Glacial Period

AUTHOR: Crécy, Nicolas de

ARTIST: Ortho (letterer)

PUBLISHER: Musée du Louvre (French); NBM (English)

FIRST BOOK PUBLICATION:Période glaciaire, 2005 (English translation, 2006)

Publication History

Glacial Period is the English translation (translator Joe Johnson) of Nicolas De Crécy’s Période glaciaire, the first of four graphic novels commissioned by the Louvre Museum and showcasing the museum’s art collection. As part of the Louvre’s campaign to bring contemporary art into the museum and to attract younger individuals, Fabrice Douar, deputy director of the publishing department of the museum, envisaged the creation of a series of graphic novels about the art collection in the Louvre. In discussing his project, Douar has also emphasized the aesthetic aspect of bringing two different worlds of art together. The artists chosen for the project were Crécy, Marc-Antoine Mathieu, Eric Liberge, and the collaborative team of Bernard Yslaire and Jean Carrière.

Because the graphic novels genre was one in which the Louvre’s publication department had no experience, the museum brought Futuropolis, a major publisher of alternative and experimental graphic novels, into the project. Crécy’s original French work was produced as a co-edition by the Musée du Louvre Éditions and Futuropolis and published in collaboration in 2005. The English translation was published in 2006 by NBM under the corporation’s imprint ComicsLit. In 2007, Glacial Period published by NBM earned Crécy a Will Eisner Comic Industry Award nomination for Best Painter/Multimedia Artist (interior art).

Plot

Officials at the Louvre Museum set only one criterion for the graphic novels that they commissioned. The museum required that the novel focus its story line on the museum and its art collection and not simply use the museum as a setting for a novel. Each novelist commissioned to write for the series was given a day to conduct research in the museum and find the topic of his novel. Crécy found the museum’s collection overwhelming. As he viewed the breadth of the collection and the diverse cultures, art, civilizations, and artistic styles represented, he was acutely aware of his own inability to comprehend so much art and culture about which he had incomplete knowledge.

In Glacial Period, he portrays a group of individuals confronted with the art of past civilizations with which they are unfamiliar. The story is set thousands of years in the future after Earth has experienced a long glacial period that has separated human beings from their history. Crécy presents a team of archaeologists composed of human academics and genetically engineered dogs, who have time-sensitive noses capable of dating artifacts and who speak human language; the team is exploring Europe, known as the frozen continent, to find evidence of the pre-ice age civilization.

There is considerable discord among the team members as they battle the freezing temperatures and cross wide expanses of frozen wasteland. A series of confrontations among Gregor, the team leader, and other team members, including the historian Paul, Hulk, Juliette, and Joseph, occur on the journey. The confrontations are motivated by professional jealousy and competition, by discriminatory disdain for other species, and by romantic interests in Juliette. The group discovers the Rungis wholesale food market covered with graffiti and mistake it for a temple and the graffiti for religious inscriptions. Gregor leaves Paul and part of the team to study the “temple,” while Paul, Juliette, Esteban, and Joseph, accompanied by the three dogs, continue their trek.

Hulk gets lost, finds the museum, and discovers rooms full of statues. The statues begin to talk to him. They eventually tell him that the museum is about to collapse into a subterranean chasm. The statues see him as their savior sent to help them escape. Hulk devises a plan for escape. The art is to make a transgenerational effort, creating one large piece of art and thus acquiring the necessary force of propulsion to flee. Meanwhile, Gregor, Juliette, Joseph, and Esteban have reached the Louvre and entered the rooms housing the paintings. They speculate about the meaning of the art and come up with all sorts of wrong ideas.

The ground begins to break up, and the group members are separated. Gregor encounters Harmenz, the creature of The Skinned Ox painting; he kills Gregor. Hulk sends the Bes statue to get Juliette and Joseph. They escape on the back of the art beast, which is a large dog. Paul, the historian, has arrived and is surrounded by artistic representations of Jesus that have fled the museum because of the pagan deities. The novel ends with Paul watching the art beast running off into the distance, to a new life for the art.

While the plot of Crécy’s novel deals with serious issues, he enriches it with humor through both the dialogue and the drawings. Much of the humor comes from the misinterpretations of the archaeologists. They believe the museum is a private mansion belonging to artist Eugène Delacroix when they find the Smoking Turk painting with the nameplate “Delacroix.” Esteban believes the pyramid in the Louvre courtyard is an igloo. They speculate that the paintings and other icons were intended for them. The squabbling among the art pieces also adds humor, as do the commentaries of Hulk and the other dogs about being hungry and about being ill-adapted for distance trekking on skis in frigid weather.

Characters

•Hulk, the protagonist, is a genetically engineered pig-dog with a time-sensitive nose. He is essential to the mission. He is in love with Juliette but realizes that their being members of different species prevents a relationship between them. He is highly aware of Gregor’s disdain for nonhumans and resents the way he treats him and orders him about.

•Juliette, a.k.a. Ma’am, a member of the archaeology team and daughter of the financial backer of the mission, is fond of Hulk and values him for both his friendship and his expertise.

•Gregor, the team leader, is an abrasive, dictatorial individual with little respect for others.

•Joseph is a team member extremely concerned about his future glory and is eager to publish.

•Paul is the team historian and believes himself to be essential to the mission.

•Esteban, another team member, discovers the pyramid in the courtyard of the Louvre.

•Firedog is the first artwork to speak to Hulk. He thinks Hulk is a pig. He frightens him at first.

•Rhyton, an ancient Cretan vase in the shape of a bull’s head, explains the screaming Hulk heard.

•Pig, a.k.a. Vattier de Bourville, is another of the artifacts involved in the initial conversation with Hulk.

•Pierre Séguier, chancellor of France, painted by Charles Le Brun, recounts the Nazi invasion and how the works were saved. He says they were more valued than the lives of the human populace.

•The Cat Goddess Bast tells Hulk he is the savior of the artifacts and must get them to safety.

•Harmensz is the subject of the painting The Skinned Ox. It is his screams that Hulk hears. Harmensz kills Gregor and then returns to his canvas to find peace.

Artistic Style

In Glacial Period, Crécy masterfully brings together two different worlds of art, that of the Louvre and that of the graphic novel, by interspersing panels featuring reproductions of the museum’s paintings with panels of his own work and by creating panels that feature the museum’s paintings and statues and also characters drawn by him. The contrast among the art styles serves to emphasize the theme of his story, that the civilization trapped in the frozen continent of Europe is far removed from that of the team of explorers.

Crécy uses almost no author commentary to impart information to the reader. Physical location, time lapse, and relationships between one event and another are all expressed either in the dialogue among the individuals or in the use of color to indicate night or day, atmospheric conditions, and physical surrounding, such as the museum interiors or the chasm into which Juliette and Joseph fall. The only author commentary that he uses is to indicate the cracking and settling of the land and buildings surrounding the characters. Crécy uses a murky, muted mixing of color, which reflects the frozen wasteland in which the characters find themselves and the confused state of mind of the explorers as they confront the Louvre and its artworks.

Crécy relies heavily on the drawing of facial expressions to convey much of the intrigue of his story. The character of Gregor is depicted with a variety of facial expressions, including arrogance, anger, a state near dementia, and fear. Hulk is also given a wide range of both facial expression and body language in his depiction. In true dog fashion, Hulk’s ears reveal his interests, anger, and fear. The visual humor of the novel also results primarily from the depiction of the dogs. They have a strong resemblance to pigs, especially when portrayed from the rear or lying on their sides or stomachs. In addition, the use of a light pink coloring further emphasizes their genetic altering with pig genes.

Themes

The major theme of the novel deals with the function of art. Crécy questions the notion that art can be preserved by and transmitted from one civilization to another. The misinterpretations and assumptions made by the team of archaeologists, who apply their own prejudices and reactions to the art they discover in the Louvre, suggest strongly that only the civilization that created the art understands its meaning. They are certain the paintings they find are evidence of an oral culture that lacked a writing system and used images to communicate. Viewing a number of nude paintings, Joseph is certain the museum was a brothel.

This theme is related to a second theme of the graphic novel. The art becomes alive and speaks only to the dog Hulk, with the exception of Bes, who speaks with Juliette and Joseph when he is sent to find them. Hulk’s reaction to the art is different from that of the human beings. He sniffs and investigates but does not immediately begin to impose his interpretation. If this is the result of his lack of human arrogance and sense of superiority, it is not definitely stated. However, tension between species and barriers between the human species and others are both themes explored by Crécy.

From the beginning of the novel, Crécy portrays an antagonistic relationship between Hulk and Gregor. To Gregor, Hulk is a dog to be ordered about, disdained, and used. Hulk confronts Gregor about his attitude and reminds him of his importance to the mission, which is, in his and Juliette’s opinion, equal to or greater than Gregor’s. Hulk and Juliette have a close friendship; however, Hulk is bothered by the limitation on their relationship caused by his appearance. Juliette cannot fully love him because he is not human. Once inside the Louvre, Hulk comments on the violence and cruelty of human beings to animals, as he views statues of The Rustic Skinner and Child with Goose. Hulk hears horrible screams and eventually is told that it is Harmensz, subject of The Skinned Ox, being skinned alive. Harmensz has his vengeance as he leaves his canvas and kills Gregor.

The academic propensity to self-centeredness and self-aggrandizement is the third theme explored by Crécy. Paul, Esteban, and Joseph are preoccupied with publishing their findings and theories and gaining recognition.

Impact

Crécy’s Glacial Period has had a significant impact on the acceptance of the graphic novel in the greater art world as an alternate art form with an aesthetic quality and value of its own. The work has enjoyed immense public success, especially in France, and has validated the Louvre’s decision to bring the graphic novel into its collections and exhibits. Crécy’s novel is the first of the graphic novels to ally the popular art form, the bande dessinée, with the high art of the museum.

In conjunction with the other three novels of the series—The Museum Vaults—Excerpts from the Journal of an Expert, On the Odd Hours, and The Sky over the Louvre—the novel has brought the Louvre into the field of graphic novel publication. In addition to the four graphic novels originally commissioned by the museum, Musée du Louvre Editions has also published Japanese graphic novelist Hirohiko Araki’s manga novel Rohan at the Louvre.

Further Reading

Carrière, Jean-Louis, and Bernard Yslaire. The Sky over the Louvre (2011).

Crécy, Nicolas de. Salvatore (2011).

Liberge, Eric. On the Odd Hours (2010).

Mathieu, Marc-Antoine. The Museum Vaults: Excerpts from the Journal of an Expert (2007).

Bibliography

Dauncey, Hugh, ed. French Popular Culture: An Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Fosdick, Charles, Laurence Grove, and Libbie McQuilan, eds. The Francophone Bande Dessinée. New York: Rodopi, 2005.

McKinney, Mark, ed. History and Politics in French Language Comics and Graphic Novels. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2008.