Shanghai discovers the different facets of Hergé
The world's largest ever exhibition on the Belgian cartoonist is currently being held in Shanghai until the end of October. "Tintin and Hergé" covers 1,600 square meters, 25% more than the exhibition held at the Grand Palais in Paris in 2016.
While Tintin discovered China in 1936, in "The Blue Lotus", most Chinese people discovered the Belgian adventurer and reporter in 2001, when the first official translations were published. The success of the series has not wavered since, with fifteen million albums sold in China.
An entire room is devoted to the adventures of "Ding Ding" (Tintin in Chinese) in the fourth album of the series, culminating in the story of the cartoonist's meeting with Zhang Chongren, a Shanghainese man who was sent to Brussels to study fine arts in 1934 and became a close friend and advisor of Hergé. This friendship had a huge influence on Hergé as he was creating "The Blue Lotus", which is widely considered a turning point in Hergé's career, in terms of not only artistic style but also ideology.
Despite Tintin's charisma, his creator did not step back in terms of his character, as the exhibition devotes a great deal of space to Hergé's discovery and taste for contemporary art, as well as his fascination for ancient and primitive civilizations, which would be reflected in his work.