Louvre-backed comics exhibit coming to Taipei

2015/11/26

The Louvre’s Ninth Art Comic Collection Exhibition is to kick off Nov. 28 at the Museum of National Taipei University of Education, highlighting the outstanding achievements of local and foreign talents in the realm of comics and graphic novels.

Running through Feb. 28 next year, the event features works by 20 cartoonists from home and abroad who were invited by the Louvre in Paris to create museum-themed graphic novels in an annual project starting in 2005. Seven comic artists from Taiwan are on the honor list this year.

Curator Fabrice Douar said the island is an emerging global hub of the creative genre recognized as the Ninth Art in Europe. “The increasingly popular Taiwan comics at the Angouleme International Comics Festival in France have driven me to bring these seven talents into the project and further hold the exhibition in Taiwan.”

The Taiwan artists taking part in the event are Ah Tui, Jason Chien, Sean Chuang, Richard Metson, Chang Sheng, Chang Shih-hsin and Liu Yi-chi.

One highlight is “The Goddesses’ Concerns” by Liu, who created the work under the name 61Chi and won the Silver Award at the 2014 International Manga Award in Japan.

Her comics, inspired from artworks such as “The Mona Lisa,” “Venus de Milo” and “The Winged Victory of Samothrace,” vividly depict her characters’ daily lives. She portrays Mona Lisa as obsessed with cosmetic masks and cucumber slices as she attempts to smooth wrinkles caused by smiling all day, while Nike struggles with her inability to speak and Venus has trouble fixing her hair for worries over ruining her perfectly proportioned features.

Equally impressive is “The Gathering of the Great Masters” by Jason Chien, winner of the Best General Comic Award at the 2013 Golden Comic Awards by the ROC Ministry or Culture.

The piece shows a teenager sneaking into the Louvre to summon the ghosts of Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael to help him finish an art assignment, only to find the three Renaissance maestros have differing opinions of each other’s works. A graphic novel arouses their interests, thus triggering another round of fierce but humorous debate on the new art form.

The seven local contributions were compiled in a recently published book titled “Seven Dreams in the Louvre.”

Also on display are other works from the Louvre’s project that have been created over the past 10 years by artists like Christian Durieux from Belgium, Nicolas de Crecy and Enki Bilal of France, as well as Hirohiko Araki and Jiro Taniguchi from Japan.

Source: Taiwan Today (http://taiwantoday.tw/ct.asp?xItem=239362&ctNode=2194&mp=9)