La mise en page aux frontières du lisible en France dans les années 70

Abstract

From the 1960s onwards, a generation of French authors began experimenting with page layout in ways that departed from its traditional use. Our aim here is to look at the creative processes that lead to a gradual breakdown in the narrative transitivity provided by the page layout, among other things. These may take the form of an increase in the number of boxes on the page or, on the contrary, their disappearance in table compositions; the movement of the eye around the page may also be hindered by unusual paths that may go so far as to contradict the temporality inherent in the distribution of the action into distinct units; Finally, the squares can become porous and the images flow into each other through gaps that destabilise the structuring of the sequence. These various transgressions of the narrative of the page layout lead the comic strips towards pictorial regimes that invest more in the spatiality of the device than in the temporality of its discontinuity and thus offer original and striking aesthetic experiences.