing a discourse. She has lectured at a num-
ber of South African institutions since 2010 and has most recently been a
Mellon postdoctoral fellow at Stellenbosch University and a postdoctoral
fellow at Rhodes University.
João Carola graduated in Graphic Design at ESAD.cr, in Caldas da Rainha.
Back in Lisbon, he completed the Comics and Illustration course at Ar.Co,
school where he now teaches. He has collaborated with short comics and illus-
trations with a number of publications. The longest collaboration is with the
anarchist newspaper A Batalha. In 2019 he co-edited with Dois Vês the
ix
x NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
collective All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace (Chili com Carne),
which was nominated for the category of Alternative Comics at the
Angoulême International Comics Festival.
Michael Connerty teaches film, animation and visual culture at the Institute
of Art, Design and Technology in Dun Laoghaire, Dublin. His book The Comic
Strip Art of Jack B. Yeats (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021) examines the work of
that artist in the context of Victorian and Edwardian comics history.
Nina Eckhoff-Heindl is a MSCA-Fellow in the program “a.r.t.e.s.
EUmanities” at the a.r.t.e.s. Graduate School for the Humanities, University of
Cologne (Horizon 2020: Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant No. 713600). She is
doctoral candidate in art history at the University of Cologne (Germany) and
the University of Zurich (Switzerland) with a project on aesthetic experience
and the visual-tactile dimensions of comics. Her research as well as her
publications focus on Modern and Contemporary Art, Image Theory,
Aesthetics, Comic Studies, Disability Studies and Holocaust Studies.
www.ninaheindl.com, nina.heindl@uni-koeln.de
Maggie Gray is a senior lecturer in Critical & Historical Studies at Kingston
University with a specialism in comics, cartooning and visual narrative. She is
author of Alan Moore, Out from the Underground: Cartooning, Performance
and Dissent (2017) and sits on the organising committee of the Comics Forum
conference and the editorial board of the journal Studies in Comics and is a
member of the Comics & Performance Network and an associate member of
the UAL Comics Research Hub (CoRH!!). With Nick White and John Miers,
she co-runs the Kingston School of Art Comic Club.
Michel Hardy-Vallée holds a PhD in art history from Concordia University
in Montréal. His main research interests include the history of Canadian pho-
tography in the twentieth century, the photographic book, visual narration,
interdisciplinary artistic practices, aesthetics and the archive. He has advised on
photographic prints acquisitions by museums and private collections and
has taught the history of photography. He is adapting his doctoral dis-
sertation about Canadian photographer John Max into a monograph and
has contributed chapters to volumes about photographic narrative and
graphic novels. His most recent article was published in the journal History
of Photography.
Ian Horton is Reader in Graphic Communication at London College of
Communication. In 2014, along with Lydia Wysocki and John Swogger, he
founded the Applied Comics Network. He is a founder member of the Comics
Research Hub (CoRH!!) at the University of the Arts London, co-editor of
Contexts of Violence in Comics and Representing Acts of Violence in Comics and
associate editor of the Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics. His book Hard
Werken: One for All (Graphic Art & Design 1979–1994) (co-authored with
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xi
Bettina Furnee) is the first academic study of this influential avant-garde Dutch
graphic design studio and was published by Valiz in 2018.
Carolina Martins is a PhD student in the Doctoral Programme of Materialities
of Literature (University of Coimbra) with the thesis Augmented Reading: spa-
tial combinations in graphic narrative installations, which proposes an analysis
of the potential of architectonic space as a narrative agent, as well as an analysis
of the possibilities of interaction between that space and the spaces of the
page and the screen for the development and unfolding of the narrative.
She is also a cultural producer, working mainly in the field of contempo-
rary dance. As an artist she expresses herself through writing, photogra-
phy and collage.
John Miers recent comics work deals with his experience of living with mul-
tiple sclerosis. His first comic on this topic, So I Guess My Body Pretty Much
Hates Me Now, was produced during a postdoctoral residency in University of
the Arts London’s Archives and Special Collections Centre at London College
of Communication and voted “Best One-Shot” in the 2020 Broken
Frontier awards. He is lecturer in illustration at Kingston School of Art
and associate lecturer at Central Saint Martins and the Royal College of Art.
Christine Mugnolo is Associate Professor of Studio Art at Antelope Valley
College. She earned her doctorate in Visual Studies at the University of
California, Irvine, in 2021. Her dissertation titled The Adolescent in American
Print and Comics focuses on the relationship between the invention of the
newspaper comic strip, early twentieth-century humour and the experience of
adolescence. Her studio practice seeks to combine figurative and narrative
practices developed by modern comics, video games and Western painting and
drawing traditions.
Bruce Mutard is a comics maker, publisher and researcher. His graphic novels
include The Sacrifice, The Silence, A Mind of Love, The Bunker and Post
Traumatic. His latest graphic novel Bully Me was published as Souffre Douleur
in France in 2019. He completed his PhD at Edith Cowan University with his
thesis The Erotics of Comics in 2021 and likes to make comics as scholarship. He
is director of the Comic Arts Awards of Australia and editor/publisher of
the Australian Comic Annual. He has been a curator and program director
at the Perth Comic Arts Festival.
Anna Nordenstam is Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of
Gothenburg, Sweden. Her main research areas are feminist comics, children’s
and YA-literature, and educational perspectives on literature. She is one of the
editors of Comic art and feminism in the Baltic Sea region. Transnational per-
spectives. Routledge, 2021, edited by Kristy Beers Fägersten, Anna
Nordenstam, Leena Romu and Margareta Wallin Wictorin.
xii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Małgorzata Olsza is an assistant professor at the Department of American

Literature at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland. Her PhD thesis
was devoted to the poetics of the contemporary American graphic novel. She
also holds an MA in Art History. Her research interests include American
graphic novels, comics and comix, contemporary American art and visual
culture. She has published on different aspects of American comics and
comix in Polish Journal for American Studies, Art Inquiry: Recherches Sur
Les Arts, ImageText, and Image [&] Narrative.
Jeanette Roan is an associate professor in the History of Art and Visual
Culture Program and the Graduate Program in Visual and Critical Studies at
California College of the Arts. She received her PhD in Visual and Cultural
Studies from the University of Rochester. She is the author of Envisioning Asia:
On Location, Travel, and the Cinematic Geography of U.S. Orientalism (2010).
Her work has also appeared in The Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics and
The Comics Journal, and she has presented at the International Comics
Arts Forum and the Comics Studies Society annual conferences.
Ylva Sommerland is a librarian and a PhD in Art History and Visual Studies.
Sommerland is working at the National Library of Sweden. Her areas of
research are queer theory in art history and comics. Her fields of expertise as a
librarian are national bibliographies, book art and metadata.
Barbara Uhlig studied protohistoric archaeology and art history at the
Universities of Munich, Salzburg and Eichstaett. She has written several articles
on colour and the comics of Lorenzo Mattotti. Since 2015 she has been con-
tributing to The Complete Crepax, a 12-volume project by Fantagraphics
that collects Guido Crepax’s oeuvre in English for the first time. Her
main research interests lie in colour theory, subversive art, text-image
relationships, protest movements and the development of Italian comics
since the 1960s.
Margareta Wallin Wictorin is Reader in Art History and Visual Studies and
Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies at Karlstad University, Sweden. Her main
research areas are feminist, educational and postcolonial perspectives on graphic
art and comics. She is one of the editors of Comic art and feminism in the
Baltic Sea region. Transnational perspectives. Routledge, 2021, edited by Kristy
Beers Fägersten, Anna Nordenstam, Leena Romu and Margareta Wallin
Wictorin.
Natalie Woolf graduated in fine arts from Leeds Metropolitan University,
subsequently setting up an applied surface design business, exhibiting interna-
tionally as an artist and designer. She holds a Doctorate in Design Products
from the Royal College of Art (RCA) London, which then led to public arts
commissions and consultancy work for councils and private developers across
the UK. Relocating to Portugal allowed more time for her own arts prac-
tice and growing interest in “expanded drawing” across different media.
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xiii
She a professor in the Hybrid Spaces Animation Arts Masters course and
the drawing programme curator for “DELLI” at Universidade Lusófona.
Tobias J. Yu-Kiener studied Art History and History at the University of
Vienna and University College Dublin. For his PhD at Central Saint Martins,
University of the Arts London (UAL), he has researched biographical graphic
novels about iconic painters and their supporting national, international and
transnational networks. He is a member of the Comics Research Hub (CoRH!!)
at the London College of Communication and co- organiser of the long-
running Transitions comic symposium at Birkbeck College, University
of London.
List of Figures
The Lives of the Artists

Fig. 1 [Uncredited] (a & w), “Leonardo Da Vinci”. Blue Ribbon Comics Vol.
1, No. 22 (March 1942), M. L. J. Magazines Inc., [p. 3], Leonardo da
Vinci frees birds on a market 20
Fig. 2 [Uncredited] (a & w). “The Story of Painting [2]”. Treasure Chest of
Fun and Fact Vol. 4, No. 14 (March 1949), Geo. A. Pflaum Publisher
Inc., p. 13, Jan van Eyck invents oil painting 22
Fig. 3 Edmond Baudoin, Dalí (2012), SelfMadeHero, p. 108, Salvador Dalí
inspired by and as successor of Jan Vermeer, Diego Velázquez, and Jan
van Eyck 25
Fig. 4 Typex, Rembrandt (2013), SelfMadeHero, p. 127, Hendrickje doing
household chores and attending to Rembrandt’s sexual needs to
facilitate his artistic work 28
onnoisseurship, Attribution, and Comic Strip Art: The Case

C
of Jack B. Yeats
Fig. 1 Illustration from Morelli, Giovanni. 1883. Italian Masters in German
Galleries, translated by Louise Richter. London: George Bell and Sons 36
Fig. 2 Jack B. Yeats, “Chubblock Homes and His Little Dog Shirk in Quest
of Porous Plaisters”, Comic Cuts, 29 June 1895 42
Fig. 3 A selection of sketches based on Jack B. Yeats characters. (The author’s
sketchbook)43
Fig. 4 Jack B. Yeats “The Little Stowaways” (panel) 7 September 1907, Puck44
Fig. 5 Jack B. Yeats, “Roly Poly’s Tour” (panel), Comic Cuts 7 August 1909 45
Reading Comics with Aby Warburg: Collaging Memories

Fig. 1 Final page of the short story, “Concert en O mineur pour harpe et
nitroglycérine”, Les Celtiques, p. 74 60
xv
xvi List of Figures
Fig. 2 Excerpts from the shadow theatre performance with an incredulous

Merlin witnessing Viviane’s seduction by the American cat. Les
Celtiques, “Burlesque entre Zuydcoote et Bray-Dunes”, Les Celtiques,
p. 10062
Psychologies of Perception: Stories of Depiction

Fig. 1 Rabbit or Duck? Anon (1892), Die Fliegende Blätter, October 23 76
Fig. 2 The Duck-Rabbit, from Wittgenstein (2009, p. 165) 77
Fig. 3 John Miers (2019) So I Guess My Body Pretty Much Hates Me Now, p. 1 85
Fig. 4 Ivan Brunetti (1994) Schizo #1, p. 4, panels 1–3. Fantagraphics 86
Fig. 5 John Miers (2019) So I Guess My Body Pretty Much Hates Me Now, p. 15 88
Fig. 6 John Miers (2019) So I Guess My Body Pretty Much Hates Me Now p. 3 89
Fig. 7 John Miers (2020) Mark Beyer’s Duck-Rabbit92
esthetics of Reception: Uncovering the Modes

A
of Interaction in Comics
Fig. 1 Miniature of the imprisonment of Jesus. Codex Egberti, Ms-Lat.
24, Fol 79v-80r (between 980 and 993 AD). (From Anderlik 2005) 102
Fig. 2 Chris Ware. Rusty Brown. Autumn. © Chris Ware 2022. (From Ware
2005, 60) 104
Fig. 3 Frank King. Gasoline Alley (Construction site). Chicago Tribune, April
22nd, 1934. (From Maresca 2007, n. p) 106
Fig. 4 Frank King. Gasoline Alley (Autumn walk). Chicago Tribune,
December 5th, 1927. (From Maresca 2007, n. p) 108
Fig. 5 Chris Ware. I Just Want to Fall Asleep © Chris Ware 2022. (From Ware
2007, endpapers) 110
Fig. 6 Chris Ware. I Just Want to Fall Asleep, 2002. Ink, coloured pencil and
white gouache on Bristol, 20 x 28 in © Chris Ware 2022. (From Ware
2017, 241) 112
eading Richard Felton Outcault’s “Yellow Kid” Through

R
Perception of the Image
Fig. 1 R. F. Outcault, “The Residents of Hogan’s Alley Visit Coney Island”,
24 May 1896, New York World. San Francisco Academy of Comic Art
Collection, The Ohio State University Cartoon Research Library 128
Fig. 2 R. F. Outcault, “The War Scare in Hogan’s Alley”, 15 March 1896,
New York World. San Francisco Academy of Comic Art Collection,
The Ohio State University Cartoon Research Library 132
Fig. 3 R. F. Outcault, “The Day After the Glorious Fourth Down in Hogan’s
Alley”, 7 July 1895, New York World. San Francisco Academy of
Comic Art Collection, The Ohio State University Cartoon Research
Library134
Fig. 4 R. F. Outcault, “A Wild Political Fight in Hogan’s Alley-Silver Against
Gold”, 2 August 1896, New York World. San Francisco Academy of
Comic Art Collection, The Ohio State University Cartoon Research
Library138
List of Figures xvii
olour in Comics: Reading Lorenzo Mattotti Through the Lens

C
of Art History
Fig. 1 Docteur Jekyll & Mr Hyde, Mattotti/Kramsky, © Casterman S.A. Pay
attention to the reduced drawing style and the use of primary colours 151
Fig. 2 Docteur Jekyll & Mr Hyde, Mattotti/Kramsky, © Casterman S.A. The
drawings are more fleshed out, the colours have shifted to green and
orange. Criss-crossing lines appear 153
Fig. 3 Docteur Jekyll & Mr Hyde, Mattotti/Kramsky, © Casterman S.A. The
drawings are overly detailed, almost grotesque. The colours are mixed
with black 155
eminist Art History as an Approach to Research on Comics: Meta

F
Reflections on Studies of Swedish Feminist Comics
Fig. 1 © Anne Lidén, “Lena i livet” [Lena’s life], Kvinnobulletinen 1 (1971),
p. 10169
Fig. 2 © Lotta Sjöberg, “Valfrihet” [Individual choice], Galago 1 2013, p. 61 176
owards Feminist Comics Studies: Feminist Art History

T
and the Study of Women’s Comix in the 1970s in the United States
Fig. 1 Carole (artwork) and the It Ain’t Me Babe Collective, the two first
pages of “Breaking Out” in It Ain’t Me Babe, 1970, Last Gasp
Ecofunnies193
Fig. 2 Lee Marrs, “So, ya wanna be an artist” in Wimmen’s Comix #2, 1973,
Last Gasp Ecofunnies 195
Fig. 3 Barbara “Willie” Mendes, the back cover of It Ain’t Me Babe, 1970,
Last Gasp Ecofunnies 198
Fig. 4 Joyce Sutton, the top row from “The menses is the massage” in Tits &
Clits #1, 1972, Nanny Goats Productions 200
eal Queer Bodies: Visual Weight and Imagined

R
Gravity in Sport Manga
Fig. 1 Inoue, Takehiko. 2008. Real. Vol. 1 San Francisco, CA: Viz Media,
pp. 54–55216
Fig. 2 Inoue, Takehiko. 2008. Real. Vol. 1 San Francisco, CA: Viz Media,
pp. 42–43217
frofuturism and Animism as Method: Art History

A
and Decolonisation in Black Panther
Fig. 1 Jonathan Maberry (writer), Phil Winslade (penciller). Captain
America: Hail Hydra, Issue #3 (March 2011) 236
Fig. 2 Stan Lee (writer). Jack Kirby (penciller). Fantastic Four, Issue #53
(August 1966) 237
Fig. 3 Reginald Hudlin (writer), Ken Lashley (penciller). Black Panther:
The Deadliest of the Species, Issue #6 (December 2009) 238
xviii List of Figures
Fig. 4 Don McGregor (writer), Billy Graham (penciller). Jungle Action, issue
#18 (November 1975). Showing the introduction of Madame Slay as a
character240
Fig. 5 Ta-Nehisi Coates (writer), Daniel Acuña (penciller). Black Panther,
issue #5 (October 2018) 241
Fig. 6 Ta-Nehisi Coates (writer), Brian Stelfreeze (penciller). Black Panther,
issue #2 (May 2016) 242
hat Is an Image? Art History, Visual Culture Studies,

W
and Comics Studies
Fig. 1 Lynda Barry, Syllabus: Notes from an Accidental Professor (Drawn and
Quarterly, 2014), p. 25 256
Fig. 2 Lynda Barry, Syllabus: Notes from an Accidental Professor (Drawn and
Quarterly, 2014), page 30 257
Fig. 3 Lynda Barry, What It Is (Drawn and Quarterly, 2008), p. 14 260
Fig. 4 Lynda Barry, What It Is (Drawn and Quarterly, 2008), p. 149 263
AST/O Exhibition (De)Construction: Exploring the Potentials

V
of Augmented Abstract Comics and Animation Installations
as a Method to Communicate Health Experiences
Fig. 1 VAST/O installation layout, 2021. (Illustration by Alexandra P. Alberda
and Photography by Alexandre Ramos). Note on illustration: grey lines
indicate features that were behind walls that visitors could not see
without moving in the space (made transparent here), the large arrow
indicates the entry into the space, and the music notes represent the
audio installation in the basement that played the sound of breathing.
The fading music notes indicates the loudness of the sound and how it
could faintly be heard at the top of the stairs as visitors descend.
(Collaged images at the bottom show where the later examined works
existed in the space) 293
Fig. 2 The Arrival montage, 2019. In collaboration with Carolina Martins:
Wall installation art “Landscape-1-2-3-loop” by Natalie Woolf, pillar
installation art “like glass” by João Carola. Landscape mural: brown
paper glued on wall, white acrylic paint, and pencil markings; like glass
pillar: alcohol-based pigmented paint on Crystal Acrylic Plates; Video/
Audio animation: projected hand painted animation on wall.
(Photography by Alexandre Ramos) 294
Fig. 3 “Anxious Hands” by Natalie Woolf, 2019. Hand-drawn animation
projected on floating translucent screens and walls behind Entrance.
Photography by Alexandre Ramos. Note: this photograph is taken
from behind the first screen. Visitors stood in the background of the
image having the animation projected around and onto them 295
Fig. 4 Entrance—The “Domestic Set” and Transition montage, 2019.
Water-based acrylic painted on walls. (Installation art by João
Carola, Carolina Martins, and Natalie Woolf. Photography by
Alexandre Ramos) 302
List of Figures xix
Fig. 5 The “like glass” art by João Carola and poetry by Carolina Martins,
2018–19. Alcohol-based pigment hand painted on Crystal Acrylic
Plates. (Photography by Alexandre Ramos) 304
rom Tableau to Sequence: Introducing Comics Theory Within

F
Art History to Study the Photobook
Fig. 1 Spread 04 of John Max, Open Passport, Toronto: IMPRESSIONS
special issue No. 6 and No. 7 1973. Offset lithography on paper,
28.5 × 22 cm. (Author’s collection) 322
Fig. 2 Spread 37 of John Max, Open Passport, 1973 323
Fig. 3 Spreads 13 and 14 of John Max, Open Passport, 1973 325
Fig. 4 Spreads 03 and 46 of John Max, Open Passport, 1973 328
Ways of Seeing Comics: Art-Historical
Approaches to the Form
Maggie Gray and Ian Horton
Abstract This chapter introduces Art History’s distance from the develop-
ment of comics scholarship as an interdisciplinary field and the impact this has
had for Comics Studies, particularly in terms of the respective dominance of
methods drawn from Literary Studies, Linguistics, narratology and semiology.
It notes the ‘hidden history’ of art historians’ contributions to the foundations
of comics scholarship, and what the range of art-historical methodologies
offers Comics Studies in terms of addressing overlooked aspects of visual style
and form, aesthetics, perception, materiality, visuality and the image. In addi-
tion to considering what Art History offers Comics Studies, including the
questioning of some of its deep-rooted categories, concepts and procedures, it
also appraises what comics and Comics Studies affords and asks of Art History.
It outlines the structure and contents of the edited collection, and its focus,
limitations and purpose.
Keywords Art-historical methodologies • Comics Studies and Art History •

History of Comics Studies • Interdisciplinarity • Practice as research
M. Gray
Kingston School of Art, Kingston University, London, UK
I. Horton (*)
London College of Communication, University of the Arts London, London, UK
e-mail: i.horton@lcc.arts.ac.uk
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2022
M. Gray, I. Horton (eds.), Seeing Comics through Art History, Palgrave
Studies in Comics and Graphic Novels,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93507-8_1
2 M. GRAY AND I. HORTON
This book draws together the work of a range of scholars applying art-historical
methodologies to the study of comics. In one way or another as well as being
researchers, they are also practitioners—educators, artists, designers, curators,
producers, librarians, editors, writers and combinations of these. Some under-
take practice-based research, and these pages carry much evidence of the value
of comics making as a mode of research itself. Among them are many trained
art historians, but several come from, have migrated into or straddle other dis-
ciplines, such as Comparative Literature, American Literature, Cultural Studies,
Visual Studies and a range of subjects within Art and Design practice. Of the
methodologies they employ, many have not previously been used in Comics
Studies.
It is notable, given the interdisciplinarity of comics scholarship, that Art
History has largely been aloof from its development. While it emerged from
Cultural Studies, Popular Culture Studies, Education and Communications
theory, in close dialogue with extramural practitioner and fan scholarship, and
became more securely entrenched in academia in the 1990s via Literature
departments, today the field includes voices from Law and Criminology,
Medicine, Psychology, Anthropology, Sociology, History, Geography, the
Digital Humanities and many more disciplines.1 The relative absence of art-
historical work on comics is similarly remarkable given the expansion of Art
History’s object of study to incorporate a broader range of media and material,
firstly in response to the rise of Cultural Studies and Film Studies, and particu-
larly in view of the challenge from—and under the auspices of—Bildwissen-
schaft, Visual Studies or Visual Culture Studies since the late 1990s.
As Comics Studies sits on the threshold of securing institutionalisation as a
discipline in itself, with a growing number of dedicated departments, under-
graduate and postgraduate programmes, alongside well-established journals,
book series and annual conferences, it arguably needs Art History. Frameworks
of analysis and theories of comics’ form remain dominated by approaches
drawn from Literary Studies, Linguistics, narratology and semiotics, with
which the academic study of comics gained greater legitimacy. These methods
became ensconced alongside the rise and celebration of the graphic novel, yet
at the same moment a ‘turn to the visual’ was observed among comics creators,
many of them art school trained (Beaty 2007, p. 7; Groensteen 2007, p. 163).
While there are oversimplifications and misconstructions aplenty in debates
about words and pictures, comics as a literary form and comics as visual art,
comics scholarship has struggled to deal with aspects of image-making, graphic
techniques, design and materiality, and the aesthetics, perception and interpre-
tation of the visual.2
Chapters in this book demonstrate how art-historical approaches and meth-
ods can inform and develop understanding of neglected areas such as the effects
of drawing style, colour and material processes. They also demonstrate how Art
History can enhance knowledge of how comics are read as images; how we
interact with and experience them as images; how they perform, move and
disrupt as images and what images are and do. Applying art-historical
WAYS OF SEEING COMICS: ART-HISTORICAL APPROACHES TO THE FORM 3
methodologies also casts light on, and helps question, categories, concepts and
procedures often taken for granted in Comics Studies—demanding critical
reflection on models of authorship and intentionality, attribution and a grow-
ing emphasis on the authenticating mark; the exclusionary operations of the
comics canon and archive; the essentialising of grid, gutter and page; and the
social positioning of the researcher. The range of methodologies engaged in
this volume further indicates the diversity of approaches within Art History,
belying characterisations of it in Comics Studies that focus on its more conser-
vative, traditional or formalist strands. Drawing Art History into comics schol-
arship involves acknowledging the intra-disciplinary divergences, points of
contention and (often strident) debates over conceptual and methodological
frameworks that can get flattened out in models of interdisciplinarity.
The dissociation of Comics Studies and Art History has by no means been
absolute. Research, writing, cataloguing and curation by art historians contrib-
uted to the formation of comics scholarship and provided several of its founda-
tional texts in the 1960s and 1970s. Art historian Pierre Couperie played a key
role in the organisation of the Bande Dessinée et Figuration Narrative exhibi-
tion at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris in 1967, and its catalogue which
included some of the earliest attempts to identify a comics canon, the medi-
um’s stylistic development and formal elements. Gérard Blanchard’s 1969 his-
tory of bande dessinée also sought to identify a comics canon and legitimise the
form through examining its origins in earlier art practices by employing an
iconographic approach. Writing by Ernst Gombrich on caricature and cartoon-
ing, particularly in the 1950s and 1960s, influenced his PhD supervisee David
Kunzle, whose History of the Comic Strip, published in two volumes in 1973
and 1990, remains a major work for comics scholars. While marginalised in the
field, Art History has since shaped ongoing debates about comics’ origins,
formal structures and relations to print cultures and movements in fine art. In
the twenty-first century, art historians have become more prominent in Comics
Studies, contributing, for instance, to the theorisation of abstract comics, and
debates about the relationship between comics and visual art have drawn on art
histories of the avant-garde, modernism and postmodernism.
We examine this ‘hidden history’ of art-historical comics scholarship in the
companion volume Art History for Comics: Past, Present and Potential Futures,
in relation to the shifts that took place within Art History over this period, as
traditional approaches of stylistic analysis and iconology were challenged by
Cultural History and the social history of art. That book also moves on to
explore how the approaches and frameworks underpinning these seminal works
might be applied in contemporary Comics Studies in light of the developments
and debates around them that have taken place within Art History in the inter-
vening years.
Both volumes are intended to prompt and provoke consideration of what
seeing comics through Art History and its varied methodologies can offer the
study of the medium, particularly in addressing some of the oversights of
Comics Studies when it comes to questions of visuality, materiality and
aesthetics. At the same time, they aim to examine what Comics Studies offers
art historians. Chapters in this book explore overlooked intersections of the
histories of art and comics, from the dialogue between women’s underground
comix and feminist fine art to the relationship between the schemata evident in
Western narrative painting, caricature, cartooning and comics stretching back
to Giotto’s fresco cycles. They also open up resonant questions about the rela-
tionship between words and images in art-historical texts, connections between
academic and popular writing about art, and the interactions of Art History
and the museum in canonical feedback loops and systems of knowledge pro-
duction. Furthermore, they intervene in urgent critical debates within Art
History about decolonising the discipline, queering the archive, and how Art
History can be a form of activism, particularly through curatorial practice and
collaboration. They offer art historians models of how comics theory can be
applied to the study of series, sequences and space, as well as ways to approach
serialisation and media memories, humour, the narrative effects of depiction,
the tactile experience of images and the benefits of thinking with and through
rather than at them.
To support the further application of art-historical approaches to the study
of comics, each chapter has a similar structure. They introduce and contextual-
ise the methodology or methodologies at hand, providing references to, and
critically evaluating, key theorists and texts. They then examine how these
approaches have been applied to comics in recent research projects and/or use
them to analyse a specific comics corpus, and finally reflect on the benefits and
challenges of these approaches for Comics Studies more broadly.
The comics under consideration cover a range of genres, formats, historical
periods and cultural traditions. They include work from nineteenth-century
American newspapers and British comics magazines, 1940s educational comic
books and 1960s and 1970s Marvel titles, 1970s bande-dessinée adventure
series and underground comix, 1990s alternative comics and twenty-first-
century graphic novels, superhero comics and sport manga. They also include
feminist comics and cartoons in journals, anthologies, albums and on social
media, comics biographies and autobiographies, literary adaptations and com-
ics derived from and used in arts education. They examine work that pushes the
boundaries of comics, most prominently in the form of augmented abstract
comics and animation installation, as well as work in other media, notably pho-
tography, but also illustration, painting, sculpture, ceramics, film. This speaks
to the way seeing comics through Art History opens up opportunities to exam-
ine coextensive, interacting fields and forms of visual art and image-making.
Chapters are grouped together in sections that roughly align with the devel-
opment of Western Art History. We start with ‘Old Skool Art History’ and
some of the discipline’s earliest approaches. Tobias Yu-Kiener examines art-
historical traditions of life writing stretching back to Pliny the Elder, and par-
ticularly inaugurated during the Renaissance by Giorgio Vasari and Carel van
Mander, in relation to the artist’s biography genre in comics, tracing the influ-
ence of, and challenges to, the art-historical canon, biographical anecdote and
life-and-work model. Michael Connerty focuses on methodologies of art con-

noisseurship, and particularly the approach of Giovanni Morelli in the nine-
teenth century, as a means of identifying and cataloguing an artist’s work—in
this case the strips Irish painter and cartoonist Jack B. Yeats produced for
British comics magazines in a context in which comics were rarely signed.
While these approaches have fallen out of favour in Art History, the final chap-
ter in this section turns to a figure whose work has received renewed interest,
Aby Warburg. Maaheen Ahmed adopts Warburg’s Mnemosyne picture atlas as a
guide to reading comics as collages, and combines his mapping of cultural
interchanges with ideas of how media remember each other to examine comics
both fictional (Hugo Pratt’s Corto Maltese: Les Celtiques) and non-fictional
(Manu Larcenet’s autobiographical Le Combat Ordinaire).
Warburg’s work can be seen to mark a turning point in Art History whereby
in the twentieth century it became more influenced by psychology, sociology
and anthropology. The following section ‘Perception, Reception and Meaning’
explores methodologies developed by art historians increasingly preoccupied
by questions of how images are perceived, experienced and interpreted. John
Miers deploys work on psychologies of perception, including Gombrich’s col-
laboration with psychoanalyst Ernst Kris on caricature, as well as the writings
of psychologist Rudolf Arnheim and philosophers Richard Wollheim and
Kendall Walton on visual perception, to attend to the effects of drawing style
with reference to his own autobiographical comic, So I Guess My Body Pretty
Much Hates Me Now. Nina Eckhoff-Heindl engages with the aesthetics of
reception approach advanced in the 1970s and 1980s by Wolfgang Kemp, Max
Imdahl and Gottfried Boehm to examine how viewers interact with artworks,
to explore the reception of Chris Ware’s Rusty Brown, Autumn by its ‘reading-
viewers’. Christine Mugnolo draws on the work of Hans Belting and Svetlana
Alpers that challenged how art historians considered the relationship between
images and audiences in terms of agency, embodiment and affect, to appraise
how Richard Felton Outcault’s Yellow Kid engaged his readers. Finally in this
section Barbara Uhlig applies art-historical work by Ernst Strauss, Lorenz
Dittman and John Gage to one of most overlooked aspects of comics—colour,
in a hermeneutical analysis of Lorenzo Mattotti and Jerry Kramsky’s Dr. Jekyll
& Mr. Hyde.
From the 1970s onwards Art History faced substantial upheaval in the wake
of Marxist and feminist approaches that challenged many of its deep-rooted
frameworks, categories and assumptions, and institutional and ideological
agendas. This was followed by strands of queer and postcolonial Art History,
strongly influenced by structuralism, post-structuralism and deconstruction,
resulting in a set of approaches that themselves became institutionalised under
the umbrella term ‘the New Art History’. The next section ‘The New and
Newer Art Histories’ turns to some of these methodologies. Margareta Wallin
Wictorin and Anna Nordenstam analyse what lessons the feminist Art History
of Linda Nochlin, Griselda Pollock and Rozsika Parker, and particularly
Pollock’s discussion of various strategic positions from which to address the
canon, holds for a multidisciplinary, feminist Comics Studies. This is grounded

in extensive research into Swedish feminist comics, from strips and cartoons in
second-wave feminist journals to contemporary comics using embroidery and
collage both reproduced in print and shared on Instagram. Małgorzata Olsza’s
chapter also takes cues from Nochlin, Pollock and Parker, alongside critic Lucy
Lippard, to contest the historiography of underground comix, and processes of
canon formation and models of authorship in Comics Studies. At the same
time, her examination of continuities between American women’s under-
ground comix, and feminist art, art criticism and Art History, enables titles like
It Ain’t Me Babe, Wimmen’s Comix and Tits & Clits to ‘break in’ to a more
expansive understanding of feminist art practice in the 1970s. Ylva Sommerland
turns to queer Art History and cultural theory to queer the art-historical
archive by opening it up to the non-normative cyborg bodies of Takehiko
Inoue’s sport manga Real, drawing on Arnheim’s concept of visual weight and
Roger Callois’ theory of play to analyse how the performance of bodies resist-
ing gravity is visually presented, and how players both lose and find themselves
in transition in the game and the ‘free unreality’ of comics.
Chapters in the final section of this volume ‘Comics for/Beyond Art
History’ are less concerned with what art-historical approaches offer and ask of
Comics Studies, than what the methods, frameworks and theories of comics
and comics scholarship propose for art historians. Danielle Becker examines
Afrofuturism and animism as methods for the decolonisation of Art History as
a discipline, particularly with regard to African art, through an analysis of the
Marvel superhero Black Panther. Jeanette Roan revisits the history of Visual
Culture Studies’ relationship to Art History, arguing it better accommodates
comics as an object of study and, as an interdiscipline, provides a productive
methodological model for Comics Studies. At the same time, in drawing com-
ics and Visual Studies together, she argues that Lynda Barry’s pedagogically
oriented comics What It Is and Syllabus constitute image theory themselves. In
a tradition of producing and communicating knowledge through the making
of comics, Bruce Mutard presents a history of narrative pictures from Giotto’s
frescoes to Nick Drnaso’s graphic novel Sabrina as the development of what
critic and curator Susan Vogel calls the ‘Western Eye’, also drawing on Michael
Baxandall’s concept of the Period Eye and Gombrich’s idea of schema. A chap-
ter by the artists and researchers Alexandra P. Alberda, João Carola, Carolina
Martins and Natalie Woolf, who collaborate on the graphic medicine project
VAST/O, reflects on how an activist art-historical methodology, as articulated
by Astrid von Rosen, can be developed in the gallery. Analysing the way their
immersive augmented abstract comics and animation installation affectively
engages viewers with lived mental health experience, they pull on recent schol-
arship on gallery comics, space, affect and abstraction, alongside the work of
Rosalind Krauss, in deconstructing the grid and gutter. The last chapter of the
book by Michel Hardy-Vallée contends that comics scholarship fills gaps in art-
historical interpretations of narrative pictures and pictorial sequences, particu-
larly in attending to the situation of images in space and image-to-image syntax,
inverting the structure of other chapters to apply the comics theory of Thierry
Groensteen in an analysis of the photobook Open Passport by Canadian pho-
tographer John Max.
While there are affinities between the chapters grouped into these sections,
there are also many resonances and points of dialogue across sections. Figures
like Warburg, Gombrich, Arnheim, Boehm, Nochlin, Pollock, Alpers and
Belting traverse chapters, as do themes of interdisciplinarity, visual culture, the
canon, the archive, the body, performance, humour, narrative, drawing and
caricature. We have included internal references to suggest such points of cor-
respondence between chapters, and readers can also use the index to follow
connections. As much as there are links and interrelationships, there are also
margins, gaps and blind spots. This book is by no means comprehensive in its
coverage of the range of methodologies developed within Art History, past or
present. While chapters engage with postcolonial Art History, specifically
Becker’s, and address race, class, disability, gender and sexuality, there is scope
for much more work drawing on Art History in these areas, particularly Critical
Race Art History, and examining their intersections. Also evident is the absence
of more emergent art-historical approaches engaging migratory, network and
planetary aesthetics, biopolitics and ecocriticism. It should be noted that while
aesthetic theories are referenced, and there are many crossovers, the focus is
more on Art History than the philosophy of art. This book is also partial in
terms of the comics analysed, most hail from the epicentres of production—
North America, Western Europe and Japan—which have dominated scholar-
ship, although this has been challenged by work on Latin American, African,
Middle Eastern, Eastern European, South and South East Asian comics and
comics from other areas of East Asia.
This is not the first attempt to examine the history and possibilities of art-
historical approaches to comics. A key forerunner is the special issue of the
Konsthistorisk tidskrift/Journal of Art History ‘Writing Comics into Art History
and Art History into Comics Research’ edited by Ylva Sommerland and
Margareta Wallin Wictorin, both of whom we are delighted have contributed
to this volume.3 Like them we believe “there is huge potential for interesting
comics research based on a variety of perspectives and methods from art his-
tory” (Sommerland and Wallin Wictorin 2017, p. 4), as demonstrated by the
chapters in this book. We hope the avenues opened up for future research
applying art-historical methodologies to the study of comics, and drawing
approaches from comics scholarship into Art History, including practices of
making comics as a means of art-historical inquiry, will be pursued.
Notes
1. On the roots and foundational works of comics scholarship, as well as its subse-
quent development, see Smith and Duncan 2017. This edited collection concern-
ing The Secret Origins of Comics Studies includes a chapter by Ian Horton on The
Historians of the Art Form.
2. See, for example, Jared Gardner’s discussion of the challenges of the line and
drawing style to narrative theory and narratological analysis (Gardner 2011). On
the exclusion of comics from Art History, and antagonisms between the art world
and the comics world, see Beaty 2012 (although more focused on art criticism
than Art History). See also Roeder 2008. On the relevance and value of Art
History for comics studies, see Sommerland and Wallin Wictorin 2017, and
Miodrag 2013 (particularly Chapter 8 Style, Expressivity and Impressionistic
Evaluation, pp. 197–220). We should stress we do not disregard the value of nar-
ratological, semiotic, literary or linguistic approaches to comics, nor seek to efface
comics’ non-visual aspects—chapters in this volume engage with questions of
narration, semiosis and language, and with the multisensory experience of comics.
3. Important conference interventions should also be mentioned, notably the ‘Art
History considers Manga’ symposium at the 1998 Japan Art Society conference
(see Watanabe 1998), the two panels on ‘Comics in Art History’ organised by
Patricia Mainardi and Andrei Molotiu at the 2010 College Art Association con-
ference, and the roundtable ‘Learning To Look: The State Of Art History And
Comics Scholarship’ at the 2018 Comics Studies Society conference organised by
Josh Rose.
References
Beaty, Bart. 2007. Unpopular Culture: Transforming the European Comic Book in the
1990s. Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press.
———. 2012. Comics versus Art. Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press.
Blanchard, Gérard, 1969. La Bande Dessinée: Histoire des Histoires en images de la
préhistoires à nos jours [La Bande Dessinées: The Story of Stories in Pictures from
Prehistory to Today] Verviers: Marabout Universite.
Couperie, Pierre. 1968. A History of the Comic Strip. Trans. Eileen B. Hennessy.
New York: Crown Publishers.
Gardner, Jared. 2011. Storylines. Substance 124, pp. 53-69.
Groensteen, Thierry. 2007. The System of Comics. Trans. Bart Beaty and Nick Nguyen.
Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.
Horton, Ian. 2017. The Historians of the Art Form. In The Secret Origins of Comics
Studies, eds. Matthew J. Smith and Randy Duncan, pp. 56–66. New York and
London: Routledge.
Kunzle, David. 1973. History of the Comic Strip. Volume 1: The early comic strip: narra-
tive strips and picture stories in the European broadsheet from c.1450 to 1825. Berkeley,
Los Angeles, London: University of California Press.
——— 1990. History of the Comic Strip. Volume 2: the nineteenth century. Berkeley, Los
Angeles, Oxford: University of California Press.
Miodrag, Hannah. 2013. Comics and Language: Reimagining Critical Discourse on the
Form. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.
Roeder, Katherine. 2008. Looking High and Low at Comic Art. American Art.
22:1, pp. 2–9.
Smith, Matthew J., and Duncan, Randy. eds. 2017. The Secret Origins of Comics Studies.
New York and London: Routledge.
Sommerland, Ylva, and Wallin Wictorin, Margareta. 2017. Writing Comics into Art
History and Art History into Comics Research. Konsthistorisk tidskrift / Journal of
Art History 86:1, pp. 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1080/00233609.2016.1272629.
Watanabe, Toshio. 1998. Art History and Comics. The Art Book 5:4, pp. 18–19.
PART I
Old Skool Art History

The Lives of the Artists
Tobias J. Yu-Kiener
Abstract Art-historical writing traditions and narrative tools have influenced

the artist’s biography comic genre since its first appearance in the 1940s. This
chapter identifies and traces the history of three main elements of the tradi-
tional artist’s biography, namely, the canon of Art History as well as the anec-
dote and the life-and-work model as narrative devices.
Further, it outlines and analyses the influence of Pliny the Elder, Giorgio
Vasari, Carel van Mander, and the nineteenth-century artist’s monograph on
biographical comic strips about artists from the 1940s and respective graphic
novels from the 2010s, using two corpora. Moreover, it establishes how anec-
dotes about Leonardo da Vinci’s life turned into genre-specific tropes that have
been used in comics for 80 years.
Finally, the challenges the artist’s biography comic genre faces after this
period dominated by Art History are defined, such as an apparent difficulty to
overcome established art-historical traditions of life-writing and a liminal posi-
tion between art-historical text and leisure reading. However, the genre also
holds the power to question, negate, and even correct the established art-
historical canon. In including non-canonical artists and exploiting the full
potential of the comic medium, it can provide new approaches beyond the
current art-historical frame and possibly develop new genre-specific tropes and
narrative devices.
Keywords Artist’s biography • Anecdote • Life-and-work model • Pliny the

Elder • Giorgio Vasari • Carel van Mander
T. J. Yu-Kiener (*)
Central St. Martins, University of the Arts London, London, UK
e-mail: tobias.j.yukiener@gmail.com
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 13

Switzerland AG 2022
M. Gray, I. Horton (eds.), Seeing Comics through Art History, Palgrave
Studies in Comics and Graphic Novels,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93507-8_2
14 T. J. YU-KIENER
This chapter analyses art-historical writing traditions’ influences on the artist’s

biography comic genre since its first appearance in March 1942. It first traces
the creation and development of the canon of Art History and the main tradi-
tions of art-historical biographies. Then, in analysing first-century Pliny the
Elder, sixteenth-century Italian Renaissance author Giorgio Vasari and his
seventeenth-century North European successor Carel van Mander, the use of
the anecdote as an essential narrative tool is established. Subsequently, the
nineteenth-century artist’s monograph and its life-and-work model is explored.
Two corpora showcase the prevalence of these art-historical traditions in the
artist’s biography comic genre. Corpus One analyses biographical comic strips
from the 1940s, demonstrating how anecdotes about Renaissance artist
Leonardo da Vinci’s life turned into genre-specific tropes. Further, one par-
ticular narrative, “The Story of Painting”, reveals the author used Pliny, Vasari,
and van Mander as sources. Corpus Two comprises two biographical graphic
novels from the 2010s, about Spanish Surrealist Salvador Dalí and Dutch Old
Master Rembrandt van Rijn. It assesses the continuous impact of Art History’s
biographical traditions and the genre-specific tropes.
A concluding section discusses the challenges and the opportunities for the
artist’s biography comic genre, how it might overcome or influence art-
historical life-writing traditions.
Art-Historical Traditions
For centuries, artist’s biographies have been dependent on three main ele-
ments: the established canonical artists, the use of anecdotes, and the life-and-
work model. The canon has determined who was considered important enough
to write about, while the anecdotes and the life-and-work model have defined
how an artist’s life was narrativised.
Pliny the Elder recorded the first European canon in his Historia Naturalis
in the first-century CE. According to Pliny, fifth-century BCE Greek sculptor
Polykleitos of Sikyon “made the statue which [fellow] sculptors call the ‘canon,’
referring to it as to a standard from which they can learn the first rules of their
art” (1968, pp. 42–3). Ever since Polykleitos, the artistic canon has been
extended, re-defined, and scrutinised, evolving and developing into more
regional and national canons under the umbrella of the Western canon of art.
On the one hand, for artists to be(come) canonical has meant “to be [deemed]
indisputable in [artistic] quality” (Perry 1999, p. 12). On the other hand, and
more pragmatically, canonical individuals have been chosen for their “enduring
popularity [with the general public as well as professionals] and continuing
economic and aesthetic value which their works are seen to hold” (Perry
1999, p. 15).
A small number of stakeholders have decided on the canon’s makeup and
subsequently publicised, and thus enshrined it. Artists have tried to insert
themselves in the canon by referencing canonical predecessors. In this context,
Antiquity’s artistic schools (Pliny 1968, Liber XXXV, Fig. A, B), the Medieval
THE LIVES OF THE ARTISTS 15
guild system, and the Renaissance’s academies were important possible “canon-
ical entry point”.1 The increasing institutionalisation of an artist’s training
made it easier for artists to establish themselves as successors of canonical mas-
ters. However, it also constituted a selection process, as not every individual
would be accepted into such an exclusive place of artistic training.
Another crucial factor in the canonisation of individuals were commissioners
and collectors, often linked to such places of learning. Latest since the
Renaissance, with its new patronage system, producing early court artists, rul-
ers and wealthy individuals have decided whose work they commission and
include in their collections. With the opening of public museums in the late
eighteenth century, aiming to educate the public, these art-historical institu-
tions became “guardians of the canon” through curatorial choices.
Similarly, art and cultural historians, together with publishers, have deter-
mined the canonical status of individuals and artworks. For example, Johann
Joachim Winckelmann (1717–1768), Carl Jacob Christoph Burckhardt
(1818–1897), and Bernard Berenson (1865–1959), through their respective
works, Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums [The History of Art in Antiquity]
(1764), Die Cultur der Renaissance in Italien [The Civilisation of the
Renaissance in Italy] (1860), and The Drawings of the Florentine Painters
(1903), shaped the perception of specific artistic periods, and hence the canon.
Further, developments in print technology, allowing for cheaper reproduction
and distribution of artworks, led to familiarisation, thus canonisation by repeti-
tion through affordable art books for mass audiences (Silver 2019, pp. 3, 11).
In drawing from while simultaneously contributing to the canon, consequently
reproducing, reconfirming, and strengthening its composition, those stake-
holders have created canonical feedback loops.
This canon of art is grounded in European notions of greatness and aes-
thetic quality derived from Greek Antiquity. It is fundamentally Eurocentric—
religiously, culturally, and artistically—and dominated by white men as critics
and artists. Conversely, it inevitably has marginalised (if not excluded) women
and non-European artists and art, as highlighted by social and feminist art his-
torians, such as Linda Nochlin (1973) and Griselda Pollock (1999, 2003).
Nochlin (1973, p. 199) argues that the lack of access to the necessary artistic
training, education, and reward had been a significant cause of the disadvan-
tages faced by non-white and non-male individuals. Pollock (1999) points out
that the canon is “selective in its inclusion and … political in its pattern of
exclusion” and ultimately a “mode of worship of the artist” (1999, pp. 6, 13).2
The anecdote, a short narrative about a particular event or details of an indi-
vidual’s life, revealing part of their personality or extraordinary skill, has long
featured in writings about artists. It already appears in fourth-century BCE
Duris of Samos’ Lives of Painters and Sculptors—“inaugurat[ing] the biograph-
ical literature on artists” (Wittkower and Wittkower 1969, pp. 3–4).
Nevertheless, the oldest, extensive, and most importantly, complete record of
artists’ lives is Pliny the Elder’s Historia Naturalis (first-century CE), Liber
XXXIII-XXXVI [Natural History, Books 33–35]. Most likely inspired by
16 T. J. YU-KIENER
Duris, one of his primary sources, Pliny uses the anecdote as a narrative device
when recording important visual artists from previous centuries, combining his
own accounts with historical sources.
Typical anecdotes from Antiquity follow a specific pattern and cover particu-
lar aspects of an artist’s life: (1) the artist’s origin, youth, and predestination;
(2) the person’s artistic skill, speed, and superiority; (3) the individual’s charac-
ter and personality. As a subject-specific narrative tool, such anecdotes about
different artists are often strikingly similar, even identical. It is thus crucial to
stay sceptical of their truthfulness.
Artistic skill is usually discussed in talking about an artwork so well executed
that it allows the artists to fool animals, people, or—most prestigious—fellow
artists. Such stories link directly into anecdotes of artistic competition. Perhaps
the most famous artistic rivalry in Antiquity is between Zeuxis of Herakleia and
Parrhasios of Ephesos, with the former believing a curtain, painted by the lat-
ter, real (Pliny 1968, pp. 108–111).
Interestingly, the artist-genius motif already appears in anecdotes from
Antiquity, with divine inspiration and artistic revelation—the marks of a
genius—being the result of an ascetic and abstentious life (Kris and Kurz 1980,
p. 145). Such devotion for art is recorded for Protogenes, living on “lupins
steeped in water” that “satisfied at once his hunger and his thirst” to not waste
any time away from work (Pliny 1968, pp. 136–139).
Throughout the Middle Ages, ancient biographical traditions and the use of
anecdotes were continued in hagiographies, the life stories of Christian saints
(Sousslouff 1997, p. 38; Kris and Kurz 1980, pp. 57–58). Only with Tuscan
Renaissance biographers, most prominently by Giorgio Vasari in Le Vite De Piu
Eccellenti Pittori, Sculptori E Architettori [The Lives of the Most Excellent
Painters, Sculptors and Architects] (1550 and 1568), the anecdote was revived
as a narrative device to record artists’ lives. According to Catherine Sousslouff,
such biographical narratives depended on only two aspects: anecdotes about
the artist’s life and descriptions of their artworks (1997, p. 26). Further, the
artist’s autochthony—an innate ability, skill, or talent based on a person’s place
of birth or upbringing—became highly important (pp. 44–56). It served a
political function in promoting notions of patriotism and nationalism.
Despite earlier texts, the Vasarian model influenced biographers the most.3
Vasari discusses an artist’s entire life, using empirical data from archival research,
historical documents, oral history and earlier written records, in situ inspection
and critique of artworks, and personal encounters. However, critiquing his
sources only inconsistently led to mistakes, oversights, and misinterpretations
(Guerico 2006, pp. 26–28; Kisters 2017, p. 27). Sandra Kisters argues that “a
large number” of artists had died already or were not personally known to
Vasari, who also writes “about several artworks without having seen them him-
self”, and “uses anecdotes told or written to him by others” (2017, p. 26).
Nevertheless, Vasari was the first to consult written documents to narrate an
artist’s life. Furthermore, he matched the artworks with their creator’s
personality, revealing an underlying idea that the latter portrays himself in the
former, thus constituting an early version of a life-and-work model.4
Inspired by Vasari, Carel van Mander created Het Schilder-Boeck [The Book
of Painting] (1604 and 1618), focussing on Dutch, Flemish, and German art-
ists. The “Dutch Vasari”, as he is sometimes called, stresses “the standard of
craftsmanship of his fifteenth-century predecessors and the value of training,
experience, and hard work above genius and scholarship” (Woods 1999,
pp. 126–7) but uses anecdotes extensively to narrate artists’ lives.
One of the most popular anecdotes from the Renaissance concerns a close
relationship, even friendship, between artist and client, such as in the biogra-
phies of Giotto di Bondone, Leonardo da Vinci, Albrecht Dürer, and Hans
Holbein, expressing the fame and individual glory of, and respect given to the
portrayed artists (Vasari 1998, pp. 27, 298; van Mander 1969, pp. 37, 87–88).
Some artists are even godly, such as Leonardo da Vinci, who “is so divine that
he leaves behind all other men and clearly makes himself known as a genius
endowed by God” (Vasari 1998, p. 284), Michelangelo Buonarotti, who “the
most benevolent Ruler of Heaven … sent to earth” (Vasari 1998, p. 414), and
Holbein, born under a “fortunate celestial influence” (van Mander 1969, p. 83).
During the late eighteenth century, books focussing on a single artist were
published, such as The Life of the Celebrated Painter Masaccio (Thomas Patch
1770), Testimonies to the Genius and Memory of Sir Joshua Reynolds (Samuel
Felton 1792), and Some Anecdotes of the Life of Julio Bonasoni (George
Cumberland and Luigi Majno 1793). Then, the term monograph referred to a
treatise focussing on a single defined topic, usually in Natural History (Guerico
2006, p. 3). It was first used for an artist’s biography by Ludwig Schorn in
1819, reviewing Adam Weise’s Albrecht Dürer und sein Zeitalter [Albrecht
Dürer and his Epoch] (1819) (Guerico 2006, pp. 3–4).
Regardless of terminology, from the beginning of the nineteenth century,
the artist’s monograph was widely adopted in Europe as a form of writing,
introducing the life-and-work model to artist’s biographies (Guerico 2006,
p.5). It was heavily influenced by and dependent on the Vasarian biographical
model, and the notion of a linked, thus reciprocally explanatory, artist’s work
and life. It combined biography and literary fiction, utilising documents and
sources concerning the artist’s story, and critically evaluated artworks and their
attribution, compiling comprehensive lists of works (Guerico 2006, pp. 4–5).
During the first half of the nineteenth century, connoisseurship, aiming to
verify originals and create a complete list of an individual’s works, the catalogue
raisonné, was a distinguishing feature of the artist’s monograph (Guerico 2006,
p. 40). The oeuvre was seen as a “multidimensional whole”, holding and reveal-
ing information about the development of the artist’s personality and artistic
practice (Guerico 2006, pp. 80, 91–96). In the second half of the century,
biographical aspects became more important again, eventually being placed
above (Art) History and connoisseurship. Gabriele Guerico observes that “the
study of the oeuvre required specialised means, and therefore found its warm-
est reception among art historians and connoisseurs. In contrast, the study of
18 T. J. YU-KIENER
biography verged on the novelistic and reached a much broader audience”

(2006, p. 149).5
The field of Art History quickly adopted the artist’s monograph as one of its
essential sources and products (Sousslouff 1997, pp. 38, 77–88). Despite some
scholarly criticism, the nineteenth- and twentieth-century conceptions of an
artist were based on the Vasarian model and its fourteenth- and fifteenth-
century predecessors, depicting artists as heroes (Sousslouff 1997, p. 93).
From the 1880s onwards, several multi-volume series on Renaissance and
Modern artists introduced numerous artists’ lives and works to a wide
readership.6
With the dawn of the twentieth century, art-historical scholars explored the
artist’s role in society and culture more broadly. Also, more concepts of artists
appeared, such as the clinically mad genius, the unappreciated, the loner, the
revolutionary, the nobleman, the bohemian. Positioning artists “ideal and
absolute” and their biographies “isolated from other kinds of biographies” tex-
tualised artists “differently from other human beings”, creating a mythical,
legendary, and heroic status for them, a situation that remained unchanged
until the mid-twentieth century (1997, pp. 101, 109, 111–112).
Thus, like their predecessors, the artist’s monograph created a canonical
feedback loop, confirming and enshrining the individual’s position and status.
Consequently, those publications became crucial in the commodification of
artists by the art market (Kisters 2017, pp. 9–15; Salas 2007, p.47). Using
eulogy and novelistic devices, monographs (re-)confirmed canonical status,
uniqueness, importance, and economic value while also pushing for the (re)
discovery of neglected individuals (Guerico 2006, pp. 236–237).
For centuries, the core elements of art-historical biographies, the canon, the
anecdote, and the life-and-work model, have prevailed. When examining the
artist’s biography comic genre, one immediately recognises apparent parallels
to those long-established biographical traditions in Art History. Their continu-
ous use in the comic medium is explored here using two corpora.
Corpus One: Biographical Comics of the 1940s

In March 1942, the new artist’s biography comic genre was instigated by the
American publisher M. L. J. Magazines, Inc., releasing a comic narrative on
Leonardo da Vinci in Blue Ribbon Comics Vol. 1, No. 22. It inaugurated a
publishing boom of at least 25 biographical comic strips about canonical visual
artists, released between 1942 and 1949 in educational youth magazines in
America. Leonardo da Vinci was portrayed most often, appearing in at least
four graphic narratives, a choice heavily influenced by the established Western
artistic canon and its fascination with creative Renaissance individuals. Indeed,
almost one in two biographical comic strips about canonical artists featured a
Renaissance artist. In drawing from while also contributing to the canon of
Art History, those narratives about Leonardo da Vinci participated in a canoni-
cal feedback loop enshrining his position further. As the first of a new kind of
comic genre and featuring the most popular subject of the decade, they also
qualify as fitting representatives of the early form of the artist’s biography
comic genre.
The narratives “Leonardo da Vinci” (Blue Ribbon Comics Vol. 1, No. 22,
March 1942), “Leonardo da Vinci: Painter and Scientist. Pioneer in
Engineering” (Real Life Comics Vol. 3, No. 2, November 1942), and “500
Years Too Soon!” (True Comics No. 58, March 1947), frequently employ the
anecdote as a narrative tool and confirm the popular image of the artist as a
genius, likely inspired by Vasari’s biography. The comparison reveals multiple
anecdotes already found in the sixteenth-century biography. For example,
Leonardo da Vinci surpassing his master Andrea Verrocchio at an early age,
constituting the motif of artistic destiny, is mentioned twice by Vasari:
“Leonardo da Vinci, then a young boy and Andrea’s pupil, assisted him in this
work, painting an angel by himself, which was much better than the other
details” (1998, p. 236); and “This was the reason why Andrea would never
touch colours again, angered that a young boy understood them better than he
did” (p. 287).
Directly linked to artistic destiny are stories about genius, expressed through
exceptionally high levels of versatility and the ability to excel in many fields. In
addition to representing him as a painter, sculptor, and draughtsman, comic
strips about Leonardo da Vinci show him as a botanist, biologist, anatomist,
physiognomist, inventor, musician, astronomer, city planner, and landscape
designer as well as military, civil, aerial, and naval engineer. Vasari describes
how Leonardo da Vinci also revolutionised these fields with his contributions:
a genius endowed by God …a very fine geometrician …not only work[ing] in

sculpture but in architecture [… making] many drawings of both ground-plans
and other structures …discuss[ing] to make the River Arno a canal from Pisa to
Florence [… who] drew plans for mills, fulling machines, and implements that
could be driven by water-power …construct[ing] models and designs showing
how to excavate and bore through mountains …and [who] with the use of levers,
winches, and hoists, showed how to lift and pull heavy weights, as well as meth-
ods of emptying out harbours and pumps for removing water from great depth
[… giving humankind] a more perfect understanding of the anatomy of horses
and of men. (1998, pp. 284–6, 298)
Furthermore, the comic strips feature anecdotes about Leonardo da Vinci’s

powerful clients and friends, such as Francis I of France, already favoured by
Vasari (1998, pp. 293, 298). The narrative “500 Years Too Soon!” (1947)
shows Leonardo da Vinci living a hermit-like life, starting work even before the
monks rise and refusing to eat to not pause his work—a clear reminiscence to
Protogenes’ asceticism described by Pliny (1968, pp. 136–139).
Leonardo da Vinci’s obsession with flight is another crucial element of the
comic strips, depicting the artist building and testing his flying machine, risking
his own or his assistant’s life. The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci in two
20 T. J. YU-KIENER
volumes (Edward MacCurdy 1938) and Leonardo Da Vinci. The Tragic Pursuit
Of Perfection (Antonina Vallentin 1938), published in Toronto and New York,
respectively, and featuring writings on flight and sketches of flying machines,
might have contributed to the corresponding focus. However, Vasari appar-
ently inspired scenes showing Leonardo da Vinci releasing birds on the market,
as in “Leonardo da Vinci” (1942) (Fig. 1) and “500 Years Too Soon!” (1947).
[W]hen passing by the place where birds being sold, he [Leonardo da Vinci]
would often take them out of their cages with his own hands, and after paying the
seller the price that was asked of him, he would set them free in the air, restoring
to them the liberty they had lost (Vasari 1998, p. 286).
The above observations reveal that many anecdotes, already used by Vasari,
reappeared in biographical comics about Leonardo da Vinci in the 1940s. At
least seven motifs can be identified: Artistic Destiny, Genius, Revolutionising
an Art-Form, Powerful Clients, Obsession, Risk-Taking, and a Hermit-like
Life. Naturally, the lines between them are at times blurred.
Between 1942 and 1972, these motifs, at least partly deriving from Vasari,
were not only used to tell Leonardo da Vinci’s life but the lives of other artists
too. While some were also painters, such as Winslow Homer, many worked in
different media, such as the architect and city planner Christopher Wren, the
engineer and architect Alexander Gustave Eiffel, the inventor of photography
Louis Daguerre, the illustrator John James Audubon, and the sculptresses
Malvina Hoffman and Vinnie Ream. Thus, by featuring no longer in one spe-
cific artist’s life story but biographical graphic narratives about visual artists in
Fig. 1 [Uncredited] (a & w), “Leonardo Da Vinci”. Blue Ribbon Comics Vol. 1, No.
22 (March 1942), M. L. J. Magazines Inc., [p. 3], Leonardo da Vinci frees birds on
a market
general, those themes turned into genre-specific tropes of the artist’s biogra-
phy comic.
One narrative of the 1940s merits special attention in the context of art-
historical biography writing traditions being employed in the comic medium.
The two-episode series “The Story of Painting” (Treasure Chest of Fun and
Fact Vol. 3, No. 13–14, February–March 1949) is remarkable, featuring sev-
eral canonical painters and citing numerous anecdotes already found in the
writings of Pliny, Vasari and van Mander. The 12-page narrative briefly dis-
cusses the origins of painting before featuring anecdotes about artists, such as
Apollodorus, Zeuxis, and Apelles. Nevertheless, the story confuses the anec-
dote about Zeuxis painting grapes.
The story runs that Parrhasios and Zeuxis entered into a competition, Zeuxis
exhibited a picture of some grapes, so true that birds flew up to the wall of the
stage […] After this we learn that Zeuxis painted a boy carrying grapes, and when
the birds flew down to settle on them, he was vexed with his own work. (Pliny
1968, pp. 110–1)
However, the comic strip credits Apollodorus with painting the fruits, while
Zeuxis is depicted dying from laughter, looking at one of his works.7 A scene
showing Apelles discussing with Alexander the Great an equestrian portrait and
letting the horse judge its quality is a combination of several anecdotes.
The charm of his [Apelles’] manner had won him the regard of Alexander the
Great, who was a frequent visitor to the studio … but when the king happened
to discourse at length in the studio upon things he knew nothing about, Apelles
would pleasantly advise him to be silent …It were vain to enumerate the number
of times he painted Alexander and Philip …A horse also exists, or did exist,
painted for a competition, … when he saw that his rivals were likely to be placed
above him through intrigue, he caused some horses to be brought in and showed
them each picture in turn; they neighed only at the horse of Apelles …He also
painted … a portrait of Antigonos in amour advancing with his horse. (Pliny
1968, pp. 124–5, 128–31)
After a discussion of Medieval painting, the section on the Renaissance fea-

tures further anecdotes. For example, Giotto di Bondone is depicted painting
a kneeling man drinking water who appears remarkably lifelike, constituting a
new artistic quality and authenticity, and drawing a perfect circle without using
a compass. Vasari described both episodes in almost identical wording:
And among these scenes, an especially beautiful one concerns a thirsty man whose
desire to drink is clearly evident and who drinks from a spring kneeling down
upon the ground with such great and truly marvellous emotion that it almost
seems as if he is a real person drinking …Giotto …took a sheet of paper and a
brush dipped in red, pressed his arm to the side to make a compass of it, and with
22 T. J. YU-KIENER
a turn of his hand made a circle so even in its shape and outline that it was a mar-
vel to behold. (1998, pp. 19, 22)
The narrative then traces the evolution of Renaissance painting before sin-
gling out Michelangelo Buonarotti as particularly important, showing the art-
ist working on the Sistine Chapel, designing the scaffolding and a unique hat
allowing him to work at night. Once again, Vasari seems to have inspired
the scenes:
And so Michelangelo ordered scaffolding built on poles which did not touch the
wall, the method for fitting out vaults he later taught to Bramante and oth-
ers …His sobriety made him very restless and he rarely slept, and very often dur-
ing the night he would rise, being unable to sleep, and would work with his
chisel, having fashioned a helmet made of pasteboard holding a candle over the
middle of his head which shed light where he was working without tying his
hands. (1998, pp. 439–40, 475)
Briefly mentioning Leonardo da Vinci, the narrative also features an anec-

dote about the Van Eyck brothers inventing oil painting (Fig. 2), told by Carel
van Mander with remarkably similar wording:
Johannes [Jan van Eyck] had painted a panel on which he had spent much time …
he varnished the finished panel … and placed it in the sunlight to dry. The parts
of the panel may not have been joined or glued sufficiently, or the heat of the sun
may have been too strong; the panel burst at the joints and fell apart. Johannes …
took a resolve that the sun should not damage his work ever again […] He had
already examined many oils and other similar materials supplied by nature, and
had found that that linseed oil and nut oil had the best drying ability of them all
Fig. 2 [Uncredited] (a & w). “The Story of Painting [2]”. Treasure Chest of Fun and
Fact Vol. 4, No. 14 (March 1949), Geo. A. Pflaum Publisher Inc., p. 13, Jan van Eyck
invents oil painting
[…] So Johannes found, after many experiments, that colors mixed with these
oils could be handled easily, that they dried well, became hard, and, once dry,
could resist water. (1969, p.5)
In its summarising verdict, “The Story of Painting” (1949) closely follows

Vasari in arguing that Giotto di Bondone and Michelangelo Buonarotti deserve
extra remembering for their extraordinary artistic achievements.
This first corpus shows that the comic strips of the 1940s featuring canonical
artists continued multiple established art-historical traditions of the artist’s
biographies. In portraying confirmed members of the Western artistic canon,
the narratives strengthened and enforced the canonical status of those artists
and their artworks, creating canonical feedback loops. Frequently, the comic
strips use the anecdote as a narrative device, while often strikingly similarly
worded episodes indicate Pliny, Vasari and van Mander as the sources. However,
limitations regarding length, complexity, and artistic quality, with the drawings
lacking depth and details and poor-quality printing, prevented these early bio-
graphical comic strips from employing the life-and-work model.
The popularity of Renaissance artists reveals the influence of twentieth-
century art-historical perceptions on the artist’s biography comic genre during
the 1940s. The graphic narratives about Leonardo da Vinci demonstrate how
anecdotes from the artist’s life, many inspired by Vasari’s Lives, have turned
into several genre-specific tropes.
Corpus II: Biographical Graphic Novels of the 2010s

After its establishment in the 1940s in educational US youth magazines, the
artist’s biography comic genre evolved throughout the second half of the twen-
tieth century, incorporating longer and more complex narratives, often no lon-
ger suitable for juveniles due to explicit content. At the beginning of the
twenty-first century, another publishing boom began, comprising at least 200
biographical graphic novels about canonical visual artists, released between
2000 and 2019.8 Two such publications, Dalí (2012) by French comic artist
Edmond Baudoin and Rembrandt (2013) by Dutch illustrator Typex
(Raymond Koot), are chosen to demonstrate the continuous use of art-
historical life-writing traditions in contemporary comic production and the
prevailing of genre-specific tropes. However, the narratives’ length and com-
plexity aim for a more mature readership than their 1940s predecessors and
allow for a more in-depth, personal and critical engagement with the artists and
their works, and the use of the life-and-work model.
In 2012 the Centre Pompidou in Paris commissioned the seasoned graphic
novelist Edmond Baudoin to create a graphic novel about the Spanish Surrealist
Salvador Dalí. The 136-page narrative about the artist’s life and art took only
18 months to complete and features a 20-page appendix including a biography
and bibliography. In its approach, Dalí is very similar to an art-historical artist’s
monograph, covering the individual’s entire life, employing the life-and-work
24 T. J. YU-KIENER
model and creating a list of the most famous artworks. Also, it relies on tradi-
tional anecdotes to trace the artist’s life, including his training, and the creation
of artworks. For example, Dalí befriends the Surrealist Federico Garcia Lorca
and Luis Buñuel in Madrid, with the three being in almost constant competi-
tion (Baudoin 2012, pp. 45–46). Also, he becomes increasingly eccentric due
to his growing fame and wealth, leading to substantial conflicts with his clients,
such as the New York department store Bonwit Teller (Baudoin 2012,
pp. 87–88). Pliny already recorded the eccentricity of Zeuxis and Parrhasios
(1968, pp. 106–107, 114–115), as Vasari did for Leonardo da Vinci and
Michelangelo Buonarotti (1998, pp. 288, 296, 427, 438, 466). Also, the
theme of the uncompromising artist who has conflicts with (potential) clients
has a long tradition.
Furthermore, Dalí contains several genre-specific tropes of artist’s biogra-
phy comics. For example, showing Dalí drawing and painting at a very young
age constitutes the trope of artistic destiny (Baudoin 2012, pp. 32, 37). Dalí
also features the trope of a powerful client in a commission by Pope Pius XII
(Baudoin 2012, p. 114). Unsurprisingly, the graphic novel depicts Dalí
obsessed with his art and his wife Gala, and himself and his own immortality
(Baudoin 2012, pp. 75, 115, 118–119). Taking personal, artistic, and financial
risks to pursue various obsessions is another trope featured in Dalí (Baudoin
2012, p. 88, 125).
The narrative establishes an emotional link between the artist’s life and
work, following the life-and-work model of the artist’s monograph. Indeed, as
Dalí’s art was autobiographical, the approach seems only natural. For example,
after falling out with his sister Anna Maria due to her book on their shared
childhood, Dalí painted Young Virgin Auto-Sodomized by the Horns of Her Own
Chastity (1954) and disowned her (Baudoin 2012, p. 116–117). Also, the
graphic novel first explains Dalí’s symbolism behind the crutches, the tower,
and more (Baudoin 2012, pp. 26–37, 100). It then refers back to them
throughout the narrative, presenting the artworks as expressions of crucial
emotional and psychological topics in the artist’s life. Finally, in its entirety, the
graphic novel introduces and discusses a large proportion of the artist’s oeuvre,
listing the works in the appendix and mirroring a traditional artist’s monograph.
The life-and-work model, an essential narrative device of traditional art-
historical biographies, links an artist’s story and artistic output on an emotional
level. Baudoin uses the principle, “reverse-engineering” Dalí’s famous
paranoiac-critical method: The Spanish Surrealist based his artworks on his
dreams, interpreting the latter with the former. Baudoin turns the process
around, trying to guess, illustrate, and interpret Dalí’s original dreams that had
inspired the paintings, calling it “the paranoiac-critical method of [Dalí’s]
paranoiac-critical method” (2017). This approach resembles the core idea of
the life-and-work model, trying to understand an artist through their artworks
and comprehending the latter by knowing the former. Further, in showing
Salvador Dalí placing himself in the lineage of canonical painters (Fig. 3), Dalí
visualises an essential element of the canon of Art History: referring to
canonical predecessors and their art, trying to gain status as their canonical
successor.
In contrast to traditional art-historical writings, Baudoin inserts himself into
his narrative in an autobiographical manner. First, he tries to keep his distance,
using proxy narrators. However, later, Baudoin shows himself working on and
narrating Dalí, talking to a fictional character, comparing his and Dalí’s life,
and explaining his approaches. The use of several parallel voices, narrating dif-
fering aspects of Dalí’s story simultaneously, constitutes another difference to
Art History’s biographical traditions.
The second example of this corpus was commissioned by the national
museum of the Netherlands, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, asking Typex to
Fig. 3 Edmond Baudoin, Dalí (2012), SelfMadeHero, p. 108, Salvador Dalí inspired
by and as successor of Jan Vermeer, Diego Velázquez, and Jan van Eyck
26 T. J. YU-KIENER
create a graphic novel about the Old Master Rembrandt Harmenszoon van
Rijn, whose artworks are the highlights of the museum. In April 2013, the
massive 238-page semi-fictional graphic novel Rembrandt was published. Each
of the 11 chapters is named after either a person (Elsje, Jan, Saskia, Geertje,
Hendrickje, Cornelia, Titus, Rembrandt) or an animal (Hansken, Conus
Marmoreus, Rattus Rattus) significant for the respective episode and to
Rembrandt, examining a close relationship or a critical moment in the artist’s
life. The narrative omits the artist’s childhood almost entirely, diverging from
the traditional art-historical biographical model.
On the one hand, the book is essentially an anthology of anecdotal episodes
grouped into chapters. On the other hand, the narrative features several tradi-
tional anecdotes from art-historical biographies and contains multiple genre-
specific tropes of the artist’s biography comic. For example, the motif of
competing artists features more than once. Rembrandt’s rivalry with his life-
long artist-friend Jan Lievens and his apprentice Govert Flinck is depicted, with
Flinck fooling his master by painting a guilder on the floor that the latter
attempts to pick up (Typex 2013, pp. 57, 91)—which is obviously reminiscent
of Zeuxis attempting to pull aside a curtain painted by Parrhasios (Pliny 1968,
pp. 110–111). Further, when Rembrandt continues working rather than drink-
ing with his friend Lievens, paints while his wife Saskia is dying, and does not
attend his long-term partner Hendrickje’s funeral, he is depicted as hermit-like
and obsessed with his art (Typex 2013, pp. 53, 92–93, 181). Typex’s portrays
Rembrandt as arrogant, eccentric, and stubborn, which leads the artist to take
significant personal and financial risks in declining profitable business opportu-
nities, rejecting work and losing (potential) commissions due to his temper
(Typex 2013, pp. 226–230). As mentioned above, such motifs have a long tra-
dition in artists’ biographies.
The graphic novel does not draw an emotional connection between the art-
ist’s personal story and creative output, avoiding the life-and-work model.
However, this was not the case during the research phase. Typex (2017) stud-
ied the numerous self-portraits in preparation for the commission, as “the only
way to get really close to Rembrandt is to look at his self-portraits”. Panel bor-
ders designed like mirror frames and a large actual mirror, featuring through-
out the book, are subtle reminders of the importance of self-portraits for
Typex’s understanding of Rembrandt as an artist and human being (Typex
2013, pp. 17, 94, 142–143, 160, 222, 237). This notion that understanding
an artist’s work equals understanding his personality and innermost feelings is
the quintessential idea of the life-and-work model but does not explicitly fea-
ture in the publication.
Typex shares with Vasari the utilisation of their own experiences as artists
when writing about a colleague. Identifying with his subjects, for Typex (2017)
“the life of an artist in Amsterdam” formed an autobiographical “starting
point”, while he also “was bankrupt just like Rembrandt” exclusively working
Rembrandt over three years. Besides, he included his family and friends when
the original characters’ appearance was not well enough known (Typex 2013,
pp. 25, 185, 198).
Naturally, there are differences to a traditional art-historical biography, with
the semi-fictional nature of the publication being the most obvious one.
Neither the museum nor the graphic novelist were aiming for an accurate
book. Consequently, Typex (2017) freely combines and rearranges various
events and dates from Rembrandt’s life, making the narrative paramount and
not wanting the “facts to get into the way of the story”. Another dissimilarity
is the focus on the role of the people around Rembrandt. In particular, women,
such as his wife Saskia, his long-term partner Hendrickje, and his daughter
Cornelia, receive considerable attention. Thus, the life of the Old Master is
being told through their eyes (Fig. 4).
The graphic novels of the 2010s, represented by Dalí (2012) and Rembrandt
(2013), make use of the life-and-work model, with the former linking the art-
ist’s emotional state and artistic output explicitly. However, both comic artists
used the life-and-work model for their research, trying to understand their
respective subjects through their art.
The two case studies feature many art-historical anecdotes, such as the com-
petition between artists, conflicts with clients, and eccentricity. In addition,
they employ several genre-specific tropes of the artist’s biography comic, such
as artistic destiny, powerful clients, obsession, and risk-taking, confirming the
tropes’ prevalence and importance.
Both graphic narratives draw from the established canon of Art History for
their subjects while contributing to the same canon in confirming and enforc-
ing Salvador Dalí and Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn’s canonical status
and the canon’s significance in general. Consequently, the biographical graphic
novels of the 2010s, just as the biographical comic strips of the 1940s, create
canonical feedback loops. Further, Dalí explicitly depicts the referencing of
canonical artists and their work to gain canonical status, a critical element of
the canon and its history. It creates a lineage of canonical, hence legitimate and
artistically valuable, artistic practice and practitioners, increasing the economic
value of predecessor and successor as well as their art.
Conclusion
The main aspects of biographical life-writings about artists, namely, the canon
of Art History, the anecdote, and the life-and-work model, have since 1942
found a new home in the artist’s biography comic genre. However, the 80-year-
old genre faces multiple challenges. It has somewhat emancipated itself from
the art-historical traditions but remains predominantly reliant on these norms.
Firstly, the portrayed artists still mirror established Art History in depicting
canonical white male artists and marginalising women and non-white artists.
Also, just like traditional art-historical writings, the graphic narratives create
canonical feedback loops.
28 T. J. YU-KIENER
Fig. 4 Typex, Rembrandt (2013), SelfMadeHero, p. 127, Hendrickje doing house-

hold chores and attending to Rembrandt’s sexual needs to facilitate his artistic work
Secondly, the graphic novels of the 2010s do attempt to take a new angle on
an individual but eventually fall back on established narrative devices already in
use for centuries, such as the anecdote and the life-and-work model. Further,
the genre-specific tropes, still in use in the twenty-first century, result from a
standardisation process during the 1940s, which relied on Renaissance authors
inspired by anecdotes from Antiquity. These first two points prove that
respective comic narratives have been following the same outdated patterns for
80 years, no longer befitting a twenty-first-century publication.
Thirdly, neither a straightforward art-historical text nor a clear-cut, purely
entertaining leisure reading, the genre is still searching for its place in the book
market. The former would require an academic level of research and execution,
including a bibliography and referencing. However, mainly considering a pub-
lication’s economics, the latter would oppose lengthy research periods and
higher printing costs due to appendices. Both examples from the 2010s are of
substantial length, with Dalí including a bibliography and a summarising biog-
raphy, and were commissioned by major art institutions. On the one hand, it
shows that graphic novelists engage in-depth with the portrayed artists for the
reader’s benefit. On the other hand, it proves that the art and museum field is
willing to engage with the medium and the genre. However, without support
from art museums, such comprehensive publications pose a financial risk for all
stakeholders. Simultaneously, if graphic novels about artists are bound to insti-
tutions often regarded as the guardians of Art History, they will remain tied to
art-historical traditions of biography writing.
The challenges faced by the artist’s biography comic genre boil down to the
simple questions, “What does it want to be?” and “Whom does it want to
talk to?”
However, the artist’s biography comic genre holds much potential as well.
In being intrinsically graphic, comics are possibly the most suitable medium to
talk about visual artists. Traditional art-historical writings attempt to describe
an artistic output in a literary medium, relying on verbal descriptions of art-
works or photographic reproduction, often standing separate from the text. In
contrast, graphic narratives offer a unique way to explore and explain an indi-
vidual’s artistic oeuvre in being able to depict it. Comics can show the various
steps in the creation of an artwork, and describe and interpret an artist’s life far
more immersive than purely literary approaches. Finally, as a popular medium,
graphic narratives can engage audiences otherwise not interested in visual art-
ists’ biographies and art-historical topics.
Nevertheless, possibly the genre’s most significant advantage lies in the fact
that it is not art-historical writing. Although it has been the case for 80 years,
there is no obligation to continue following the art-historical traditions and
using respective narrative devices. If the genre frees itself from these conven-
tions, it could advocate for a more inclusive art world. Indeed, it has already
started to do so as graphic novel biographies about comic artists, such as
Wilhelm Busch, Joe Shuster, Winsor McCay, and Shotaro Ishinomori (石ノ森
章太郎), treat their subjects just like canonical artists.9
Firstly, when no longer relying on the canon of Art History when choosing
a subject, biographical graphic novels can provide a stage for less well-known
or less established artists, including comic artists. Consequently, such publica-
tions would no longer create canonical feedback loops. On the contrary, they
would question, negate, and possibly correct the established canon, thus break-
ing the perpetual canonical confirmation cycle.
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elegant, and though smaller than the other two, yet sufficiently
spacious. It is of a circular form, supported by Corinthian pillars, and
prettily decorated. It is here, where are performed comic operas, and
little pieces, in which are blended dialogue and music. The singers
are very good, and the actors respectable. “Le Caliph de Bagdad,”
“la Maison à vendre,” and “la Folie,” are the performances, which
have attracted the greatest crowds this winter. Mademoiselle Phyllis
is the principal performer. She is a very pretty woman, with an
excellent voice, and an elegant person.
“Feydeau,” as it is commonly called, is much frequented by the
fashionables of Paris, and is by many preferred even to the larger
theatres. “Vaudeville” is an extremely pretty little theatre, where short
lively pieces are acted, enlivened with songs, all of which have an
epigrammatic turn. Celebrated authors, distinguished public
characters, and temporary occurrences, are often the subjects of
these pieces. The philosopher of “Ferney,” is well represented in one
of these called, “Voltaire,” as are, “Florian,” “Gesner,” “Scarron,” &c.
in the pieces called, by their respective names. When lord Cornwallis
honoured this little theatre with his presence, couplets were instantly
sung in celebration of the peace; and a farce has lately been acted
here, called, “le Peintre françois à Londres,” in which a very
handsome compliment is paid to the english character. Madame
Henry is the heroine of “Vaudeville.” She is a good actress, and one
of the most beautiful women I have yet seen in France.
“Le théâtre de Louvois,” is larger than “Vaudeville;” but smaller
than “Feydeau.” Here plays are acted mostly of two or three acts; but
they sometimes perform longer pieces. I saw at this house, a few
nights since, a comedy taken from Fielding’s Tom Jones. It was a
sentimental drama, and neither ill written, nor ill acted; but the
ridiculous use of the following expression, “Tom, mon cher Tom[46],”
in the midst of a very pathetic scene, had such an effect on my
muscles, that I could not recover my gravity for the rest of the
evening. Apropos; the french have a most extraordinary aptitude to
make mistakes in translating, and adopting our english appellations.
In a serious drama, or in a novel taken from our language, the
vulgarism of addressing a young lady, by the name of, “miss,” is
retained in french; and the absurd manner in which the word is
pronounced, united to the coarse familiarity of the expression, often
destroys the effect of the best imagined passages. In the same
manner, “Mrs.” instead of being translated “madame,” is written
“mistriss;” and if “a lord William,” or a “lord Charles” is mentioned, he
is sure to be called in the next page, “le chevalier baronet,” &c. A
respectable old steward receives the childish name of “Dick,” a
heroine is “miss Peggy,” and a renowned warrior, “sir Jack,” or
“admiral Billy.” I resume my subject. The actors of “Louvois,” are
tolerably good; the house is about the size of our little theatre in the
Hay market, and the pieces represented here are often entertaining.
“Le théâtre de la rue Favart,” to which “l’opera Buffa,” or the Italian
opera has lately removed from “la salle olympique,” is a handsome
building, the boxes of which are so far more lively than those of the
other theatres, that they are open. In most of the play-houses at
Paris, the boxes are separated by a partition on each side, like the
division of the private ones in London. This is not done at “Favart,”
and the effect is favourable to the appearance of the theatre; the
company not being concealed from view, as at the other
“spectacles.” Madame Bolla has lately made her appearance on this
stage, and has excited a considerable degree of public curiosity. She
is generally much admired; and when her name is announced, the
house is sure to be full. The music is excellent, the orchestra is well
chosen, and some of the actors are uncommonly good. The “opera
Buffa” is particularly patronized by madame Bonaparte, who has a
box here, and seldom fails to attend, when any favourite piece is
performed. The first consul is likewise said to be partial to this house.
Besides the six principal theatres, which I have already
enumerated, and which are not only the most frequented, but also
the most central, being all situate in, or near “la rue de la Loi;” there
are several others scattered about the town, which are full every
night. The buildings of many of them are pretty, and the acting far
from indifferent.
The “théâtre de Montansier,” in the Palais royal, is devoted to little
farces, and to that sort of comedy, which rather forces an involuntary
laugh, than claims a smile of serious approbation. The blunders of a
clownish servant, the tricks of Scapin, or the caricature of some
reigning fashion, and now and then a sentimental piece of one act,
(for “sentiment” is the order of the day, at Paris) constitute the kind of
amusement, usually offered at this house. At this theatre are lobbies,
or foyers as they are called, in which the ladies of the “Palais royal”
roam at large, as at Covent-garden and Drury-lane. On this account,
“Montansier” is not much frequented by women of character; though
now and then it is the fashion, even for the first females of the place
to make parties, and go there.
“Le théâtre de Molière,” as it was called, till last week, when it
assumed, I know not why, the name of “théâtre National et Étranger,”
is situate in “la rue St. Denys.” It is a very elegant little theatre, and
the backs of the boxes are covered with glass, by which means the
audience are reflected, and doubled on every side. I saw here, a few
evenings since, “le Lovelace Anglois, ou la Jeunesse de Richelieu,”
an excellent comedy, which, to my great surprise, was very well
performed by the actors of this house.
“L’Ambigu-comique,” at the most distant part of the Boulevard, not
far from the ci-devant Bastille, is much frequented, on account of its
splendid processions. A piece called, “le Jugement de Solomon,”
has been so extremely popular, as to render it very difficult to get a
seat, when it was performed. After several fruitless attempts, I
succeeded last night in gaining admittance; and I must confess, that
I was much disappointed. The theatre is little and dirty; and the stage
is too confined for the shows presented on it, to produce any effect.
“Le Jugement de Solomon,” notwithstanding its great celebrity,
seemed to me a very tiresome, dull, uninteresting piece of tawdry
parade.
“Le théâtre des jeunes Artistes,” is also on the Boulevard, very
near “l’Ambigu-comique.” “La salle,” or the hall, appropriated to the
purpose, though small, is neat and prettily decorated. Here I saw a
pantomime in five acts; the hero of which was the renowned “Puss in
Boots,” or “le Chat botté,” as he is called by the french. Need I add,
that I was completely ennuyé. The actors are really young beginners,
or “jeunes artistes;” and I fear, from the promising appearance of
three or four of the female performers, (none of whose ages
exceeded sixteen) that this theatre is a nursery for other places,
besides the play-houses.
“Le théâtre du Marais,” I have not yet visited; but I am told, that the
building is elegant. A detachment from the company, which I have
already mentioned as acting at “le théâtre de Molière,” performs at
this house.
There are likewise, “le théâtre de la Gaieté, rue Thionville,” “le
théâtre des jeunes Élèves,” et “le théâtre sans Pretension,” on the
Boulevard. I have not seen them; but I hear they are exactly on the
same plan, and in the same state as “le théâtre de l’Ambigu-
comique.”
Besides these numerous play-houses, there are several
exhibitions of horsemanship, on the plan of Astley; and there is
likewise a very curious optical deception, called, “la Phantasmagorie
de Robertson.” The latter is very well worth seeing. After viewing in
the outward room various electrical machines, mechanical
inventions, and other curiosities, you are led into a dark apartment,
in which the ghosts of distinguished characters are supposed to
appear. This is extremely well managed; and the principle of optical
deceptions is exemplified, and clearly explained. A man of the name
of Fitzjames also appears as a ventriloquist; and after he has thrown
his voice into different parts of the room, he declares, that the power
of doing so is not a natural gift, but simply a habit acquired, of
varying the sound of the voice. The same man gives a most
admirable imitation of the meeting of a jacobinical club; and in
hearing him, you really imagine, that the demagogues of those
bloody days are still haranguing with all the absurdity and madness,
which characterised them. In addition to the amusements which I
have specified, there are innumerable puppet-shows, théâtres de
société, mountebanks, tumblers, fights of wild beasts, jugglers, rope-
dancers, and quack-doctors.
Having given you this general sketch of the spectacles of Paris, I
shall, in my future letters, only mention such particular performances,
as by their merit or their popularity, may deserve your attention.
I am, &c.
LETTER XV.
The play of Henry IV, read by le Texier.
Paris, february 10, 1802 (21 pluviôse).
my dear sir,
I went this evening to hear le Texier, so well known in London, read
la Partie de Chasse de Henry IV. The reputation of the reader, and
the singularity of being present at the recital of a comedy in the
french republic; the fame of which formerly depended on the
attachment of the people to the cause of monarchy, and particularly
to the house of Bourbon, drew an unusual crowd, and I had great
difficulty in obtaining admittance. “La salle,” or hall of “le Brun,” in the
rue de Cléry, in which subscription concerts are usually performed,
was the place appropriated to this purpose; and though the room is
extremely large, it was soon filled in every corner. The benches were
in a few minutes occupied, and many persons were obliged to stand
during the whole performance. Le Texier, to my great astonishment,
appeared much confused. Though accustomed, for so many years,
to appear before the public, he had all the horrours of a young
beginner. I know not, whether his alarms arose from the numerous
audience which he saw collected, from any apprehension he might
entertain as to an interruption from the police, or from the criticisms
which he expected from the french, who, more conversant in the
language, in which he was about to read, than those to whom he
was used to address himself, might be less indulgent. From
whatever cause his fears arose they were very apparent. His hand
trembled, the sweat dropped from his brow, his voice faltered, and in
some scenes, he forgot material passages. It is unfair to pass any
judgment on a person so circumstanced, I shall therefore only
observe, that I saw with regret, that though much applauded, he was
but little admired. As to me, I have often been so highly amused and
delighted with his readings in England, that I was more than
commonly disappointed.
“La Partie de Chasse de Henry IV” seems to have lost none of its
popularity; for, notwithstanding the very imperfect manner in which it
was read, the most unbounded applauses testified the approbation
of the audience, at the recital of those passages, which were
formerly in the mouths of every one. A person unacquainted with
Paris, would have been apt to conclude, from what passed this
evening, that the french were all royalists. But it must be
remembered, that, in the first place, the greater part of those
assembled on this occasion, were drawn there by their particular
sentiments; secondly, that any thing new, no matter what, is sure to
be well received; and lastly, that Henry the IVth, besides being the
favourite of the ladies of all parties, was at the beginning of the
revolution considered as a kind of popular character, whom even the
most violent democrats held up to public admiration. He was likewise
a military hero; and, after all, there is nothing so much esteemed in
France, as martial merit. Perhaps it was this part of his character,
which induced general Moreau to attend the reading of a play, of
which so renowned a warrior was the subject.
This celebrated general sat in the gallery, with a lady of
considerable talents, in whose company I afterwards supped. The
lady in question entertained the company, with a lively account of the
bon mots, brilliant thoughts, and happy expressions of her warlike
companion; but as madame is particularly famed for the richness of
her fancy; and as, notwithstanding his decided merit as a soldier, no
one ever before heard of the conversation talents of Moreau: it was
universally allowed, that the general was not a little indebted for his
favourable testimony to the imagination of his fair reporter.
To return to le Texier. His play concluded without any interruption;
and though the words “vive le roi” were omitted, the song of “vive
Henry IV” was repeated and received with enthusiasm, by the
audience.
Adieu. How strange a nation are the french! the more I see of
them, the more I find it difficult to discover their real sentiments. I am
rather inclined to think, that they have no decided political opinions at
all; and that their passions, the fashion of the day, or the accidental
humour of the moment, make them at one time stern and visionary
republicans; then hot headed royalists; and at another, quiet,
submissive, unreflecting tools of the ruling power, whatever it may
be. But I must not allow myself to enter on such topics: I therefore
take my leave, and bid you, for the present,
Adieu.
LETTER XVI.
Party at a fournisseur’s.—Ball at a ci-devant noble’s.
Paris, february the 15th, 1802 (25 pluviôse).
my dear sir,
I received an invitation to spend yesterday evening at the house of
an individual, who is supposed to have made a very large fortune as
a “fournisseur,” or army contractor; and whose wife is one of the
“élégantes” of the new set. I send you, therefore, a faithful account,
as descriptive of that class of society, to which the name of “les
nouveaux riches” is given.
A handsome porte cochére[47] led to a well lighted and elegant
stair case, by which we approached the salon; where madame ⸺,
and some friends who had dined with her, were seated. As, among
the very few houses at which I visit at Paris, the greater part are of
“l’ancien régime,” I have become so accustomed to dark rooms, old
furniture, and dismal hangings, that I was quite astonished at the
splendour of the apartment, into which I was now ushered. An
elegant girandole of cut glass, made with the greatest taste, and
filled with innumerable wax lights, gave such a lively appearance to
the room, that, for a few moments, I supposed myself in London. The
chairs were made with classical propriety in antique shapes, and the
colours were well assorted. The carpet (a luxury not often met with in
this town) was of the finest Brussels manufactory; and the walls were
ornamented with designs on the plan of “Echart.” We were received
with much politeness by the lady of the house, who is a beautiful
woman, and who, whatever her original situation may have been, is
at present graceful in her manner, highly accomplished, and well
acquainted with the literature of her own country.
Monsieur was neither very handsome, nor particularly brilliant;
but he was very civil, and took no little pride in showing us the suite
of rooms which adjoined to the salon, and which were all, like the
latter, splendidly lighted.
The apartment next to that in which we were received, was
covered with pictures representing a naval engagement; and the
inscription underneath proved, that they had belonged to the
unfortunate Louis XVI. A large claw table was placed in the centre of
the room; and our host, though a good republican, forgot not to
inform us, that it had cost him a large sum of money; having been
taken from the Thuilleries, where it had long been in the use of Marie
Antoinette. Next to this was the bed-room, which was particularly
splendid. The canopy of India muslin, so fine that it appeared like a
net, to which was added a rich embroidery of gold. The stand of this
elegant couch was of mahogany, ornamented with antique figures
correctly carved. The boudoir, which adjoined, almost, exceeded in
luxury that of madame ⸺, already described in a former letter. The
sofa was of crimson velvet, edged with silver; and the sides and top
of this little bijou were entirely covered with the finest mirrors.
Beyond the boudoir was another bed-room, furnished in a different
manner, but with equal taste and equal extravagance. The party
consisted of five or six ladies, who were, perhaps, more expensively,
than correctly dressed, of two of the ministers, and of some
foreigners of distinction. A musician of eminence performed on the
harpsichord; and accompanied madame ⸺ and one of her friends,
who both sung very prettily.
The evening would have been pleasant, had there not been a
degree of form, which to me was not a little annoying. About twelve
o’clock supper was announced; which was served on the ground
floor, in a small salle à manger, which was also elegantly furnished.
The supper was good, and the servants who waited were attentive.
I saw, this evening, for the first time, general Berthier. He is a little
man, plainly dressed, with cropped hair. His countenance is
expressive, when he speaks; but his figure is diminutive, and his
appearance by no means military. He is extremely polite,
gentlemanly, and affable. I am told, he is by birth “gentil homme;”
and by his manner it is easy to see, that he must have passed the
early part of his life in good company.
After giving you this account of a party at one of the new houses,
you will, perhaps, not be displeased, if I conclude my letter with a
short description of a ball given by a person, formerly of very high
rank, and still of considerable fortune.
The antichamber, through which it is always necessary to pass at
a french assembly, is rather a disgusting sight. The servants,
differently occupied, some playing cards, some sleeping, and others
criticising the dress of those who pass by them, do not attempt to
rise, and even those of the house seldom give themselves the
trouble of moving, at the arrival of their master’s guests. If the valet
de chambre is near, the company are announced; if otherwise, they
are allowed to find their way to the apartment of those whom they
are visiting. At the ball, of which I am now speaking, in addition to the
antichamber devoted to the use I have mentioned, the second
drawing room was filled with filles de chambre, milliners, and
mantuamakers, whom the good nature of our hostess permitted to sit
there, that they might view the dancing, and learn the fashions. I
observed, that several of these soubrettes did not direct their
attention solely to the female part of the company.
After passing through these rooms, we found ourselves at last in
the salon, which was extremely well lighted with patent lamps. These
are much used at Paris, and almost generally substituted for wax.
The oil used here is less offensive than that which is bought in
London; and, when a sufficient number of reflectors are placed about
a room (which is not very commonly the case) it becomes very
brilliant; but the heat is always oppressive.
The company assembled on this occasion were all of the old
noblesse; and no nouveau riche, no person connected with the
government, and very few foreigners, were permitted to contaminate
this quintessence of “bonne compagnie.” I perceived many of those
faces which I had remembered in London among the emigrés of
distinction; and the lady of the house did not forget to enumerate the
families of dukes, comtes, marquis, marechals, &c. which formed her
society. It is but justice to this class of company, to observe, that the
ladies (whether from a natural sense of propriety, from habits
contracted during their residence in foreign countries, or from the
wish of distinguishing themselves from their plebeian fellow citizens,
I shall not pretend to inquire) are infinitely more correct in their dress,
than those of any other set at Paris. I saw here several elegant
women, who were tasteful, without being indecent; and though,
perhaps, a hundred persons were assembled (which is considered a
very large party in this town) there was only one female present, of
whom it could be said, that she was too liberal in the display of her
charms; and she was the subject of general conversation, and
general censure.
The ball began with two cotillons, or french country dances, which
were very gracefully performed by eight gentlemen and ladies, who
vied with each other in skill and activity. The rest of the company
were seated on benches, which were placed in gradations against
the wall. A walse was then played; about fifteen couple stood up;
and the gentlemen, placing their arms round the waists of their
partners, moved round the room in a circle, while the young men not
so employed formed a group, and filled the centre. The air
appropriate to this dance is extremely pretty, and the figures of the
ladies are seen to great advantage. Yet, notwithstanding the quiet,
respectful manner of the parisians, I must still continue of the opinion
of Werter; that no modest woman ought to dance the walse, unless
her partner be either her husband or her brother.
After a short interval, I perceived a string of young men crowding
together, and forming a line. I learnt with surprise, that this was the
preparation for an english dance; and that the gentlemen were taking
places for their partners. Though gallantry is, I suppose, the cause of
this mode of determining precedency, it is extremely dangerous; and
the ladies of Paris ought, like our fair country women, to take the
trouble of arranging, themselves, so important a question. One or
two duels have already taken place, this winter, owing to the
disputes occasioned by the zeal with which these “preux chevaliers”
contended for the honours of priority; and the evil will daily increase,
if this manner of taking places be continued.
Walses and cotillons succeeded alternately, for the rest of the
evening. About two o’clock in the morning, supper was announced.
The table, not being large enough to afford seats for all the company,
was solely occupied by the ladies. The entertainment consisted of
soups, hot dishes, légumes, fruit, and pastry; after which, as a
remove, two large plates, one of turbot, and one of salmon, made
their appearance. These, to an english eye, seemed very singular;
but I hear, all good french suppers conclude with fish.
After supper, the ball recommenced, and continued till six in the
morning. On summing up the occurrences of the evening, I
remarked, that, though the women were handsome, the company
elegant in their dress, and genteel in their manner; though the music
was admirable, and the refreshments plentiful and good; yet there
was something wanting; I mean that gaiety of heart, and that flow of
spirits, which, according to all accounts, the french formerly
possessed.
The ladies danced to perfection; but they seemed to do so rather
for triumph than amusement; and any stranger, coming suddenly into
the room, would have supposed, that he saw before him the élèves
of the opera house, not the daughters of the proud noblesse.
Dancing is, indeed, more a science than an entertainment, at Paris;
and while those who were engaged seemed to study every step, and
to make all their motions by rule, the by-standers looked on, and
criticised with the same professional attention. There was little or no
conversation: the loud laugh, involuntary tribute of joy, was not
heard; nor the innocent prattle of unsuspecting, happy youth. I know
not whether this total change of character is to be attributed to the
heavy misfortunes which the higher classes have experienced, or to
some other cause; but certainly nothing is more obsolete than french
vivacity. I have now passed more than three months in Paris; and
have not yet seen among its inhabitants[48], one instance of
unbounded mirth. When it happens to me to be in english, american,
or other foreign companies, I am always surprised at the fun and
jollity of the persons around me.
Before I conclude my letter, I ought, perhaps, to mention, that I
saw, at this party, the celebrated Kosciusco, whose heroic exertions
in the cause of polish liberty have rendered him so justly celebrated.
I am happy to say, that he is perfectly recovered from his wound, and
that he has no longer any marks of lameness. He is not now in the
vigour or the bloom of youth; but his eye is finely expressive. I am
sure, Lavater, in seeing it, would have said, “That eye is the eye of a
poet, a genius, or a patriot.” I had not the pleasure of being
introduced to him, and can therefore only speak to you of his
exterior.
I am, &c.
LETTER XVII.
A play acted for the first time, called “Edouard en Ecosse,” the hero of
which was the english pretender, full of royalist sentiments, performed
twice, and highly applauded; “God save the King,” played on the
French stage; plot of the play, which was forbidden on the third day.
Paris, feb. 21, 1802 (2 ventose.)
my dear sir,
I went three evenings ago to see the first representation of a new
play, called “Edouard en Ecosse[49].” The subject was of course the
arrival in the isle of Sky of the english pretender, and his escape
thence. The applications which were likely to be made to the present
situation of France, drew an immense crowd. I went early to “le
théâtre françois,” and was fortunate enough to obtain a seat. If
before the curtain drew up I was struck with the singularity of my
situation as a british subject, about to see on the stage of the French
Republic a play founded on such a topic, my surprise increased
when the performance began. I soon perceived that the whole merit
of the piece depended on the interest which an unfortunate prince,
banished from the throne of his ancestors, was calculated to produce
on the minds of the audience; and if such was the design of the
author, he was more than commonly successful. The passages in
favour of royalty, and particularly those which expressed pity for the
proscribed, were applauded with inexpressible warmth. The dialogue
was well written, and so artfully worded, that it was difficult for any
man, whatever his political sentiments might be, not to join in
commiserating the fate of Edward. The story was simple, and as well
as I can trace it from memory, I will give it to you.
The young pretender, after being defeated by his enemies, and
abandoned by his friends, takes refuge, disguised as a peasant, in
the isle of Sky. Having passed three days without food, he is driven
by want into a house, the door of which he finds open. Here
exhausted with fatigue and hunger, he falls asleep. In this situation
he is discovered by lady Athol, (the mistress of the mansion) wife of
the governor of the island, and the particular favourite of king
George. He wakes, and, after an interesting dialogue, confesses
who he is. He then asks of lady Athol “a little bread for the son of him
who once was her sovereign.” Long divided between the sentiments
of humanity and those of duty and gratitude, lady Athol cannot resist
this last pathetic appeal, and having supplied him with some
refreshment, she determines to protect him. In the midst of this
scene Argyle, who is commissioned by the british government to
take the pretender, arrives, and seeing Edward, expresses some
suspicion. To remove this, lady Athol, with that presence of mind
which women often possess on such trying occasions, declares, that
the person he now sees in the dress of a peasant is her husband,
Lord Athol, (whom Argyle had never seen) and who, having been
shipwrecked, was just arrived in this pitiful plight. Argyle believes the
story, and having paid his compliments to the supposed governor,
leaves him to take that repose, of which he concludes he must stand
in need, after the accident which he had experienced.
Edward afterwards appears in the dress of lord Athol, and in that
character is obliged to preside at a supper, to which Argyle and
some other english officers had been previously invited. One of the
latter, a violent partisan and rough soldier, proposes, as a toast,
“death to all the enemies of George.” Edward, after a violent
struggle, throws down his glass, and rising from the table, exclaims,
“I will not drink the death of any man.”
After this scene, which was rendered very interesting to the
English, by our “God save the king” being played on the french
stage, and to the whole audience by the last phrase, which was
received with unbounded applause, the real lord Athol arrives. In this
dilemma the courage of lady Athol does not desert her. She makes
signs to her husband, who discovers the truth, and recollecting that
Edward had once saved his life at Rome from the hand of an
assassin, he determines to rescue him from the danger of his
present situation. He accordingly pretends to confess to Argyle, that
in assuming the name of Athol, he (Athol) had deceived him, and
that he is the pretender after whom he is seeking. In this character,
therefore, Athol is arrested, and in the mean time Edward, conducted
by the faithful steward of lady Athol, makes his escape in a boat. The
whole then is disclosed, and on the arrival of the duke of
Cumberland, Athol is pardoned for this pious fraud, the duke
declaring that he is convinced that the king himself, would, under
similar circumstances, have acted in the same manner.
There is a kind of counterplot or episode, in which the celebrated
miss Murray appears as the sister of Athol, but her character is not
material to the general story of the play. Argyle, who is in love with
her, asks her of her Edward (while he appears as Lord Athol) and
this puts him into another dilemma, from which he is also saved by
the presence of mind of lady Athol. Mademoiselle Contat played lady
Athol most admirably, and the part of Edward was performed in a
very interesting and natural manner by St. Fall, who rose infinitely
above himself in the character assigned him.
From this imperfect account you will at least be able to observe
what occasions were given both in the scenes and in the dialogue,
for such applications, as the friends of royalty took care to make, and
which were applauded with a degree of ardour, which I never saw
equalled either in England or France.
What a strange people are the French? Do I see the same nation
who put Louis XVI to death, and who have, with such daring
courage, opposed the return of the house of Bourbon, shed tears at
a similar story, and enthusiastically support the sentiments of this
play, founded not only on an attachment to monarchy, but on
principles of indefeasible right? Again, do I see the same people,
who a few years back permitted their best and worthiest citizens,
however guiltless, to fall in crowds under the axe of the guillotine,
and at the nod of a contemptible petty tyrant; I say, do I see the
same people commiserate the sufferings of an abdicated prince, and
loudly applaud a sentiment which justly declares, that to wish the
death of any one is a base, an unmanly, and an unnatural action?
But I am going out of my element. I return to the play. It was received
with more and more admiration at every line, and when the curtain at
last dropped, the applause increased, and continued for several
minutes uninterruptedly.
The author was called for, and proved to be one of the actors of
the house, who, as if inconsistencies of all kinds were to be
reconciled on this occasion, was formerly a violent jacobin.
The play was acted a second night, with the omission of “God
save the king,” and the sentiment about the toast; and to day it is at
last forbidden.
The royalists are excessively irritated at the prohibition, but how
was it possible to suffer in a republic a performance, every word of
which expressed respect for royalty, and pity for a proscribed family?
In England, where, thank God! liberty is less shackled than in this
country, and where our ideas of government are more fixed, should
we suffer on our stage a play which recommended republican
doctrines? The answer is plain. I believe this is the right way of
judging every question. Viewing it in this light, I think, that if the
consuls had any fault, it was in suffering “Edward” to be acted. In
stopping it they have only done their duty.
I am, &c.
LETTER XVIII.
The carnival.—Masks in all the streets.—Account of the different
characters, processions, &c.—Masqued ball at the opera house.
Paris, february the 25th, 1802 (6 ventose).
my dear sir,
The streets of Paris have, since sunday last, exhibited a very
singular appearance to the eye of an englishman. The carnival is
now begun; and the people, being permitted by the present
government to return to all their old habits, are celebrating this
season of the year with that gayety, whim, and eccentricity, which it
has long been a kind of religious duty, in catholic countries, to
display on such occasions. From six in the morning till midnight, the
principal streets are crowded with masks of every description; and
while a certain number are contented with exhibiting their fun and
their dresses on foot, others are mounted on horses, attended by
servants, also in costume, and some are seated in carriages of every
description. In short, Paris has been one continued scene of jubilee,
and it is difficult to pass through the principal avenues of the town,
on account of the vast crowds of singular figures, who press forward
on every side, and arrest the attention of spectators. Harlequins,
Columbines, beaux, abbés, lawyers, and monks, present themselves
every where; and while they circulate in detached parties,
mamalukes, turks, and indian savages, correctly dressed, well
mounted, and attended with bands of music, move in numerous
bodies. These, and motley groups of masks of all kinds, filling the
inside, top, and every part of hackney coaches, landaus, sociables,
curricles, cabriolets, and german waggons, form lengthened
processions on the Boulevard, in the rue St. Honoré, and in the
neighbourhood of the Palais royal; while the latter, the Thuilleries,
and Champs Elisées, are filled with pedestrian and motley coloured
wits, who, attacking each other with poissard eloquence, amuse not
a little the surrounding multitude.
It is difficult to convey an idea of the show, variety, and eccentricity
of the dresses. In the extraordinary processions, which I have
already mentioned, several handsome carriages were employed,
drawn very frequently by four, sometimes by six, and, in more
instances than one, by eight horses. Caricatures of all sorts were
exhibited; and it was curious to see the costumes of friars, nuns, full
dressed marquis, powdered abbés, and mitred prelates, appearing
as masquerade disguises in those streets, where, twelve years
before, the same dresses excited the serious respect of every one.
The people showed considerable fun in many of the grotesque
figures which they assumed; and I was particularly pleased with a
fellow, who, imitating our english print, was dressed as a monk, and
literally carried on his back a young girl enclosed in a truss of straw,
with these words written on his burden, “Provision pour le
convent[50].” Besides innumerable Eves, beautiful Venusses, and
handsome legged damsels, dressed as boys, Diana had many a fair
representative, clad in flesh coloured pantaloons, and gracefully
perched on the edge of a coach box, embracing with one arm a
Hercules, and with the other an Adonis. I think you will admire, as I
did, the admirable choice of such a dress, and such a posture, for
the goddess of Modesty. The moral conduct of each lady was,
doubtless, not less appropriate than her outward appearance to the
character which she assumed.
This amusement has already continued some days, and will, I am
told, last at least ten more. It is difficult to ascertain how the body of
the people, who alone take part in these sports, can support both,
the loss of time, and the expense which the dresses, carriages, &c.
must necessarily occasion. It is indeed reported, that the government
pays the whole cost, and that the principal characters are hired to
amuse the mob; but a respectable gentleman, who was intimately
connected with the minister of police under the old régime, assures
me, that the same thing was said at that time; and that nothing was
more false, though the masks were then as splendid and as
numerous as they are at present. I believe, the truth is simply this,
that the french are so fond of pleasure, of amusement, and
spectacles of all kinds, that there is no sacrifice which they will not
endure, in order to be able to indulge this favourite passion. A
parisian will dine for six days on a sallad, that he may go on the
seventh to a ball or a play; and I have no doubt that the emperors,
caliphs, and janissaries, whom I have seen to day in such oriental
splendour, have many of them still, like good christians, begun to
mortify the flesh, even before the commencement of Lent. This
necessary sobriety, united to the regulations of the police, which are
admirable, prevents any disorder or riots in the streets; and
notwithstanding the swarms of idle masqueraders, who wander at
present about this great city, I have not yet heard of a single
accident, or of the slightest disturbance.
The carnival is celebrated in the same manner by the higher
classes in the evening; and there is a masquerade every night at the
opera house. I went there yesterday, and observed more gayety
among the persons assembled, than I have yet seen in France. The
pit being joined to the stage, gave a large space, which was entirely
filled. The gentlemen do not usually wear masks, and their persons
are only covered with a domino. It is one of the privileges of the
ladies to conceal their faces, and to attack, without being known, the
beaux of their acquaintance. This custom takes from the splendour
of the masquerade, as very few persons are fancifully dressed, and
almost all are occupied in seeking adventures. Nor was the
conversation livelier than on such occasions in England: the small
number of individuals who pretended to assume characters, trusted
to their dresses, rather than their wit, for the support of their parts.
There were “english jockies,” who had never heard of Newmarket,
and who could speak no language but the french; haughty dons, who
could not answer a question in Spanish; actors, who could not repeat
a single line either of Racine, Corneille, or Voltaire; beys of Egypt,
who knew not the course of the Nile; grand signors, who heard, for
the first time, that wine was forbidden by the Koran; and monks, who
did not know to what order they belonged. Yet, notwithstanding these
little defects, the evening was lively; and though there was no form,
there was no disturbance.

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Seeing Comics through Art History:

Alternative Approaches to the Form

Comics and Modernism: History, Form, and Culture (Tom

Art History for Comics: Past, Present and Potential

The Art of Love Poetry 1st Edition Erik Gray

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More information about this series at

Seeing Comics through

ISSN 2634-6370 ISSN 2634-6389 (electronic)

Cover illustration: Mark Beyer’s Duck-Rabbit / John Miers

Ways of Seeing Comics: Art-Historical Approaches to the Form 1

Part I Old Skool Art History 11

Part II Perception, Reception and Meaning 73

Psychologies of Perception: Stories of Depiction 75

Part III The New and Newer Art Histories 161

Real Queer Bodies: Visual Weight and Imagined Gravity in Sport

Part IV Comics for/Beyond Art History 223

VAST/O Exhibition (De)Construction: Exploring the Potentials of

Maaheen Ahmed is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at Ghent

Małgorzata Olsza is an assistant professor at the Department of American

The Lives of the Artists

 onnoisseurship, Attribution, and Comic Strip Art: The Case

Reading Comics with Aby Warburg: Collaging Memories

Fig. 2 Excerpts from the shadow theatre performance with an incredulous

Psychologies of Perception: Stories of Depiction

 esthetics of Reception: Uncovering the Modes

 eading Richard Felton Outcault’s “Yellow Kid” Through

 olour in Comics: Reading Lorenzo Mattotti Through the Lens

 eminist Art History as an Approach to Research on Comics: Meta

 owards Feminist Comics Studies: Feminist Art History

 eal Queer Bodies: Visual Weight and Imagined

 frofuturism and Animism as Method: Art History

 hat Is an Image? Art History, Visual Culture Studies,

 AST/O Exhibition (De)Construction: Exploring the Potentials

 rom Tableau to Sequence: Introducing Comics Theory Within

Maggie Gray and Ian Horton

Keywords Art-historical methodologies • Comics Studies and Art History •

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

life-and-work model. Michael Connerty focuses on methodologies of art con-

canon, holds for a multidisciplinary, feminist Comics Studies. This is grounded

Old Skool Art History

Abstract Art-historical writing traditions and narrative tools have influenced

Keywords Artist’s biography • Anecdote • Life-and-work model • Pliny the

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 13

This chapter analyses art-historical writing traditions’ influences on the artist’s

biography verged on the novelistic and reached a much broader audience”

Corpus One: Biographical Comics of the 1940s

a genius endowed by God …a very fine geometrician …not only work[ing] in

Furthermore, the comic strips feature anecdotes about Leonardo da Vinci’s

After a discussion of Medieval painting, the section on the Renaissance fea-

Briefly mentioning Leonardo da Vinci, the narrative also features an anec-

In its summarising verdict, “The Story of Painting” (1949) closely follows

Corpus II: Biographical Graphic Novels of the 2010s

Fig. 4 Typex, Rembrandt (2013), SelfMadeHero, p. 127, Hendrickje doing house-

Paris, february 10, 1802 (21 pluviôse).

Paris, february the 15th, 1802 (25 pluviôse).

Paris, feb. 21, 1802 (2 ventose.)

Paris, february the 25th, 1802 (6 ventose).

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Ways of Seeing Comics: Art-Historical Approaches to the Form 1

Part I Old Skool Art History 11

Part II Perception, Reception and Meaning 73

Psychologies of Perception: Stories of Depiction 75

Part III The New and Newer Art Histories 161

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Part IV Comics for/Beyond Art History 223

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