Word: comic
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Exhibition participants, who examined and ponderously commented on all manner of comic-strip techniques, included an assortment of professors, movie directors, publishers, and three imported American comic-strip writers: Al Capp (Li'I Abner), Alfred Andriola (Kerry Drake), Lee Falk (Mandrake, the Magician). Most of the participants seemed thoroughly convinced that significant trends can be discerned in the way Li'l Abner runs from girls or scratches his head...
...more ardent comic fan was on hand than French Film Director Alain Resnais, who acknowledges that some of the techniques he used in Last Year at Marienbad were based on Mandrake. Resnais hopes to make a movie with Falk, but why, he wanted to know, did Mandrake warm up to Narda back in 1950? Did Falk change the relationship deliberately? Replied a rather stunned Falk: "I can't even remember what I was writing in those days, but I'm sure it wasn't deliberate...
...fact that the exhibition was held at all is largely due to the interest of French intellectuals who have touched off a European comic-strip boom. Today, Resnais told Andriola, early Charlie Chan strips fetch about $50 each, and original proofs are worth much more. Swallowing hard, Andriola replied that he had recently thrown away all his Charlie Chan proofs: "Resnais looked at me as though I had destroyed the Mona Lisa...
...whole affair was a heady experience for the American comic-strip writers, who have long taken for granted that they are part of the American subculture. Said Al Capp: "At home, nobody has ever asked me for an autograph for himself. It's always for a demented brother who reads my junk, or his idiot nephew. Writers don't take you seriously because you draw. Artists don't take you seriously because you write. Now we come to Europe to find out that it's deep stuff, and if I stay around these guys much longer...
Life is pop ballet, a modern parable that mocks contemporary values. To the stabbing atonal music of Charles Ives, the dancers move through four stages of life against a background of giant flats of pop art-IBM cards, an ice-cream cone, green stamps, comic-strip characters. By contrast, Lucifer is classical ballet, eschewing pantomime and narrative for a more abstract visualization of Hindemith's austere Concert Music for Strings and Brass. After the angels assemble for "a typical day in heaven," Lucifer appears, defiant and strutting, and engages in graceful combat with Archangel Michael, only to be felled...