Urban Revelation in Paul Madonna’s Postsecular Comics

This essay explores the work of San Francisco-based artist Paul Madonna, his unique use of the tropes of imagetext and its implications concerning authority, readership and meaning in a post-modern, post-secular world. In reading through the absences in Madonna’s work – the absence of people in the landscape, the absence of an observing entity, the absence of a clear symbol and reference, this essay argues for a philosophical approach that underlies this work, one that can be dubbed “Durkheimian Existentialism.” In analyzing the ‘space’ Madonna creates in his work between an empty city landscape and human communication through the French thinker, Émile Durkheim, this essay argues for meaning behind the visual absence of people in Madonna’s comics: a celebration of people’s centrality and importance in a reality with no external meaning, to the extent that they themselves can become a revelation.