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Abstract
This article draws on examples ranging from Richard F. Outcault's early twentieth-century newspaper strips to the more complex work of the German artist Wilhelm Schulz in a late nineteenth-century anarchist magazine to show how the format of sequential images can allow a play upon different levels of reality. Their simultaneous presentation, not time-bound like that of cinema, can subvert linear narrative progression and create a disturbing universe in which the boundaries between ontological levels become blurred. Schulz's image of a threatening sea monster encroaching upon the shore is compared to work by Expressionist, Symbolist and Surrealist artists in which the appearance of such creatures in liminal spaces evokes repressed psychic material, as waking life gives way to the irrational and the nightmarish.
Contributor Notes
Pierre Fresnault-Deruelle, a semiologist, was born in 1943. He has taught visual arts studies in a journalism school in Tours. He holds a chair at the Sorbonne. He has lectured widely abroad (from Riga to Sydney, taking in Bahia and Urbino). His publications focus on the poetics of still images: propaganda, photography, advertising, press cartoons, genre painting and comics (particularly the work of Hergé). His most recently published book is called Une anthologie de la l'affiche publicitaire en Europe [An Anthology of Advertising Posters in Europe] (Geneva: Georg, 2023). pierre-fresnault@orange.fr. Website: Fresnault-images.fr.