Manga—comics or graphic novels from Japan—touches everything. It considers nothing sacred. Such is the reality that hits me at the current exhibit we attended at the Centre Pompidou, France’s national museum of contemporary art, Bande dessinée, 1964 – 2024 (Comics 1964-2024).

It isn’t just manga, either. From its acknowledged beginning in the counterculture (like Art Spiegelman’s Maus), all comics art seems to have assumed an irreverent attitude towards its subject matter throughout its history. Maybe that’s inevitable when its reason for being is to make people laugh.

Intrigued by what I have learned from the exhibit, I purchased one of the books associated with it and that resonated with my own interests—Quand Manga Réinvente Les Grandes Classiques De La Peinture (When Manga Reinvents The Great Classics Of Painting).

On its cover is a manga interpretation of a well-loved Vermeer masterpiece, Girl With The Pearl Earring. Predictably, from typical manga techniques, what stands out in this interpretation are the girl’s eyes. They’re much bigger.

Manga take on masterpieces

Other interpretations have involved more radical, even disturbing changes, as in Édouard Manet’s’Dejeuner Sur L’herbe

With this exhibit at possibly the largest, best-endowed museum of contemporary art, comics has cemented its prestige as an art form. In 2022, the Louvre recognized it as the 9th art when it amassed a collection of comics art.

The Pompidou exhibit presents the history of comics art development, primarily in the three countries that have produced most of these works—France, Japan, and the United States.

True to its mission of injecting humor in its presentation, comics art has addressed and helped us cope with everything that makes us human—our fears, dreams, hopes, memories. Like other art forms, it has borrowed material from existing works (literature, for instance), and adapted techniques from other art forms.

For a more in-depth look at comics art, the museum has put together an illuminating series of podcasts you could check out.

Here’s a delightful manga interpretation of another famous artwork. Can you guess the original painting that inspired it?