Art in the comic is an exhibition in which some of the best contemporary cartoonists and illustrators show their passion for the history of painting. The exhibition will present iconic works from the history of art through the eyes of a number of cartoonists, initiatives by museums based on comics, and an initiative from Fundación Telefónica to reinterpret part of its artistic collection in cartoons.
The exhibition shows work by masters of European comic such as Milo Manara, Enki Bilal, Catherine Meurisse, David Prudhomme, Bernard Yslaire, Marc-Antoine Mathieu. It also includes a broader group of Spanish artists such as Santiago García, Javier Olivares, Ana Galvañ, Mamen Moreu, Miguel Gallardo, Sergio Bleda, Paco Roca, Rubén Pellejero, Juan Díaz Canales, Enrique Ventura, Joan Boix, Fidel Martínez, Brais Rodríguez and Malagón, and many others. There will also be American artists, namelyJuan Giménez, Arthur Suydam, Jorge Zentner and Patricio Clarey.
Comic infiltrates the museum
Major art centres have become aware of the importance of comic. In 2005, Fabrice Douar, editor at the Louvre Museum, and Sébastien Gnaedig, chief editor of Futuropolis, created a collection of comics, in which the museum itself and its art collections formed the leading thread of the story. These albums were drawn and written by some of the most important names in Franco-Belgium and Japanese comics.
In 2009, this initiative resulted in the exhibition, Le Louvre invite la bande dessinée, where the leading museum in France showed the work of authors who participated in this collection. In 2012, another comic exhibition displayed the originals of the album Les Fantômes du Louvre by Enki Bilal. The artist photographed the galleries of the museum. He then sketched 22 phantasmagorical characters on top of them and imagined stories linked to the paintings they were admiring.
This inspired other museums to look into the narrative possibilities of the comic. In 2014, the Musée d’Orsay, together with the publishers Futuropolis, created its own collection of comics set in the legendary train station and its art collections. Two albums have appeared to date, drawn by Catherine Meurisse and Manuele Fior.
Comics reached Spanish museums in 2014, with the album Mitos del Pop (Pop Legends) by Miguel Ángel Martin, commissioned by the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum of Madrid, to complement the homonymous exhibition devoted to Pop Art.