Exhibition in photos: Christophe Blain at the 49th Angoulême International Comics Festival

 Christophe Blain, dessiner le temps. Sonia Déchamps, Antoine Guillot and Jean-Baptiste Barbier. Angoulème. Vaisseau Moebius. 17-20 March 2022.

Twice the winner for Best Album at the Angoulême International Comics Festival (2002 for the first volume of Isaac le pirate; 2013 for the second volume of Quai d'Orsay), Christophe Blain was honored with a major retrospective that framed the body of his comics work through the lens of his own cinephilia. The presentation of the exhibition within a large darkened set of rooms invoked the space of the cinema theatre, and the whole thing even ended in a rounded room that displayed his film poster work on its walls while a screen hanging down from the middle of the ceiling projected a 5 minute interview clip showing Blain speaking about some of his fetish films and their influence in his work. 

Blain's visual virtuosity with his brush and pen and inks is on fine display here. The exhibition is packed with a surplus of original pages, including a large number of preparatory sketches, that were all individually accompanied by the artist's own commentary. Everything about the exhibition, from its scenography to the non-chronological organization of Blain's work to the flow of the text and the commentary, teased out the wide extent to which Blain's cinema obsession informs almost every aspect of his comics. Some references are quite obvious, such as his clear love of the Western genre and its visual and narrative codes, but some revelations offered some new avenues of appreciation such as his admission of how the French dubbed soundtracks of many of the Hollywood films of the 1950s-60s play a major role in how he treats the rhythm and tenor of his dialogue.

As a cinephile myself, I greatly appreciated this opportunity to recontemplate Blain's comics and how he treads the intersection of bande dessinée and cinema. Antoine Guillot's intelligent framing and guiding narration through the exhibition does an excellent job of highlighting aspects of Blain's work in both a cinema and bande dessinée context. All of this work is not in vain as the wonderful catalogue collects and reprints almost the entirety of the exhibition: all the original artwork, all of Guillot's text and also all of Blain's commentary - only the collection of sketches is missing. 

-Nick Nguyen

All photos taken by Nick Nguyen

Photos are organized in an attempt to present a visual chronology of the exhibition installation as experienced in a sequential walkthrough.
 

 

 

 

Exhibitions of the 49th Angoulême International Comics Festival: Introduction

After a cancellation in 2021 and a postponement from its traditional time slot during the third week of January at the start of 2022, the Angoulême International Comics Festival returned in full swing for its 49th iteration on March 17-20. It felt particularly nice to be back especially since for many festival-goers, the last glimpse of this special town during Covid restrictions was on movie screens thanks to Wes Anderson’s loving treatment in THE FRENCH DISPATCH (2021). I happened to be staying at a house that was right in front of one of the film’s recognizable locations.

 

Notable additions to the town’s visual landscape included two new tributes to Albert Uderzo:

A) a huge 200 square meter mural conceived by François Boucq, located at 10 boulevard Louis Pasteur.

B) a sculpture of a menhir (6.5 meters high weighing 22.5 tons) placed just outside the train station appropriately next to the obelisk dedicated to René Goscinny.

Also outside of the train station were image installations set up by the festival that displayed political contributions by Lewis Trondheim, Riad Sattouf, Milo Manara, Victor Hussenot, Benjamin Chaud, Luiza Kwiatkowska and Natali Noszczyn that served as expressions of solidarity for the situation raging in Ukraine. 

The Ukrainian colors even lit up the facade and clock tower of City Hall, which serves as the Festival Headquarters for press and professional accreditation. 

The entrance to City Hall was also adorned with the Ukrainian flag, flanked by the flags of France and the European Union.

The situation in Ukraine also inspired a last minute addition to the official opening of the Festival that took place on the evening of Wednesday March 16: a live drawing concert featuring invited artists with the final piece auctioned for charities to support refugee relief. This concert followed the announcement of the winner of the Festival's Grand Prix award, which was bestowed upon French-Canadian artist Julie Doucet. The timing of this honor couldn't have been more appropriate, foreshadowed by the recent publication MAXIPLOTTE, a collection of her work (translated into French) edited by Jean-Christophe Menu for l'Association. I'm greatly looking forward to see what Menu and the Festival will put together for her Grand Prix exhibition to highlight the 50th edition of the Festival next year.     

Over the two and half days that I was in Angoulême, I was able to catch nine of the festival’s exhibitions. I’ll be presenting these nine exhibitions as a series of ‘exhibition in photos’ over nine individual blog entries with limited commentary. I hope the photos will offer a decent visual idea of the installation and presentation of each exhibition. My ultimate goal is to have these photos serve as the gateway to more lengthy exhibition reviews destined for the print edition of IJOCA. 

-Nick Nguyen

All photos taken by Nick Nguyen

Press badge (left) and the invitation to the Festival's opening ceremony drawn by Chris Ware