>> From the Library of
Congress, in Washington D.C.
>> Martha Kennedy: Good
afternoon everyone, come on.
It's wonderful to see you, yes.
My name is Martha Kennedy, for
those of you who don't know,
and I'm very pleased to welcome you
to the 2017 Salon Fellow's
Lecture today.
This program is sponsored by the
Swann Foundation for Caricature
and Cartoon, and the Prints
and Photographs Division.
The Swann Foundation is one of
the few that provides support
for scholarly graduate research, in
the field of caricature and cartoon.
And it does this through
annually awarded fellowships.
Since 1977 the foundation
has been an important part
of the library's graphic program.
The foundation underwrites a
number of initiatives relating
to these art form,
here at the library.
And they include preservation
and processing
of the library's comic art,
development of these collections,
related public presentations and
many exhibitions that are mounted
in the graphic arts
gallery, and other spaces
in the Library's Jefferson
Building, in fact, there are several
up right now, and I encourage
you to go and see them.
I should say that this is being
filmed for future broadcast
on the library's website
and at the media.
We encourage you to ask questions
and offer comments, after the talk.
But, please realize that if
you participate in the Q and A,
you are consenting to be --
you're consenting to the library,
possibly using your
film image and remarks.
Today's speaker; Elizabeth Nijdam
is a PHD candidate in the department
of Germanic Languages
Interpreters, at the University
of Michigan, at Ann Harbor.
The research focuses on
German Comics after 1989,
and the desertion traces
eastern men artistic traditions
into the post-unification
comics of Anke Feuchtenberger
and [foreign language] and
these artists are members --
were members, or are members
of an opposition artist group
called PJH [foreign language],
which I believe it's
translated as Gloom Future,
I think it's an interesting name.
Elizabeth's research
has been published
in the International
Journal of Comic Art,
and World Literature today, she has
worked extensively, also on Comics
on the Classroom, and in
fact published a chapter
on teaching German History
with graphic novels,
and a book entitled class
-- please open your comics.
She currently serves as Secretary
for the Executive Committee
of the International Comic Arts
School, and she's a member at large,
of the Executive Board of the
Comics Studies Society's Graduate
Students Contest.
On October of this year, she will
start work on her book project,
entitled Panel Pasts, East
German History and Memory
in the German Graphic
Novel, and she will do this
as a post-doctorate fellow in the
Berlin Program for advance German
and European Studies, at the
Freie Universität Berlin.
It is been a pleasure for me to
introduce Elizabeth, to resources
and PNP and some other
divisions here at the library.
Her lecture today is titled,
It's not just horror and black;
The Comics of Anke Feuchtenberger
and Their Many Expressionisms.
Please join me in welcoming
Elizabeth.
>> Elizabeth Nijdam: Thank you for
that wonderful introduction and I'd
like the Swann Foundation, and the
Prints and Photographs Division
for inviting me here today,
it's been a wonderful week
up in the PNP reading room,
where I've taken many photographs
of the first eight issues
of Raw, and you'll be able
to see those photographs
in my presentation today every time
you see my thumb or my fingers,
those are the photographs
that I took here
at the Library of Photographs.
So, this part of my
dissertation and presentation,
and talk today would
have been impossible
without this experience here.
These panels are from
the early sequential art
of Anke Feuchtenberger, and each
driven graphic artist who is trained
in the German Democratic
Republic, but began making comics
in the United Germany after
the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Beyond the very fact that she
embraced the comic's medium,
which was an artistic form virtually
non-existent for adult audiences
in Socialist East Germany,
a striking feature
of its work is its German
Expressionist visual rhetoric.
Feuchtenberger sequential
art emulates the aesthetic
of the wood cap print, the
claustrophobic and angular space
of German expressionist
cinema, and the deformed bodies
and elongated appendages of the work
of German expressionist
artist, [foreign language].
Feuchtenberger's comics
were called the aesthetics
of the German modernism
of the early 20th century,
but interestingly this
is a visual language
that predates her artistic
production
by more than seven decades.
Comments on the role
and significance
of Feuchtenberger's expressionist
visual rhetoric, and not unusual
on the discourse surrounding
German comics after 1989.
In the exhibition catalogue
for the Goethe-Institut comics,
manga and co, from 2010 for example,
and the [foreign language]
attributes the quote,
"Return of German comics
to the emergence
of East German graphic
artist in the scene",
observing that Anke
Feuchtenberger and other members
of the graphics art collective PJH
[foreign language] were not the
whole boom to the economic demands
of successful comics production,
due to the work of graphic artists,
which granted them the space
to experiment in the comics medium.
He continues his assessment
of the renovations,
by implicating the quote
on quote, "Solid education
in the East German graphics arts",
which he writes, "Instructed them
in techniques such as hand process,
wood cut, and leno-cut printing,
calligraphy and book design,
quote, "Had long been abandoned
by West German art colleges,
and other educational
establishments", end quote.
Perhaps is there, but situates the
technical and aesthetic innovations
of Feuchtenberger and other
East German artists working
in the comic's medium, in
their training at the JDR,
in the Nation's Artistic Traditions.
Perhaps it is that his
observation reflect the importance
of Feuchtenberger and
other East German Artists,
in redefining German
comics after 1989.
However, lacks new ones.
So, here is the list of three
artist collectives that were founded
in the '1990s and that's to the
individual names where it says EG,
or those East Germans
that participate
in the forming of these collectives.
While the techniques these artists
mastered in the DDR informs some
of her aesthetic experiments.
Feuchtenberger expressionist
influences were not entirely born
of her East German
artistic training, in fact,
the expressionist visual rhetoric
of Feuchtenberger's poster art,
and graph curation after 1989
looks nothing like the experiments
and neo expressionism that occurred
the last few decade on the DDR.
So, here at the bottom we have
to give examples of painting,
that's sort of being mobilized
on the expressionism aesthetic,
and then we two posters
in the right hand side.
This presentation, therefore
complicates plat houses
implications, that German comics
were reborn, as a consequence
of Fauchtenberger and
other artist training
in the East German graphic arts,
studying alternative comics
and especially arch speak on them in
France by my rule is Raw magazine,
as an important but unacknowledged
factor in the development
of Feuchtenberger's
expressionist aesthetics.
Furthermore, it illustrates
how Feuchtenberger's adoption
and adaptation of an
expressionist visual rhetoric.
Can ask 100 expressionist
artistic styles,
including early German
expressionism,
East German Neo-Expressionism, and
the Expressionist Visual Rhetoric
of American Alternative Comics,
to simultaneously distant
her post 1989 work
from her East German training,
while also setting
incorporating elements of it.
I've examined how this engagement
of multiple expressionism
complicates assertions
of West German cultural hegemony
after 1989, aligning this project
with Scholarship of Paul Cook,
my analysis of Feuchtenberger's
Graphic innovation demonstrates the
importance of East German to stick
traditions, and in the Agency
of East German Artists, alongside
with international innovations
in comics art, and
redefining its fears of quote,
"Western artistic production
after 1989".
r in terminology from
cultural theorist "I argue
that the sequential
art of Feuchtenberger
and other East German
graphic artists there
by produce a hybrid space
of cultural production,
where East German artistic
practice has got subverted
to Western artistic traditions,
but operated in tandem with them.
And representing East
Germany since unification.
Paul Cook engages post-colonial
theory to understand the faith
of East German Culture in
Post-unification Germany.
He pauses that the process
of Germany Unification has been
presented as a quasi-subjugation
of East by the West, where
West Human Culture has remained
hegemonic, and East German culture
has been suppressed, ignored,
and systematically erased.
Most notably articulated
in a book called,
[foreign language] called it a
volume, called [foreign language]
which means colonization of the DDR.
These authors describe
post-unification circumstances
of East German Culture, in
conventionally colonialist terms.
Studying the dismantling of the
East German economic system,
development of a new
social hierarchy,
featuring important leaders
from the federal republic,
and the systematic denigration of
local practices, collective identity
and shared morals as evidence.
Cook continues, however, to comment
on how limiting the perception
of unification of this -- perception
of the unification may be,
remarking that the
relationship between East
and West German regions,
is much more complex
than Post-colonial
theory may suggest.
Ultimately, he observes that the
colonization of East Germany is more
about the perception and
representation of the East,
West German relationship than
the reality of the situation.
However, this perception
of colonized East Germany
has important consequences
on the way East and West Germans,
quote, "Relate to the unified state,
and the legacy of the
past" end quote.
Co-opting [inaudible]
cultural hybridity,
allows me to examine the impact of
East German artistic traditions,
on Post-Unification German comics.
Well, also highlighting
the importance
of other expressionist traditions
and the development of a hybrid form
of post-unification and
cultural production.
Feuchtenberger's theories Barmi
und Klett, is an excellent example
of the emergence of the early German
Expressionist visually rhetoric
in our work.
The four narratives of bam
and flat Barmi und Klett,
span her first four
publications Schrage Schwestern;
a 1993 collection of comics from
German speaking female artists
like [foreign language], Herzhaft
and Lebenslanglich, also published
in 1993 part of the
crunch series edited
by Attacks Brother, Martin Barbara.
Mutterkuchen, Feuchtenberger's
first official publication
by Joham Enterprises [phonetic]
in 1995, and Die kleine Dame,
the artist's first collaboration
with [foreign language] published
in 1997, it features the real
narrative of a mother and child,
as they traverse a frightening
reality of strange nightmares
and mysterious men,
in an alien 80 world.
The narratives are highly
imaginative and symbolic,
offering allegoric interpretations
of the relationship between mother
and child, and man and woman.
Her aesthetic devolves over the
half decade of her production,
but each graphic narrative
maintains an equivalent link
to German expressionism.
The bodies Feuchtenberger
represents, feature sharp angles
and elongated appendages, the
spaces in which the action unfolds,
are constricted and
claustrophobic, and the perspective
from which the images are
drawn is angled sharply
to the picture plane changing
dramatically between panels.
German expressionism, a leading
style of German modernism,
relates to a number
of related movements
that emerged before
the First World War,
but reached their peak during the
'1920s, defined by visual rhetoric
of sharp angles, deep
shadows, and dramatic contrast
to real landscapes, extensive
symbolism, and emotive
and often unrealistic
representation.
It emphasizes personal
expression over objective reality,
characterized by simplified
or distorted forms
of exaggerated color.
However, a defining characteristic
that set expressionism apart
from other modernist movements,
and indeed, almost any other period
of our history, was this
dedication to print making,
and works on paper in general.
The wood cut print was an
invaluable tool of the movement,
and as expressionists encouraged,
essentially every painter
of the period turned
to the graphic arts.
With an emphasis in geometric forms,
accompanied by alternating patterns,
solid color, and carve patterns
produced texture shading and depth.
The aesthetic of the wood cut print
and its variance are immediately
recognizable, and associated
with German expressionism.
In Feuchtenberger's 1993 [foreign
language] graphic narrative,
featured in [foreign language] the
protagonist that may see in a body,
is represented topless
with unusually long arms,
and unrealistically sharp shoulders,
recurring to angularity, nudity,
and even tiny nipples, of Austrian
expressionist painter [inaudible].
The panel's perspective
changes dramatically
and the readers observes the
protagonist's search happen
from four different angles
across the first five panels
of the search for treasure.
The second panel of the series
features a perspective from directly
in front of the protagonist,
the viewpoint in position,
perhaps in part of the
figure's mid-section.
The third and fourth panels
feature aerial views, however,
Feuchtenberger complicates
this representation of space,
by making elements
of the scene visible,
with a contradictive
perspective of view from above.
For example, the second panel
presents the reader with both --
with the view of both, the
top of the protagonist head,
and the bottom of her left foot.
Furthermore, the architecture
behind the protagonist is towering
over her, and threatening to
break out of the picture plane.
Well, the flat surfaces
of the building's uppermost levels
are also visible to the viewer.
Again, in the third panel, space
seems to be folding in on itself,
where the viewer's perspective
is simultaneously looking
up from the ground, with
side obscured by plant life,
while also looking down from
above, with the back of the head
of both the mother
and child visible,
as they bend down to
inspect the earth.
But, the panel start geometric
impulse, the claustrophobic
and collapsing spaces, angular and
non-parallel architectural aligns,
and dramatic and changing
perspectives; Feuchtenberger's art,
echoes the aesthetic of
expressionist cinema.
Specifically, recalling the films --
those of the Cabinet of
Doctor Caligari, from 1920.
Barmi und Klett, distorted
landscapes, collapsing
and claustrophobic architectural
spaces, irregular lightning,
deep shadows and imaginative
city escapes, narrative aesthetic
of the dark and distressing
stories of early German cinema.
However, the overwhelming
expressionist impression
of Feuchtenberger's art, really,
it's not to the panels construction
of space, nor how the
figures angular
and elongated proportions recall
expressionist painting; rather,
it's Feuchtenberger's style
of artistic representation,
which mimics the visual vocabulary
of early 20th century engravings
that echoes German
expressionism on a formal level,
and specifically the
art of wood printing.
Like the founders
of the expressionist artist group
[foreign language] Ernst Ludwig
Kirchner, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff,
Erich Heckel, [foreign language].
The space represented in
Feuchtenberger's work is textured
with repetitive geometric forms
that flatter the picture plane,
and pattern, and line
work that develops death.
Well, the bodies depicted
are sharp and angular,
with elongated proportions.
Feuchtenberger's panels flat and
dense planes of black and white,
stand in stark contrast
to the textures she builds
in the background and
foreground of her images.
Her line work is clear, with bold
demarcations that rarely blur
or fade into the background, and
she develops her deviation in tone,
saturation in shape, through complex
patterns of cross hatching dots,
and parallel and non-parallel lines.
Feuchtenberger's sense of space
there by simultaneously flatten --
is flattened through the planes of
black and white, in a sign depth,
through the intricate pattern work.
This visual style is particularly
logical on Barmi und Klett series,
but Feuchtenberger's novelization of
the wood print aesthetic is apparent
in all of her work,
between 1993 and 2003.
Well, Feuchtenberger's black
and white parallel
recalls the print work
of [foreign language] her
emphasis on the female body,
and intimate relationship
between mother and child,
echoes the engravings of
another important impressionist
and print maker; Kathe Kollwitz, and
the sequentiality of her art points
to the influence of fans,
[inaudible], wood cuts.
Yet, despite the implication
of this artistic strategy;
in reference to the Feuchtenberger's
wood cut print aesthetic,
she does not employ the technical
aspects of such print making,
instead, she mobilizes as
a characteristic texture
of impressionist engraving,
painstakingly reproducing
the geometry
and detail patterning
of the medium by hand.
She thereby, creates works that
emulate the print making culture
of Germany, before World
War One, but still,
undeniably possessed traces
of the artist's hands,
the artist's signature
style, and the influences
in the Post World War One
period, until modern day.
In fact, the wood cut
print aesthetic is just one
of many expressionist's influences
that he artists integrate,
producing unique visual aesthetic.
In line with [foreign language]
contention, Feuchtenberger's trying
to do expressionism might
not seem surprising,
considering her graphic
arts training,
at the Kunsthochschule Berlin
license, during the most radical
and experimental decade
of DDR artistic practice.
East German poster art is
often naively -- back --
is often natively associated
of the artistic mandates
of socialist realism, however,
it was in fact, in artistic space
that had its own set of
modernist aesthetics,
that allowed room for
experimentation.
Furthermore, after the
'1970s, when the legacy
of East Germany expressionism
was officially adopted
into East German aesthetic
traditions.
Expressionism became an
important mode of representation,
in all areas of each
German artistic practice.
However, while the East German
neo-expressionism of the '1970s
and '1980s could be written in to
the legacy of German expressionism,
its relationship with early
German modernism was flopped,
and evolved to look very different
than the aesthetic strategies
of expressionists that were popular
in the first three decades
of the 20th century.
I would definitely like to
spend the next few minutes,
outlying the integration
of German modernism,
and specifically German
expressionism,
into East Germany's art history.
In the immediate post war
period, very few styles
and differences existed between the
occupied zones of divided Germany,
where all artistic production
attempted to distance itself
from the Nazi past, through a
number of aesthetic practices.
However, already in 1946, cultural
ambassadors began encouraging the
Soviet occupied sector, to
adopt Soviet socialist realism,
as the model for Post War
German artistic production.
With the founding of the DDR
in 1949, the salinization
of art was institutionalized in
the battle against capitalism.
Two years later, the Socialist
Unity Party of Germany, or the SED;
adopted policy against
formalism, and in 1953,
socialist realism became the
official cultural policy of the DDR.
By 1960, however, the SED began
to re-evaluate the position
on the proto-revolutionary
art of the pre-war period,
and began sponsoring working groups
that would reverse
DDR's cultural policy,
land bashing German modernism,
and instigate the liberalization
of the party's cultural politics,
over the following decades.
And its opening address
for the symposium
at the Hamburg Universitate in
Berlin, in November of 1960,
a historian [foreign language]
provided his reconsideration
of the history of German
proletarian revolutionary art.
He spoke about the tradition as it
harkens back to the 19th century,
and culminated in the work
of [foreign language] who'd
previously had been harshly
criticizing, and not regarded
the positive contributor
to socialist realism.
In direct contradiction to the
origins of socialist realist art,
publicized in the '1950s,
[inaudible] sided the origins
of German's socialist realism, with
the founding of the communist party
or KPD in 1919, and those
artists aligned with the party
in creating proto-revolutionary art.
Who have also identified the key
components of socialist realism,
which thematizes the
worker with the goal
of awakening the worker's
movement in Germany, well,
also maintaining organic and
inorganic tie between the people
and art, but importantly,
he prescribed no specific
medium or style.
Moreover, he considered
Käthe Kollwitz,
as notably German expressionist,
memorial wood cut,
for Karl Liebknecht, as exemplary
of the origins of socialist realism.
And acknowledges the
German expressionist members
of the Association of Revolutionary
Visual Artists of Germany;
George Grosz, John
Heartfield, Rudolf Schlichter,
[foreign language], Otto
Nagel, Oscar [inaudible],
as having the most
significant contribution
to East German socialist realism.
April 1964, marks the turning
point in East German Aesthetics.
At the fifth congress for --
[ Foreign Language ]
Organization of Fine Artists,
our historian [inaudible] found
sculptor Fritz Klein [phonetic]
in live cigar cellar painting,
[foreign language] shocked
administrators and members,
by attacking the East
German cultural policy
that rejected methods of modernism
as unusable for socialism.
Warnings that artistic stagnation
and provincialism would lead --
would result from SED policies.
Isaac [phonetic] spoke in favor
of artistic experimentation
with modern artistic styles,
he believed artistic freedom
would be given back --
should be given back to
the artist, and artists,
not politicians should decide
the constituted communist art.
Isaac was harshly criticized
for its comments, and was forced
to subsequently release a
self-criticism six months later,
to prove his loyalty to the party.
Official aesthetic
artistic doctoring,
did however, begin to lose him.
In his article, [foreign language],
in 1964, Siegfried Wagner,
editor and chief of the SED art
publication [foreign language]
brought that many artistic
paths could lead to realist art.
With the statement
being more important
than the realistic representation.
Ultimately, was this perspective
on socialist realist art,
that [foreign language]
sanctioned in its close remarks,
the fourth conference
of the Central Committee
of the SED, on December 17, 1971.
Where he concluded that,
quote, "If one starts
out from the solemn position of
socialism, then there cannot be
in my view, any taboos in the fields
of art and literature that applies
to both the shaping of the
content, and of style", end quote.
His election marked an official
shift in cultural policy,
and even though, the
surficial opening act
of cultural policy
only lasted until 1976,
when both [foreign language]
was expatriated, also resulting
in a mass exodus of artistic
and intellectual figures,
emigrating out of East Germany,
and let the lasting impact
on all East German
artistic production to come.
While the aesthetics in modernism
came under attack again, and again,
from the '1970s onwards, the SED
officially changed their perspective
on the preview art of
the [foreign language].
Seeking to legitimize
socialist realism, by claiming
and actually stand out
of the expressionist art
of the Proletarian
Revolutionary Artists,
and the same artist's
anti-fascist art
of the immediate post war period.
Cultural authorities began
to incorporate the socially
conscious art of the also artist,
and the German Avant Garde,
into the artistic tradition
of socialist realism.
Consequently all pre-war humanist
and anti-fascist art was
reinterpreted in the '1970s onwards,
as early socialist art;
that's creating a continuity
between the socialist realism of
the day, and the artistic practices
of early German modernism.
Feuchtenberger's education in
the last decade of the DDR,
had already incorporated
this lineage
of early German expressionism.
New expressionist aesthetics, were
therefore, no longer the radical
and alternative visual, rather they
were in the '1960s and the '1970s,
in the sense they would
still use the language
that would become convention
in some forms
of East German artistic production.
This was especially true in DDR's
poster art, and specifically
in the genre of theater posters,
which was both an important part
of Feuchtenberger's
training in the graphic arts,
and an essential avenue of
income for her, after 1989.
Yet, like her comics;
Feuchtenberger's comics
after 1989 looked nothing
like the new expressionist art
of East Germany.
And pairing Feuchtenberger's
pre and post 1989 work,
illuminates the shift
in her aesthetics.
So, if you guys can see
here, we have two posters
that she created right after
of the Wall; '91 and '92,
and this is the final project
that she did to graduate
from her art school, where she did
a series of promotional materials
for a Soviet Sun Festival,
as it's the only remaining
example they're holding from 1980.
And then, to compare to sort of
what she's been doing more recently,
in 2006 and 2003, she's
in her return to charcoal,
and sort of a more round
and realistic representational
mode for figures.
So, you can see how -- a
dramatic shift happened
after 1989 in her work.
Even though, Feuchtenberger
was trained during '1980s
in Kunsthochschule in poster
art, with the aesthetics
of her poster art before
1989 aligning
with the representational modes
of East Germany neo-expressionism,
her graphic art after 1989 does not
emulate this vision of language.
Instead, Feuchtenberger embraces
the aesthetic of the wood cut print
on early German expressionism.
Contradicting frat houses claim
that an explicit continuity exists
between Feuchtenberger's training
and East German graphic arts,
and her innovation
in graphic narration
after the fall of Berlin Wall.
The exact words of Feuchtenberger's
style innovations were not entirely
born of her East German training
and the expressionist
aesthetics specific to the DDR
on the '1970s, and '1980s.
Instead, Feuchtenberger
visual rhetoric is embedded
to an earlier form of
German expressionism,
that predated the DDR altogether.
Looking into the expressionism art
of the proto-collective and artists
such as Frans Masereel,
Kathe Kollwitz, Otto Dix,
George [foreign language],
the question remains however;
why a really German modernism?
How did Feuchtenberger came to adopt
an early German expressionist visual
style on her artistic
production after 1989?
And what factors led this artists
and others to mimic the aesthetic
of the wood cut print, instead of
another form of representation?
And it's often been acknowledged,
that the turn to comics
by Feuchtenberger and other
members of PJH [foreign language],
was inspired by their introduction
to the Avant Garde comics anthology,
RAW, which they began
reading after 1989.
Something Feuchtenberger
hesitated to.
Yet, comments on their visual
aesthetics nevertheless assert its
embeddedness in East
German graphic arts.
Considering that Feuchtenberger art
bears striking resemblances to some
of the alternative comics
published in RAW magazine
in the '1980s and the '1990s.
It appears that American alternative
comics inspired Feuchtenberger
to adopt more than the comic's form.
So, here on the left we have Mark
Bayer, spelled wrong actually,
and on the right we have Mark
Caro, we'll be seeing more
of their work as we continue.
When the Wall fell in 1989;
Feuchtenberger moved to West Berlin,
to continue her artistic endeavors
with other PJH [foreign
language] members --
[ Foreign language ]
Like many East Germans at the
time, they became quickly inundated
with the West German and
American cultural material
that they had not had
access to in East Germany,
one such document was the American
alternative comic's anthology, RAW;
produced by Art Spiegelman
and Françoise Mouly.
East Germany had a
cozy comic's culture,
the children's comic books series
Mosaique [foreign language]
for example, here we have
two issues of Mosaique,
both which began in 1955.
The medium was referred
to as [foreign language]
and picture stories, and no comics
for adult audiences existed.
The discovery of RAW by this group
of artists was therefore
transformative.
In addition to introducing Avant
Garde European and American comics
to the art collective, RAW magazine
demonstrated the possibilities
of the expressionist visual
rhetoric in the comics form.
The obvious aesthetic
and narrative parallels
between the sequential arts of
Feuchtenberger in the comics of --
here we go -- [foreign
language], see?
And the -- the comics of Mark Bayer
and Mark Caro, both published in RAW
for example, leads us to question;
how did international trends
in comic's production informed
Feuchtenberger adoption
of early German modernism?
The volume section
of this presentation,
therefore positions Feuchtenberger
artistic innovations alongside
developments in the
alternative comics --
alternative comics internationally,
looking into the myriad
of expressionist visual
rhetoric's published in RAW,
as an important factor in
Feuchtenberger adoptions
of the aesthetics of
the wood cut print.
The visual rhetoric of
expressionism has been familiar
to the American comics, since Will
Eisner's adoption and popularization
of the graphic novel
in 1978, after all,
it was the expressionist
wood cut novels of Le Noir
that inspired Eisner
in his production
of the supposed first graphic
novel -- a contract got.
And later, Art Spiegelman's mouth,
the Pulitzer Prize
winning graphic novel
that put comics on
the proverbial map.
However, Spiegelman's
first experiments
in expressionism predate
even Eisner's canonical text,
when he first produced his
experimental four page comic.
Prisoner on Hell Planet in 1972,
and Real Dream three
years later in 1975.
While there's no way to talk
conclusively about the adoption,
specific representational
styles during different periods
of comic history, artistic choices
often conceded throughout history
trends, and it is safe to say
that there's some clear aesthetic
and thematic differences that emerge
between the underground comics
and alternative comic scenes.
The underground comics of the
late '1960s and '1970s sought
to push back on the restrictions
of the comics code of the '1950s,
which stipulated no sex, no
violence, and no social relevance,
to the emphasize leftist politics,
and the sexual and debates aspects
of the human nature, through
the themes of drug use, sex,
violence anti-Vietnam
protest and rock music.
Epitomizing the work of Robert
Crumb, was at first only associated
with San Francisco comic scene,
but later became synonymous
with the underground
comic's movement as a whole.
Crumb's crude, crass and
misogynist comic style,
defined both the archetypal
content of the period,
and the visual language
of its expression.
However, during the mid '1970s,
the underground comic
scene began to stagnate.
When emerged underground comics
began to wane in popularity,
were generically known
as alternative comics.
Generally speaking, they
were adult oriented comics,
sometimes science fiction,
auto biographical or horror,
but overall experimental
in forming content,
seeking political relevance,
and presenting increasingly a
sophisticated visual aesthetics.
The lingering influence of
the period, came in the form
of a new Avant Garde comic;
typified in RAW magazine.
First published in 1980 with the
print of around 45,000 copies;
RAW introduced a new generation of
experimental comic's artists working
in a variety of visual languages.
Artistic style within
RAW very dramatically,
with regular contributions
by a number of artists
over the first eight
issues of the first volume,
including the scratching,
expressive punk-rock style comic,
Jimbo by Gary Panter, who is quoted
king of the ratline, end quote.
The delicate incautious of Ben,
captures the pointless position
of Drew Friedman, the grotesque
and deformed bodies of Mark Bayer,
the bold, clear lines of
Charles Burns, and the scratch
for illustrations of Scott
Gales, while also an homage
to her recruitment in MAD, with its
alt, capital, three letter title,
and similarly kinky by lines.
RAW, was a lavishly produced
large format anthology
that was obviously intended
to be a work of art.
Its format, comparable to other New
York art scene tabloids of the time,
specifically Andy Warhol's
interview,
made it clear that Spiegelman
and Mouly's intention was
to show case the art
featured within the magazine.
Spiegelman sought new talent,
directly from his class
at the School of Visual Arts, in
New York, including Mark Newgarden,
Drew Friedman and Cats,
many of whom,
engaged their formal arts
training in their production
of sequential arts,
more holistically
than earlier comic's artists.
Thereby, lending the soft
preferentiality, artistic depth,
and formal complexity
of Avant Garde art
to the comic's production
show cased in RAW.
The impact of RAW, and of
Art Spiegelman and Mouly,
in developing the alternative
comic scene, cannot be overstated,
as a collection of
cartoon and talent,
no other single comic's
production has ever equaled
RAW accomplishments.
Flipping to the pages, it is
clear that the visual language
of alternative comics expanded
upon the visual rhetoric's
of the underground comic scene,
to incorporate new
and innovative styles.
And so, this is one issue
of RAW, this is RAW five,
and I took a picture of the first
page of every comic, or illustration
in the volume, so that you can
see how varied it really was.
Underground comics
have shown artists
that the comics form was not defined
by any particular age, group,
art style or subject
matter; however,
it was in alternative comics that
the visual language of the medium,
really proliferated and diversified,
and importantly it was also
around this time that
an expressionist,
artistic language emerged, not only
engaged the composition angularity
and wood cut print aesthetic
of early German modernism,
but it also featured a dramatic
shift in content as well.
The center piece of RAW, was
Spiegelman's own story; Maus.
Maus had previously
appeared in prototype form
in a three page comic,
in the underground comic's
magazine Funny Animals,
published in 1972 by Apex Novelties.
But, in RAW, it became
serialized graphic narrative,
published a chapter at a time.
The comic recounted the story
of Spiegelman's father's Life
in Poland, an experience of the
holocaust, representing Jews
as mice, and Nazis as cats,
and the greatest antagonism
between Tom and Jerry ever pinned.
Subverting the conventions
of the comic's medium,
to use Funny Animals, to represent
such serious subject matter,
was itself interventional.
However, openly tackling
traumatic story
through the comic's
form was revolutionary.
After winning the Pulitzer
Prize in 1992;
Spiegelman's Maus had
successfully proven
that comics could tell
important, accessible stories
that had absolutely nothing
to deal with super heroes.
Maus, however, changed the content
and perception of the medium,
paving the way for
comics to be incorporated
into serious literate
discussion and academic study.
They finally escaped the humor
shelves in commercial book stores.
The representational mode of Maus,
also drew significant intention,
in contradiction to the
comical aesthetic positions,
suggested by the representation
of human figures as animals,
the visual language of the comic
itself is dark, dense and morbid.
The panels and images are
exclusively in black and white,
heavily shaded with cross hatching,
and solemn planes of color.
Divergent for the earlier
visual rhetoric
of underground comics is clear,
as it's the quasi-expressionist
rendering of the figures.
All the space constructed
maintains an obvious adherence
to realistic representational
space, this shading;
simplicity of the line
work, and angularity
of the figure's bodies
is reminiscent
of expressionist engravings.
Furthermore, when Art Spiegelman,
decided on the visual surface
of Maus, the artist
even sites the art
of important German
expressionist George Grosz.
This influence is made especially
explicit, when the panels
of the chapters of Maus featured on
RAW, are compared to the prototype
in Funny Animals, which featured
a more conventional strategy
of portraying cartoon animals, while
also emulating the archetypal mode
of representation of underground
comics, in the stylization
of the figure's themselves.
Looking at the original printings of
the chapters in RAW; the connection
to the aesthetics of print making
is clear, both as a consequence
of the quality of the printing,
and in the cover chosen
for many issues themselves,
as well as in the enlarged
images Spiegelman selected
to show case for the work.
So, what I found really interesting
about seeing these originals,
is when you see the anthology of
Maus, everything looks so clean,
but when you look at how
they originally printed,
because the quality of
the paper was not as high,
because it's a very
independent group of artists,
it just looks rougher
and scratchier,
so it was really interesting to
have access to these originals.
However, returning to
Spiegelman's earliest incarnation
of the Maus narrative,
Prisoner on the Hell Planet,
which not only inspired the visual
rhetoric of the subsequent chapters,
but also became part of the graphic
narrative itself, within RAW,
and later published with
the collection of chapters.
Spiegelman's expressionist
influence is much easier to trace.
In 1972, Spiegelman published
Prisoner on Hell Planet
in short order comics number one.
As a powerful representation
of the suicide
of its concentration camp mother --
survival mother, Prisoner in
Hell Planet is remarkable,
for the way in which it deals
with the traumatic experience
as remembered by her son.
However, it is not only the content
that lends power to the depiction,
it's also its mode
of representation,
decidedly expressionist.
Prisoner on Hell Planet was
drafted on scratch board,
a form of direct engraving, in
which the artist uses a sharp tool
to scrape off dark ink, revealing
a white or colored layer beneath.
Unlike conventional drawing,
scratch work requires the artist
to develop the image through
the addition of highlights,
and it's therefore -- thereby able
to reproduce the sharpness contrast
and texture of more
traditional forms of engraving,
without the painstaking process
of working with metal or wood.
However, the aesthetic produce often
mirrors the geometry and angularity
of other forms of engraving,
moreover, Art Spiegelman
in 2010 peers reviewed essay on the
expressionist wood cuts of Le Noir,
he situates his own work
in Maus, with a lineage
of expressionist wood
cut worthless novels.
[inaudible] Ward is one
of his many inspirations.
With the appearance of his
expressionist experiments
in arcade review, Real Dream in
1975, and later on RAW magazine;
Spiegelman fought to find the
parameters of the emergent genre,
while also perhaps representing a
new direction of the visual language
of alternative comics thereafter.
In fact, Spiegelman and
Eisner's initial novelization
of the style expressionism
and the aesthetics
of expressionist print making have
continued to influence comics.
The dark angular and psychological
landscape of Batman, for example,
and specifically Tim Burton's film
for 1999 and 1992 inequitably draw
on expressionist visual
strategies as well as Film Noir,
which itself has its roots
in German expressionism.
As is the work of other artist that
appeared in RAW during the '1980s,
and early '1990s, Gary Panter
and Bruno [phonetic]
Richards punk-rock scratching,
chaotic expression of lines.
Mark Caro and -- let's see, yes.
Here we go -- Gary Panter
and Bruno Richards, Mark Caro
and Gerry Moriarty's mobilization
of the wood cut print aesthetic.
Jose Antonio Muñoz, and Mark Bayer's
grotesque bodies in black and white,
and Scott Gill's Pescadores, and
Mark Fisher's scratch board comics
and illustration; all
registered as neo-expressionist.
While each individual artist
adoptionary of interpretation
of expressionism, and the
aesthetics of print making,
might have originated
from different influences,
which would've been difficult
to perceive from the point
of perception; the
pervasiveness of these aesthetics
in alternative comics was clear.
Even Robert Crumb's work in
RAW in 1985 moves towards --
moving into the aesthetics
of print making,
and conventions of Film Noir.
And by the eighth and final issue
of the first volume of RAW in 1996,
Spiegelman and Mouly,
even go so far,
as to characterize the humor section
of the edition as expressionist.
Take expressionist
jokes, abstract jests.
Subtitled, some RAW artists seeking
inspiration; Gags of RAW eight,
is a collage of historical
and contemporary artwork,
featuring a variety of
artistic modes of representation
from around the world,
collapsing and in distinction
between our historical time
and space, and importantly,
it features two images
from wood cut novels
and expressionist print marker,
Frans Masereel, among other images
by Mark Caro, and white -- Charles
Burns and others, which in fact,
also look like wood cuts.
The expressionist jokes,
Spiegelman's eight issue,
thereby bring the expressionist
influences of RAW in full circle.
Ultimately, there existed
an expressionist impulse
in the visual language
of alternative comics.
This auto-manifested as a trend
in artists mode of representation,
or editorial decision
by Spiegelman and Mouly,
and their selection to publish.
Either way, the result was the
same, and the neo-expressionist work
in RAW, encouraged other artists
to adopt the visual language.
Reading RAW, Feuchtenberger
would've encountered this myriad
of expressionist visual languages
and the aesthetics of
alternative comics.
Familiar with the neo-expressionist
visual rhetoric,
prevalent in East German poster art;
their early German modernist style
of American alternative comics,
would've resonated with her,
while also reflecting the spirit
of the revolutionary events,
surrounding Germany
unification aesthetically.
By adopting this mode
of representation Feuchtenberger
aligned her artistic endeavors
with the stylistic plane which
embodied the revolutionary moment
of 1989, by visually revisiting
the aesthetics of protests
of the early 20th century,
and the American alternative
comics simultaneously.
Her early expressionist aesthetic,
thereby anticipated the political
interventions of her work
in her poster art for the
East German Women's Movement,
and related comics in [foreign
language], just something I looked
at in my dissertation; her feminist
activism around 1989 to 1991
in the work that she did
with East German feminists.
In conclusion, Feuchtenberger's
appropriation of the aesthetic
of the wood cut print,
sharp corners, collapsing
and contradicting architectural
spaces, and distorted
and grotesque bodies hailed
from an earlier iteration
of German expressionism than the
alternative visual rhetoric's
of neo-expressionism in the DDR.
However, there are also not
directly derived in the iterations
of expressionism, found in
American alternative comics
in the '1980s, and '1990s.
Instead, Feuchtenberger's
aesthetics come from a combination
of these influences;
Feuchtenberger's adoption
of the visual language of
early German expressionism,
was therefore neither an extension
of the aesthetics of this Germany,
as some German comic's
historians have argued,
nor as Feuchtenberger herself
attests, a reaction against them.
Instead, the expressionist
visual rhetoric
of Feuchtenberger's early
sequential art is a combination
of both impulses.
Appropriating the aesthetics
of the wood cut print,
simultaneously differentiating
her art from the alternative
and experimental art, to emerge out
of East Germany in the last decade
of the DDR, and the state mandated
aesthetics of socialist realism.
While allowing her
to continue to work
with familiar aesthetics paradigm
that embodied the revolutionary
politics of the moment,
and engaged in an important
artistic style
of alternative American comics.
Ultimately the work from
Feuchtenberger, and other members
of PJH [foreign language] marked
the emergence of a new hybrid form
of cultural production,
at the intersection
between multiple expressionisms
and the politics of 1989.
Feuchtenberger's graphic art drew
together divergent expressionist
traditions from various sources
of influences to create a new mode
of representation that complicated
both [foreign language] conviction
of Western German hegemony
after unification,
and frat houses assertion that
East Germany artistic traditions
reinvented German comics
after 1989, at the same time.
Thank you.
[ Applause ]
Anybody has any questions?
Yes.
>> I have one.
Wasn't -- I'd like to know more if
you studied what you're reading --
the German writing that
communist party was really engaged
with the production those days
of the expressionist
movement, and why not --
>> And so, my reading
of that turn of events?
>> That statement that --
>> Yes, it was a movement
desperation,
because it really alienated an
entire generation of artists,
when they turned away from the
expressionist and Avant Garde art
of the early 20th century, because
all of these artists identified
as communists, and all of a
sudden, art was no longer relevant,
because the revolution had happened.
So, it really alienated
all of these artists,
and didn't reinforce a brewing of
socialism realism on German soil.
So, it was a desperate
move, in order to try
to renegotiate their position
within German art history,
because it was coming
from the Soviet Union,
and they had to make sure
that German artists felt
that they had a connection
to this tradition.
And they were constantly rewriting
the biographies of artists to try
to fit them in and out of
certain artistic legacies.
In a really, really interesting way,
the way that they engaged
[foreign language] for example,
and his biography, and role,
and illustrating the presence
for both, for example.
So, there's all of these
switches that happen
if you follow the whole thing, it's
really fascinating, the political --
the politics of the aesthetics
of realism and abstraction,
when you look of both
sides of the Berlin Wall.
Yes?
[ Inaudible ]
Well -- so, I think there
was some color on RAW,
but for the most part it
was used strategically.
So, the one volume
that I went through;
it kind of had a funny section,
usually most of the entire volume is
in black and white,
like Gary Panter's use
of color here is very
striking, but most of the comics
in RAW were all black and white.
And I think, with sparse
use of color, where's my --
So, when you look at this
one, these pages of color --
the material of the paper changes,
it's trying to mimic the
funny section of newspapers.
So, this was a characteristic
of every issue
of RAW in the first volume.
For the most part the artist
gravitated towards black and white,
and I think -- I can't
really speak to that choice,
but when you see Mark Bayer, who
has published [inaudible] Jordan,
and all of his work is in black
and white, but when you see it
in this volume, for example,
like you can see it's colored,
it's very bizarre to see Mark
Bayer in color, it's very unusual.
And then, also some of
these other artists --
all right, this Jack survives,
he's a novelist every issue
of the first eight of RAW, Moriarty
and usually entirely
black and white.
So, they're making a statement
with this first issue,
trying to mimic the funny
section of newspapers.
But, all of these artists tend to
gravitate towards black and white.
Can maybe support example
to choose from,
but I think it was fun to look at.
>> Can you speak a little bit to --
on your research, you
felt that they --
well, actually was being
looked at by these artists?
>> Yes. So, in interviews they sight
that they were inspired by RAW.
So, that's coming from
them directly;
what part of RAW inspired
them becomes --
that's where I try to think
critically, because yes,
they were reading RAW, they
started reading some [inaudible]
at the same time as well.
So, I just take that they're
existed RAW in their purview,
and I know that Feuchtenberger
herself has identified Mark Bayer
as an important influence
for her, and then [inaudible]
but the other artist
that I'm looking at.
So, there's a few artists,
that really like this work,
and then I'm not aware
if they find that work.
How did they encountered it?
And that's where I come to,
looking through these issues of RAW,
you see some comparisons
with Feuchtenberger's work,
but it's really striking
her colleague,
[foreign language] the format of the
panels, the worthlessness and some
of these other aesthetic
characteristics that I'm seeing
in RAW, are very pronounced
in his own work,
and I feel like he actually down
planted his influence of RAW,
more than Feuchtenberger did.
So, I start my entry point
as things that they commented
in their interviews, and
from there, I run with it.
Sometimes contradicting
your own assertions.
[ Inaudible ]
It began as artist collective
that was politically motivated,
was founded in 1988, and during
the Monday demonstrations they were
handing out leaflets and flyers,
some of them for a mark to try
to make some money at the same time,
and they worked in the same studio,
but they didn't work together.
So, it was a different sort of
model for an artist collective,
they were just a bunch of
East German graphic artists,
some of which met in art
school, and then after 1989,
they did exhibitions
together, and there are --
for Feuchtenberger and
[inaudible] worked a lot
on theater houses doing poster work.
So, they supported
each other, and not --
and then Feuchtenberger
independently did a lot of work
with feminist groups around 1989.
But, those then, became very the
solution by the political process
after 1991, and the unification
as they were among those
East Germany intellectuals
that were looking for a third
way, some sort of in-between
where they didn't lose
-- they didn't --
East Germany was reformed,
instead of abolished.
So, they became very -- the
solution after 1991, and you can see
that in their art, and by
1993 the group disbanded,
and I worked with these
two artists, because I find
that their artistic
production is very important,
because they became two of
the most prominent teachers
of graphic narration in Germany.
Anke Feuchtenberger has taught
essentially every German graphic
novelist publishing
in Germany today.
So, that's the end of my
dissertation, sort of looking
at the legacy of her work,
through the work of her students.
And [inaudible] has been teaching
in Berlin, for justice law,
those are in the one third East
German graphic artists attacked,
who was also a prominent teacher
of graphic narration in Germany.
So, it's interesting; these
formally trained comic's artists,
then had the credentials
to become teachers, and so,
they can enter the art
institutions of the United Germany,
and start formalizing the training
of comics, which is really unique.
She is in Hamburg teaching.
Yes, she's still teaches, she
lives in a small East German town,
a restored farmhouse, but
teaches at the HEW in Hamburg,
teaching graphic narration
and illustration.
So, not explicitly comics, but
then, all of the final projects
of her students are always comics.
And her students have
developed a really --
several years since a
prominent student run magazine,
where a lot of the young German
graphic novelists got their
feet wet.
The German scene isn't huge,
but I think it's inspiring.
[ Inaudible ]
Well, thank you very much.
>> This has been a
presentation of the Library
of Congress, visit us at loc.gov.