This book looks at comics through the lens of Art History, examining the past influence of art-historical methodologies on comics scholarship to scope how they can be applied to Comics Studies in the present and future. It unearths how early comics scholars deployed art-historical approaches, including stylistic analysis, iconography, Cultural History and the social history of art, and proposes how such methodologies, updated in light of disciplinary developments within Art History, could be usefully adopted in the study of comics today. Through a series of indicative case studies of British and American comics like Eagle, The Mighty Thor, 2000AD, Escape and Heartbreak Hotel, it argues that art-historical methods better address overlooked aspects of visual and material form. Bringing Art History back into the interdisciplinary nexus of comics scholarship raises some fundamental questions about the categories, frameworks and values underlying contemporary Comics Studies.
Author(s): Ian Horton, Maggie Gray
Series: Palgrave Studies in Comics and Graphic Novels
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 247
City: Cham
Acknowledgements
Contents
About the Authors
List of Figures
Why Does Comics Studies Need Art History (and Vice Versa)?
Disciplinary and Methodological Concerns
Part I: The History of Art History and Comics Studies
Part II: Possibilities for Comics Art History Now
References
Part I: The History of Art History and Comics Studies
Establishing Canons, Styles and Schools at the Dawn of Comics Studies
Creating Classical Canons
Defining Styles and Schools
References
Iconography and Cultural History in Comics Studies
Iconography as Method and Methodology
Cultural History as a Critical Framework
References
Art History Turned Upside Down: David Kunzle and the Social History of Art
Volume 1: Exe⁄orcising Gombrich
New Left Art History
How Karl Marx Prevailed over Carl Barks
Volume 2: The Social History of Comics
References
Variations of Formalism, Modernism, Abstraction
Claude Moliterni: A Formalism of Narrative Technique
Gérald Gassiot-Talabot: Comics Against Formalism and Abstraction?
Comics (and the) Modernist Avant-Garde
Andrei Molotiu: Abstract Comics Formalism
Abstraction Beyond Modernist Formalism
References
Part II: Possibilities for Comics Art History Now
Challenging Canons and the Challenge of Style: Visualising the Baroque Storyworld of Judge Dredd’s “The Cursed Earth”
Contesting Canons in Comics Studies
The Challenge of Style for Comics Studies
Styles and Schools as Canonical Markers
Picturing a Baroque Storyworld: Seeing “The Cursed Earth” Through Wölfflin’s Comparative Methodology
The Limits and Potential of Wölfflin’s Analysis of Style for Comics Studies
References
Iconography for Comics Studies Reconsidered: Interpreting Visual Transformations in Jack Kirby’s The Mighty Thor
From Iconography to Iconology
The Semiotic Turn in Art History (and Comics Studies)
Thump, Karrrack! The Iconology of Transformation in Thor
The Challenge of Iconography and Iconology for Comic Studies (and Art History)
References
Cultural History for Comics Studies: Reinterpreting the Eagle and “Dan Dare - Pilot of the Future”
From Iconology to Cultural History
The Discourse of Cultural Studies Within Comics Studies
Recontextualising the Eagle and “Dan Dare - Pilot of the Future”
Daring to Use Cultural History in Comics Studies
References
A Social History of Comics Art: Looking at Writers and Readers’ Capitalism for Beginners
Marxist Art History and Comics
Style, Ideology and Class
Ideology and Autonomy
Affect, Materiality and Ways of Reading and Seeing
Writers and Readers ... for Beginners Comic Books
Relations of Production, Distribution and Consumption
Style, Materiality and the Politics of Form
Ways of Reading and Looking
References
Re-framing the Avant-Garde: Different Ways of Seeing Escape
Positioning the Avant-Garde in Comics Studies
Unpopular Culture and Postmodern Modernism
Framing the Avant-Garde in Art History
Advancing Towards the Picture Plane
Advancing Against Art and into Life
Advancing as Reaction and Repetition
Advancing Beyond the Frame
Escape Artistry
Reading Escape as Unpopular Culture
Small Press and Alternative Avant-Gardes
A Mainstream Alternative
Putting Comics Studies in the Frame
References
Modernism and Comics Revisited: Form and Fragmentation in Alan Moore’s “I Can Hear the Grass Grow”
Comics and Modernism
Modernism in Art History
The Significance of Form
The Specificity of Medium
The Defence of Autonomy
The Occlusions of Modernist Criticism
Reframing Modernism and Comics
I Can Hear the Grass Grow
Form: The Abstract Underscore, Medium and Modernism
A Medium of Fragments: Modernity, Montage and the Politics of Form
References
Conclusion: Future Directions
References
Index
