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...
The problem is, Oesterheld was not recognized as the author of Ticonderoga, Ernie Pike, etc. for a long time, both in Italy and France.
ReplyDeleteHi Luca, thanks for your comment!
ReplyDeleteI 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.