Dagens Weekendavis indeholder bl.a. min anmeldelse af to fine udstillinger af italienske renaissancetegninger i London — den store, man fristes til at sige episke, på British Museum og den lille, udsøgte men desværre nu lukkede Michelangelo-udstilling på Courtauld Gallery. Køb og læs og besøg!
UPDATE: Artiklen ligger nu på Bunkeren i engelsk oversættelse.
J.F. Willumsens Museum har netop udskrevet en stor og ambitiøs tegneseriekonkurrence, der søger en behandling af den danske kunstners liv og værk i tegneserieform.
UPDATE: Museet har netop udskudt deadline til 31. december.
Her er deres (let redigerede) pressemeddelelse:
J.F. WILLUMSEN I STRIBEVIS:
J. F. Willumsens Museum udskrev d. 22. maj 2010 på Komiks.dk en konkurrence for professionelle tegnere og illustratorer om en tegneserie om en af Danmarks mest originale billedkunstnere gennem tiderne – J.F. Willumsen (1863-1958). De tre bedste oplæg præmieres med hhv. 35.000, 10.000 og 5.000 kr., og det vindende forslag vil i samarbejde med J.F. Willumsens Museum og et tegneserieforlag blive videreudviklet og publiceret.
Men hvorfor en tegneseriekonkurrence på et kunstmuseum?
This year’s festival in Copenhagen promises to be the best yet. Friday night saw the launch party with the customary awards ceremony. As usual, most Danish comics people were there, providing the base of a fine crowd with many visitors from abroad: besides the two triumvirata — Burns, Clowes, Ware & Gibbons, O’Niell, Quitely — the festival’s international guests were out in force (sans Yslaire, who had to cancel at the last minute) and it was great to see most of the scholars who attended our conference at the University of Copenhagen earlier in the day (in itself a great pleasure — more on it soon) hanging around till late too.
I was part of the jury and am proud to convey the winners here. It was difficult, but this is what we came up with — the list contains theall the nominees, with the winner highlighted:
For better or worse. I’m not sure what, at the end of the day, this will do for the cause of reason and compassion in this matter, but a situation where drawing certain things will net you death threats and attempts on your life is simply unacceptable. Whatever the history of systemic injustices or problems that feed this mess, they cannot excuse unjust actions of individuals. Stop threatening my friends and peers, who have done nothing but exercise their freedom of expression, and let us join in non-violently criticising those that exercise it irresponsibly.
Salaam.
If you’re interested, you can read my 2006 thoughts on the cartoon crisis here.
If you’re looking for something do on Friday night to warm you up for the weekend’s Komiks.dk festival, you could do worse than dropping by Butik CMYK in Nørrebro for the opening of the exhibition Blæk og Blyant (‘ink and pencil’), featuring three illustrators: Nygårds Maria Bengtson, Majbrit Linnebjerg and Toril Bækmark (more here). Peter Williams will be playing the bass from five o’clock.
It goes down on Friday 21st of May from 17.00 – 20.00 in CMYK kld., Jægersborggade 51 (in the basement), Copenhagen.
Sweden’s finest step up for a tribute to Guru (RIP), and what a terrific tune it is! Promoe over “Full Clip”, Supreme over “Above the Clouds” “Royalty” & “Who’s Gonna Take the Weight”, which Timbuktu then takes over with much enthusiasm. It ends with a bang. Nice one, guys!
I dag blændes der op for et nyt dansk webmagasin om tegneserier, nummer9 — et bud på en bred men også kritisk dansk kilde til nyheder, kritik og journalistik fra tegneseriens verden. Initiativtagere en en bred vifte af folk fra det danske tegneseriemiljø, inklusive undertegnede. Chefredaktør er Erik Barkman. Han skriver følgende i sin velkomst:
“Nummer 9 er et nyt magasin på nettet for alle med interesse for tegneseriemediet : eller den niende kunstart, som de siger i Frankrig. På Nummer 9 vil vi bringe anmeldelser, nyheder og baggrundsstof, som henvender sig til både nye og garvede tegneserielæsere.
Bag Nummer 9 står en samling skribenter, der har slået deres folder hos bl.a. Rackham, Tegneseriesiden og tegneseriemagasinet STRIP! Tilsammen vil staben bestræbe sig på at dække alt fra humørstriber og klassiske superhelte over den fransk-belgiske albumtradition til manga og eksperimenterende graphic novels.
Vi har indgået et samarbejdet med STRIP!, som betyder, at vi har fået lov til at bringe artikler fra bladets omfattende arkiv. Det er en enestående mulighed, som forhåbentlig vil komme mange læsere til gode.
Vi håber på interessante dialoger, så skriv endelig kommentarer til indlæggene.
God fornøjelse!”
Adressen er www.nummer9.dk — sæt bogmærke eller smid det i din feed!
Danmark har i alt for lang tid manglet et tilgængeligt og kvalitetsbevidst dansk tegneseriesite. Lad os håbe på, at nummer9 vil udfylde den rolle!
This wicked little film by Andreas Wykade sums up my state of mind this cartoon-crazed week pretty accurately. Sleep well…
Friday this week finally sees the kickoff of what promises to be the best comics festival ever in Denmark. For the fourth time round, the Copenhagen comics biennial, Komiks.dk, offers a programme that seeks to span the breadth of the comics medium and features a fantastic lineup of international guests. In step with their mounting ambitions, the festival organisers have brought the event to a bigger and better venue than previous years — Øksnehallen, in the heart of Vesterbro and close to the city centre.
And the programme is a significant improvement on that of earlier years. The headliner arguably is the great American triumvirate of Chris Ware, Dan Clowes and Charles Burns, rivalled only by the trio of true brits Dave Gibbons, Kevin O’Neill and Frank Quitely. Add to this a host of other cartoonists, including a couple of interesting younger German artists, Line Hoven and Arne Bellstorf, and all the way from Japan, KeitarÅ Arima. The venerable French-Belgian mainstream is held down by Jean van Hamme and Bernar Yslaire, while the virtuosic Dutch chameleon Daan Jippes will be reppin’ both that tradition, and the many others he has tried his hand during the course of a long career.
Komiks.dk is the major event in Danish comics and it always brings with it a host of new releases. This year, we will for example see the long-awaited Danish publication of Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan from Aben Maler, as well as Burns’ Black Hole from Fahrenheit. Aben Maler also has Clowes’ brand new book, Wilson, on offer, and both publishers are serving up a number of remarkable new Danish releases.
I myself will be taking part in a number of activities. Firstly, I’m involved in the planning of an academic conference, entitled Contemporary Comics, at the University of Copenhagen, which you will already have heard about if you’re a regular reader here. The main organiser is Rikke Platz Cortsen, Ph. D. student at the Department of Art and Cultural Studies and we’re very proud of the programme we’ve put together, which you can check out on the official website, and not the least of its centrepieces, a keynote address by Canadian comics scholar and Jacques Samson and an on-stage conversation between Paul Gravett and Chris Ware.
This all takes place on Friday and would be the perfect way to warm up for the festival proper — so if you’re around, do turn up (pre-booking is not required). That same night is the festival’s launch party at Øksnehallen, where the official Komiks.dk awards, selected by a jury (which includes yours truly), will be handed out. The festival proper runs through Saturday and Sunday and the full programme can be downloaded here.
THORHAUGE HER: ENDELIG! Chris Wares hovedværk, Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Kid on Earth, er nu udkommet på dansk, i en toptilrettelagt udgave på Aben maler. Det er selveste signaturværket i bølgen af nye tegneserier fra de sidste 15 år, et fuldblods mesterværk i alle henseender. Jeg har skrevet og talt om den bog en million gange, og det må være nok. Det eneste, der er tilbage at sige, er: KØB DEN. Den er helt uden for diskussion pengene værd, Jimmy Corrigan er en bog, man vender tilbage til igen og igen.
Ware er som bekendt hovednavn på tegneseriefestivalen i Øksnehallen, Kbh., 22. og 23. maj, køb dit eksemplar der, og nyd (den både sjove og særdeles reflekterede) Ware i samtale med Metabaron Matthias Wivel ham selv om lørdagen.
I Information blev dette lille interview med Ware i øvrigt bragt forleden.
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