Brown, C. (1989) “The Man Who Couldn’t Stop” in Ed The Happy Clown (Picton: Vortex Comics, 24–25)

The tight grid structure and overpowering information in the panels of Solo Scenes recalls comics such as Daniel Merlin Goodbrey’s The Archivist, which also featured in the Hypercomics exhibition. The grids in Goodbrey’s work can be read in several directions in both print and digital versions. The narrative does not have to be read left-to-right and top-to-bottom, and one experiences Solo Scenes in similar fashion.

The scenes of Roth on the toilet resemble “The Man Who Couldn’t Stop,” Chester Brown’s short masterpiece of comics pacing and humour from Ed the Happy Clown (1989: 24–25). A prolific autobiographical cartoonist, Brown’s drawing style here shows the influence of Robert Crumb, also no stranger to autobiography. The hatching and minimal changes between panels recalls Crumb’s work on “The Harvey Pekar Name Story” (1977) from American Splendor (Pekar 1996: 1–4). In his typical scratchy style, Crumb draws Pekar talking directly to the reader in panels that change only minutely from one to the next; each panel is subtly different, suggesting the movement of time. Brown, however, uses photocopies to repeat some images and the non-changing drawing suggests a more tedious passage of time.

Roth was an avid reader of autobiographies and he took more consolation from them than he did from fiction (Dobke 2004: 237). He also had an urge to use his life experience in his art, much like Brown, Crumb and Pekar. Roth controlled what was made public in a similar fashion to an autobiographical cartoonist choosing which elements of his or her life to show in comics. Like the cartoonist choosing the layout of each panel and page, “Roth was always conscious of the staged nature of the situation;” he enjoyed being watched and was always conscious of the camera setup and that his actions were clear to the viewer while making Solo Scenes (Jud 2004: 123).

Roth’s work uses, and is similar to, comics but can we call it comics? McCloud defined comics as “juxtaposed pictorial and other images in a deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or to produce an aesthetic response in the viewer” (1993: 9). McCloud’s use of juxtaposed was intended to separate comics from moving images.

In reply to McCloud, Dylan Horrocks argued against such essentialist definitions: “Borders are, after all, artificial inventions designed to control the movement of people, commodities and ideas” (2001: 39). In Abstract Comics (2009) Andrei Molotui uses this reasoning to suggest different pieces of abstract art as a prehistory of abstract comics. In a later essay Molotiu states that “any new evolution in an art form (such as comics) expands the purview, and thereby proposes a new definition of that art form” (2012: 84). Definitions should not be set and permanent but allowed to evolve.

Aaron Meskin also argues for moving away from any essentialist classification: “there is a very real possibility that the definitional project is misguided. Moreover, there is no pressing need to come up with a definition” (2007: 376). Meskin argues that comics should be defined by typical rather than specific features and suggests that “perhaps something is a comic just in case it is/was nonpassingly intended for regard-as-comic.”

Roth’s installation contains such “typical features” as panels and captions, and can be classed as Beaty’s “comics off the page.” In his latest book Comics Versus Art (2012), Beaty recounts the debates surrounding the definitions of comics and suggests that, rather than as specific material traits, comics should be thought of as a social world along the lines of Pierre Bourdieu’s theories of The Field of Cultural Production. Beaty also cites George Dickie’s theory that “a work of art is an artefact presented to the art world public, and that the art world public is a set of individuals who are prepared in some degree to understand an object that is presented to them as art” (2012: 36) to support his claim that “comics can be defined as objects recognized by the comics world as comics” (2012: 37).

Beaty’s argument is persuasive as it moves the issue of definition towards context rather than form, and as comics are so formally diverse, and a site of seemingly endless formal experimentation and variation. This is a seductively inclusive argument, but in another respect, it is effectively just another border around what we can claim to be comics. In effect, establishing that comics are produced by and for those in a certain community (the comics art world) limits what can and can’t be considered comics in a different way.

The debate will go on, and it is the debate itself that will continue to inform our understanding of comics. Solo Scenes can be read as a comic even if Dieter Roth is not part of the comics art world and did not intend it to be so. Comics are a “cool” medium, to use Marshall McLuhan’s term (1964: 24), and as such the reader has to engage with them to make them work. Viewers must perform a version of closure to complete the reading of an artwork as comics, whether encouraged to do so by Dave McKean or unintentionally with Solo Scenes. It is not just something that is created by the comics art world that can be comics; something viewed through the debates of the comics art world can be comics too.

A reconfigured version of the Dieter Roth: Diaries exhibition is showing in London at Camden Arts Centre from 17 May – 14 July 2013.