With Benot Peeters, it is the comic strip which enters the Collge de France, symbol of a progressive and late institutional recognition. The theorist and screenwriter reviews the specificities of this medium and discusses certain contemporary trends, from graphic novels to non-fiction.
Photography: Ariel Suhamy – Editing: Abel Poucet
elected to the chair of artistic creation at the College de France for the year 2022-2023 to sketch a “Potics of comics”, Benot Peeters is a comic book writer and scriptwriter, but also director of Impressions Nouvelles and editorial advisor at Casterman.
After studying philosophy, he prepared for the diploma of the practical school of advanced studies under the direction of Roland Barthes then devoted himself entirely to writing from 1982, notably by writing biographies of Jacques Derrida, Paul Valry, Sandor Ferenczi and Alain Robbe- Grillet published by Flammarion.
However, it is in the field of comics that he mainly distinguished himself by devoting essays to this medium (Read the comicFlammarion, 2000) and more particularly some of its essential figures like Herg (The World of HergCasterman, 1983;Herg, son of TintinFlammarion, 2002 andRead Tintin. The delighted JewelsLes Impressions Nouvelles, 2007) but also by designing documentaries or exhibitions on essential authors like Herg, Art Spiegelman or Chris Ware, to whom he devoted an Angoulme exhibition then the BPI from the Center Pompidou (June 8-October 10, 2022).
Finally, if he is a comics theoretician, Benot Peeters is also a practitioner. He thus collaborated with numerous designers (Frdric Boilet, Aurlia Aurita, Alain Goffin, Anne Baltus) but especially Franois Schuiten with whom he wrote The Dark Citiesa series of sixteen albums published by Casterman Editions (1983-2009), awarded and translated into around fifteen languages.
Link to his site