Thierry Groensteen, 1880-1914 : The Birth of the Comics industry in France, Nov 14, 2023

The 375th meeting of the NY Comics & Picture-story Symposium held on Tuesday, November 14, 2023 at 1 pm ET. Visit https://nycomicssymposium.wordpress.com for more events.

Thierry Groensteen: 1880-1914 : The Birth of the Comics industry in France

Thierry Groensteen will summarize the main facts established in his latest essay, La Bande dessinée en France à la Belle Epoque (2022). During the period that precedes the First World War, comics, which until then existed only as a handful of books, experienced a spectacular development both in the children’s press and in the satirical magazines for adults. Moreover, the provincial newspapers started publishing comic sections that were conceived for them in Paris. Animal strips, silent comics and trooper comedy were some of the most popular genres. About 180 artists produced comics on a regular basis and the period saw the birth of popular characters such as Bécassine and Les Pieds Nickelés whose careers would last for decades.

Born in Brussels in 1957, Thierry Groensteen has curated the Comics Museum in Angoulême from 1993 to 2001. He has also been the chief-editor of two important journals: Les Cahiers de la bande dessinee and Neuvième Art. The latter has become the online journal NeuviemeArt2.0. Groensteen is the founder of the publishing company L’An 2, now a department of the group Actes Sud. He has long tauught at the Ecole européenne supérieure de l’Image, in Angoulême, and curated many exhibitions.

An occasional scriptwriter and novelist, he is the author of numerous books about the history, the semiotics and the aesthetics of comics. The University Press of Mississippi have translated three of his authoritative essays: The System of Comics, Comics and Narration and An Expanding Art.