Text to Image (Text and Image: Homage to Anne-Marie Christin)

This book is about a symposium held on May 21, 2016, at the University of Tokyo, to honor Anne-Marie Christin (1942-2014). Anne-Marie Christin was a pioneer researcher who studied the interrelationship between text and image. She had a close connect with Japan. The written characters of the Japanese language, along with the aesthetics of the culture, had a major impact on her, providing greater depth to her speculations.
 
After spending her childhood in Algeria, Anne-Marie Christin joined the École Normale Supérieure (ENS) in Paris in 1962, where she obtained her teaching degree in classical literature. After working as an assistant at the Sorbonne, she began teaching at Paris Diderot University (Paris 7). The year 1982 marked the formal establishment within Paris 7 of the Centre d’Étude de l’Écriture (CEE), which became the Centre d’Étude de l’Écriture et de l’Image (CEEI) in 2001. Anne-Marie Christin became a Professor in 1983, and was given the title of Professor Emeritus after her retirement in 2008.
 
While she pursued her own research, she was also constantly involved in joint research. Anne-Marie Christin spurred the development of research on text-image relationships in France, even though Japan held a special place for her. In Paris 7, she benefitted from the dedicated knowledge of experienced Japanese scholars at the University, and she also visited Japan several times. These experiences had a lasting impression on her and were a source of fresh ideas and inspiration.
 
While the contributors of this book display their own scholarly interests and research pursuits, the main focus is on the suggestions provided by and the influences of Anne-Marie Christin on each of them. The fact that the essays in this book cover a wide variety of boundaries is exactly what we aimed for. At the same, the essays can be categorized into three groups, based on the main orientations of Anne-Marie Christin.
 
The first category covers a large theme, namely the relationship between the writer and the artist. Noriko Yoshida discusses the relationship between Baudelaire and Manet, Fumio Chiba elaborates on the ties between the artist Francis Bacon and Michel Leiris, and Torahiko Terada speaks of the ways in which contemporary illustrators expressed the short stories of Maupassant. The second category includes the interrelation of text and images by presenting research chiefly in the fields of manga (bande dessinée) and museum studies (museology). Naoko Morita closes up on the drawn lines in the work of Rodolphe Töpffer, Yoko Kitamura considers the manga of Yumiko Oshima, and Kazuaki Yoshimura provides his considerations regarding the Jean-Luc Godard Exhibition, “Travel(s) in Utopia.” The third and final category aims to excavate the relationship between writing, icons, and sound. After Takako Tanikawa’s rumination on symbols in Japan and Western Europe, Yoon Jung Do examines Un Coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hasard (A Throw of the Dice will Never Abolish Chance) of Mallaramé, Marianne Simon-Oikawa discusses the “visual poems” of Pierre Albert-Birot, and Jan Baetens takes up the sound poet Vincent Tholomé. To conclude, Shigemi Inaga presents his recollections, describes the academic influences Anne-Marie Christin has had on Japanese students, and presents a vivid account of her as a person and the roles that she played in her life.
 

(Written by Marianne Simon-Oikawa, Associate Professor, Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology / 2019)