COLLECTION NAME:
Graduate Thesis Collection
Record
Title:
A Desert Puzzle to Contemplate or Sometimes Investigate: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Comics and Landscape Art
Creator:
Duncan, David Allan
Subject:
Thesis (M.A.) -- Art History
Subject:
Savannah College of Art and Design -- Department of Art History
Rights:
Copyright is retained by the authors or artists of items in this collection, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.
Abstract:
Drawing on interpretive strategies developed in the study of desert landscape paintings including the work of American Regionalist Maynard Dixon and Spanish Surrealist Salvador Dalí, this thesis interprets depictions of the desert environment in the mid-twentieth century bandes dessinées of the Franco-Belgian cartoonists Jijé and André Franquin, creators of Western genre comics. The desert environment of the American West anchors this cross-disciplinary analysis as the visual and narrative subject matter for the works under review. This study places emphasis on the role of setting and environment within a narrative framework. Placing the discourses of comics and landscape painting in scholarship provides ways to examine and comprehend. It produces new interpretations, unique things that scholars have missed. This thesis demonstrates the reciprocity between painting and comics by correlating landscape theories associated with Symbolism—specifically spirituality, to a Jerry Spring comic by Jijé. It also ties matters of identity—including national identity and culture—to a Spirou and Fantasio comic by Franquin. I then use comics theories regarding temporality to assert the expression of sequential narrative mechanics in two paintings by Dalí. Finally, this thesis deploys ideas about cumulative spatial construction to inform a look at two paintings from Maynard Dixon. From these focused examples, new realms of scholarship become possible.
Keywords: bandes dessinées, comics scholarship, Salvador Dalí, Maynard Dixon, André Franquin, identity ideology, Jijé, landscape theory, western genre.
Keywords: bandes dessinées, comics scholarship, Salvador Dalí, Maynard Dixon, André Franquin, identity ideology, Jijé, landscape theory, western genre.
Publisher:
Savannah, Georgia : Savannah College of Art and Design
Date:
2021-08
Format:
1 online resource: 1 PDF (Thesis, 93 pages, color illustrations)