If you’re planning to vacation in France this year, there is good reason to add Strasbourg to your itinerary – for it is the city that has formed and inspired some of the world’s greatest illustrators and cartoonists.
It takes less than 2 hours from Paris, on Europe’s fastest TGV line, to reach the city known as the Capital of Europe, which sits on the nation’s eastern border. Home to the European Parliament, the Court of Human Rights, and the Council of Europe, it is a place most commonly associated with international politics and rule of law. However, behind this façade of diplomacy and deliberation lies a vibrant city bursting with history, culture, and cartoons.
Wandering the streets of the central isle, itself a UNESCO World Heritage site, it is easy to get lost in the history of a place that dates from the Roman Empire – as medieval buildings jostle with French renaissance and Prussian architecture for your attention. There are landmarks that have considerable stories to tell too: the Palace of Kaiser Wilhelm II, the canon foundry of Emperor Napoleon I, the church where John Calvin preached, the balcony where Churchill spoke to the masses, and the University where Schweitzer, Pasteur, and Goethe worked and studied.
While Strasbourg’s heritage as the place where Johannes von Gutenberg invented his moveable-type printing press might make it an obvious choice for UNESCO World Book Capital 2024, it is the city’s more recent history as a center for learning that makes it this year’s winning candidate. Home to one of France’s largest universities, welcoming over 50,000 students annually, not only does the metropole boast over fifty libraries but offers countless bookstores, too. Indeed, there are five book retailers and a second-hand book market in the central square alone.
Of course, when it comes to bookshops in France that means comic books, manga, graphic novels, and art books galore, as much as any other kind of book; after all, there’s no shame in grown adults owning vast collections of bandes dessinées! In fact, illustration and cartooning are so much a part of the cultural fabric here in France that most leading comics authors, past and present, are household names. It should come as no surprise then that the year-long World Book Capital festival features a program of events on the theme of illustration.
Most tourists to Strasbourg are unlikely to be aware that the city harbors a passion for the graphic arts, rivaling that of Angoulême over 500 miles to the west, lest they notice the copious amount of street art around the city. From the comic cats of Alain Séchas on the tram network, and Alex Senna’s giant Artemis near the central station, to colorful cartoon art on every street corner, Strasbourg is a paradise for lovers of the drawn line.
Indeed, the city’s relationship with illustration can be traced back (pun intended) to Benjamin Zix, who was born in the "Petite France" area in 1772 – where a small plaza now bears his name. At the age of twenty, Zix joined the French army as General Balthazar de Schauenburg’s personal illustrator, presumably to record military victories in Switzerland and supply engravings for printing. In the years that followed, he accompanied Napoleon's armies to Prussia, Poland, Spain, and Austria, yet arguably his most iconic work was created sometime later in the shape of Cortège nuptial de Napoléon et de Marie-Louise d'Autriche in 1810, a 68-inch-wide ink and watercolor panorama of the dignitaries in attendance at Napoleon’s (second) wedding – which you can see at the Louvre in Paris with another 150 or so original works.
However, the first true comic author to hail from Strasbourg was born two decades after Zix’s untimely death in 1811. Gustav Doré, who began working as a caricaturist at the age of 15, started producing comics in the middle of the 19th century. These were superbly drawn comedies, told with text below each image, and were so good that Doré was soon illustrating literature for publishers in France and Great Britain.
What followed were engravings and illustrations for works by Lord Byron, Coleridge, Milton, Dante, Balzac, Cervantes, Tennyson, and Edgar Allan Poe, as well as an illustrated Bible and countless other texts. His work is said to have inspired Vincent van Gogh and H.P. Lovecraft. In 1861, barely halfway through his career, the French state awarded Doré the Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur, their highest national honor. By the time of his death in 1883, Doré had put his hand to over 10,000 woodcuts, paintings, and illustrations. Little wonder then that a special exhibition of Doré’s finest works features among this year’s World Book Capital events. The Gustave Doré Constellation exhibition was at the Heitz Gallery in Strasbourg, untill July 15.
A short walk from the Heitz Gallery, at the National Center of Illustration, is another must-see exhibition – a retrospective of Canadian artist Julie Doucet. Winner of the Grand Prix de la ville d’Angoulême in 2022, Doucet has been an influential figure on the alternative comics scene, throughout North America and Europe, since the 1990s and put her hand to a wealth of fascinating work that extends beyond classic illustration into engraving, collage, video, and poetry. The Julie Doucet exhibition runs until Nov. 3.
Of course, it’s worth noting that the National Center of Illustration is also known as the Tomi Ungerer Museum, another of the city’s celebrated authors, with much of the space dedicated to archiving and exhibiting Ungerer’s 14,000 iconic works. Born in Strasbourg in 1931, Ungerer grew up during the Nazi occupation of Alsace, spending much of his spare time sketching satirical cartoons of the invaders. After failing high school and a brief stint in the army, at the age of 22, he enrolled in the École des Arts Décoratifs de Strasbourg (still just a short stroll from the museum) to pursue his interest in fine art. However, he was ejected after just one year for unruly behavior.
Nevertheless, his illustration career took off soon after setting off for New York with a portfolio of drawings and manuscripts under his arm and just sixty dollars in his pocket. His work appeared in Esquire, Harper's Bazaar, Life, The New York Times, and Village Voice, he began working in advertising and publicity (producing the famous poster for Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove), and started illustrating children’s books (including Jeff Brown’s Flat Stanley). Thus began a career that spanned over six decades until his death at the age of 87 in 2019. Having donated much of his work to Strasbourg, the museum was set up by the city to store and display his collected works in 2007. The collection is spread across the three floors of a Prussian-era villa near La place de la République, it includes a library, some 1,500 toys collected by the artist, work by some of his well-known colleagues (e.g. Saul Steinberg), and three separate galleries dedicated to his children’s illustrations, satirical cartoons, and erotic artwork respectively (children are barred from the latter).
It has to be said, however, that Ungerer never once put his hand to comics throughout his entire career. Indeed, a few years prior to his death, when the organizers of the city’s annual comic convention, Strasbulles, asked if he would like to get involved, he declined, confessing that he had zero interest in the field. This year, Strasbulles can be found among the attractions at Strasbourg’s annual European Expo. At the time of writing details were scarce, but award-winning comics titan Grzegorz Rosiński (Thorgal, Hans, Chninkel) is said to be the guest of honor with a special exhibition of his work playing center stage. The Foire Européenne de Strasbourg runs from Sept. 6-15 at the city’s exhibition park.
While Strasbulles is a festival entirely dedicated to comics there is another annual festival in Strasbourg devoted to the wider craft of illustration. One of the centerpiece exhibitions of the Central Vapeur festival this year features artwork from Revenge of the Librarians by British cartoonist Tom Gauld which is on display at a dozen or so university libraries around the central campus – including the new Guggenheim-esque Studium. (The exhibition runs until Oct. 31.)
Interestingly, it is not unusual to find comics and illustrations hanging in Strasbourg’s libraries; if you happened to pass by the National University Library (BNU) last year you could have checked out the BD du réel exhibition dedicated to nonfiction graphic novels from around the world. There is also a rotating calendar of events under the moniker Bibliothèques ideales (Ideal Libraries) featuring interviews with leading authors. Past guests have included France’s most popular comic author Riad Sattouf (Arab of the Future, Esther’s Notebooks) and the prolific Jean-David Morvan (Small World, Irena, Reality Show, Magnum Generations). However, at the time of writing, the September 2024 program for Bibliothèques ideales had yet to be announced.
Another son of Strasbourg I should mention is Jacques Martin, the clear-line genius, born in 1921, who worked with Hergé on several instalments of The Adventures of Tintin, as well as his own stories. Although practically unheard of in the English-speaking world, his most successful series was The Intrepid Alix, whose adventures take place against the backdrop of the Roman Empire, and which continues to live on to this day with new albums and other spin-off titles regularly hitting the presses despite Martin’s passing in 2010. It is said that his lifetime’s work of 7 series, 120 albums, published in 15 languages, has sold over 20 million copies… so far. Alas, there is no permanent trace or monument to Martin in Strasbourg.
Then there are the graduates of Ungerer’s, albeit brief, alma mater – now known as the Haute École des Arts du Rhin, HEAR for short, which opened a special illustration section in 1972. It was here that Marjane Satrapi began working on her famous autobiography Persepolis in the early 1990s, where local boy Christian Hincker (nom de plume: Blutch) cut his creative teeth, and more recently where Marvel, DC, and Image comics’ Stephanie Hans (Angela: Asgard’s Assassin, Die) began her career. Other noteworthy alumni include: Christian Heinrich, who studied and then taught at the school – counting Satrapi among his students – for his P’tites Poules (The Little Hens) series of illustrated children’s books (21 at the last count) popular the world over; Frédéric Pillot (Balbuzar), who can be found in a nearby studio painting luxurious oversized canvases for all number of books and comics; and Canadian John Howe, book illustrator, concept designer, and art director on the Lord of the Rings series of films and Rings of Power TV shows.
To understand where Howe got much of his inspiration for his fantasy work you need look no further than Strasbourg’s vast imposing cathedral. How do I know this? Well, I was recently asked by local publishers Éditions Caurette to break the golden rule of translation (again) and translate a French text back into its original English form, for the author – Mr. John Howe – had misplaced his original manuscript and only had the 1987 French version to hand. In the postscript he recalls discovering the cathedral as a student: “one misty midnight, astride a borrowed bicycle in an unfamiliar city on a new continent. In a fog so dense I lost my way, rounding a corner, I found myself at the foot of a vast and lofty gothic façade that disappeared upwards into the glowing mist. I was enchanted. That enchantment has never faded.” Indeed, the mighty 1,000-year-old edifice is impressive and mesmerizing in every respect, no doubt inspiring countless artists down the centuries. According to the editors at Caurette the very first English version of Howe’s book, entitled quite simply Cathedral, will be the subject of a Kickstarter campaign later this year.
Many of the events for the World Book Capital festival taking place between September 2024 and March 2025 have yet to be finalized, so it is worth keeping an eye on the official website for news as it develops. The Tomi Ungerer Museum has already announced there will be a new exhibition entitled Childishness: The counter-educational work of Tomi Ungerer and contemporary illustrators which will run from Nov. 21 to March 9, 2025, but more illustration events in association with Strasbulles and Bibliothèques ideales are likely to be revealed very soon.
Coincidentally, in January 2025, I will begin teaching a new course called "European Graphic Novels" at the Syracuse University abroad faculty in Strasbourg. We’ll be studying visual storytelling from a European perspective and, I hope, meeting some of the world’s future stars of cartooning – who will surely be found wandering around somewhere in the vicinity of the Cathedral, soaking up its inspiration.
For more information visit the official UNESCO World Book Capital 2024 festival website: lirenotremonde.strasbourg.eu
The post Drawn to Strasbourg, France, the World Book Capital for 2024 appeared first on The Comics Journal.
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