Francophone readers take their comic books very seriously – dare we say as seriously as the Japanese take their manga. In fact, Francophone comics, known as La Bande Dessinée (BD), are so highly esteemed in their region of origin that they have been christened the 'ninth art[form]', on par with the eight traditional forms, including painting, sculpture and poetry, constituting the pantheon of Art with a capital A. While the influence of canonical works like Asterix, The Adventures of Tintin, Lucky Luke and The Smurfs has led to an established comics culture, Japanese manga commands a considerable sum in comic sales in the region and has inspired countless BD authors. Indeed, Japanese authors like Jiro Taniguchi, whose work is included in this exhibition, enjoy great popularity in France, where Taniguchi’s manga A Distant Neighborhood was adapted into a live-action French film.
The cross-pollination between BD and manga has even led to the creation of hybrid genres and artistic movements, such as manfra (a portmanteau of manga français) and la nouvelle manga. Tapping into this artistic goldmine, in 2005 the Louvre Museum invited comic artists of both persuasions to create new Louvre-themed works for display. This resulted in the publication of twelve volumes, with the project still going strong. The Mori Arts Center Gallery's 'Louvre No. 9' displays works and materials from past projects with participants like Taniguchi and Hirohiko Araki, as well as specially commissioned art by local greats including Taiyo Matsumoto, Daisuke Igarashi, Shinichi Sakamoto, Katsuya Terada and Mari Yamazaki. Sprawling into three sections, the exhibition aims to present a vision of how the French and Japanese comic cultures can come together and draw inspiration from each other.
The works on display centre on events taking place in the Louvre, with narratives ranging from love stories to ghostly murder mysteries. In the exhibition, you’ll not only encounter reimaginings of the Louvre’s iconic paintings, like the Mona Lisa, but also of the museum itself, which is transformed into uniquely alluring places in each authors' vision, where ghosts roam among the exhibits or cats live secret lives after all the visitors have left. There’s a particularly timely and poignant work by Mari Yamazaki about a Syrian refugee boy who encounters an ancient relic from his war-torn country in the museum.
The exhibition also features several video projections revealing the creative processes behind the works, with clips showing the unique techniques with which artists sketch and colour their panels. While captions dotting the exhibition contain interesting information about the characteristics of and differences between BD and manga, they are mostly in Japanese. More often than not, though, the Art speaks for itself.
Photos by Keisuke Tanigawa