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 creation of “wordless” books. From a historical perspective these factors are easily recognized in the development of these wordless books, and the role that Masereel played in the formation of novels in pictures cannot be overemphasized.
Frans Masereel was born into an upper middle-class family in the Flemish seacoast town of Blankenberge, near Ghent. His father died when Masereel was only five years old, and his mother moved the family to Ghent. She married a doctor who had strong socialist convictions and became an early role model for the young Masereel, who regularly joined his stepfather in demonstrations against social injustices (such as the appalling conditions of the textile workers in Ghent). This early example of taking personal action against social inequities remained influential throughout Masereel’s personal life and was a dominant theme in his prints and artwork. Masereel attended the Ghent Academy of Fine Arts in 1907 but left after a year for Paris, where he pursued his art independently. He befriended Leon Bazalgette, who was the first French translator and biographer of the American poet Walt Whitman. Whitman’s poetry, with its democratic and humanistic views, became the cornerstone of Masereel’s themes.
During World War I, Masereel volunteered as a translator for the International Red Cross in Geneva. He also worked as a political cartoonist from 1917 to 1920 for the newspaper La Feuille. This job required, under tight deadlines, that Masereel create a drawing related to a daily news event. He used brushes and India ink to create bold black-and-white images that would easily catch the eye of the reader. These bold brush-and-ink shapes were better suited for reproduction on the newspaper’s low-grade paper stock. Fine-lined detail produced with pen and ink did not reproduce well. Masereel later integrated this technique of unembellished black-and-white images into his woodcuts and established a distinct style that is, today, immediately recognizable as his trademark. Had he remained outside the newspaper experience, the evolution of his distinct style would have been delayed or, perhaps, never have occurred.
In 1916, along with Claude Le Maguet, Masereel founded the journal Les Tablettes, which continued publication until 1919; it was there that he published his first woodcuts. Masereel’s woodcuts were the integration of his developing style for the newspaper La Feuille. In order to reproduce the bold technique he employed for La Feuille, he used the soft side, or plank side, of the wood. His concentration on the woodcut also related to his deep interest in the medieval woodcuts displayed in liturgical prayer books, block books, and simple playing cards that told didactic stories to an illiterate population.
One of Masereel’s early illustrated books, published in 1917 with 57 woodcuts, was Quinze Poèmes by the Belgian poet Emile Verhaeren. In this work, Masereel used a more involved method in his woodcuts–cross-hatching, the crossing of lines to create tones and shading. This common technique, although skillfully done, was a movement away from the bold and simple style he had been developing. He eliminated cross-hatching soon after, returning to the simple forms he had exhibited in his brush-and-ink drawings and adding a bit more detail to his woodcuts without eliminating the central focus of his solid figures and forms. The period from 1916 to 1922 set a firm foundation for Masereel’s future artwork, and he built friendships with many prominent writers, such as Romain Rolland, Stefan Zweig, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Hermann Hesse.
Masereel’s first wordless efforts, Debout les morts (Arise Ye Dead) and Les Morts Parlent (The Dead Speak), published in 1917, were more like the print albums of the day; their subject matter was the disasters of the war. He quickly followed these efforts with his first woodcut novel, 25 Images de la Passion D’un Homme (25 Pictures of a Man’s Passion, 1918). In this book, regarded as the first woodcut novel, Masereel defined the social and political themes for his future works.
In the following year, 1919, Masereel published Passionate Journey, his favorite work and a good example of autobiographical fiction. In addition to Masereel’s own experiences, there are those of the hero, whose life reflects that of Henri Guilbeaux, a friend of Rolland and Masereel’s in Geneva. A French Marxist and a biographer of Lenin, Guilbeaux possessed eccentricities that were well observed by Masereel and served as the model for the outrageous behavior exhibited by the hero in Passionate Journey. This peculiar, sometimes humorous, conduct was a balance to the reserve and contemplative nature more closely associated with Masereel’s own personality. In contrast to many of the realistic narratives of the day, the hero in Passionate Journey rises above the constraints of society to live on a humanistic plane. Like his friend George Grosz, whose work Ecce Homo depicted the ills of German society, Masereel expanded this austere depiction with joyful events and everyday activities of common people on the street.
It is, perhaps, easier to form a concept of this work if one looks at Masereel’s first woodcut novel, Die Passion eines Menschen, as a short story told in twenty-five woodcuts, and at Passionate Journey as a novel told in 167 woodcuts, in regard to length and narrative intricacies. This woodcut novel portrays the experiences of a young man entering a city. He is a witness and, later, a participant in the various experiences that life offers, from the comic to the tragic. The skill with which Masereel was able to create emotional ties between the reader and the main character on 2¾- by 3½-inch black-and-white blocks in the original work is truly impressive. The size of the original editions encouraged readers to slip the novel inside one’s pocket, to use as a book of prayer or meditation, or for entertainment. The original title of this book, My Book of Hours, can be regarded as a personal interpretation of human life based on the Medieval Book of Hours, with religious themes that were only available to the very wealthy. Passionate Journey is Masereel’s query into the human condition and a tribute to the mentors in his life—the social views of his stepfather, the democratic vision of Whitman, and Guilbeaux’s zany, impulsive reactions to an industrialized culture.
Masereel’s original monochromatic technique disregarded light and shadow in favor of flat, legible images. The hero is easily distinguished in each picture because the pictures are simple, displaying only essential objects. Masereel captures the heart of the reader in much the same way as cartoonists in their display of the magic of sequential art with less, rather than more, realistic representation of the action. The woodcut is the oldest print medium, requiring only the simplest materials. For this reason, some consider it a craft form, especially since it is not as refined as other print media. These elements of the woodcut work in the hands of Masereel turn craft into art, with his skilled emphasis on solid themes without any stylistic garnish so prevalent in other print media. It is also important to recognize that the means of making a woodcut not only reflects the democratic attitude that Masereel held for all people, but also that the actual materials are linked directly to nature.
The popularity of Masereel was due in large part to the interest and enthusiasm of the German publisher Kurt Wolff, who published cheap editions of Masereel’s distinctive books for the general public. Wolff published five woodcut novels with introductions by popular writers such as Thomas Mann and Hermann Hesse. These editions sold thousands of copies and established Masereel’s name for an audience of readers without regard to language or literacy.
No other artist had such a lifelong love of the woodcut than Masereel. Throughout his life and the inexhaustible amount of artwork he created, his predominant mode of expression was the woodcut. Both in his book illustrations and his own unique novels in pictures, Masereel’s passion, coupled with the vigor of his style, makes him a force to constantly admire and study.
David A. Beronä is a woodcut novel historian, the author of Wordless Novels: The Original Graphic Novels (2008), and the Library Director at Plymouth State University, New Hampshire.