It’s About that Time, Roskilde!
Once again, you know where you’ll find me this weekend. At the Roskilde Festival, covering the hip hop acts and assorted as part of the RapSpot team. So tune in over there, and witness the strength of sneed knowledge.
Matthias Wivel is the administrator of the Metabunker. He is Head of Research at Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen and a co-founder and the current chairman of the Danish Comics Council.
Titian in Rome: Notes
In what is becoming a bit of a trend hereabouts, I’m writing notes on another art show which is no longer available for viewing: this time the Titian exhibition at the Scuderie del Quirinale in Rome, which closed several weeks ago. As an exhibition, it was fairly lacklustre. The kind of blockbuster whose curatorial muscle…
Remembering Kim Thompson
I was incredibly saddened to learn of Fantagraphis co-publisher Kim Thompson’s death last week. At age 56 it is early to go and my deepest condolences go out to his family, friends and colleagues. He shall be sorely missed, not the least within the field of comics where he made his mark. Although I’ve written…
A Titian Fragment?
Another possible Titian is coming to the block. The picture at right will be auctioned at Christie’s, London on 2 July. It’s clearly a fragment of a picture that was once bigger, most likely a half-length portrait. Is it a Titian? Christie’s seems cautious, having set the estimate at only £400,000 : £600,000 (low for…
Thanks for a Great Festival
Late Sunday crowd Anke Feuchtenberger working a wall 3 x Thorhauge Jaime Hernandez interviewed by Henry Sørensen Copenhagen Comics this past weekend was a blast. Thanks for the memories. More soon.
Hype: Danish Kuti
A Danish edition of the internationally distinguished Finnish comics newspaper will be released in Copenhagen this Friday. The release is marked by a reception at the Storm P. Museum, just in time for Copenhagen Comics — the grand, international comics festival which will take place in Øksnehallen, Copenhagen, this coming weekend. Comics people on the…
Eyes Wide Open
The great Barocci show at the National Gallery in London closed last Sunday. I’d been meaning to write something about it here since I saw it in its first weeks, but things got in the way and I never got around to it. The show, however, has stuck in my memory as a particularly exhilarating…
(Some of) the Best Online Comics Criticism of 2012
Whoa, a couple of pieces I wrote on comics last year have been selected among the best pieces of online comics criticism of 2012 by a panel of judges at The Hooded Utilitarian. I’m flattered, not the least to be in the august company of a selection of really excellent pieces from a variety of…
The Week
The week in review. Well, what do you know? The Dutch portrait head that surfaced at a small English auction sale in 2007 and was bought as a Rembrandt for £2 million has now been acquired by the Getty as the earliest known self-portrait by the master for an undisclosed sum. It now also carries…
Hype: Copenhagen Comics 2013
This year sees the fifth international comics festival in Copenhagen, this year under the name Copenhagen Comics. I’m biased, but I think the organisers have put together a truly impressing program this year, topping even that of 2010, which was stellar. It’s on the weekend of June 1-2 at Øksnehallen in Copenhagen, with additional events…
An Unknown Titian?
Apparently the picture above was sold at auction in Switzerland last week. It went for €460,000 at hammer, which is a hell of a lot for a picture described as copied after Titian in the sales catalogue. Clearly several bidders suspected it might be the real thing. Brendor Grosvenor of Philip Mould informs us that…
Hype: Tardi in The Comics Journal
It’s been out for a while, but I still wanted to mention that the new issue of the recently revamped, book-format Comics Journal (#302) is a real treat, what with Gary Groth’s marathon-length interview with the late Maurice Sendak, a roundtable on kids comics featuring Art Spiegelman, Jeet Heer, Paul Levitz, and Paul Karasik, plus…
More on comics criticism at the Hooded Utilitarian
In the latest instalment of my irregular column at the Hooded Utilitarian I present a late entry in the debate kicked off last month by Eddie Campbell, with his essay for The Comics Journal, “The Literaries”. In his essay, Campbell took issue with the insistence by some critics not just of comparing the achievements of…
On to Baltic Comic in Rendsburg
Tomorrow, I travel to Rendsburg in Schleswig, Northern Germany, to participate in the Baltic Comic seminar and workshop held at Nordkolleg cultural center. I am to give the keynote along with comics critic and historian Klaus Schikowski and it promises to be a fun event. I hope to see some of you there and will…