This book explores what the methodologies of Art History might offer Comics Studies, in terms of addressing overlooked aspects of aesthetics, form, materiality, perception and visual style. As well as considering what Art History proposes of comic scholarship, including the questioning of some of its deep-rooted categories and procedures, it also appraises what comics and Comics Studies afford and ask of Art History. This book draws together the work of international scholars applying art-historical methodologies to the study of a range of comic strips, books, cartoons, graphic novels and manga, who, as well as being researchers, are also educators, artists, designers, curators, producers, librarians, editors, and writers, with some undertaking practice-based research. Many are trained art historians, but others come from, have migrated into, or straddle other disciplines, such as Comparative Literature, American Literature, Cultural Studies, Visual Studies, and a rangeof subjects within Art & Design practice.
Featuring an award-winning chapter by Bruce Mutard (Martin Schüwer Publication Prize for Outstanding Comics Research), 'From Giotto to Drnaso: The Common Well of Pictorial Schema in ‘High’ Art and ‘Low’ Comics'.
Table of Contents:
Ways of Seeing Comics: Art-Historical Approaches to the Form.- Part I Old Skool Art History.- The Lives of the Artists.- Connoisseurship, Attribution, and Comic Strip Art: The Case of Jack B. Yeats.- Reading Comics with Aby Warburg: Collaging Memories.- Part II Perception, Reception and Meaning.- Psychologies of Perception: Stories of Depiction.- Aesthetics of Reception: Uncovering the Modes of Interaction in Comics.- Reading Richard Felton Outcault’s “Yellow Kid” Through Perception of the Image.- Colour in Comics: Reading Lorenzo Mattotti Through the Lens of Art History.- Part III The New and Newer Art Histories.- Feminist Art History as an Approach to Research on Comics: Meta Reflections on Studies of Swedish Feminist Comics.- Towards Feminist Comics Studies: Feminist Art History and the Study of Women’s Comix in the 1970s in the United States.- Real Queer Bodies: Visual Weight and Imagined Gravity in Sport Manga.- Part IV Comics for/Beyond Art History.- Afrofuturism and Animism as Method: Art History and Decolonisation in Black Panther.- What Is an Image? Art History, Visual Culture Studies, and Comics Studies.- From Giotto to Drnaso: The Common Well of Pictorial Schema in ‘High’ Art and ‘Low’ Comics.- VAST/O Exhibition (De)Construction: Exploring the Potentials of Augmented Abstract Comics and Animation Installations as a Method to Communicate Health Experiences.- From Tableau to Sequence: Introducing Comics Theory Within Art History to Study the Photobook.
About the Author :
Maggie Gray lectures in Critical & Historical Studies at Kingston University, UK with a specialism in comics, cartooning, and visual narrative. She is author of Alan Moore, Out from the Underground: Cartooning, Performance and Dissent (Palgrave Macmillan 2017).
Ian Horton is a Reader in Graphic Communication and a founder member of the Comics Research Hub (CoRH!!) at the University of the Arts London, UK. He is Associate Editor of the Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics and his research is focused on comic books, graphic design and illustration.
Review :
"Seeing Comics through Art History: Alternative Approaches to the Form, is a multi-author anthology ... . Seeing Comics through Art History: Alternative Approaches to the Form includes an introduction by the editors and fifteen individual chapters ... . comics scholars ... will find a wealth of inspiration between the covers of this wide-ranging collection." (Roger Sabin, The Year's Work in English Studies, Issue 2, July 10, 2024)
