Sunday 2 October 2016

BD

The BD, "band dessinée", or graphic novel is hugely popular in France, and there was an exhibition this weekend at Château Gontier, perhaps half an hour from my place, so I went to see.

I rather like BDs, though I'm not an addict as many French seem to be.  But I see it as a perfectly good art form, and I like the way that it provides a big outlet for graphic artists in France, whereas the market is very much smaller (relatively) in the English-speaking world.  And they seem to me to represent a strong argument against putting everything on Kindle.

Actually I'd like to see the Shakespeare plays in BD form.  I find reading the raw text to be rather dry, although do-able, and I think that a BD interpretation in the hands of a talented artist could lift them onto a different plane.  And you could keep the original text intact.

I stumbled across a guy, Yann Lesacher, at a small stand, he was selling the books he has produced, showing his watercolours and sketches of the Brittany coast.  He's going along the GR34, a long coastal footpath known as le sentier des douaniers, the customs officers' path, making sketches and watercolours as he goes.  The pictures in his books are leavened by light-hearted or humerous comments that sometimes relate to the pictures, sometimes don't.   He's on his eighth volume of books, and you can find more of his work here.


2 comments:

helen devries said...

What do i press to follow his blog? As usual, totally muddled .

James Higham said...

Most interesting, Mark. Graphic means pretty pics or graphic, as in its depictions?

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