Herge and the Museum: two bad examples

Given the flap over the newly opened Herge Museum in Belgium, you begin to wonder if Herge's heirs can do much more to turn the public off to the man's work. From the Forbidden Planet blog:

The event was considered important enough by quite a lot of international media to send reporters over. However, all excitement about the new museum quickly turned into frustration when it turned out that no photography or filming was allowed inside museum and that Fanny Rémi and Nick Rodwell, the people behind Moulinsart, didn’t feel like being interviewed. And to top it off, none of the representatives, except Joost Swarte, appeared to be able to speak any other language but French.

Fabulous public relations. Much of the media swanned off, completely pissed. I sometimes wonder if these people actually think things through before they do them. As I usually say, treat someone well, they might tell 2 people, treat them poorly and they'll tell 10.

Reminds me of taking the time, while in France last summer, of trying to track down the one page of Herge artwork, a Tintin page, hidden somewhere inside the vast, overrated collection of crap that is the Centre Georges Pompidou. it was not easy, let me tell you, amidst all the modern "art" ( and I use the word loosely) to find the page, on the fourth floor.

But then you had to see the single page of art from 16 feet away or so, as they had put the page at the end of a long inverted pyramid of black and white squares. So, lets reiterate again: a single piece of artwork of 10 x 15 inches, and not even that great a page really, is held in the middle of an escher illusion at the distance of 16 feet away.

and now I'm wondering if it wasn't the curators of the Pompidou but maybe a suggestion by the Herge people? To keep people a distance away from the precious artwork? In any case, this international comics fan, who has looked at comic artwork all over the world, would like to say that he's seen original Herge art in the flesh... but i don't think i can say that.

And, if you want a brutal satire of Tintin, in all his european colonial glory, check out The Rabbi's Cat 2. The two Rabbi's Cat volumes are maybe the best graphic novel i've read in the last year.