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Franciszka Themersons Ubu Comic Strip:

Autography, Caricature, and the Avant-Garde

Barnaby Dicker

Abstract

This essay establishes a graphic history pertaining to Franciszka Themersons UBU Comic Strip (1970). A product of her

extensive engagement with Alfred Jarrys play Ubu Roi (1896), this work invites us to consider Themersons vanguard

approach to caricature-, cartoon- and comic strip-making in relation to their interwoven histories. To this end, a connection is

drawn between Themerson (1907-1988) and father of the comic strip, Rodolphe Tpffer (1799-1846), through their shared

use of a specific and enduring autographic strategy described here as the slovenly idiom. This idiom is traced from the

emergent modern caricature, cartoon and comic strip of the nineteenth-century to the assimilation of these graphic strategies

by the avant-garde community to which Jarry (1873-1907) belonged in fin-de-sicle Paris. Links are drawn between Jarrys

and his associates graphic depictions of Ubu and Themersons later portrayal of the character.

Franciszka Themerson Alfred Jarry Rodolphe Tpffer Charles Philipon Honor Daumier Pierre Bonnard The

Nabis Comic Strips Caricature Autographic Reproduction Slovenly Idiom Ubu Roi.

Fig. 1. Franciszka Themerson, Strip 24 of UBU Comic Strip (1970). Copyright The Themerson

Archive.

Let me now praise slovenliness.

A premeditated slovenliness; planned and consciously searched for.

--Stefan Themerson

One of the most striking features of Franciszka Themersons UBU Comic Strip (1970) is its apparently simplistic, nave, and rough-hewn graphic idiom (figs. 1 and 2). Developed over the course of her

career, this idiom sees its most extreme published articulation here. More than a century earlier, critic

Friedrich Vischer was struck by Rodolphe Tpffers use of the same idiom in his prototypical comic strips:

What sort of scrawl is this? This is what Goethe praised? I can hardly believe my eyes, this is how our

own childish scribbles looked, when we turned boyish fantasies into silly caricatures. But on closer

inspection these capricious, lawless networks of lines coalesce into the most decided characterization, this

quite crazy, slovenly drawing becomes a well-considered and systematic instrument in the hand of a man

who makes sense of nonsense, is wise in delirium, and steers his mad steed to its certain destination,

following the rules of a secret calculation (2007: 187).

Vischers assessment holds as true for Themerson as it does for Tpffer; their shared idiom is not one of incompetence and haste, but of a deliberate graphic strategy. Our conception of this slovenly idiom may be reformulated more attentively and precisely. Works in this vein proudly emphasize, celebrate, and exploit the integration of drawing and/or handwriting into autographic reproduction

technologythe significance of which cannot be overstated. At the close of the eighteenth century, and for the first time in print history, an artists original drawn marks could be reproduced in apparently every idiosyncratic detail and distributed to a large audience. As David Kunzle asserts, this

invitation to combine graphic line and verbal formulation [. . .] constitute[d] a new mode [. . .] bypass[ing] or transcend[ing] the normal criteria of criticism (1990: 46). Taking Themerson as our

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fruit, Tpffer our root, and Alfred Jarry our tree, we shall see how a certain line of avant-garde graphic

art, closely tied to literature and the book, traded on this autographic development and the slovenly

idiom it had sparked in the modern caricature, cartoon, and comic strip.

By autographic reproduction, we mean processes that appear to adhere closely, if not directly, to an

artists marks, rather than those that have been re-inscribed by a second party. Over the past hundred years, there have been increasingly fewer occasions to question these reproduction processes; they are

a given. As noted above, the integration of drawing and handwriting into autographic reproduction has

been a significant development, introducing a layer of visible spontaneity into what remains a complex

industrial, technological, and social system. The first stages of this integration can be dated to the

close of the eighteenth century, when William Blake demonstrated the ingenious expedient of drawing and writing on a copper plate [. . .] using the acid resist [. . .] as the graphic medium1 (Jussim 1983: 46). Blakes innovation was soon followed by another development of particular significance, namely transfer lithography, which autographically reproduces every mark made on a piece of paper

without the final print being laterally reversed. Prior to this development, all pictures and, most

significantly, all writing (Blakes included) had to be reversed on the block in order for the print to appear the right way around. In addition to being accessible, such autographic processes promised a

more or less exact reproduction of a pages design, allowing artists to freely combine drawing and writing in whatever manner they chose.

For the purposes of this essay, emphasis will be placed on Themersons work as a graphic artist operating within a literary frame. Themerson, a practicing illustrator and designer in her native Poland

since the early 1930s, went on to found the important British avant-garde publishing house

Gaberbocchus Press with her husband, writer Stefan Themerson, following World War II.2 Apart from

her extensive work as an illustrator and book and journal designer, Themerson authored six books: Forty Drawings for Friends, London 1940-1942 (1943); The Way it Walks (1954); Semantic

Divertissements (1962) (co-authored by Stefan Themerson); Traces of Living (1969); UBU Comic

Strip; and Franciszka Themerson, 1941-1942 (1987).3

With the partial exception of UBU Comic Strip,

Themerson did not write her booksshe drew them.4 The tension at work here is encapsulated in the artists statement, I cannot think of anything in [my pictures] I could translate into words (Themerson 1991: 20), which appeared in the one and only published account of her approach to her

work. This does not mean, however, that her work lacked literary dimensions. Themersons books as much as her many career-spanning illustration projects were conceived in relation to writing,

literature, and the ideas communicated through them. Indeed, they could be seen as a form of literary

criticism (shaped, in part, by her exchange with Stefan). Forty Drawings for Friends, London 1940-

1942 and Franciszka Themerson, 1941-1942 were both comprised of selections from a series of

drawings the artist described as unposted letters composed for her husband during their wartime separation (Wadley 1991: 7-8).

5 The informal designation clearly announces Themersons intention to

re-imagine writing through drawing. The Way It Walks is playfully subtitled a book of cartoons accompanied by UNNECESSARY SUPPLEMENT in which a number of quotations has [sic] been

especially compiled for those who like captions with their pictures.6 The inclusion of the unnecessary quotations, a cultured selection of philosophical statements that Themerson must, in some sense, have actually liked and considered necessary, at once undermines and affirms the caption

format so common in print cartoons.7 The fusion of Themersons drawings and the written responses

of her husband which make up Semantic Divertissements invert the standard illustration format in

which pictures follow writing.8 UBU Comic Strip is unique for containing Themersons creative

writing; which, even then, nestles closely to Jarrys source text, Barbara Wrights translation and, of course, her own drawings. My intention here has not been to suggest that we read Themersons drawn books linguistically; on the contrary, it has been to contextualize her work in the tradition of critical

book (and page) making, albeit in a way different from F. T. Marinetti or Guillaume Apollinaire.

Let us recall the major historical and technological events standing between Tpffer in 1835 and

Themerson in 1970: a long series of European wars, revolutions, occupations, and dictatorships; the

widespread embrace of (capitalist) technological progress; the expansion of mass distribution and

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mass media; the flowering of the modern caricature, cartoon, and comic strip; and the emergence and

decline of the modernist avant-garde. In the midst of all this, we have Alfred Jarry. Jarry and his work

have long been subject to critical scrutiny.9 Of greatest and most direct significance to the present

study are his many connections with the graphic arts. A semi-professional graphic artist himself, with

many friends and acquaintances working in this field, Jarry edited two graphic art reviews, LYmagier and Perhinderion, and dedicated space to such art in his writings. Jarry palpably engaged with the

graphic dimension of writing and typographyseveral instances of which shall be discussed later. In light of these factors, we have ample reason to accept Stephen Goddards conclusion that Jarrys use of the graphic arts was no simple pictorial detour, it was an extension of his critical thinking (1998: 17). Of acute importance here is Jarrys direct reference to Tpffers work in his 1903 operetta, LObjet aimthe beloved object of Jarrys title being the driving force behind Les amours de Monsieur Vieux Bois (The Loves of Mr. Vieux Bois; 1837).

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Pre Ubu has been a popular avant-garde figure since Jarry brought him to public attention in 1896.

Pierre Bonnard, Paul Klee, Dora Maar, Max Ernst, Juan Mir, and David Hockney are but a handful of

artists who have contributed their own interpretations of the grotesque character. The product of a

collective endeavor that supplemented the school life of students at Lyce de Rennes in the 1880s, the

Ubu cycle has remained cultural public property. Moreover, Ubu has always enjoyed a polymorphous

existence spanning literature, theatre, puppetry, music, the graphic arts and, more recently, film and

animation. If Jarrys play Ubu Roi sits at the dawn of the modernist avant-garde, then Themersons UBU Comic Strip belongs to its twilight years. Yet as Thierry Groensteen and Barbara Pascarel have

recently documented, the Ubu cycle has come to enjoy a healthy comic strip life following the

appearance of Themersons version in 1970.11

UBU Comic StripThemersons last authored work12reconstructs Jarrys Ubu Roi in ninety strips. It is arguably Themersons most explicit engagement with the popular arts, since it is deliberately accessible

13 and modeled on newspaper comic strips, in terms of both layout and the jovial

stylization of the characters. Structured in this way, the work presents no radically subversive avant-

garde vision of the comic strip format. Rather, it gently distorts comic strip form through a

combination of authorial idiom, intent, and intuition, facilitated by its realization outside of any

industrial production setting.

Self-contained as the strip is, it must be understood as the continuation and summation of Themersons long-standing engagement with the figure of Ubu. Themerson first came into contact with Ubu in her

native Poland in the early 1930s when Wiadmoci Literackie, a journal to which she and her husband contributed, published the first Polish translation of Ubu Roi.

14 But it was not until she came to work

on the illustrations for the first English translation of the playpublished in 1951 by her own Gaberbocchus Pressthat her interest in Ubu took tangible form. From there, she went on to design costumes and sets for theatrical productions of the play in 1952 and 1964. Around the same time she

was working on her comic strip, Themerson also designed sets and costumes for a 1970 production of

Jarrys Ubu enchan (Ubu Enchained; 1900).

According to Nicholas Wadley, The spirit of Jarrys Ubu lit a touch paper to [Themersons] maturing drawing (1993: 61), progressively and finally emancipat[ing her] art from the diverting charm of the 1940s and 1950s (1991: 13-14); the momentum of these successive engagements, he adds, generated work increasingly liberated in technique, caricature and frank hostility (1993: 61). While Themersons graphic formulation of Ubu and his world visibly evolves over this twenty year period, the artist also makes subtle shifts in stylistic emphasis from one format to another: the illustrations are

fine-lined; the first theatrical masks combine collage and bricolage; the full-blown, strongly-outlined

puppet-theatre sets, figures, and costumes turned the stage [into] a life-sized black-and-white drawing (Wadley 2009: 9); while the comic strip juxtaposes the conventions of the format against Themersons slovenly idiom.

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In creating an Ubu of her own, Themerson drew on the rich literary and pictorial back catalogue of

material roughly spanning the period 1894-1901 through which the character became a household

name. Themersons most conspicuous and consistent reference to Ubus canonical appearance(s) comes in the form of the leaf sprouting from the characters head, a motif which first appeared in Jarrys program for Ubu Rois public theatrical debut at the Thtre de lOeuvre in December 1896. Other, slightly less obvious references include the large, wide nose Jarrys collaborator Pierre Bonnard sometimes gave Ubu in his illustrations for the two Almanachs du Pre Ubu (1899 and 1901), and the

characters donning of a bowler hata modern accoutrement Ubu had carried since his earliest daysin one sequence of UBU Comic Strip. Themersons repeated references to Ubus canonical graphic aspects are not, I propose, limited solely to figurative elements, but extend to the slovenly idiom

common to all her Ubu work, as well as the autographic foundation upon which it relies.

The 1951 Gaberbocchus translation of Ubu Roi is famous for placing Themersons illustrations among Barbara Wrights handwritten transcription of the play. The title page specifies 204 drawings by Franciszka Themerson doodled on litho plates. Given that the slovenly idiom is less slovenly than it first appears, Themerson and her associates are guilty of some misdirection here. Jan Kubasiewicz

accepts Themersons bait, concluding that these spontaneous illustrations seem free from compositional rules or the structure of the book (1993: 28). Wadley, too, has described the work as improvised (1993: 60). These are hasty assessments, for at least twenty pages clearly display precise layouts in which the plays text has been distributed so as to accommodate the drawings.15 These pages reveal the book to be the product of detailed planning and suggest that Themersons illustrations are far from the spontaneous improvisations they have been claimed to be.

Kubasiewicz considers the books lithographic combination of handwriting and drawing evidence of an unusual concept and extraordinary process of execution (1993: 28). Taking a slightly different tack but reaching the same conclusion, Wadley describes Themersons approach to the illustrations as being practical and economical, and its effect [. . .] dazzling (1993: 61). These remarks are not incorrect. However, they lack a historical dimension because they do not seek out prior examples that

follow along similar lines, such as Tpffers picture-story albums. Juliet Simpsons recent work on the impact of symbolist and post-symbolist illustration on LYmagier (1894-1896), the publication edited by Remy de Gourmont and Jarry, is valuable to this end, alerting us to a number of late-

nineteenth century projects that appeared in Jarrys immediate vicinity and utilized similar formats and technologies to that of the Gaberbocchus Ubu Roi. Simpson also draws some interesting conclusions

regarding such avant-garde practices. She ventures that by interlacing drawing and writing on the lithographic plate, the symbolists divested [language] of its transparency, its signified, [causing it to] [. . .] appear as graphic sign while, analogously, the visual (i.e. the drawing) becomes a writerly trace. Simpson concludes that this reciprocal but perpetually unstable relationship between text and illustration problematize[s] the implicitly imitative function of the pictorial image or text (2005: 153). What is strange about Simpsons account of the unstable relationship between text and illustration in the type of work under review is that she does not subscribe to the premise of her own observations, for while she acknowledges a problem in uncritically assuming drawing and writing to be imitative, she nevertheless considers this to be their implicit purpose. Simpson compounds this problem by separating writing and drawing only to envisage a situation in which their defining

characteristics are exchanged. A graphic rather than semiotic perspective avoids this problem by

practically and etymologically embracing both drawing and writing at a fundamental level, thereby

rendering elaborate, self-nullifying terminological maneuvers unnecessary (beyond pointing out the

play at work in any given drawing-writing combination).

Beyond the scope of Simpsons study, but of central importance here, are Jarrys lithographic combinations of writing and drawing. Beginning with his program for the Thtre de lOeuvre production of Ubu Roi, autographic processes occupy a prominent position in Jarrys work until 1899, and reflect the close artistic relationship he shared with Bonnard and composer Claude Terrasse at the

time, as well as the Nabi16

credo promoted by Thtre des Pantins, the puppet-theatre the three

founded with writer Franc-Nohain. Jarry published two books as autographic facsimiles: a

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republication of Ubu Roi in 1897 and LAmour absolu in 1899 (although he apparently planned to publish Ubu cocu in the same manner (Jarry 1972: xxxvi)). Unsurprisingly, it is the first of these two

publications that interests us most. It seems that the manuscript from which the facsimile was

produced was not that upon which previous editions of Ubu Roi had been typeset, for Jarry mentions

the recent Thtre de lOeuvre production on the title page. In other words, the manuscript appears to have been specially prepared for this publication (Jarry 1972: 1145). It is revealing of Jarrys conception of autographic reproduction that he refers to this edition as a piece, rather than a book, as he had done previously (Jarry 1972: 349, 1148). What is of particular interest is Jarrys inclusion of six drawings: two full-length veritable portraits de Monsieur Ubu; one autre portrait de Monsieur Ubu profile head; two frontal Ubu heads; and one balai innommable (unnamable [toilet] brush). Insignificant as these may seem, the drawings nevertheless act as signposts that point to Jarrys awareness of the autographic potential for drawing-writing combinations partially theorized by

Simpson and illustrated by the Gaberbocchus edition of Ubu Roi. In fact, there is enough evidence to

suggest that Themerson and Wright modeled the Gaberbocchus Ubu Roi on Jarrys 1897 facsimile. (With the significant difference that the Gaberbocchus edition contains many more drawings, the

format of the two editions is essentially the same: handwritten text and drawings combined on the

same lithographic plates.) Themerson habitually anchors an illustration (frequently a head) to each

page number (with no more than a handful of exceptions) in much the same way as Jarry does four of

the six drawings found in the 1897 facsimile. One further piece of evidence firmly raises this

hypothesis out of the realm of speculation: preserved in the Themerson archive are two copies of the

1921 Fasquelle edition of Ubu Roi. Both have been plundered for their illustrations, drawn in, and

annotated. In one copy, in the margin of page 189, beside a detailed description of the autographic

facsimile edition, two lines have been drawn and 1897 written beside them.

If Jarrys facsimile edition of Ubu Roi privileged writing over drawing, his program and song sheet covers for the January 1898 Thtre des Pantins production of Ubu Roi more than rectify the balance.

Signed by Ubu himself, these transfer lithographs sit perfectly between Tpffer and Themerson, both

chronologically and in terms of slovenly idiom and the foregrounding of writings graphic dimension. The leaf growing from Ubus head on the cover for Terrasses Ouverture dUbu Roi (1898) alerts us to the influence these works later had on Themerson. Bonnards interpretations of Ubu, which complement Jarrys text in the two Almanachs, provide the final notable stylistic influence on Themersons Ubu that stem from this precise milieu. Bonnards slovenly idiom is markedly different from the one found in Jarrys Pantin drawings. Painted sketchesautographically reproducedwhose loose, rough lines habitually vary in thickness and frequently double back on themselves, share many

affinities with Themersons UBU Comic Strip. Especially notable are Bonnards contribution of a very short comic strip illustration for Jarrys Ubu Colonial in the 1901 Almanach (Jarry 2006: 42-43), and, two years later, with Jarry again, the post-Ubu Soleil de printemps, a thirteen-vignette picture-story that might qualify as a comic strip, published in Franc-Nohains illustrated satirical weekly Le Canard sauvage (Terrasse 1989: 94-95).

Avant-garde books of the sort discussed above, states Simpson, printed in limited editions, presented a type of publication that was self-consciously elitist, not to be confused with a mass-market

commodity, but which, nevertheless, eformation[ed] commercial techniques for the production of original prints (2005: 150, 151). With this observation, we reach something of a crux: avant-garde approaches to graphic art and publishing could never be dislocated from print technologys populist foundation (a situation identical to that which avant-garde photographers and filmmakers would later

face). As Simpson points out, this was less a cause of consternation than an opportunity for

exploitation, both financial and aesthetic. While critics are happy to acknowledge the influence

caricature, cartoons, and comic strips had on symbolist and Nabi artists, such as Bonnard, they tend to

maintain a distance, as if reluctant to test the extent of that influence. Simpson, for example, remarks

that Nabi illustration drew heavily on the brevity and distillation of comic-book style graphics and that Bonnards witty shorthand notations recall [. . .] the silhouette techniques of both caricature and of shadow theatre [sic] (emphasis added; 2005: 158). Similarly, Colta Ives, Helen Giambruni and Sasha M. Newman look to work that reveals how little Bonnard distinguished [. . .] between painting

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and the most casual, even comic-book sort of popular illustration (emphasis added; 1989: 11). What I question in these examples is the vagueness of the comparisons and the avoidance of more suitable

ones. As we have seen, Bonnard drew actual comic strips, while other drawings of his do not recall

caricatures, they are caricatures. Bonnards work may have been motivated by different concerns and directed towards different audiences than that of more popular contemporaries; however, it seems folly to think of his slovenly idiom as not being somehow popular. Claire Frches-Thory and Antoine Terrasse have been more attentive and assertive critics, stating that, The Nabi style is characterized by the gaucherie of execution advocated by Maurice Denis [which includes] the use of all sorts of transpositions, even caricature (2002: 225). (While they are far from interchangeable terms, it is worth pointing out that the slovenly idiom under review certainly demands a gaucherie of execution.)

We confront in Simpson the same problem we called on her to correct in Kubasiewicz and Wadley,

namely: assertions of avant-garde innovation to the exclusion of antecedents in the reconfiguration of

the drawing-writing relationship brought about through autographic reproduction. As we have seen,

such autographic cross-fertilization, and the slovenly idiom through which it has been partially played

out, may be traced back to Blake at the close of the eighteenth-century, prior even to lithography and

its transfer processes. Yet it is perhaps only with Tpffers first published work, Histoire de M. Jabot (1835), that we begin to see a focused testing of the impact of autographic reproduction on the book,

given Tpffers commitment to lithographic transfer processes. In a sense, Tpffer was at the cutting edge of popular print technology. However, in the eyes of many of his contemporaries, he was not

using print technology for its intended purpose (picture-stories were hardly the pinnacle of learning) (Kunzle 1990: 38). This is, in effect, the same charge Simpson leveled against later avant-garde artists

who were appropriating commercial techniques to produce self-consciously elitist works (2005: 150, 151). If Tpffers autographic satires apparently lack the radical self-consciousness demanded in avant-garde workand this is certainly open to debateAdolf Oberlnders Randzeichnungen aus dem Schreibhefte des kleinen Moritz (Marginalia from the Exercise Book of Little Moritz), serialized

between 1879 and 1901 in Fliegende Bltter, makes much of the avant-garde work look mild, even

uninspired by comparison, through its confident and highly-detailed slovenly idiom. The precise,

partial undermining of the figures solidity through superimposed lines is a strategy common to both Oberlnders Moritz and Themersons Ubu work. (Such overlapping of elements is called transparency drawing when studied in childrens pictures.)

Taken together, caricature, cartoon, and comic book loom large in Themersons mature output. The Way it Walks is a book of cartoons, while the title Traces of Living seems to be a nod toward Saul Steinberg, a cartoonist whom Themerson admired and who published The Art of Living in 1949.

Wadley claims that, It is not the individual [Themerson] lampoons but the cultural treadmill by which he is conditioned, and even her most savage humour sustains the glimmer of hope that he might one

day step off it. She felt little sympathy with the art of caricature when it was used for the merciless

hounding of individuals (1991: 13). Themerson described her mature style as a Geometry of conflict built of two kinds of abstractions [. . .] One an abstraction of this strange universe in which we find ourselves trapped, expressed by space arrangements, intersecting surfaces, geometrical

shapes, and two an abstraction of what we see and know about the human body, human emotions, human behavior (1991: 30-31).

She recounted a critical moment in the evolution of this pictorial language in the following manner: I was [. . .] having endless talks with bowler-hatted businessmen [and] [. . .] young, equally bowler-hatted

men who [. . .] had decided to make a lot of money by writing best-sellers, or drawing strip cartoons, or

both [. . .] I soon found myself, like a schoolchild drawing a caricature of his teacher under the desk,

filling the pages of my sketchbook with little, very important men in bowler hats. (1991: 27-28)

Themersons statement is significant for three reasons. Firstly, it makes clear that caricature provided her with a method of abstraction through which she could address the human condition. Secondly, it

reveals that her cartoons and comic strip emerged partially in response and opposition to certain

establishment manifestations of these formats. Thirdly, the mention of schoolchildrens caricatures of their teachers hints at her awareness of the circumstances out of which Ubu emerged.

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Themerson is by no means the first avant-garde artist to have utilized principles of caricature and

cartooning. One thinks of Pablo Picasso, George Grosz, the numerous Dada portraits, as well as

Jacques Villons and Marcel Duchamps stints as cartoonists for Parisian newspapers at the turn of the twentieth century. As we have seen, Jarry, Bonnard, and other fin-de-sicle artists also made use of

such graphic strategies, adopting its slovenly idiom as their own. As Ernst Gombrich would reassure

us, It means no disrespect to the achievements of twentieth century art if we [. . .] link them with the emancipation from the study of nature which was first tried out in the licensed precincts of humour

and elucidated in the experiments of Tpffer (1977: 301). Gombrich makes his point regarding emancipation from the study of nature more clearly when he asserts, following Tpffer, that one can evolve a pictorial language without any reference to nature (1977: 286). He essentially argues that caricature (if not all depiction) evolves in connection to human cognition and perception through

an endless layering of graphic mode upon graphic mode.

Themersons caricatures and cartoons rarely function in the way that we are accustomed to finding such work in mainstream newspapers and magazines. The graphic pun or jokemaximally abstract in a Steinberg cartoonhas largely dissolved into general graphic humor. The dissolution of such puns and jokes are linked to Themersons promiscuous approach to perspective and gravity that can leave figures, as it were, floating on mid-page.1717 In what sense, then, do Themersons caricatures and cartoons qualify as caricatures and cartoons? Is it enough that she named them as such? An affirmative

argument can be made on three levelsformal, purposive, and historical. They retain the formal appearance of a caricature and/or cartoon and, as a consequence of Themersons wedding of the two kinds of abstractions (universal and human),18 continue to make satirical statements, however diffuse. Her approach also brings us back to Tpffer, who, in the words of Kunzle, made a plea for a new kind of comedy that resides less in the character of the concept [. . .] than in the briskness of the

drawing [. . .] in other words [. . .] a call for a new graphic aesthetic (1990: 46). Themersons caricatures, cartoons and comic strip can be seen to take up Tpffers call, but not before it had been shaken and sent spinning by Jarry. At the same time, Tpffers new graphic aesthetic carries its own antecedents.

The caricaturea loaded or exaggerated portraitis considered to have emerged in Italy around 1600 with the work of Annibale Carracci. It seems that, from the outset, there existed a form of caricature

which favors the manipulation of conventional types over the satirization of real persons (Crowley 1971: 7). Working with sitters, seventeenth century artist Pier Francesco Mola often invent[ed] a setting [. . .] and pseudo-narrative context for [his] caricature[s], while Pier Leone Ghezzi frequently [. . .] annotated [his] with an account of the sitter and the occasion of the caricature (Crowley 1971: 8). Caricature may be abstract or type-based, and can incorporate narrative and writing in much the

same way as cartoons and comic strips now do. Thus it is unsurprising that we should find Charles

Baudelaire eformati[ing] caricature as an art form ripe for adaptation into literature in mid-nineteenth-century France (McLees 1984: 221)

19a strategy Louis Dumur immediately saw at work in Jarrys Ubu Roi.

Reviewing the playscript in the September 1896 issue of Mercure de France, Dumur wrote: Jarry does not restrict himself [. . .] to introducing caricature solely into the physical appearance and

gestures; he introduces it also into the character, into the soul, into language (qtd. In Beaumont 1984: 95). Jill Fell has neatly summarized how this effect was achieved:

Jarry did not conceive of Ubu as a fixed physical profile, but more as a protean conduit for mans base instincts, subject to chance, which could appear in several forms. His changing illustrations, put together

from a number of pictorial sources, and his different textual descriptions bear witness to his very fluid

conception of Ubu. The original husk of Pre Hbert had to be left behind. This was an entirely new being

that had emerged from the murk of illicit adolescent exercise books and that had taken on an entirely new

form in fin-de-sicle Paris (2005: 149).

Uburecognized by Dumur as a type was less a caricature than the embodiment of caricature (Beaumont 1984: 95).

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Christine van Schoonbeek unpacks Ubus composite elements and various incarnations. These include the infamous caricatures of the French Citizen King Louis-Philippe initiated by Charles Philipon in 1831, which Jarry references in his frontal depictions of Ubus head (the shape, facial expression, and sprouting leaf are prime indicators) (van Schoonbeek 1997: 43-52). As van Schoonbeek explains, in

citing this caricature, Jarry was making an (indirect) reference to a precise moment in the political and artistic life of France (1997: 50). This reference also provides us with a valuable way of scrutinizing how the satirical and humorous popular graphic arts shaped the thinking of Jarry and his

schoolmates.

Philipon and the artists who contributed to his journal La Caricature and its successor Le Charivari

depicted the kings head as a pear which, in French (poire), can mean both face and foolthe equivalent of mug. On November 14, 1831, after seven months of publishing offensive Roipoire cartoons, Philipon found himself in court, charged with treason. For his defense, he apparently drew

the transition from king to pear in four steps before asking (in Kunzles paraphrasing), Which is king and which is pear, and when? And for which am I to be punished? (Kunzle 1990: 296).20 Despite receiving a heavy fine, Philipon decided to publish his anti-monarchistic breakdown of the caricature

process. Appearing in La Caricature three days after the trialthe time needed to prepare and print the issue?it has since become the standard depiction of the Roipoire. However, the version that appeared in La Caricature is often conflated with a revised version printed in Le Charivari in 1834. Van Schoonbeeks comparative analysis is based on the latter version, (accurately) emphasizing the fourth, pure pear-heads similarities with Ubu. La Caricatures original version carries notable differences, with the third semi-pear-head boasting a number of Ubu-like features. This first version is noteworthy here for another reason: it is the product of transfer lithography, combining Philipons slovenly sketches with his handwritten statement. Remarks by Jarrys contemporaries, A.-F. Hrold and Henry Bauer, published during the period of heated debate over Ubu Roi in the winter of 1896-

1897, strongly suggest that Jarrys reference to Philipons Roipoire was not lost on the Parisian public of the time (Beaumont 1984: 102-103). Ubus graphic identity was well-established by this point, having appeared in Le Livre dart in April, 1896. Themerson also seems to have been aware of Jarrys Roipoire reference, encapsulating Ubu Rois epigraphThen Ubu shakes his peare / which is afterwards called Shakespeare by the Englishe within a faceless and neckless pear-head/nose/body

21discernable as such by its nostril/anus hair (Jarry 1996: 7). Themerson later sketched a neck and torso onto her Roipoire in the copy of the Gaberbocchus edition that she used as a reference while working on the comic strip.

Honor Daumier was one of the artists who worked for Philipon. Three of his satirical cartoons from

the period in question, produced using autographic and possibly transfer lithography, stand out as

especially relevant. His 1832 caricature of Louis-Philippe as Rabelaiss Gargantua, a giant pear-headed figure sitting upon a commodious throne, being fed bribes [. . .] and defecating medals and money resulted in the artist serving six months in prison (Judith Wechsler, qtd. In van Schoonbeek 1997: 51). Jarry, who later worked on an adaption of Rabelaiss story, would no doubt have been struck by this print had he seen it. Satirizing the French governments ministerial benches, Daumiers 1834 caricature Le Ventre eformation (The Legislative Belly) is, for Winslow Ames, at once a political indictment, a rogues gallery of caricatures and a monumental composition (s.d.: 912). The picture resonates with the repeated emphasis later placed on Ubus ample gut or gidouille. Indeed, Jarry sets the opening scene of Ubu Cocu ou LArchoptryx (c.1890) inside Ubus belly, in much the same way as Daumiers caricature indicates that the politicians are sitting inside a (Louis Philippes?) giant stomach. In March 1832, La Caricature published Daumiers Masques de 1831a page that represents fourteen select politicians as the interchangeable masks of a faintly-featured pear-head.

22

Let us compare Daumiers schema with the way in which Jarry introduced Ubu Roi on December 10, 1896 in the Thtre de lOeuvre. Jarry informed the audience that several critics had found Ubus belly far more swollen with satirical symbols than we have really been able to stuff it with for this

evenings entertainment (1965a: 76). Seemingly contradicting himself, he remarked a little later that you are free to see in Mister Ubu as many allusions as you like, or, if you prefer, just a plain puppet, a schoolboys caricature [ eformation] of one of his teachers who represented for him everything in the

9

world that is grotesque (1965a: 76). In sum, pear-headed Ubu is as blank and as protean a character as Louis-Philippe is in Daumiers Masques de 1831. As a means of curbing these ongoing satirical attacks, the French government introduced extreme censorship laws in 1835 which forbade direct references to specific persons or institutions (Crowley 1971: 12). With censorship laws being alternately revoked and reinstated in relation to Frances political stability until 1881, satirical graphic artists were forced by and large to evolve purely type-based forms of caricature (Goldstein 1989: 258-

262). Moreover, as Robert Goldstein maintains, restrictions on the theatre in France generally paralleled those governing caricature [. . .] [although they] remained in effect even longer, [having

been] abolished only in 1906 (1989: 259). Against this backdrop, it is not hard to see why caricature became such a fecund tool for Jarry and his provocative artistic aspirations.

Jarrys formative years at the Lyce de Rennes, where he encountered the source material for Ubu in physics teacher Pre Hbert and the parodic myths his peers had already invented around him,

23

provide us with one last, significant connection with popular graphic humor. Making caricatures of

teachers was a long and well-established tradition that had, by this time, spread to published cartoons

and comic strips. Jarry and Themerson both acknowledge this practice, and Vischer mentions

childhood caricatures in connection with Tpffers slovenly idiom. Tpffer was himself a schoolmaster whose picture-stories were initially created to amuse his students. His second published strip, Monsieur Crpin (1837), concentrates on poking fun of pedagogues. Daumier

published a series on Professeurs et Moutards (Teachers and Kids; 1845-1846) which transported

French society into the classroom (Kunzle 1990: 252-53). The most Ubuesque evocation of student

ridicule of teachers is Oberlnders Randzeichnungen aus dem Schreibhefte des kleinen Moritz. Within this widespread culture of elaborate caricatures of school teachers it may have been almost expected of

students to make them. Henri Bhar even conjectures that Pre Hbert, Ubus initial model, might even have witnessed an early performance of Les Polonais, the play that became Ubu Roi (Fell 2005:

142).24

From Tpffer via Vischer to Themerson via Jarry, we can trace a repeated linking of the slovenly

idiom to childhood caricature. Fells mention of Ubus emergence from illicit adolescent exercise books is particularly suggestive in this context. Tpffer described his picture-stories as drolleriesas comical graphic trolls sitting on the margins of book cultures more serious central project (qtd. In Kunzle 2007: 121).

25 The earliest caricatures (of the Carracci school) were sketched in

the margins. Tpffers self-depreciation becomes the essence of the joke for Oberlnder; there is little in Moritzs exercise book other than marginalia. The drawings in Jarrys autographic facsimile edition of Ubu Roi are drolleries, too, that receive an enhanced recapitulation in Themersons illustrations for the Gaberbocchus translation. The handwritten text common to both publications, meanwhile,

recalls the exercise book. Historically, one of the functions of the slovenly idiom, as it generates a

mass audience, social standing, and cultural currency for itself, is to reach back to the formative period

in our education when drawing and writing enjoyed an unavoidably volatile relationship with one

anotherbefore we learned how to decisively separate the two. Emmanuel Pernoud finds in Bonnards Ubu illustrations the artist taking pleasure in an infantile regression of drawing (qtd. In Groensteen 2006: 31). Perhaps Ubu and the slovenly idiom are the crowning glories of autographic

reproductions radical revisionist return to the principles of the xylographic book [or block book], where text and picture were cut together out of blocks of wood to make a continuous [. . .] printing

surface (Jussim 1983: 46). Under the rule of a slovenly Ubu, a sketch can be good enough for mass reproduction and a comic stripattended by a dense graphic historycan elicit writing from an artist who otherwise drew books.

At the beginning, I referred to Kunzles claim that autographic reproductionspecifically, its potential to combine drawing and handwritingcould evade previously established forms of criticism. Certainly, a critical account is far from complete; artists uses of autographic processes being one area in need of further scrutiny. Jarrys facsimile editions of Ubu Roi and LAmour absolu (and the proposed Ubu Cocu), for example, appear to have garnered no real scholarly attention; the same goes

for Themersons work (almost across the board). Is this a case of exponents of autographic art and its

10

slovenly idiom evading criticism or of criticism evading them? As a result, the slovenly idiom has

been dispersed and annexed to oeuvres, movements, genres, political and technological histories, in

short, misrecognized and subjected to the standard forms of criticism which Kunzle claimed that it

could bypass. (With its focus on drawing-writing combinations, comics studies might provide a

suitable critical framework with which to approach the autographic slovenly idiom.)

And yet, the evidence presented here shows that the slovenly idiom, built on lithographys inherent challenge to the integrity of print media, has been deployed as a critical tool in itself; first by nineteenth-century pioneers of the modern satirical caricature, cartoon, and comic strip, and later by

vanguard artists eager to challenge all manner of socio-cultural conventions. Perhaps the slovenly

idiom has had greater impact than we might think and still has something to offer, given its evolution

and endurance in the fields of caricature, cartoon and comic strip, as well as illustration and

animation.26

Groensteen states that a comic is a graphic performance [. . .] that bears witness to a skill, a style, a vision, a potential [. . .] developed [. . .] in dialogue with a certain preliminary idea of the medium, of

its nature, of its competencies and its prescriptions (2007: 161, 22). Simply put, a comic is a graphic performance which picks up the gauntlet of the formats history. In tracing the graphic history pertaining to UBU Comic Strip and the slovenly idiom that it manifests, we have seen just how

loaded such work can be (figs. 2 and 3).

Fig. 2. Franciszka Themerson, Strip 90 of UBU Comic Strip (1970). Copyright The Themerson

Archive.

Fig. 3. Rodolphe Tpffer. Strip 24 from Histoire dAlbert (1845). Copyright free.

~

Franciszka Themersons UBU Comic Strip has been published in four different editions. Each publication carries a slightly different title and, in some cases, distinct author credits. (All of them are

out of print.) They are:

UBU: A comic strip Based on Ubu Roi by Alfred Jarry. Indianapolis and New York: Bobbs-Merrill,

1970;

UBU. Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij, 1987 (given here as co-authored by Alfred Jarry);

UBU comic: UBU based on Ubu Roi by Alfred Jarry. Tokyo: Seido-sha, 1993;

UBU daprs Alfred Jarry. Editions de lAN 2, 2005.

UBU Comic Strip was also serialized in De Revisor in sixteen installments from: 1 (1983) 5 (1985).

The epigraph by Stefan Themerson is taken from his The Urge to Create Visions.

A number of people must be thanked for their help: Nicolaas Matsier, Dr. Menno Lievers (editor of De

Revisor), Professor Henri Bhar, Julien Schuh, Thierry Groensteen, Catherine Ternaux at La cit

11

internationale de la bande dessine et de limage, Angoulme, Kate Dicker, and Dr. Anne Price-Owen. Special thanks are due to Jill Fell and to Jasia Reichardt and Nicholas Wadley at The Themerson

Archive.

NOTES 1 As opposed to using the acid resist as a ground to be removed. 2 The Themersons founded the Gaberbocchus Press in 1948. Barbara Wright and Gwen Barnard soon doubled the number of

company directors. 3 The first and last of her books were artists books in the strict sense of the term, printed privately in editions of 25 and 200 respectively. 4 There is not enough space here to discuss Franciszka Themersons drawn books in connection with the tradition of wordless books, which David A. Beron describes as the original graphic novels. See Beron 2008. 5 As its title makes clear, Forty Drawings for Friends, London 1940-1942 was a personal project printed to celebrate the

Themersons reunion. 6 The subtitle of the Unnecessary Supplement reads: Especially Compiled for Those who like their Pictures to be Attended by a Discourse of Reason. 7 Captions are, of course, also commonly added to photographs as well as book illustrations when they appear in print. 8 Traces of Living contains texts by Edward Lucie-Smith and Lucy Teixeira. 9 For the sake of brevity, I refer readers to three of the most insightful English-language studies: Fell 2005; Beaumont 1984;

and Rosset (ed.) 1960. 10 Regarding this connection, see Groensteen 2006 and Pascarel 2008. 11 Lonardo Nuez published a comic strip version of Act I of Ubu Roi (which uses Alfred Jarrys text) in Les Crampes 1 (1970). The publication of Nezs version therefore precedes that of Themersons. Although Themerson owned a copy of Les Crampes 1, this seems to be an instance of pure coincidence since Themersons project was well underway, if not completed by this time. Due to their obscurity, I have been unable to establish whether Les Crampes ran to further issues or

whether Nuez ever finished his comic strip version of the play. See Nuez 1970. 12 As its title suggests, the 1987 book Franciszka Themerson, 1941-1942 consists of work from the early 1940s. 13 In a letter to James Laughlin, dated September 8 1970, Themerson wrote, I do hope that the appearance of the comic-strip both in Europe and in USA will enlarge the public for [the] [. . .] UBU-play. See Themerson 1970a. 14 Ubu Krl, translated by Tadeuz Boy Zelenski, appeared in Wiadmoci Literackie 492 (1933). See Foulc 1981 and Wadley 2009. When Boy Zelenskis translation was published as a book in 1936, he contributed a forty-five page introduction. See Jarry 1936. 15 For examples of precise layout, see the following pages: 14, 21, 24, 28, 39, 49, 52, 82, 85, 93, 97, 98-99, 116, 124, 151,

153, 157, 160, and 161. 16 The French Nabi group existed for a few years in the 1890s. Paul Srusier, Maurice Denis, Pierre Bonnard, Edouard

Vuillard and Flix Vallotton were among the members of this informal group of artists who conducted their affairs as if they

were a secret society. See Frches-Thory and Terrasse 2002. 17 Themerson discusses this aspect of her work in 1991: 20. 18 This argument echoes Wadleys discernment of two dominant motive energies behind Themersons mature art, which, for the most part [. . .] worked in harnessa shrewd observation of the world around her, and [. . .] an evident pleasure in pitting a natural fluency of execution against the inherent properties of materials (1991: 11). 19 See also McLees 1990 and Hannoosh 1992. 20 For details of the Roipoire controversy, see Crowley 1971: 46-47. 21 Jarry gave Ubus head and body the same piriform shape, presumably following Honor Daumier, who had used the same shape and strategy in his depictions of Louis-Philippe. The addition of the nose to this chain of visual echoes appears to be

Themersons own invention. Examples of this echoing in Themersons work may be found in Jarry 1966 on pages 118 and 84, and in Themerson 1970b on strips 76 and 2. In Alphabet du Pre Ubu (Jarry 2006: 14), Bonnard (following Jarrys witty cue) renders the letter a as a posterior view of Ubu not dissimilar to Themersons epigraphic pear. 22 The fourth head in what appears to be Charles Philipons original 1831 court drawing (conserved in the Bibliothque Nationale de France) is a blank pear. 23 See Beaumont 1984: 14-15 for a summary of the pre-Jarry Hbert (Ubu) cycle. 24 A recent essay by Jill Fell dovetails with the claims made here. She argues that Jarry would have known J. B. Delestres 1866 De la Physiognomonie, which contains a chapter on caricature. Fell draws attention to Delestres interest in street graffiti and the similarities between Ubus appearance and the caricatures of teachers made by a boy interviewed by Delestre. See Fell (forthcoming). Tpffer, we note, published an Essai de physiognomonie in 1845. The original edition was

autographic and combined Tpffers handwriting and drawing. See Crowley 1971: 55-56. 25 This connection supplements Groensteens and Pascarels respective claims that Jarrys Dr. Faustroll was partially based on Rodolphe Tpffers Dr. Festus. See Groensteen 1996: 30 and Pascarel 2008: 174. 26 These are all cultural fields in which Themerson was actively involved. Contemporary exponents of the slovenly idiom

include caricaturist and illustrator Gerald Scarfe, illustrator Quentin Blake, animator Phil Mulloy and, with his ratty line, graphic and comic strip artist Gary Panter.

12

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