Abstract
The Idea (1920)
83 woodcuts make up Frans Masereel's illustrated narrative entitled "The Idea". "The Idea" is personified by a young woman who emerges from an intellectual discovery to begin a long journey where she will be admired, reproduced, raped, dressed, disguised, undressed, and raped again. She is dressed, first in any clothes, then as a man, then as a queen. The authorities repress her and kill those who defend her. She is shown and scandalized. It hides and scandalizes. To endure, the Idea runs to the printing press. There it seems to triumph. It is its moment of greatest ecstasy. It runs happily and dazzles in each printed book... even if they burn and feed bonfires. Her initial creator: a man undifferentiated from all the rest loves her, loses her and misses her... Old and tired he observes the events that the Idea lives with total independence from his lap. It never belonged to him. His path, now, is part of the world.
The production of the Belgian artist Frans Masereel (1889-1972) was noted for his wordless tales that unfold through engravings on political and social themes, on war and capitalism. As a pacifist defector, he produced his well-known motifs almost always from France: factories, automobiles and pipelines recur to frame bohemia, love and eroticism among skyscrapers and traffic.
Since 1916, his engravings can be found in the most careful European magazines of left-wing culture. First, in Les Tablettes and Lumière, in which he himself participated, then also in Clarté, for example. Since the end of the twenties his work has been reproduced in different parts of the world. In South America, Labor (BA, 1928-1929), Nervio (BA, 1931-1936), Contra (BA, 1933), Izquierda (BA, 1934-1935), Flecha (Córdoba, 1935-1936), Monde (Montevideo, 1936) and Latitud (BA, 1945) were just some of the magazines that were interested in his work, while in Europe Masereel continued to illustrate the literary works of authors such as Romain Rolland, Henri Barbusse, Thomas Mann, Émile Zola and Stefan Zweig.
The images used were digitized by The Masereel Group and are available in the public domain at The Anarchist Library.