David Gene

Great Horned Owlets Threat Display Watercolor for 270° by Maggie Umber

“text bites” by bill bissett

Histoire engloutie #2

Loto #5 : Mouvement Absolu

Another dialectic relationship in fundamental formal features of comics is continuity and discontinuity. In comics actual images are discontinuous, distinctive and different, but the reader interprets it as a continuous action by the same character in the same space-time. We do not read the first three panels of Alexis Beauclair’s Loto #5 : Mouvement Absolu as three different instances of the ball at rest in three different space-times. We interpret it as the ball continuoisly moving through a tube. The reader produces the continuity out of discontinuity. The reader is an active reader.

When the reader perceives the continuity in comics, s/he unconsciously focuses on the common factors and ignores the differences. In Krazy Kat, the background changes panel by panel, but the reader interprets the work as characters remaining in the same place, not as characters moving to different spaces panel by panel. This demonstrates another dis/continuity in comics: the ability to present differently when depicting the same concept. In Krazy Kat, it’s the landscape / background. Here again, the reader creates the discontinuity out of continuity, but this time, the artist consciously employs this dialectic relationship for the work.

First six pages of Hundert Ansichten der Speicherstadt

Martin tom Dieck’s Hundert Ansichten der Speicherstadt exploits this dis/continuity to the extreme. In Dieck’s silent comics, there are few repeated elements or images among the pages. The reader needs to take the time to recognize the object and the association between different images, rather than perceives the repeated same images right away.

Alexis Beauclair’s Globe (2008), Loto (2014 -), Photon (2014), Labyrinthe (2014), Compositions Binaires (2015), Perspective Fuyante (2015), Sol (2016), and About Series #5 (2016);

Jean-Philippe Bretin’s Non-Stop Road (2014), Deep Valley (2015), and Report (2016);

Margaux Duseigneur’s oeuvre (2012-);

Jochen Gerner’s Grande Vitesse (2009) and Abstraction (2011);

Louis Granet’s Fort Worth (2014);

Romeo Julien’s Astral (2016) and Chantier en course 1/7 (2015);

Stefanie Leinhos’ oeuvre (2011-);

Nicolas Nade’s Nobu (2016) and Ingredients (2016);

Antoine Orand’s Sphinx 2 (2014), Stargate (2014), Claires Fontines (2016), How We Met (2016) and Relatives (2016);

Ann Pajuvali’s Kammib (2014)

Frederique Rusch’s Untitled (Comic Book) (2013);

Sammy Stein’s oeuvre (2015-).

These impressive comics share similar subject, theme, content, style, period, and geographic origin. As such, they can be grouped as a genre. I call this new budding genre European Abstract Formalist Comics.

Abstract Formalist Comics indisputably and directly studies the most abstract and fundamental formal elements of comics such as space (Beauclair, Bretin, Gerner, Julien, and Orand); space-time (Gerner and Orand); time (Gerner, Nade, and Stein); repetition / variation / transformation (Duseigneur, Leinhos, Pajuvali, and Stein); representation (Julien, Pajuvali, and Stein); perspective (Beauclair, Bretin, and Granet), language (Granet); image; drawing (Beauclair, Gerner, Granet, Julien, and Stein); texture (Nade and Julien); spatial dimensions (Julien, and Nade); media / printing (Beauclair); laws of nature / motion (Beauclair, Duseigneur, Gerner, Orand, and Stein); and more. 

While many other comics also explore these fundamental qualities, Abstract Formalist Comics are different in that they predominantly are concerned about these abstract formal elements. 

This is possible by: a) depicting “process” or juxtaposing images instead of narrative; and b) having no language. The wordless and non-narrative comics induce the reader to concentrate on the formal qualities of comics, rather than its narrative and “literature” value which the reader usually is interested in the most.

Most Abstract Formalist Comics deploy the geometric clean line drawing and flat color. This emotionless and mechanical style calls attention to abstract subjects that Abstract Formalist Comics scrutinize.

Antoine Orand, Relative

Abstract Formalist Comics are different from abstract comics. First, Abstract Formalist Comics have figurative (representative) as well as abstract objects in them. Some even have human characters. But the emphasis is not on the human character’s psychology, as in other narrative arts, but rather on physicality, displayed through movement or a singular area of the body. The human being is just another object within the Abstract Formalist Comics. 

Next, contrary to some abstract comics that have the narrative or contents such as Shaw’s Veuve-poignet (2006) or Lewis Trondheim’s La nouvelle pornographie (2006), Abstract Formalist Comics lack the narrative. Instead of the traditional narrative, Abstract Formalist Comics describe or juxtapose the process of movement (action), repetition, transformation, et cetera.

Sammy Stein, Crayons

Why “European” Abstract Formalist Comics? The above-listed works are mostly by French artists and all are by Europeans. There are only few Abstract Formalist Comics in other regions. Moreover, Artist books by Sol LeWitt (USA); Re/Forma (2014) by Luis Aranguri (Brazil); and works by Yuichi Yokoyama are exceptions, rather than the norm, in their countries and continents. 

Furthermore, European Abstract Formalist Comics artists work together in anthologies like Lagon (edited by Alexis Beauclair and Sammy Stein) or Super-Structure and are published by Editions Matiere, Editions FP&CF, or Gloria Glitzer. In contrast, non-European Abstract Formalist artists work independently and there’s no anthology or publisher specific for similar works.

European Abstract Formalist Comics is blossoming now. All works were made in this decade.

Finally, I want to discuss the epitome of Abstract Formalist Comics — Jennifer Bartlett’s Rhapsody (1975). Not only its style, but its subjects and contents, are the same as Abstract Formalist Comics. It studies repetition / variation; sequentiality; panel; color; shape; line; dot; pixel; figuration / abstraction; representation; realism; drawing; painting; resolution; style; form; element / entity; rhythm; juxtaposition; collage; appropriation; doodles; flatness; nature / artificial; motion; narrative; grid; image, photography, low / high art, time, space; panel; art history; and more. [1]

Most importantly, Rhapsody tells us how to perceive Abstract Formalist Comics: rhapsody, like a music. We can read it by analyzing the work, like me, but also, viscerally appreciating its imagery beauty. 

New book: »Read It Out Loud« Plain-coloured riso, 30 pages, coil-binding, edition of 100.

Still about to finish the remaining 84 copies but you can pre-order now: http://stefanie-leinhos.de/#read-it-out-loud

//////// Shipping out April 25, 2018. ////////

Mary Lucier – Polaroid Image Series, 1970, used on the front and back cover of Alvin Lucier’s I Am Sitting In A Room LP, Lovely Records, NYC, 1981.