Andrew F. Jones (University of California, Berkeley)

This talk traces the artistic collaboration of Hergé, the Belgian comic book artist and author of The Adventures of Tintin, with the prominent Chinese painter and sculptor Zhang Chongren 張充仁. Tchang (as he was known in French) is not only the central character in two of Hergé’s best loved albums, Le Lotus Bleu and Tintin au Tibet, but also the catalyst for Hergé’s own unlikely transformation from his origins as far-right Belgian Catholic royalist, colonial apologist, and crude caricaturist, to the avatar of a new realism in the realm of the comics, characterized by meticulous research, and the precise mimetic rendering of the many exotic locales in which the adventures of Tintin and his trusty terrier Milou unfold.