Five Images of Sequential Art Throughout History and Mediums

I have always found the prevalence of sequential art peppered throughout human history to be squarely at odds with a contemporary "understanding" that the sequential art medium is to be relegated to the "lower" art forms of social convention. The following images are connected by a common theme: they all tell a story in a visually dynamic construct using sequential images to impart information to the viewer/reader.

This Roman frieze depicts the celebratory triumph of Octavian Augustus - becoming the first emperor of the new Roman Empire.

Egyptian hieroglyphics are among the oldest forms of sequential art known to man, utilizing complex symbolic imagery to tell stories and relay messages. The fundamental element of ancient Egyptian is a pictoral language system - the pictures literally make the words.

This is a modern comic book layout. The illustrations were done by Jim Lee, the man who reinvented the aesthetics of the X-Men and breathed new life into the comic industry in the early nineties, after long stagnation throughout the eighties. The visual composition is far more complex both in dynamic use of distance and image size, as well as the overlapping of images and panels to create and interesting and visually appealing story.

Hieroglyphics are old, but these paintings on cave walls in Spain are by far the oldest evidence of sequential art as a means of imparting messages and celebrating triumphs. These image series are part of a larger construct that commemorates a great hunt, thousands of years before the first comic book was put into print.

This is a Thor comic (circa mid-1960's) drawn by Jack Kirby. Kirby was one of the original innovators in the development of mainstream comic art. He utilized a wider array of emotion and stylistic design in constructing the comics, reinventing the concept of super hero aesthetics in the process.

Andrew Jackson's struggle with the emerging central bank of the United States in the 1830s is depicted in this very old political cartoon. Like the Hieroglyphics, frieze, comics, and cave paintings above, this cartoon tells a story in a single shot, imparting an opinion/message and recounting a contemporary issue all at once. Political cartoons have developed much in the last 180 plus years since this old classic, but the fundamental tenants of the sequential art medium, which help define this image, have remained relatively constant.

Reflection on Rampley and In-Class Assignments

Reading Matthew Rampley’s “Exploring Visual Culture”, I was taken by the breadth of the author’s scope and grasp on the subject of culture. Whereas our in-class reading concentrated on how “we make meaning of the material world through understanding objects and entities in their specific cultural contexts”, Rampley’s discussion focuses more on the definitive and fundamental elements of culture – what it is and how it affects us (Sturken and Cartwright). We learn that culture is the means by which each of us develops a “set of rules about how to express and interpret meaning”, but how then can we discern which set of rules are the correct ones to use? (Sturken and Cartwright)

Through our in-class exercises we learned that our views and interpretations of the real world are subjectively influenced by what we hear and see. In addition, our environment influences our analysis of cultural data we absorb and must interpret on a daily basis. Rampley observes that there is certainly a social divide in what is considered “high” or “low” art in western society, with the upper crust favouring the traditionally “antiquated” and the lower stratospheres of society left to comic books, video games, and trashy airport romance novels. Thus, certain groups within society might seek to establish an order of nobility and hierarchy to the arts, in order that their tastes and aesthetics might retain preeminence.

But taste and value judgements are inherently subjective. The feelings an individual discerns when examining a piece of art will differ from those another experiences when looking at the same piece. Culture is a malleable creature – it is constantly morphing into something new as people change their value judgements and new technology evolves to help facilitate the ease of global mass communication. As more people from different backgrounds exchange ideas and cultivate relationships, the concept of culture becomes more and more malleable.

Although certain sects of society seek to impose their value judgements on others, nobody can take away an individual’s ability to think for him or herself. Ultimately, I must agree with Johann Gotfried Herder's assessment that, as Rampley lays it out, "a culture grows not by reference to some artificially imposed standards drawn from elsewhere - classical antiquity or France - but spontaneously according to its own impulses." (Rampley) Individuals have widely varying preferences and tastes – so long as the cultural attitude does not display antagonism or intolerance towards cultural plurality, there can be no real ordered ranking of cultures, or their values, over one another.

Rampley, Matthew. “Exploring Visual Culture: Definitions, Concepts, Contexts”. Edinburgh Press.

Sturken and Cartwright. “Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture”. Oxford University Press. New York, NY: 2009.