Radio Rackham: Thomas Thorhauges Mood

Denne gang kigger vi indad! Det startede på Dansk Tegneserieråds generalforsamling for et par uger siden, hvor jeg i sidste øjeblik kontaktede min mangeårige samarbejdspartner Thomas Thorhauge (blandt mange andre steder her i Bunkeren) for at høre, om han kunne komme og fortælle om sine prisbelønnede Mood-tegninger til Politiken, muligvis hans foreløbige hovedværk, og tydeligvis hans mest populært gennemslagskraftige arbejde.

Det gjorde han selvfølgelig og vores gode kollega Felix Rothstein kastede alt hvad han havde i hænderne på hjemmefronten og kom og ledede samtalen kyndigt. Frederik var det også og optog det hele. Meeen, vi snakker jo om en perfektionist her, så Thomas besluttede sig for at genindspille det hele igen i studiet, med Felix i fornem reprise, så vi endte med et mere koncist, skarpere interview. Det ligger nu i Radio Rackhams feed. Lyt til det her, læs mere på Nummer9 og følg Thomas på Instagram!

Radio Rackham: Mainstream-manga

Rackham er nu på anden generation! Ikke et øje er tørt hos os gamle rackhamitter, der nu kan byde Thorhauges søn Andreas velkommen, sammen med kammeraten Jakob “Manga” Karrer til en snak om nogle af de største og bedste shonen-mangaer: Eiichiro Odas One Piece, Hayam Izayamas Attack on Titan og Tatsuki Fujimotos Chainsaw Man. Tegneseriens tilbageværende mainstream er her (og i Korea). Lyt her og læs mere på Nummer9.

Blueberry i Informeren

Ovre hos Information har de nu publiceret min efterhånden mange måneder gamle anmeldelse af bind seks i Cobolt opsamlingsserie af Jean Giraud og Jean-Michel Charliers Blueberry. Det markerer for mange læsere seriens højdepunkt, der hvor Blueberry er på flugt som lovløs, beskylders for mordforsøg på Præsident Grant, kæmper med den iskolde snigmorder Angel Face og søger tilflugt hos en Navajo-stamme, hvor han gennemgår noget der minder om en totemistisk genfødsel. Tilfældigvis sker det samtidig med at Giraud i det virkelige liv fornyede sin kunst under alter-egoet Moebius. Denne dobbeltforvandling er anmeldelsens hovedgenstand. Læs her!

Radio Rackham: The French Comics Market

In a first, we broadcast our latest episode in English. It features an interview with French comics critic, curator and market analyst Xavier Guilbert, who enlightens us on the French comics market, disspelling a number of myths along the way. He explains how manga alone has doubled the market between 2020 and 2021, how the best-selling publication in France in 2022 is a documentary comic about climate change, how the gender distribution of comics readership hasn’t changed along with the influx of female creators in the last decade or so but has remained stable since the eighties, and many other insights. This is a must for anyone interested in comics publishing or comics as a cultural phenomenon.

Listen here and read more (in Danish) at Nummer9. Also, do follow Xavier on Twitter @xguilbert and keep up with his work at his long-standing website du9.org.

New articles on Titian, Sebastiano, Michelangelo, Raphael!

I’ve recently had a couple of scholarly articles published in two anthology volumes. I hope you will check them out.

One is a treatment, my most comprehensive yet, of Titian’s engagement with reproductive printmaking, from his scattered interactions with printmakers working after his designs and finished works in the earlier parts of his career, his involvement in Venetian literary circles from the later 1520s onwards and its manifestation in book illustration and print portraiture, to his increased collaboration with printers and printmakers issuing prints after his paintings from the 1550s onwards, culminating in his famous work with Cornelis Cort in the mid 1560s through 1571.

The article is included in the anthology Titian: Themes and Variations, edited by the great Peter Humfrey. It compiles new scholarship on Titian’s practice of replication and variation throughout his career and across media, written by many of the top scholars in the field. I’m honoured to be included.

The other article was developed from a conference paper I gave during covid for a Roman conference on Raphael in 2021, postponed like so many other things involving Raphael, from the anniversary year of 2020. It examines the close creative exchange, competition and mutual inspiration between Raphael, Sebastiano del Piombo and Michelangelo in Rome during the second decade of the sixteenth century and beyond. I have new things to say about Raphael’s appropriations from the Sistine Chapel ceiling, his and Sebastiano’s race to complete mural paintings in oil, the internal chronology of their respective renditions of the Transfiguration of Christ and a proposal about Michelangelo’s contribution to Sebastiano’s never-complete altarpiece for the Chigi chapel in Santa Maria della Pace.

It is published in the volume Himmlische und irdische Liebe: Ein anderer Blick auf Raffael, edited by Yvonne Dohna Schlobitten, Claudia Bertling Biaggini, Claudia Cieri Via, a rich compendium of work by a wide variety of scholars on this crucial period in the history of modern Western art.

Do take a look at either or both when you’re next at your academic library. I also recommend getting them for your own bookshelves of course, but realise that that is a longer shot.