080093 UE Course: Japanese Comics 1970-1990 (2023W)

The two decades 1970-1990 bring a wealth of new themes and graphic expressions, photorealistic drawing styles and change of the traditional comic scheme (grid and panel layout).

Manga artists (mangaka) have visualized completely new topics with the medium of comics and brought them into the public eye. Moto Hagio and Minami Ozaki are dedicated to gender issues and the emotional world of the individual in a strictly formalized society. They created a style that has become internationally known as "manga style".
The very strong international integration of Japanese comics is reflected in the worldwide success Akira by Katsuhira Otomo.

As in the tutorial on Tezuka Osamu in WS 21-22, the aim is to transfer "traditional" questions of art history to the history of comics, to show relationships to the simultaneous development of art (national and international) and to trace the graphic mastery of new themes and iconographies. There will also be room for unconventional approaches.
In addition to formal topics such as image and page composition, visual effects, international interdependencies, graphic implementation of literary models, interaction between comics and cartoons as part of transmedia art, the exercise will also deal with questions about the visualization of time, speed, science fiction, technology, future, feelings, dreams, consciousness and identity.
For this exercise, I will strive for a Zoom discussion with Moto Hagio and/or Katsuhiro Otomo.
In small groups, we will study original drawings and designs of a mangaka and their implementation in the Asia Collection of the MAK.
Participation in the tutorial in WS 21-22 is not a prerequisite for participation in it, but the results and written summaries will be available.