Le chemin le moins court : L’art du détour chez Michaël Ferrier et Jirō Taniguchi

Abstract

This comparative article brings together the works of two painters of Tokyo: Francophone writer Michaël Ferrier and his hybrid collection of poetic essays, Tokyo, petits portraits de l’aube (2004), and Japanese mangaka Jirō Taniguchi and his contemplative bande dessinée, L’homme qui marche (2017, 1995). Through a close study of their explorations of Tokyo, I argue that fragmentation and detour, foundational motifs of the authors’ aesthetics, are carriers of a common ethical project that offers a decentralization of the gaze, one that embraces multiplicity and contradictions, to grasp the human and non-human in a common gesture.