Friday, September 6, 2013

Pascal Blanchet > La Fugue



La Fugue is a nearly wordless story (there are maybe fifteen words in French in the whole book) in which an elderly man looks back over his life. This old man is a jazz pianist, now lost in gloom, but whose life once took him to the biggest cities and to the boldest loves. As far as plot goes, there is nothing here that you haven't read a dozen times before. Everything of value comes in the presentation.



There are no panels here, and each page is a full illustration. Actually, many pages have no illustrations at all, and are left blank, giving the book a unique pace, with certain images provided a space to breathe over a two-page spread. Printed in two colors (red and brown), there is a sleekly jazzy line at work throughout that gives the images a bouncy feeling. Blanchet also uses negative space far more convincingly than other cartoonists. His layouts are spare and uncluttered, which has the function of amplifying what is on the page 






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