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Autobiographical Innovations: Edmond Baudoin’s "Éloge de la poussière"

The artist Edmond Baudoin is famous in France although not the UK. My article is the first devoted to his autobiography Eloge de la poussière (1995). Analysis of the album is combined with an interview from Baudoin. Baudoin had never been interviewed in the Anglophone media before. French studies into Baudoin discuss the album’s collage-like effects, and prove the importance of Alberto Giacometti (Dominique Hérody; 1996. Philippe Sohet; 2001). I focus instead on the work’s literary aspect, primarily by examining the hitherto overlooked relationship between Baudoin and the autobiographical poet Michel Leiris (1901-1990). My analysis establishes that, with both men, the guiding principle is discontinuity: their petites vies are recounted through juxtapositions, metaphors and symbols; leaps forward, detours and backtrackings abound. I show how Baudoin and Leiris invite readers to question whether the autobiography is true by similar means: they emphasise the problem of memory, include sequences which may be imagined, and highlight tensions between self-censorship and confession. Finally, I demonstrate why Baudoin’s approach gives Eloge de la poussière its previously unexplained poetic dimension. I argue that interest resides in the manner by which meaning is created as much as in the meaning itself: dispensing with panels and captions heightens the suggestive power of words and images; readers make sense of the visual/verbal components by exploring resonances between them.

‘Autobiographical Innovations’ interrogated links between Baudoin and Leiris for the first time and is cited by the prominent French scholar Thierry Groensteen: En Chemin avec Baudoin (Paris: PLG, 2008), p. 33. ISBN: 978-917837-00-9 and was revewed by a fanzine:

http://forbiddenplanet.co.uk/blog/2008/from-our-continental-correspondent-european-comic-art/

‘Autobiographical Innovations’ appeared in the opening edition of European Comic Art, which was the first peer reviewed English-Language journal devoted to European graphic novels and comics. After publication, Baudoin gave a keynote paper at our July 2011 MMU conference.