Monday, June 3, 2024

Forgotten Yet Again?

People are excited about the new set of comics related exhibitions at the Beaubourg in Paris. I haven't been there, so I can't say anything about it, but there's a blatant flaw I want to address. To quote the site of the Centre Pompidou:

Corto Maltese une vie romanesque [...] Une exposition qui met en évidence les sources littéraires d’Hugo Pratt : Hermann Melville, Joseph Conrad, Jack London…

I don't know if I need to translate the phrase or not, but, since I'm writing in English: "Corto Maltese an adventurous life [...] An exhibition that underlines the literary sources of Hugo Pratt: Hermann Melville, Joseph Conrad, Jack London…" 

Hugo Pratt, himself, also cited Zane Grey, but he's too lowbrow, I guess...

But I digress... This is all fine and dandy to continue the myth of the great man. The great European artist who brought true literature to the lowly comic...

Being serious: the real literary source of Hugo Pratt was Héctor Germán Oesterheld and not only these French, I guess, curators forgot him, they forgot all the rich Argentinian comics tradition. The Venice Biennale invited a Brazilian curator this year. Maybe the comics habitus needs a similar revolution.  Unfortunately comics are always apart from what's going on in the rest of the world...



2 comments:

  1. The problem is, Oesterheld was not recognized as the author of Ticonderoga, Ernie Pike, etc. for a long time, both in Italy and France.

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  2. Hi Luca, thanks for your comment!
    I don't know if European comics critics knew what was going on and were conniving with Pratt, or they genuinely didn't know, but I guess the former, to be honest. Nowadays, though, in the age of the Internet and the information highways, they have no excuse.

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