Broken Frontier

The Moebius Art Exposition (Moebius-Transe-Forme) at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art Contemporain clearly represented a major step forward for comic art, but it wasn’t until I made the trip to Paris to see the exhibit for myself that I was able to fully grasp just how much it distinguishes comic art as its own legitimate art form.

For the many of us who already appreciate comics and the incredible artwork within their pages, we didn’t need much from the exhibit. Just the fact that it was happening and in a premiere museum in Paris no less, was enough. Luckily, the curators of the show were not so easily satisfied, going well beyond slapping original artwork into frames and hanging them on walls as if they were singular images.

The exhibition was set up in a way that perfectly matched how comic art should be viewed to get the most out of the experience and to understand what it has to offer that no other form of fine art can.

The first thing I noticed when I entered the museum was that much of the artwork was displayed along long, winding tables. There, the pieces inside could be seen together, with one leading sequentially to the next, much like an artist would assemble a sequence of images when creating a new concept or character.

In the same room, there was also a separate table where a large replica of a sketchbook was placed. I would guess it was about 20 inches by 14 inches. Printed on the pages of the sketchbook were the black and white pages with word balloons of the pages to the Mister Blueberry graphic novel. This was a great representation of how artwork becomes story.

And as much as I loved these two styles of displays, they did nothing to prepare me for what I would see when I made my way downstairs to the second room. Here, the walls were covered with images, many of them blown up to fill the entire height of the wall. In other sections, drawings were projected onto the wall, not like photos, but as if the line work had been made of light. These images shifted from one drawing to the next, moving along the wall.

There were also two displays that recall the use of digital technology for comics. In one section, there were small towers coming up from the floor. On the top surface of them were images, mostly comic covers backlit by a light at the bottom of the tower. If you’ve ever seen a comic on the iPad or a similar device, you know what backlighting can do to make the colors pop.

The display of the short story 40 Days in the Desert went even further in simulating the digital comic experience. This story is told in large, wide-format panels all of the same size.  The panels were shown on a high definition TV, one at a time, from beginning to end. One area where I feel that digital displays can enhance the comic reading experience is how the next panel in a sequence will replace the previous image, inhabiting the same space. This allows you to really see the shift in the image.

And this was only a small taste of how technology was used as to curate the show. There was a 30-minute documentary on Moebius called Meta-Moebius. I didn’t have time to see it in its entirety, but I hope it will be released for sale one day. For now, it remains exclusive to the exhibit.

What I did see was the short 3-D film based on an adventure of the Moebius characters Stel and Atan. The story itself is so fantastical that it made perfect use of 3-D technology. I know that animation is a different medium, but it was a great way to show that comics have been creating the kinds of stories for years that film is just now getting to the point of doing justice to technologically.

With all this said, the most important thing about the exhibition was that it was a success. It drew huge crowds even into its final week. The large hardcover catalog of the show has been sold out for some time. I only managed to find a copy by tracking down a small comic shop on the other end of town and buying their last copy (which was no longer shrink wrapped and already had wear to it). It's not an easy book to get your hands on, but I recommend getting a copy if you can. It’s the closest thing to replicating the exhibition that you can get.

Hopefully there will be more exhibitions for comic artists in the future that follow this type of model. Obviously, a talent like Moebius doesn’t come along very often, but both he and this exhibition have done their part in making comic art something that deserves to be seen in a major museum.