All PostsMatthey, Pascal. “A la plage.” Grandpapier.org, 2009. 15 p.
–. “Greenfield Village.” Grandpapier.org, 2007. 10 p.
These are two similar works by the artist Pascal Matthey from the Belgian webcomics site Grandpapier.
Over ten four-panel pages “Greenfield Village” does not so much tell a story as create a space. I am tempted to call it non-narrative, one might find the hint of a narrative across the images but no real story is formed. Most of the panels show fragmented images of what I can only assume is the village of the title: cropped off buildings, trees, bridges, sidewalks, fences, streets. Some of the panels show small figures, isolated or integrated with the scene. The collective image formed by the panels is a quiet village from some past century.
The hint of narrative comes from two repeated characters–two women, perhaps mother and daughter–who appear together in a number of the panels. Are they walking through town, thus setting off this fragmented tour of the scene? Nothing is explicit. Two clocks appear (one of page five, one on page ten), both showing the same time. No time has passed. Are these panels all simultaneous?
Page 5 from Greenfield Village
Matthey’s art is simple black line work with hatching. The images have the look of being photo referenced, though clearly Matthey has composed his panels independently of any references. He makes frequent use of negative space. A building is pushed to the bottom of a panel, showing only the roof and white space. A street scene–sidewalk, a person, a building–is pushed to the top of the panel, leaving another wide swath of white in the panel. The figures are often shown in whole but shorn of any background. The whole effect is one of space, lightness, quietude.
“A la plage” [At the Beach] is quite similar to “Greenfield Village” though visually more dense. The 15 six-panel pages are drawn in colored pastel (I think pastel). As the title indicates the comic shows images at a beach town. Based on the clothes and cars, it is some time in the mid-20th century. Like the previous comic, cropped and photo-referenced images seem to be the order of the day. Instead of negative white space, here Matthew’s panels are predominated by the dense, multivariate orange of the beach and the lighter blue of the sky/ocean. People are much more prominent, we see all manner of people on the beach: lying, swimming, playing, walking. While a few people or things are repeated in small multi-panel sequences, at no point do I get the sense of any narrative flow. The work creates a scene in detail, one that is clearly evoked.
Page 9 of A La Plage
Both of these works are quite lovely comics. Both are what I might call, description comics: comics that, instead of telling a story, simply describe something (in these cases a place). Work like this is a rarity in comics: representational (not-abstract), non-narrative, yet not non-sensical. Go read.
Hi Derik:
Great find!
Here’s what I wrote on my blog about Hokusai’s _100 views_ (http://tinyurl.com/yaw7jbm):
“I also want to put a geometry concept on the comics theory table (Hokusai loved geometry, by the way…): the idea of locus (the totality of all points, satisfying a given condition; the locus, as applied to comics, is a third way between narration and description).”
That’s what I think these comics are. Examples of the locus applied to comics.
Hi, Domingos. I like that idea of a “third way”.
Is it between narration and description because it is a little bit of each?
I’ll have to go reread the 100 views and give this some more thought.
That’s the general idea, but it seems to me that the locus leans more to the descriptive side. Even so if we join more than one image some kind of residual narrative emerges: the two women in “Greenfield Village,” as you pointed out, and the second tier of page 10 in “A la plage.”
Another interesting problem in descriptive comics is: does time pass from one panel to the next (as comics’ reading protocol seems to indicate) or are they simultaneous in time, if not in space. Even in the latter case we may imagine viewers at the different points of view (as in “narrators” for writing) and, so, some kind of narrative again: why are they there, what are they looking for, etc…
I can even imagine the most extreme anti-narrative non-abtract comic: the repetition of one image endlessly. My question would be: is the viewer some kind of obcessed mental pacient, etc…
Thanks for sharing…I am drawn to the wordless aspect of these non-narrative comics and the strong sense of place and a personal feeling that this elicits. Somewhat similar to Frans Masereel’s The City. What I find amazing is my own desire to ascribe a narrative to these panels…that endless thirst for storytelling.
Matthey’s work is really striking–great stuff!
That idea of reading narrative into even the most abstract comic, is something that comes up in a piece I’m working on about the Abstract Comics anthology. It’s hard NOT to find a narrative.