A New Modernism in Comics
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abuse of remake and allusion. Just as Autarcic Comix makes a strong claim on the
formal coherence of the whole of its members, the movement is violently opposed
to the new toy of cut/paste cybernetic culture: the computer aided collages of
heterogeneous bits and pieces (in this sense one could say Autarcic Comix exhibits
the pennanence within contemporary graphics of a certain arts and crafts aesthetics).
Of course, this suspicion of collage does not mean at all that there are not any
collages, nor that computers and CAD-CAM are never used. It only means that
intertextual games and references to other productions are overtly declared, so that
the reader always knows what exactly is happening. Moreover, this course of action
is not exempt from an ideological agenda. Collage is indeed a prominent bias of
today’s ads, and it is the resistance to this type of mercantile graphics that finally
grounds the very parsimonious use of citations.
A third property of Autarcic Comix is the particularly acute historic
consciousness of the movement, which implies a strong set of positive and negative
evaluations of the anterior comic strip production. Some areas are censured to a
very large extent. Thus, for instance, Autarcic Comix breaks with the long-time
dominant reference frame of the “clear line” (the simplified and sometimes robotized
graphic style o f the Franco-Belgian school and its countless im itators).
Simultaneously, other domains are strongly foregrounded. This cohabitation is
fundamental: far from simply being copied or played with in a rather allusive
manner, the plates and books of the new “masters” are confronted with the new
works their example have made possible.
Finally Autarcic Comix does not think that history has come to an end or
that the differences between ideologies are now softly fading away in order to give
birth to a planetary quietness (this is indeed the way, shocking or astonishing for
an Anglo-Saxon audience, postmodernism is seen by many European artists^). It is
true that the art work of Autarcic Comix does not explicitly belong to the agit-prop
tradition. Yet the political agenda of the group is rather clear, and the denunciation
of social injustice permanent and explicit, and the responsibility of the artist is not
a mere slogan. Do 1 have to repeat that such a feature is, in a European context at
least, definitely )wt postmodern? The fact that a work speaks of AIDS, the homeless,
rape, right-wing anti-abortion propaganda, etc., is a thorough sign of modernity.
It is of course too early to give a first global evaluation of the results of
these new tendencies in European comics, which are now rapidly becoming
institutionalised. It seems not impossible to predict however that the marginal
activities of the small press production will soon have more mainstream features.
Within a few years it will be easier to see if this transition proves fruitful for the
medium itself, or if it is nothing more than the same old story of a once challenging
group of authors adopting a middle-of-the-road attitude.
University of Maastricht/University of Leuven
Jan Baetens