CULTURE
Cartoon Nation
Right: The Belgian Comic
Strip Center is a real draw for
ardent cartoon fans. Some 80
per cent of visitors come from
abroad Below: Throughout
Brussels you’ll see street
cartoon art everywhere.
There are even cartoon tours
which take you on a walking
discovery around the most
notable designs in the city
24 Ascott LIVING
Photos: Daniel Fouss/Belgian Comic Strip Centre (Main); 2014 Les Editions Albert Rene Goscinny - Uderzo (Asterix); Getty Images (Brussels city, Comic illustration)
With more cartoonists than anywhere else in
the world, it is small wonder that the Belgian
Comic Center in the heart of the country’s
capital draws thousands of visitors each year
While in most countries comics are for
kids, in Belgium the art form of bande
dessinée (drawn strips) is taken very
seriously indeed. More than 200,000
people visit the Belgian Comic Strip
Center (BCSC) in Brussels every year.
This tiny, quiet country is a hotbed
of renowned cartoonists and their art.
Open for just over 25 years, the
BCSC is quite unique, as a showcase of
cartoon art and as a conservationist of
original work. Over 7000 original works
are stored in the Center’s vaults. Fans
of cartoons say that there’s nowhere in
the world quite like it, as the Center’s
communications director Willem De
Graeve confirms: “When we welcome
US comic strip artists here they are a
bit jealous. They say that people want
to read comics in the US but they don’t
have a museum and it’s just seen as a
nice entertainment and not culture.”
The Center’s permanent exhibitions
are regularly renewed and are
supplemented by temporary exhibitions
celebrating the comic arts. Stalwart
attractions are those honouring the
teenage detective Tintin and the blue
hatted woodland folk The Smurfs.
Hergé (the pen name of The
Adventures of Tintin creator George
Remi) was the first Belgian comic
strip artist to become famous, with
his art inspiring his fellow Belgians.
“Hergé was only 22 when he
created the first Tintin adventure,”
says De Graeve, “So many saw this
young guy who earned a living from
drawing cartoon strips and they
were inspired. It’s like if a country
is known for a sport like tennis,
Firm friends
The inseparable friends:
Asterix and Obelix are
well known to millions of
people across the world.
Right: The claire de ligne
style exemplified by
Asterix and Tintin
they have lots of great players and
it becomes a national model. It was
more or less the same with Hergé
and comics. He was the locomotive
of the whole comic strip train.”
“Belgium is a small country but
it’s quite a complicated one. We have
11 million inhabitants and three
official [