An interesting-looking exhibition with several young great artists – wish I could go, but I probably won’t be around those parts for quite a while. Also, check out Artboks’ website and MySpace).
And, in Malmö, the C’est Bon Kultur crew, will be opening a show of the great Martin tom Dieck’s work on Saturday. Same lament from me. Do go, he’s a contemporary comics master.
Finally, the Bunker crew have pooled their individually snapped flix from the opening, the weekend before last, of the exhibition Comix, at Brandts klædefabrik in Odense, Denmark. Hop over to our photo gallery for a (nigh-)virtual tour (as they say) of the exhibition, as well as images of some of the best cartoonists of the moment dipping into Hans-Christian Andersen’s pond. And go see the exhibition already!
All right, so I’m in Italy and haven’t posted anything for a while. Lots of stuff coming up. In the meantime, Pepo Mhas posted a link to an interview with Christophe Blain over on his excellent blog Con C de Arte (bookmark now!), where he takes the opportunity to comment again on my stated opinion on Blain’s work and that of other French cartoonists of his ilk, something we and a bunch of others had a good debate a little over six months ago.
I don’t have anything to add to what I wrote back then, but just want to correct what seems to me a misconception in Pepo’s assessment of the points I made: I am not looking for ‘literary comics’ from Blain and the other cartoonists I’ve been criticising, nor am I blind to their dazzling graphic skills. However, they still lack substance. Their art is beautiful but boring, and ultimately their work is conservative and bourgeois, which is a shame because they are so talented.
One of Denmark’s most talented storytelling graphic designers and BLÆK alumnus, Jan Oksbøl Callesen has just launched his own personal webiste at www.janokscal.com. Also check out his page at studio Gul Stue.
Det er svært at karakterisere Under Byen som et rockband i ordets traditionelle forstand. Deres musik, tekster, instrumentering, ja hele deres opstilling på scenen, er vel nærmere at betragte som en helhed der, når det fungerer, vitterlig slår gulvet væk under publikum.
Right, back from Denmark and Odense, where I participated in the opening of the exhibition on comics and contemporary art at Brandts klædefabrik, Comix. It was a good time. A nice show and plenty of nice people, some familiar others not. The Bunker will hopefully be running a review as well as a photo reportage soon, but in the meantime I figured I’d post a couple of photos and reproduce my opening speech. Stay tuned.
This is the last installment of our interview with cartoonist Anders Nilsen; 1, 2, 3.
Moving on to the much more traditionally narrative Big Questions. It’s evident that you had been leading up to Algernon’s descent into Hades for a while before it became obvious that that’s what you were doing. What made you decide to adapt the myth? [of Orpheus and Eurydice]
It’s funny, I actually didn’t mean to adapt the myth. It just sort of worked out that way. Once I realized that that was the story I was telling, I liked it, and I’ve been trying to reinforce the connections a bit. Bringing in more of Algernon’s singing for example. I’m also just really interested in myths, fairy-tales and religious stories like the Bible. They are endlessly interpretable and adaptable. A bottomless source. They’re the template for pretty much all storytelling in the Western world. Whether by design or by stumbling onto them I think there is much to be gained from brushing up against them, borrowing, stealing, rewriting and quoting from them, whether subtly, like the story you mentioned or overtly like in the Sisyphus story I did in Kramers 4.
Mig bekendt var Jakob Martin Strid den første tegneserietegner, der sidste år kunne modtage Statens Kunstfonds eftertragtede 3-årige arbejdslegat. Ganske vist lagde Kunstfondets litteraturudvalg i sin motivation mest vægt på Strids børnebøger, og vist var legatets første afkast til offentligheden da også færdiggørelsen af sidste års hit-børnebog Min mormors gebis. Men forleden dumpede så et 198 sider langt tegneserieepos ned på boghandlernes hylder, sådan lidt fra out of nowhere. Og lad det være sagt med det samme, at det i sandhed var en pragtfuld overraskelse : årets danske tegneserie er simpelthen landet!
Skønt hverken titlen eller omslaget på nogen måde er lokkende : den lille cyan-farvede bog med den krukket-antiautoritære titel Decimal 0.4 ligner mest af alt en af Jyske Banks seneste lad-os-pakke-aktieinfo-ind-som-gave-gimmicks : og det er da helt ærligt, som de ville sige i bemeldte bank, ret trælst.
Continuing our interview with cartoonist Anders Nilsen; 1, 2, 4.
CAMBRIDGE-CHICAGO 2007
A lot has happened since we last spoke : back in the Fall of 2004, I believe it was : but I think I would like to pick up more or less where we left off, which will also maintain the chronology somewhat. We ended up talking about your drawing, and about approaches to storytelling with drawing, and you’d just started publishing comics in your much looser sketchbook style back then. In the years that have passed, you’ve published Monologues for the Coming Plague, as well as a couple of pieces in Mome in which you make use of that approach. Could you give me an impression of what it has given you in terms of your storytelling, and how you think it supports your artistic endeavour?
I just re-read the older interview… Indeed, a lot has happened. There are several things that might be worth re-visiting. One being that I’m not working as a cook anymore (for which I am very grateful).
As for the present question… I think I touched momentarily on it previously, but it is really helpful to me to have the two different approaches running simultaneously. I started the looser-styled stuff, what turned, ultimately, into Monologues for the Coming Plague, while I was working on Dogs and Water. I was working on that book as well as Big Questions, and that meant all the drawing I was doing was for relatively polished, finished, official-feeling stories. Until that time I had always kept sketchbooks, which allowed a degree of experimentation and playfulness. The amount of work I was doing for BQ and DW had eclipsed that. Also, though both those projects are in a way improvisational, they are/were slow to realize. I was inspired in part by going on a tour with several other cartoonists to start drawing, and storytelling, purely for fun again. To varying degrees I’ve kept both styles going in the years that have followed, and still have, though both have evolved, partly because of events in my life. The End isn’t about humor or absurdism in the same way, but it grows pretty directly out of that more experimental work. I’m a great believer that once an artist knows exactly what they are doing, there is a problem. Leaving myself open to various possibilities is part of keeping myself on my toes and also keeping myself entertained, which is really what it’s all about in the end. I occasionally lament the potential polish or seamlessness I have traded for that restlessness, but ultimately I think I’m happier. And hopefully more fun to read as well.
