Frank Santoro recently posted a note about ‘fusion cartoonists.’ He sees the work of Paul Pope and Scott McCloud’s Zot as progenitors of a new stylistic movement (a loose term – perhaps a better word is sensibility?). Other, younger cartoonists mentioned in the same breath are Brandon Graham, Brian Lee O’Malley, and Dash Shaw. Their work (according to Frank – and I concur) is a new kind of fusion of contemporary and international influences. Their works draw on art from all the major comic-book producing regions: America, Japan, and Europe. This international miscegenation is key.
Frank likes Jazz metaphors and I think ‘fusion’ generally fits… though it’s perhaps a little broad. I’ve been thinking recently along similar lines, but aligning these artists with a recent art-world concept of Altermodernism. The term & concept was coined by Nicolas Bourriaud in 2005. Bourriaud asserts that post-modernism has exhausted itself and it must be replaced by a new concept. His candiate is Altermodernism. Here’s his explanation:
“Artists are looking for a new modernity that would be based on translation: What matters today is to translate the cultural values of cultural groups and to connect them to the world network. This “reloading process” of modernism according to the twenty-first-century issues could be called altermodernism, a movement connected to the creolisation of cultures and the fight for autonomy, but also the possibility of producing singularities in a more and more standardized world.”
To my eyes this really fits what Frank is describing.
Altermodernism itself is still rather vague and ill-defined… it’s very new after all… but at least it’s meaning is not yet so overstuffed like it’s predecessors post-modernism and modernism. I for one would be thrilled to see comics at the head of an artistic vanguard, embracing and extending the meaning of the zeitgeist with the same kind of determination seen in the art world. Down with Alternative. Long live Altermodern!
I was asked to contribute an essay on the work of Will Eisner as part of this years Will Eisner Week celebrations. I decided to take a closer look at Eisner’s Contract With God Trilogy. The essay (well… really a series of notes) just got posted. Here’s a short excerpt:
All the stories in A Contract with God take place on Dropsie Avenue. Eisner fills this fictional Bronx street with multiethnic (especially Jewish) immigrants, desperate criminals and ragged tramps. Sudden wealth is as possible as instant ruin. Throughout the book it becomes obvious that the real protagonist of the book is the street itself. Eisner lavishes attention on its dilapidated buildings, rain drenched stoops and moody street-scapes. He’s clearly enamored of the urban patina of the place. With each subsequent story, Eisner increasingly begins to use the architecture of the street as a substitute for the panel border. In effect he trades the comic-book gutters for the gutters of the street.
Read the whole thing here.
Photo by Emilia Kaczynski
I wrote a bit about Handle With Care already. A little while ago, I was able to dispatch a reporter to the exhibition to document the exhibition before it closed. The intrepid reporter was my little sister, Emilia. She just happened to be in Paris studying all things French and she volunteered to go on a fact finding mission to Montauban. Undeterred by the six hour train ride (one way!) she brought back volumes of photographs of the exhibition. After seeing this virtual walk through I’m even more impressed by the breadth and depth of the exhibition. Bravo Laurent! Take a look.
On Saturday (Oct. 24th) John Porcellino arrived in Minneapolis to promote his new King Cat collection, Map of My Heart. He rode in on a weird wind charged with spectral energies. The evening started out at Big Brain Comics, where John Porcellino & Zak Sally held a joint signing. Perhaps the ectoplasmic currents were stirred by the eerie juxtaposition of two old friends publishing work from roughly the same time period. Sally’s Like a Dog and Porcellino’s Map of My Heart exhume old material, reopen old wounds and release the ghosts of the past… ghosts which still haunt both authors… ghosts which haunted the small gathering that convened at the West Bank Social Center to see John speak about his life and work.
Zak Sally roused the poltergeist by a spirited reading of an epic letter (penned by Mr. Mike) from John’s book. As if ordained by malicious spirits, the overpowering sound of a brass band emanated from the floor the moment John took stage to speak. Undeterred he pressed on struggling against the powerful oompa rhythms which permeated the air. I detected a presence in the room… was it the absence of Maisie Kukoc? As he read from the book and illuminated the comics with stories of his health struggles and divorce a change started taking place in the general mood. John no longer labored against the brass cacophony, just the opposite, it became the soundtrack to an exorcism. The painful memories of past struggle transformed via the alchemy of King Cat into a personal lapis philosophorum.
I took only a few pictures. They can be seen in my Flickr stream. Ghost are difficult enough to capture on film. Are digital pixels a better medium? But the presence of ghosts can be detected by the eerie juxtapositions they leave behind.
At the end of event, we learned that the artists who run the West Bank Social Center were about to embark on a ghost finding experiment by constructing a giant cardboard Ouija Board. I think their efforts were successful.
Published on
October 14, 2009 in
Comics.
As promised in the last post, Gabrielle Bell’s new mini-comic, L.A. Diary, is now available for purchase on the brand new Uncivilized Books site.
L.A. Diary by Gabrielle Bell
A confluence of events almost as portentous as the alignment of the sun and the galactic center heralding the uncertain events of 2012 have caused the Rain Taxi Book Festival and Fallcon to share the same moment in time if not the same space. Both events will compete for your attention between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. tomorrow (Saturday, Oct 10th) and I will attempt to have a table at both. At the Rain Taxi event, I (as Uncivilized Books) will be sandwiched between Big Brain Comics and Zak Sally’s La Mano Books. Several great authors are scheduled to appear (Nicholson Baker, Lorrie Moore, Andrzej Zagajewski, etc.) but the main event as far as I’m concerned will be cartoonist Gabrielle Bell. In addition to gracing the Book Festival, Gabrielle teamed up with Uncivilized Books to produce a special mini-comic: L.A. Diary. The comic is a collection of diary strips published on her blog. It also contains sketches and an unfiltered glimpse at her real sketchbook diary. We also teamed up on a small Gocco print (pictured below). They will both be available for sale at the Rain Taxi festival and eventually next week copies will be made available online. Of course my comics will be available for sale as well, including the recently released Best American Nonrequired Reading 2009.
Meanwhile, I will also be tabling at Fallcon (Peter Bagge will be there!). On Saturday my presence will be limited, but on Sunday I will be joined by Gabrielle Bell and we will have her above mentioned mini-comic (and print) for sale in addition to my usual junk. Stop by and say hi!
Silver Gocco print by Gabrielle Bell
I came to the United States From Poland in 1987. I’ve traveled back to the home country a few times over the last couple of decades. A few days ago I had a different kind of homecoming. I was interviewed for the first time by the Polish comics community. The brief interview is now posted, along with a few pages of my comics, on the Aleja Komiksu site.
If you read Polish the rest of the Aleja Komiksu site is well worth checking. I especially recommend the extensive interview with Andrzej Klimowski, one of the most interesting figures in British comics. English speakers aren’t completely left out. The site posted a survey of recent comics by young British cartoonists. Take a look.
To celebrate this virtual homecoming, I’m posting one of my first ever comic-books. It may not be THE first comic, but it’s certainly the first total package: a stapled pamphlet, complete with a logo and print run number (it was customary for the print run to be listed on books in Poland at the time – in this case the print run was 1). I was 11 when I made this.
Click to enlarge
Sometime in the late 90’s, only a few years after I started self-publishing mini-comics, I got my first order from France from someone named Laurent Parson. Over the next decade he would keep ordering the odd mini-comic that I’d happened to be selling on my site. Then a few weeks ago he asked me to participate in a “DIY” comics exhibition that was going to take place at the library where he lived. How could I say no? After a few weeks of emails and idea exchanges I finally sent my artwork to Montauban, the location of the exhibition. Now the show is up and open to the public. It’s called Handle With Care and features the work of several American cartoonists & zinesters: Ron Rege Jr., Jordan Crane, Mark Burrier, Aaron Cometbus, John Porcellino, Minnesota’s own Vincent “King Mini” Stall, JP Coovert and many others.
A still from video about the exhibiton.
The exhibition will be on display for the next seven weeks at the Biblioth√©que de Montauban. From what I can tell it looks fantastic. Take a look at this video. It’s a dizzying array of art and objects. It simply looks amazing. I wish I could go see it for myself. The video has the added benefit of featuring Laurent talking about the show. I don’t understand a word of it, but I can finally put see the face behind all the emails and letters he’s sent over the last decade.
More about the exhibition here and here (PDF 1.8 MB).
Friday night saw the opening of the Big Funny exhibition at the Altered Esthetics gallery. The exhibition features the art from the titular Big Funny: a big (48 newspaper sized pages) collection of comic-strips by an assortment of Minneapolis cartoonists. More info on the collection here. I brought a camera and acted like an annoying paparazzo. The results are here.
Published on
August 3, 2009 in
Comics.
Click to enlarge
Dash Shaw already posted a small glimpse of our 15 page collaboration, “Resolution”. I wrote and Dash did the art, though the process was more fluid than that. When the piece comes out, I’ll do a post on the process. My layouts above correspond roughly to the page Dash posted on his blog. It will appear in MOME vol. 17.