Totally Tintin

Within is a landscape of the imagination,brightly lit and coloured,as outside a steady drizzle falls against the windows from leaden skies. If that sounds like a memory of childhood reading indoors,it is no accident. Since Tintin8217;s first appearance in a Belgian Catholic newspaper 80 years ago,generations have roamed the world vicariously through his comic-book adventures as a trouble-prone if unusually clean-living foreign reporter.

In much of Europe,especially in Belgium and France,the stories have gained a devoted following,generating books,academic papers and conferences at which grown men and it is usually men debate arcana like the real-world location of Tintin8217;s Brussels home,or the ancestry of Captain Haddock,his best friend and drunken,comic foil. For less obsessive fans,the books are still an important memory. Some 200m albums have been sold in all,giving children their first taste of the exotic as Tintin fights bullies and solves mysteries from the jungles of Latin America to the mountains of Tibet: a sort of cartoon National Geographic,with the added appeal of car crashes and fist-fights.

Both groups of fans will find much to please them in the new museum. The brainchild of Hergé8217;s second wife,Fanny Rodwell,who set up the Hergé Foundation in 1987,the museum shows off a rotating collection of original artwork and source materials,laying bare the hard work that Hergé put into his comics,with each speeding car,cityscape or policeman8217;s uniform inspired by archived photographs and research trips in the field. Back in his Brussels studios,Hergé would spend long hours posing as each character while assistants sketched him as a reference guide for the final drawings.

Mr de Portzamparc a past winner of the Pritzker prize,one of architecture8217;s highest awards confesses that as an adult he rarely thought about Tintin. But the museum commission awoke memories of sketching Captain Haddock when he was a small boy and of doodling the ocean-going ships that fill the Tintin albums. It was very easy to open the door and plunge back in, he says.

Yet the museum has another ambition: to cement the claim that Hergé,who died in 1983,was an important artist in his own right,whose talents as a graphic designer,painter and typographer were somewhat eclipsed by the runaway success of 8216;The Adventures of Tintin, to quote one oddly grudging sign on display. The reverential tone of such captions,allied to a general lack of larkishness,make clear this is a serious Hergé museum,not merely a Tintin exhibition. It seems fair to predict that many child visitors will be left decidedly fidgety.

At times,the museum seems to be straining to make its argument. One display highlights Hergé8217;s love of modern art and his friendships in that world his private collection included works by Andy Warhol,Roy Lichtenstein and Alexander Calder. A sign high on a wall quotes Balthus,a Polish-French modern artist,recalling a happy evening with a sculptor friend,Alberto Giacometti,marvelling at the quality and depth of Hergé8217;s work. Yet the work that the two artists were admiring was a stack of Tintin albums. Quite right too: the Tintin books are by far Hergé8217;s finest achievement,admired by children and famous artists alike. You would think that would be enough.

The Economist Newspaper Limited 2009