Bacon’s Triptych, Three Studies of the Human Head, 1953, in Deleuze’s Francis Bacon commentary

 

by Corry Shores

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[I am profoundly grateful to the source of this image:

artimage.org.uk

Credits given at the end.]

 

[The following is quotation. My commentary is in brackets.]

 

 

Francis Bacon

 

Triptych, Three Studies of the Human Head, 1953

 

(Thanks source: artimage.org.uk)

 

Painting 60 of Deleuze’s
Francis Bacon: Logique de la sensation. Tome II - Peintures
Painting [13] of the English translation
and Painting [60] of the Seuil 2002 French

 

 

From the text:

Et si l’on rêve d’introduire un ordre dans un triptyque, nous croyons que celui de 1953 impose cet ordre qui ne se confond pas avec la succession des panneaux : la bouche qui crie au centre, le sourire hystérique à gauche, et à droite enfin la tête qui s’incline et se dissipe. [60]

(Deleuze 1981a: 24a; 2002: 34b)

 

And if one dreams of introducing an order into a triptych, I believe that the 1953 triptych [13] imposes the following order, which is not to be confused with the succession of panels: the screaming mouth in the center, the hysterical smile on the left, and finally, the inclined and dissipated head on the right.

(Deleuze 2003a: 26b; 2003b: 28d; 2005: 21b)

 

Commentary:

[Deleuze notes how generally there are no narrative relations between the Figures in Bacon’s paintings. This means also there would probably be no ordering relations between Figures displayed in separate panels. However, Deleuze says that were there to be some exception, it could be this triptych, because the panels’ successive states can be seen as displaying the stages of the self-escape of the Figure’s body. {1} First it begins its escape through the mouth through the scream. {2} Then it begins it dissipation, evidenced by the disjunction between the hysterical smile and and the tensed body (see the first quotation in painting 11.) {3} The body is now dissipating, with the face losing all form and the body slumping as it dissipates. When we pass from left to right, we might even hear a sort of melodic drop as we go from panel to panel.

(Thanks source: artimage.org.uk)

Note: the text says that the screaming mouth is in the center panel and that the hysterical smile is the left panel. In the French painting edition, they are in fact displayed in this order:

(Deleuze 1981b: painting 60)

]

 

 

From the text:

L’hystérique, c’est á la fois celui qui impose sa présence, mais aussi celui pour qui les choses et les êtres sont présents, trop présents, et qui donne á toute chose et communique á tout être cet excès de présence. [...] Bacon peut dire avec humour que le sourire hystérique qu’il peint sur le portrait de 1953, sur la tête humaine de 1953, sur le pape de 1955, vient du « modèle » qui était « très nerveux, presque hystérique ». Mais c’est tout le tableau qui est hystérisé.

(Deleuze 1981a: 36c; 2002: 52c)

 

The hysteric is at the same time someone who imposes his or her presence, but also someone for whom things and beings are present, too present, and who attributes to every thing and communicates to every being this excessive presence. [...] Bacon explains rather testily that the hysterical smile he painted on the || 1953 portrait [11], on the human head of 1953 [13] , and on the 1955 Pope [19] came from a “model” who was  very neurotic and almost hysterical.” But in fact it is the whole painting that is hystericized.

(Deleuze 2003a: 63b; 2003b: 75d; 2005: 36c)

 

Commentary:

[When an image represents a situation, we might say that the image provides itself in its presence, and the represented element is given indirectly through the representation. Processing images representationally is something more or less cognitive and cerebral. Bacon’s paintings avoid representation while still providing intense sensations, and thus we are not distracted by the cognitive elements and instead are left with the raw presences of the image and its sensations. And we might also note that when we experience an overwhelming sensory experience, it attests both to the presence of those sensations as well as to the presence of whatever may be causing them, including the “forces” that are at work in imposing themselves upon our sensory apparatus. And given how overwhelming the sensations are, it attests to the excessiveness of this presence that has such a disruptive effect on our body’s workings. The Figures in Bacon’s paintings can be said to both themselves experience and express this excessive presence as well as causing us to have an overwhelming sensory experience, and thus they communicate that excessive presence to us. We might also find that in such experiences of sensory overload, our bodies begin to undergo confusions of many physical sorts, like certain components of the sensation being at odds with others. We may for example want to look away from the image in disgust while at the same time being drawn to it with rapt and eager curiosity. While under this mode of experience, we could perhaps notice certain traits of hysteria, coming especially from the lack of control of all the influences, tensions, sensations, and so on wrestling throughout our body. Deleuze’s point in these passages is that the hysteria of these Figures is something found not just in the smiles but throughout their bodies and in fact throughout the rest of the painting. For, the other elements in the painting are involved in the play of forces that give rise the Figure’s hystericized body and smile.]

 

 

From the text:

 

Dans les triptyques, c’est donc sur l’horizontale qu’on cherchera le rythme- | témoin à valeur constante. Cette horizontale peut présenter plusieurs Figures. D’abord, celle du plat sourire hystérique : non seulement comme nous l’avons vu, pour le triptyque de tête de 1953 (panneau gauche), mais déjà pour le triptyque des monstres de 1944 (panneau central), où la tête aux yeux bandés n’est pas du tout une tête qui s’apprête à mordre, mais une tête abominable qui sourit, suivant une déformation horizontale de la bouche. [60] [80]

(Deleuze 1981a: 51-52; 2002: 74b)

 

In the triptychs, it is thus on the horizontal that we must seek the attendant-rhythm with a constant value. This horizontal can be presented in several Figures. First, there is the flat hysterical smile, which appears not only, as we have seen, in the 1953 triptych of the head (left panel [13]), but already in the 1944 triptych of monsters (central panel) [1], where the head with the bandaged eyes is not a head preparing to die, but an abominable head that smiles along the horizontal deformation of the mouth.

(Deleuze 2003a: 44b; 2003b: 75; 2005: 54b)

 

Commentary:

[Deleuze identifies three rhythmic tendencies or “figures” in Bacon’s triptychs. We might think of these rhythmic figures as being tendencies or forces of variation impressing themselves into the viewing experience, with all these figures being what they are individually on account of their relation to the other forces. There is an active rhythm, which acts upon or against a passive rhythm, which is the recipient, patient, or simply the opposite in a ‘losing’ way of the active tendencies. So if the Figure in one panel implies a force or motion that is rising, then the passive rhythm will be found in another Figure implying a downward force or motion. There is always a third rhythmic figure, which is like a baseline against which the other-two are oriented. So if one Figure has a rising motion, and another a falling motion, then the third will have a horizontal motion (or a horizontal stability), since that would be the neutral stance between rising and falling. Often times there is a horizontal smile in Bacon’s Figures which serve this attendant rhythmic function, and we see it here in the center panel.

(Thanks source: artimage.org.uk)

Note: as mentioned above, the text says the smile is in the left panel, which is how it is ordered in the Paintings volume.]

 

 

From the text:

 

On comprend du coup que les triptyques aient besoin de cette vivacité lumineuse ou colorée, et se concilient rarement avec un traitement « malerisch » global : le triptyque de tête de 1953 serait une de ces rares exceptions. [60]

(Deleuze 1981a: 55d; 2002: 80c)

 

We at once realize that the triptychs have need of this luminous or colored vivacity, and are rarely susceptible to a global “malerisch” treatment; the 1953 triptych of the head [13] would be one of the rare exceptions.

(Deleuze 2003a: 44b; 2003b: 84ab; 2005: 59c. Note: in 2003a, there are no quotation marks around malerisch.)

 

Commentary:

[The malerisch style was described previously in this way: “We see everywhere the reign of the blurry [flou] and the indeterminate, the action of a depth that pulls at the form, a thickness on which shadows play, | a dark nuanced texture, effects of compression and elongation - In short, a malerisch treatment, as Sylvester suggests” (Deleuze 2003a: 26|27; 2003b: 29c; 2005: 21d). In the triptychs, there is a coupling of Figures across panels. Often in the triptychs, this coupling is in part somehow effected by violently projecting the figures onto a uniform color field. (Perhaps the uniformity of the color field prevents there from being too much discernible visual givens standing between the spatially separated Figures, thereby compelling us to couple them, and perhaps the vibrancy of the colors makes the Figures stand out more distinctly, intensifying their coupling.) But there is an exception to this pattern, namely the triptych in question. The Figures here are sort of blurred into an uncolored background.]

 

 

 

 

Texts:

 

Deleuze, Gilles. 1981a. Francis Bacon: Logique de la sensation. Tome I. Paris: Éditions de la différence.

Deleuze, Gilles. 1981b. Francis Bacon: Logique de la sensation. Tome II - Peintures. Paris: Éditions de la différence.

 

Deleuze, Gilles. 2002. Francis Bacon: Logique de la sensation. Paris: Éditions du seuil.

 

 

Deleuze, Gilles. 2003a. Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation [with translator’s introduction (Smith’s “Deleuze on Bacon: Three Conceptual Trajectories in The Logic of Sensation”) and author’s introduction to the English edition]. Translated by Daniel W. Smith. Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis.

 

 

Deleuze, Gilles. 2003b. Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation [with translator’s preface, preface to the fourth edition by Alain Badiou and Barbara Cassin, author’s foreword, and author’s preface to the English edition]. Translated by Daniel W. Smith. Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis.

 

 

Deleuze, Gilles. 2005. Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation [with translator’s preface, preface to the fourth edition by Alain Badiou and Barbara Cassin, author’s foreword, and author’s preface to the English edition]. Translated by Daniel W. Smith. London/ New York: Continuum.

 

 

 

 

Images obtained gratefully from:

https://www.artimage.org.uk/4598/francis-bacon/three-studies-of-the-human-head--1953

 

.

Groensteen (7.5) Comics and Narration, “Accentuation and Polyrhythm”

 

by Corry Shores

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[The following is summary. Boldface and bracketed commentary are my own.]

 

Thierry Groensteen

Comics and Narration

Chapter 7:
The Rhythm of Comics

7.5
Accentuation and Polyrhythm

 

 

Brief summary:

When the panelization is regularized into a waffle-iron grid, it bears with it inherently a metricized rhythmic cadence. However, the rhythm of such regularized formats can be given accentuations and polyrhythmic layers. Different elements and patterns can be established such that certain parts stand out more rhythmically, and also, at one and the same time various rhythmic patterns can be experienced as flowing together simultaneously. Regularized panelizations can also complicate rhythm in other ways. Chris Ware’s layouts for example can be anti-rhythmic in one sense, because they slow time’s motion down to a crawl. But in another sense, they create other sorts of rhythms in the way we experience that slowed time.

 

 

Summary

[We previously examined some instances of structural irregularities in comics panelizations, and we observed the rhythmic influences they have. For example, speeds of timing may accelerate or decelerate, or syncopations or metrical cadences may suddenly and temporarily appear.] The previous examples we examined demonstrated how rhythm can be accentuated. Because these cases presented anomalous instances of structural regularity within a context of irregularity, “differentiation and accentuation are synonymous” in these instances (151). [So in other words, when the structure is irregular, rhythmic accentuation for the most part comes from local differences. As such, they perhaps lend themselves more to intensive differences like instantaneous variations in speed or amplitude of the beat. However, when the panel structure is regularized, more than just local variations can be implemented, since larger structural organizations can be developed. It seems perhaps Groensteen with his examples is saying that when you have structural regularities, you can establish a context or environment on the basis of which you can “code” or “program in” other variables with rhythmic effects.]

The localized occurrences noted above are specific examples of the accentuation of rhythm (in this context, differentiation and accentuation are synonymous). There now emerges a general rule, which is as follows. In the case of a comic with the smoothest possible beat (regular layout, reiteration of very similar iconic content, standard distribution of balloons over the page), many resources are available for accentuation, whether at the level of the stanza or at that of a single panel. Some of these resources come under the heading of the spatio-topical system, and have, for that reason, been signaled in System 1: a panel can be accentuated by its siting (especially when it occupies the central or the final position), by its shape or by its size. Others concern the content represented. These are: a break in the scale of images, in the continuity of a phased process (cinematic or optical progressivity), or in the chromatic range (through contrast in color). The final parameter that can be brought into play is, as we have seen, the amount of information offered to the reader, and, notably, the amount of text. These different kinds of accentuation can be used at the same time. The more of them the author brings together to make an image or a stanza stand out, the more remarkable the cumulative effect of scansion will be.
(153)

 

[Groensteen next discuss the polyrhythms in La Cage. I unfortunately do not have a copy available at the moment, so I will just have to quote.]

In my essay on La Cage [The Cage] written in 2002, I referred to the superimposition of a number of structuring rhythmic procedures in Martin Vaughn James’s famous experimental “visual novel”:

Like any published work that is inherently visual, La Cage consists of a sequence of double pages that are immediately perceived as a succession of diptychs. To this basic binary beat are added, in this instance, all kinds of rhythmic and even melodic effects. The reader only has to leaf through the book to make them visible: there are sequences which, like musical phrases, are sustained over several diptychs and are then suddenly broken off as another tune comes in; effects of rhyme, repetition, always with [. . .] some variation; alternation between large images split into two halves set out on facing pages and diptychs that juxtapose unrelated, self-sufficient images; and, finally, variations in the framing of the image that affect two of its parameters: size and position on the page. All these procedures, working together, stamp a particular rhythm onto Vaughn James’s visual novel, a rhythm made up of accelerations and pauses, moments of intensity and glissandos. The text intervenes on two levels. Considered in its simple physical materiality, it is, variously, absent altogether, reduced to a single line or expanded into a block of type, and may be positioned above or below the image. Considered as reading matter, it holds the attention for longer or shorter periods.⁴⁴
{Footnote 44 from page 193: “La Construction de La Cage” [The Construction of La Cage], afterword to Martin Vaughn-James, La Cage (Brussels: Les Impressions nouvelles, new edition 2010) p. XLVI.}

[Below is an image that illustrates partially some of these ideas. I obtained it very gratefully from Emmanuel Espinasse's Pinterest page.]

Groensteen cites other examples of polyrhythm from Alan Moore’s, Dave Gibbons’, and John Higgins’ Watchmen. On some pages, there are three layers of rhythm simultaneously at work. This results from an interchange between different scenes, which is like parallel editing in film. {1} There is the grouping of threes of each horizontal strip on the page. {2} There is the interchanging swing between both scenes. And {3} there is the constant repetition of text in each panel, that is not entirely homogeneous, since in one scene it is narration boxing and in another speech ballooning, and also in each box there will be different amounts of text.

The interweaving of different rhythms is also in evidence on certain remarkable pages of Watchmen, characterized by the alternation of two narrative sequences that intersect within the waffle-iron grid, overlaying onto the page an X-shape, which is reinforced by the distinctions in color tone between the two sequences in question.45 Moore’s skill lies in not disrupting the continuity of the text—the same dialogue goes on throughout the entire page, sometimes “on” (the speakers are shown: we will call this scene A) and sometimes “off” (the “image track” is uncoupled from the “soundtrack” and we see another scene in another place: scene B). The result is that on top of the cadence set up by the waffle-iron grid, the A-B-A/B-A-B/A-B-A structure actually interweaves several different rhythms: the ternary rhythm of the strip, the binary rhythm of the A-B alternation, and the rhythm of the text, at once regular in that it sits atop two series of images with no interruption—and irregular, in view of the varying length of the lines of dialogue.
(154)
[Footnote 45 from page 193: See, for example, the second, third, and fourth pages of Chapter 1, the first pages of Chapter 2, or pages 9 and 10 of Chapter 3.]

[Below is an instance where the pattern is obvious, but the panels of the bottom strip are combined.]

[Below are two consecutive pages where the grid remains intact.]

[Perhaps the pattern is more apparent when we place them side-by-side.]

[Below is the ternary rhythm of the three-paneled strips.]

[All while these triplets have their rhythmic effect, at the same time we experience the binary interchanging movement between scenes.]

[And still at the same time there is the constant beat of the text insertions, marking each panel with another tick.]

 

 

Comics  have a basic discontinuity built into them [resulting from the fact that they are segmented into panels.] Comics artists have many ways to create possibilities of rhythm that the reader actualizes through her interpretive reading decisions.

The discontinuity that is the basis of the language of comics ensures that rhythm is a central element of its discursive resources. It has been important to establish the following points here: that the rhythm peculiar to each work is enriched by multiple effects and strategies, that this rhythm is unceasingly | modulated throughout the work as a function of multiple parameters, that almost all the great authors are past masters at interweaving rhythms (emphatic and muted), and, finally, that readers have a role to play in the actualization of these combined processes—it is they who must interpret the score.
(155)

In fact, Chris Ware is the one who made this analogy of the reader interpreting the comic as if it were like a music score. Groensteen then notes the very slow pacing we often find in Ware’s work. It in a sense is a sort of anti-rhythm, since it seems to slow time down.

 

The latter expression originates from Chris Ware (“When you read a comic strip, it’s like reading a musical score. It’s up to us as readers to bring the music from the score alive”);⁴⁶ and if there is one artist who has established , if not rhythm, then at least duration, as one of the essential dimensions of his own poetic art, it is without doubt the author of Jimmy Corrigan, whom we meet again here. When his work first began to attract attention, readers were all struck by his management of time, characterized by the stretching out of certain sequences, sometimes to an almost unbearable extent, further exacerbated by the nature of the sequences in question, which were marked by the immobility and indecisiveness of their protagonists, by non-communication and aphasia. As Jacques Samson writes, in Ware’s work, “time moves sluggishly, and displays its sluggishness.”⁴⁷

[Footnote 46 on page 193: Unpublished comment, during round table with author.]
[Footnote 47 on page 193: Jacques Samson et Benoît Peeters, Chris Ware, la bande dessinée réinventée [Chris Ware, Comic Art Reinvented] (Brussels, Les Impressions nouvelles, 2010), p. 150. See also Georgiana Banita, “Chris Ware and the Pursuit of Slowness,” David M. Ball and Martha B. Kuhlman (eds), The Comics of Chris Ware (Jackson, U P of Mississippi, 2010) pp. 177–90.]

 

[Below is a panel from a Jimmy Corrigan issue of Acme Novelty Library. As you can see, Ware is a genius.]

 

Groensteen explains that there is an anti-rhythmic element in Ware’s design, because much in the imagery is made to be experienced as if things were stagnating. Nonetheless, there are still rhythms in the way we experience the distended temporality of the events, and they can be modulated by such factors as panel sizes and their sequentialized contents.

 

The visual translation of the miring of the action—which amounts to an antirhythm— is achieved by a constant recourse to seriality effects: avoiding shotcounter shot sequences and pointless changes in framing, Ware cultivates instead the systematic, reiterating the same angles of vision over and over again. To which is added a very personal conception of layout, analyzed above (p. 49) as “a combination of quadrangular blocks.” In fact, the eye perceives at first glance that these blocks are not all equivalent: one large image means a pause, another series of small images represents the unfolding of a process, or is a figurative expression of emphasis. To the different formats configured by the artist there correspond different rhythms of apprehending the material, time spans mentally calculated by the reader. Ware likes to quote Goethe’s definition of architecture as “frozen music.” This metaphor applies perfectly to the architecture of his comics pages.

 

Thus even when time seems to stand still, there are yet other structural factors which give those pauses rhythm of a sort.

 

The question of rhythm is, nonetheless, all-pervasive in his work. It is transmitted, as we have seen, by the insistent repetition of certain iconic contents, but also by the mathematical principles on which the compartmentalizing of the space on the page is based. To the “nested regularities” that we have observed (the fact that the panels correspond to three or four standard formats, perfect multiples of each other), there correspond different beats, so that the page (and the narrative as a whole) is made up of interwoven rhythms—even when, within this rhythmic mechanism, the author manages to suspend the flow of time.

 

 

 

 

Works Cited:

 

Thierry Groensteen. Comics and Narration. Translated by Ann Miller. Jackson, Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi, 2013. Originally published as Système de la bande dessinée 2. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2011.

 

 

 

Image credits:

 

 

Martin Vaughn-James. La Cage. Copyright Les Impression nouvelles. Obtained gratefully from Emmanuel Espinasse's Pinterest page:
https://www.pinterest.com/phenixdu16000/sp4ce-k0mix/

Alan Moore (Writer), Dave Gibbons (Illustrator/Letterer), & John Higgins (Colorist). Watchmen #1. September 1986. Copyright DC Comics, 1986.

 

 

Alan Moore (Writer), Dave Gibbons (Illustrator/Letterer), & John Higgins (Colorist). Watchmen #2. October 1986. Copyright DC Comics, 1986.

 

 

Chris Ware. Acme Novelty Library #14. Copyright 2000 Chris Ware. Fantagraphics Books.

 

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Groensteen (7.4) Comics and Narration, “The Awareness of Rhythm”

by Corry Shores

[Search Blog Here. Index tabs are found at the bottom of the left column.]

[Central Entry Directory]
[Literature, Drama, and Poetry, Entry Directory]
[Graphic Literature, Entry Directory]
[Thierry Groensteen, Entry Directory]
[Groensteen, Comics and Narration, entry directory]

 

[The following is summary. Boldface and bracketed commentary are my own. Proofreading is incomplete. Sorry about that.]

 

Thierry Groensteen

Comics and Narration

Chapter 7:
The Rhythm of Comics

7.4
The Awareness of Rhythm

 

 

Brief summary:

When a comics layout pattern is regularized to form a “waffle-iron” grid, it is formally obvious what about it creates its metrically homogenous, steady rhythm or “cadence.” However, when the panels’ shapes are not regularized, then the rhythm can be unsteady and more complicated. This means that brief instances of regularized sequences stand out very strongly from the irregular context. Nonetheless, even in irregular patterns there are still rhythmic factors like tempo alterations, syncopation, and so on. These other variables draw our attention to the subjective contribution to comics rhythm. The comics artist presents certain rhythmic possibilities for the reader to explore, and the reader, on the basis of her disposition and free decisions, actualizes any of those rhythmic possibilities.

 

 

Summary

[We previously discussed the steady cadence rhythm of the “waffle-iron” grid layout of comics.] Although many comics have the waflle-iron grid pattern, many others do not, and they thus do not have the steady cadence of the regularized panel formats (148).

 

[Groensteen then makes a very important phenomenological observation. He previously showed how when the regular pattern is established, the exceptional instances where that pattern is broken stand out and change the rhythmic feel of the comics. Eisner made a similar point, too. But if the pattern is irregular, then it is the moments of regularity that stand out. This supports a more basic phenomenological point, which is that phenomenality can be based on difference.]

When irregularity becomes the rule, it is localized incidences of regularity that stand out. The reader notices immediately if a series of three or four consecutive panels have identically shaped frames in common, particularly if the shape is unusual, either longer or wider than the norm for the other images. These panels work together: they constitute a stanza.
(148)

 

Groensteen gives an example from Jason’s Je vais te montrer quelque chose. Most of the work has irregular panelization, except for a dialogue scene [shown below, taken from Groensteen’s book.]

This central group of eight panels forms a “stanza”. [When we read it, there is an interesting change of rhytmic gears that occurs.]

Eight panels is more than enough for a cadence to emerge, and here it is reinforced by two of the seriality effects that we have already noted: repetition (each of the eight panels is a close-up on a face, whereas in the other images the characters are framed at half or full length) and an effect of periodic alternation (Sandra and Alex speak in turn; moreover, they are represented in three-quarter profile along symmetrical axes).
(149)

 

In the surrounding wordless panels, we do not have a good way to gauge how much time passed. But we can discern that the eight rapid frames have the temporality of the displayed verbal exchange (149). [Recall again Eisner’s explanation that we use clues in the panel’s content to discern how much time is passing within and between panels.]

 

[Groensteen’s next point is interesting. We first must distinguish the duration depicted and the duration it takes to read the panels. When there is dialogue, it might take us longer to read the panels than it takes for the fictional duration to occur. In other words, a panel sequence might imply that for example 10 seconds have passed, but it took us 20 seconds to read those panels. On the other hand, a silent panel might imply that 20 seconds have passed, but it takes us just three seconds to read it. Groensteen thinks that there is an inverse relation between depicted and experienced duration.]

It is of course important to make a distinction between the time of the action and the time of reading, which have an inverse relationship to each other. Our eight panels containing dialogue recount a very short scene, but, because they include text, they possibly take a little longer to read than the wordless images that occur before and after them, even though the latter represent more story time.
(149)

 

Groensteen then makes another interesting phenomenological observation. The time intervals in comics can be depicted in the story, but the rhythmic feel of the comics comes more from the temporal properties of the experiences of the comics. This comes, he says, in stages. First we see the overall panel structure on the page, which gives us a feel for whether or not the rhythm is regular or not. Then as we continue reading the panels, we might experience variations in the pacing. [I may not be getting the next point. It seems that Groensteen then says that the rhythm is not merely found in the reader’s experience but rather in the interplay between the actual temporal features of the experience and those of the fictional temporality that are decoded from visual clues.]

Rhythm, in comic art, is never a matter of time intervals that can be measured but of time intervals that are felt, through an impression that is built up in stages. This begins with an instant visual fix on the configuration of the multiframe, which will be perceived as regular or not, composed of a greater or smaller number of panels and featuring or not featuring seriality effects (all factors that can be taken in at first glance). It is then activated by the reading process, which is subject to variation in speed, now faster, now slower.⁴² We must refrain, here again, from an over-mechanistic or simplistic description, because not only does the reader’s awareness of rhythm depend on his/her own alertness and sensitivity, it is also something other than a simple matter of correlation with the time of the action or the time of the reading. It is, precisely, forged in the gap, the tension between these two dimensions: the reader’s engagement with what is being | recounted, and, correspondingly, the decoding of a greater or lesser amount of visual and verbal information.
(149-151, skipping 150, which entirely displays the Jason page)
[Footnote 42 of page 193: When Baetens and Lefèvre write: “The rhythm of narration of a comic can be measured by a comparison between the probable duration of the action and the number of panels covering it in the album” (Pour une lecture moderne, op. cit., p. 53), they are confusing rhythm with speed. Although the speed of the narration can indeed be measured by this relationship, it will by now be clear that rhythm is a considerably more complex matter.]
{From footnote 5 of this chapter, page 191: ... Jan Baetens and Pascal Lefèvre, Pour une lecture moderne de la bande dessinée [Towards a Modern Reading of Comic Art] (Brussels: CBBD, 1993) ....}

 

Groensteen will now focus more on the subjective element of how rhythm is experienced in comics. The same panels can have different rhythmic qualities depending on the dispositions and free decisions of the readers. The same silent panels for example can be studied and dwelled upon, or glanced over quickly.

The configuration of the multiframe and the density of the information are objective criteria. However, nothing is more subjective than our involvement in the fabula that is being recounted or shown, the narrative discourse that is addressed to us. It is all the more subjective for having a double motivation, emotional and aesthetic. Let us take the example of a wordless panel representing a (silent) character in close-up. Reader A will skim over it: s/he has noticed that this is a lull in the action and so (in his/her opinion) the panel is not worth tarrying over. Reader B (especially if she is a female reader?) will be moved by the expression on this mute face and will linger over it, intuiting a sentiment that arouses empathy (the importance of close-ups in shōjo mangas is well known). Reader C will be held up by his/her interest in the drawing style of the close-up: it may be striking on account of the intensity, the accuracy,—and sometimes the comic effect—of the facial expression (as in the theatre, we can speak of a powerful presence), or it may simply be worthy of admiration for its graphic virtuosity, as a particularly felicitous portrait, a face that is etched and detailed, a remarkable “phizog” (think, for example, of certain close-ups by Giraud or Goossens).
(151)

[Below is a page of shōjo manga, Ueda’s Peach Girl, which Groensteen displays earlier in this book.]

[Below is a silent close-up by Giraud. I am not sure if this is the sort of close-up Groensteen has in mind, however.]

[And below is a silent close-up by Goossens. Again, I am not sure if this is what Groensteen has in mind.]

As we can see, then:

In the final analysis, the author proposes but the reader disposes. It is the latter who animates, identifies with, punctuates, and brings to life the story in his/ her own way. The reader therefore contributes to the rhythm of the narration, which, ultimately, coincides with the pulsating flow of the reading process.
(151)

 

Groensteen then has us consider another example, namely a page from André Juillard’s and Patrick Cothias’s Les 7 Vies de l'Épervier. Tome 7: La Marque du condor. [Below is the referenced page.]

[Let me quote first.]

This page is characterized by seriality effects, even if they are not as marked as in the work of Jason. The geometrical arrangement of the page, as the reader first apprehends it, however vaguely, is as follows: vertically the page is divided in two across the middle. Horizontally it is also divided in two, but the parts are of unequal size. This structure (an off-center cross shifted towards the left) dictates the rhythm of the page: one large image followed by a stanza of three horizontal images “bracketed together,” then two more classically shaped images one above the other, then again a group of three images, this time vertically elongated.
(151)

[I was a little confused, because I expected it to read that horizontally the page is divided into equal sections top and bottom, but vertically into unequal parts, as the left side is narrower.]

[At any rate, the point seems to be that we get three beats in each “stanza” on the right side of the page. This is similar to the Jason example, because in the context of rhythmic irregularity, there are isolated sequences with a metrical rhythm.]

 

Groensteen then says that this pattern makes the rhythm here “syncopated” (151). [The idea might be that although the stanza’s have a regular rhythm, in the context of the irregular rhythm, they perhaps seem like accentuated off-beats, but I am not sure.]

The operation of reading this part of the narrative is not regular or cadenced; it is more syncopated, as the sequence is processed in successive chunks. The | most expressive element is of course the vertical juxtaposition of these two tercets (three-panel stanzas) oriented along opposing axes.
(151-153, skipping page 152, which displays the comics page)

 

Groensteen then looks at other visual elements in the frames of this page that lend to its rhythmic feel. For example, the blue of the sky in the last three panels creates an affinity between them that lends to their being grouped as a stanza. But what about the top stanza? All other panels have just one speech balloon, but those have two, again creating a visual grouping.

Over and above the arrangement of the frames, other structuring parameters are involved in the production of rhythm, the two main ones in our example being the distribution of colors and the spacing out of speech balloons. As regards the colors, red stands out strikingly, very prominent in the first panel, and then punctuating the lower part of each half of the page. But the pale blue of the sky creates an effect of continuity among the last three images and contributes to their perception as three components of a single group. As regards the text, it is noteworthy that every panel of this page contains one speech balloon, with the exception of the three horizontal panels of the top stanza, which each contain two. There again, we have a factor that, by introducing a variation into the tempo of reading, singles out the stanza and designates it as homogeneous in its difference.
(153)

 

 

 

 

Works Cited:

Thierry Groensteen. Comics and Narration. Translated by Ann Miller. Jackson, Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi, 2013. Originally published as Système de la bande dessinée 2. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2011.

 

 

Image credits:

 

Thierry Groensteen. Comics and Narration. [See above]

 

Jason. Je vais te montrer quelque chose. Copyright 2004 Jason and Éditions Tournon-Carabas. Here taken gratefully from p.150 of Thierry Groensteen. Comics and Narration.

 

Miwa Ueda. Peach Girl #1. Translated by Dan Papia. Copyright 2001 Mixx Entertainment / 1988 Miwa Ueda. Tokyopop.

 

Jean Giraud (artist) & Marc Bati (writer). Le cristal majeur. Copyright 1986 Dargaud.

 

Daniel Goossens. Route vers l'enfer. Copyright 1997 Goossens and Audie-Fluide Glacial.

 

André Juillard (artist) & Patrick Cothias (writer). Les 7 Vies de l'Épervier. Tome 7: La Marque du condor. Copyright 1991 Éditions Glénat.

 

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Groensteen (7.3) Comics and Narration, “Three Types of Emphasis”

by Corry Shores

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[The following is summary. Boldface and bracketed commentary are my own.]

 

Thierry Groensteen

Comics and Narration

Chapter 7:
The Rhythm of Comics

7.3
Three Types of Emphasis

 

 

Brief summary:

The standardized waffle-iron gird panelization lends itself to a metricized rhythm with a steady cadence. The effects of this cadence can arise either from repetition or alternation. There is repetition when there is a static shot with small variations from panel to panel, and it prolongs key dramatic moments. There is alternation when the contents of the panels switch between poles of variation, as from for example light to dark.

 

 

Summary

[We previously discussed the “waffle-iron” grid layout of comics, with one example being Chester Brown’s Louis Riel. A Comic-Strip Biography. We displayed this panel as illustration:

] In the panel layout of Louis Riel, as we can see, there is a grid of six panels enframed by a fairly thick line. Groensteen says that the cadence can be experienced as stronger or weaker, depending on what is going on in a particular sequence of panels. He further states that there are two sorts of effects involved in these variations of cadence: {1} effects that arise out of repetition, and {2} effects that play on periodic alternation (144).

 

Groensteen begins with repetition. It results when the contents of a series of frames remains homogeneous in a some basic way such that it seems we have one scene seen from a static observer that is prolonged while we witness the activity taking place.

Repetition: this is the effect of the “static shot” of a character, a group, part of the decor (this borrowing from film vocabulary indicates that the whole scene is perceived from a single spatially determined point). I will also refer to this as a “seriality effect.” By repeating the same framing over and over again, the artist emphasizes a key moment within the narrative and prolongs it not on the mode of “and then” but rather of “and still . . . and still . . . .” On page 23, five panels offer a high-angled viewpoint over a stockade. A man is nailing a proclamation to the fence, and people are stopping to read it—first a single passer-by, then two more, then some others. On pages 70–72, the final seconds before the execution of Thomas Scott, found guilty of treason, are cruelly dragged out, as the question as to whether he should stand or kneel before the firing squad is posed | three times. The same framing is used eleven times before the white panel used by Chester Brown to render the actual moment when the condemned man is shot. Throughout the sequence, time seems to stand still, and the sight of Scott becomes more and more unbearable each time it is reiterated. The repetition creates a particular kind of dramatic tension—it is as if the reader can hear the reverberation of the drum that beats out, unflinchingly, these solemn and dreadful moments.²⁸
(144-145)
[Footnote 28 from p.192: Similarly, in From Hell, the almost unbearable scene from chapter 10, which details every step of the murder committed by William Gull on November 9, 1888, and particularly pages 4 to 9, where the victim is savagely disfigured and ripped apart, draws its power from the regularity of the layout and the continuity of the angle of vision. It is noteworthy that From Hell makes frequent use of the static shot, which is not the case for Watchmen. Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell, From Hell (Marietta: Top Shelf Productions, 1999).]

[Below we see the first Louis Riel static shot scene.]

[Now below we see the second static shot scene from this graphic novel.]

[And now below are some of the pages from From Hell that Groensteen cites in the footnote.]

        

 

Repetition, as we saw, maintains a homogeneity across a series of consecutive panels, and this creates also a metricized temporal rhythm. The next sort of rhythmic variation is alternation. The contents might swing between visual poles, like light and dark.

Alternation: Brown makes skilful use of the three colors in his palette, black, white, and gray. The hierarchy of values can be overturned at any point. So black, heavily present in one scene, can disappear altogether in the next. These contrasts may emphasize the general structure of the narrative, its division into scenes, whose respective length is in itself a rhythmic element; they may also set consecutive panels on the same page against each other and create a checkerboard or stroboscopic effect.
(145)

[Below is another page from Louis Riel. In this case, we have starting with panel 2 an alternation of light and dark.]

 

Groensteen then says that there can be alternation also with “actual iconic content or the angle of vision” (145). He notes the trial scene at the end of Louis Riel where there is an alternation of figures all at the same profile perspective. “The rhythmic effect is very powerful, especially in the passages corresponding to the questioning of the witnesses, which have the pace of a verbal and visual ping-pong match” (145). [Below is a page from this trial scene.]

 

[Groensteen then mentions parenthetically the stroboscopic rhythm of Breccia’s adaptation of Poe’s Tell-Tale Heart.]

(There is a famous example of a comic that bases its narrative project on the repetition of a small number of images. This is the Alberto Breccia adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, The Tell-Tale Heart.³⁰ I have written elsewhere that “the stroboscopic effect” produced by Breccia proves to be a “remarkable graphic transposition of the heartbeats of the victim” that the murderer believes he can hear in his room.³¹ It is, of course, this auditory hallucination that induces him to confess his crime and to lead police to the body buried under the floorboards.)
(145)
[Footnote 30 on page 192: First published in French in Charlie mensuel, no. 88, (May 1976).]
{Footnote 31 on page 192: See my article: “Le cadavre tombé de rien ou la troisième qualité du scénariste” [The corpse that fell for no reason, or the scriptwriter’s third quality], Revue de l’Université de Bruxelles, nos. 1–2 (1986), Autour du scénario, pp. 111–18”.}

[Below are some  pages from Breccia’s "El corazón delator."]

 

[I am not entirely sure what the next idea is, but it seems that you can have alternation of larger chunks, called periodic alternation. This is like a stanza in poetry, and you could have the equivalent as a group of panels on a comics page. It seems Groensteen indicates that we will deal more with this later when examining irregularity.]

Periodic alternation is one of the eight characteristics of rhythm enumerated by the Belgian philosopher and semiotician Henri Van Lier after an investigation of the properties of human walking. Another of his examples is “stanza formation,” or the combining of several elementary units (in this case, strides) into larger ones.³² The notion of the stanza, used in poetry to designate a section of | the poem made up of several lines, can easily be transposed to comic art. It designates a group made up of several panels that stand out in relation to the page, the sequence, or the book as being particularly salient, because the panels in question produce a seriality effect through the repetition or alternation of content or formal features. The panels in the same stanza echo each other and display one or other of these types of cohesion to a remarkable extent. The stanza is therefore a key component of rhythm, not only in the case of the “waffle-iron” but also, if not more, as we shall soon see, in irregular layouts.
(145-146)
{Footnote 32 on page 192:  See Henri Van Lier, Anthropogénie [Anthropogenics], Brussels: Les Impressions nouvelles, 2010) pp. 18–21. (Translator’s note: Van Lier’s original term is “strophisme.”) The other characteristics of rhythm noted by the author are: interstability, accentuation (which I will include in my own analysis below), tempo, autoengendering, suspense, convection, and distribution through nodes, envelopes, resonances, and interfaces.}

So the first two types of rhythmic effects made possible by the waffle-iron grid are repetition and alternation. The third sort of effect is progressivity, of which there are two sub-types. {1} cinematic progressivity, which is “the cinematic decomposition of the action represented,” and {2} optical progressivity, that is, “the equivalent of the zoom in or out, which gradually brings us closer to or further away form a given subject” (146).

[Cinematic progressivity seems to be like holding the camera in one place while action continues in front of it, and so with regard to comics, it is a series of frames with a homogeneous visual perspective displaying a series of moments in an event.]

Cinematic progressivity usually goes hand in hand with the insistent repetition of the same framing. Historically, it emerges out of the chronophotographic experiments of Muybridge into the breaking down of movement, as Thierry Smolderen has demonstrated.³³ It was with the artist Arthur B. Frost, an ardent admirer of Muybridge, that comics became interested in movement, arising out of its specificity as an art form composed of intervals. Smolderen shows how Frost’s “chronophotographic waffle-iron grid” rapidly became adopted as standard in the Sunday newspaper comics.
(146)
[Footnote 33 from p.192: Naissances de la bande dessinée, op. cit., pp. 104–17.]

[I do not have access yet to Smolderen’s book to know exactly which Frost images he is referring to. But here is a possible example. We see the decomposition of the action, as if a camera is rolling and we are taking out selected frames.]

 

 

Groensteen then says that the progressivity effect is found in Cliff Sterrett’s Polly and her Pals. But I was only able to find one example.]

One of the cartoonists who exploited it to most spectacular effect was certainly Cliff Sterrett.³⁴ Among the Polly and her Pals Sunday strips, there are remarkable examples of “static shots” (for example, the pages from August 8, 1926, and July 13, 1930, which both have an underwater setting and frame only the legs of the characters), and others, just as striking, of the cinematic decomposition of an action (we can cite the occasions when Samuel Perkins falls into the water on August 25, 1926, and August 24, 1927, collides with a passing woman during a storm [March 3, 1929], or attempts to close and secure a trunk [July 21, 1929]). Sometimes the two effects come together, as on the page which sees the same Sam trying to swallow a pill with the help of water from a fountain (January 16, 1927).
(146)
[Footnote 34 on p.192: The work of Frost and Sterrett was published in France in the twenty-first century by the L’An 2 publishing house.]

[Below is the one from August 8, 1926.]

 

Groensteen then notes that he will return to the rhythm of silent/wordless comics later.

 

The structure of the waffle-iron grid is apparent upon the first glance of the page, and three effects we discussed can operate on the level of the page as a whole (147).

 

Along with Polly, there were many other cases of repetition in 20th century comics (147).

 

There are some variations in the waffle-iron grid structure. Watchmen and From Hell for example at times double or triple the panels by combining their sizes. Groensteen’s point is that these exceptional moments have even more pronounced rhythmic effects, given the consistent context they stand out starkly from. Thus the six consecutive splash pages of Watchmen have the effect of being like six gongs of a clock, as if at that moment time stands still.

Among comic books that conform to a regular layout, some observe the rule strictly (this is the case of Louis Riel, a work of deliberate austerity), while others are more flexible in their adherence to it. In Watchmen and From Hell, famously, the nine-panel grid works on a modular system, with some images double or triple the size of a standard panel.³⁵ Although any infringement of the regular pattern is significant, it is obvious that the more it departs from the norm, the more it will stand out. In this respect, the first six pages of the twelfth and last chapter of Watchmen, the only splash pages of the whole work, have a remarkable impact. The rhythm of the narration freezes, and time is suspended over these images of devastation, an effect underlined by the title of the film being shown at the Utopia Cinema: The Day the Earth Stood Still.³⁶ Douglas Wolk has made the valid comment that the reader perceives these six outsize images like “six consecutive unexpected gongs of a clock.”³⁷
(147)
[Footnote 36 on page 192: A famous 1951 film by Robert Wise.]
[Footnote 37 on pages 192-193: See Douglas Wolk, Reading Comics (Cambridge, Ma: Da Capo Press, 2007), p. 239. Other critics have noted that this point about Watchmen also applies to the rest of Alan | Moore’s work: images taking up a whole page almost always coincide with some kind of apocalypse.]

[Here is one of the splash pages mentioned in Watchmen.]

[Here is a page with double and tripled panels, again from Watchmen.]   

[And here is a page from From Hell with a doubled panel.]

 

 

Groensteen next discusses the role of the parameter of “fixed metric form” in creating the comics’ cadence. It is especially for the case of short-format comic strips that artists might choose to use the same regularized panel format each time. Charles Schulz’ Peanuts for example for a long time used a four panel structure. [Below is an example from a very early one.]

Groensteen also notes how Ferri and Larcenet’s Le Retour à la terre  and Diago Aranega’s Victor Lalouz used standard six panel formats.

[Below is a strip from Ferri and Larcenet’s Le Retour à la terre.]

[And below is one of Diago Aranega’s Victor Lalouz.]

Groensteen notes that Schulz made use of the metrical rhythm of these homogenized panel patterns, and in fact he even repeated much in the content, “so to accentuate the slightest variations in posture or facial expression, and confers on them the status of graphic events that are information- and often emotion- bearing” (147-148, quoting his paper  “Le système Schulz” [The Schulz System], Les Cahiers de la bande dessinée, no. 81 (June 1988), pp. 88–113; 91.)

 

 

 

 

Works Cited:

Thierry Groensteen. Comics and Narration. Translated by Ann Miller. Jackson, Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi, 2013. Originally published as Système de la bande dessinée 2. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2011.

 

 

Image credits:

 

Chester Brown. Louis Riel. A Comic-Strip Biography. Copyright 2006 Chester Brown. Drawn & Quarterly.

 

Alan Moore (Writer), Eddie Cambpell (Artist), and Pete Mullins (Contributing Artist). From Hell. Copyright 2006 [1989] Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell. Top Shelf Productions.

 

Alberto Breccia. "El corazón delator." Obtained gratefully from SAP Comics.
http://sapcomics.blogspot.com.tr/2011/09/el-corazon-delator-tell-tale-heart.html

 

Arthur B. Frost. "A Tale of Two Tales." In The Bull Calf and Other Tales, pp.108-112. New York: Charles Scribners' Sons, 1892. http://archive.org/details/bullcalrtal00fros

 

Cliff Sterrett. Polly and Her Pals. 8-August-1926. Obtained gratefully from: RyallTime Blog. https://ryalltime.wordpress.com/2010/12/09/polly-and-her-pals/

 

Alan Moore (Writer), Dave Gibbons (Illustrator/Letterer), & John Mullins (Colorist). Watchmen #12. December 1986. Copyright DC Comics, 1986.

 

Charles Schultz. The Complete Peanuts: 1950-1952. Copyright 2004 United Feature Syndicate, Inc. Fantagraphic Books.

 

Jean-Yves Ferri & Manu Larcenet. Brigitte Findakly, colorist. Le retour à la terre. 1. La vraie vie. Poisson Pilote, 2002.

 

Diego Aranega. Victor Lalouz. 1. En route pour la gloire.  Dargaud (Poisson Pilote), 2006.

 

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