Passionate Journey

A Vision in Woodcuts

Frans Masereel

• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780486460185
• eBook ISBN: 9780486139203
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Artist Monographs

"Look at these powerful black-and-white figures, their features etched in light and shadow . . . Has not this passionate journey had an incomparably deeper and purer impact on you than you have ever felt before?" — Thomas Mann
Belgian-born Frans Masereel (1889–1972) was one of the greatest woodcut artists of the twentieth century. Ingeniously portraying the human experience through dramatic art, this novel-without-words — crafted from 167 intricate woodcuts — is considered to be the Flemish artist's masterpiece.
A feast for the eyes and the imagination, this powerful visual narrative details the life of an ordinary man. From the first bustling frame to the last haunting image, we are deeply drawn into the hero's day-to-day encounters, and discover a spirit in quest — one that we can profoundly relate to, emotionally and intellectually. Through each extraordinarily vivid depiction, readers feel the hero's happiness, grief, awe, and despair.

INTRODUCTION

When Thomas Mann, winner of the Nobel Prize for literature in 1929, was asked to name the movie that had made the greatest impression on him, he responded instead with a work of fiction—a novel in pictures by Frans Masereel. This influential work was Mon livre d’heures: 167 images dessinees et gravees sur bois (Geneva, 1919; also published as Mein Stundenbuch in Germany in 1919 and My Book of Hours and later as Passionate Journey). Masereel coined the term roman in beelden (novels in pictures) to describe these imaginative and realistic stories told entirely without text; they also are referred to as “woodcut novels,” since they were told in black-and-white pictures printed from woodcuts and displayed in book form.

In the early decades of the twentieth century, the public’s eager acceptance of cartoons and the silent cinema were factors in the growing preoccupation with pictorial media. The German Expressionists, who produced striking black-and-white woodcuts, were also a factor in paving the way for these intriguing novels. Following World War I, a dynamic period of artistic experimentation prevailed in Europe. Artists created works that were the antithesis of everything traditional, exemplified by the Dada movement in art; consequently, this seemed an opportune time for the cre...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• INTRODUCTION