The week in review Vacation and work have kept me away for a while, a will probably continue to do so for a little while yet. While in Boston, I checked back on one of the city’s premier cultural institutions. The new wing of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston is emblematic of museum…
Earlier today I posted an appreciation of the late Moebius’ last great work, Le Chasseur déprime, over at Hooded Utilitarian. Reading that book in the light of his illness and death suddenly seemed to make a lot of sense. It is among his most profound, questioning works — a fitting artistic testament from somebody who…
By Thomas Thorhauge It was a surprise when Sammy Harkham and Picture Box publisher Dan Nadel announced their plans for Kramers Ergot 8 about a year ago. Some of us had assumed that the monumental Kramers Ergot 7 had been the decadent word in what has been by far the most groundbreaking comics anthology of…
This year, Danish comics culture is seeing the revival of the Ping Awards, an industry award last given back in the Nineties. Once a hall of fame prize, it is now awards cartoonists in five categories in the manner of the Angoulême Fauves. This year focuses on comics published in 2011, and five Danish comics…
The Ping Awards gala last night? A success, no doubt about it. Sold out, full house, crowded and fun! The young event team had pulled out all the stops and were almost entirely stress-free. Things just worked. Anyway, this was a major event in the small subculture that Danish comics, and one we hope will…
The week in review Running late as usual, it’s a new week, but what? This weekend the great Leonardo show at the National Gallery in London closed and I regret not having had time to post something more detailed than my Weekendavisen review from back in November while it was still open, but that’s how…
I spent last weekend at Angoulême and as usual I covered the festival for The Comics Journal. Here are my post for Friday and Saturday, dealing with the two astonishing shows (co-)curated by festival president Art Spiegelman, and here are my thoughts on the festival as a whole. I travelled to Angoulême with representatives of…
Leonardo had only recently arrived in Milan when in 1483 he was given the opportunity to realize in a painting the thoughts he had been formulating privately about art and life. The resultant picture was a watershed in his career, and in Western art. The commission was for an altarpiece depicting ‘Our Lady with her…
Over at The Comics Journal my review of Fantagraphics inaugural volume of their edition of the complete Carl Barks Disney comics is now online. What do you think about the choices made for this edition?
We’re getting to that time of year when us Northern European comics fans head south to sample the first taste of spring in comics at the Angoulême festival. As in previous years, I will be covering the event for The Comics Journal, so peep their site for updates come Thursday and through the weekend. I’ve…
This year’s Angoulême festival was a solid if somewhat unremarkable one, plagued more than usual by the cultural myopia that has always characterized it to an extent. Its organizers described it as a success, but below the surface, it turns out, lurk conflicts of financing and responsibility.
As usual Saturday brought the crowds to Angoulême. It is difficult to get around, but it brings to the festival a heady atmosphere of art and commerce. Even the Association staff decided today partly to suspend their ongoing strike in order to support their artists who had turned up to sign their books. Killoffer, Gerner,…
Arrived in Angoulême fairly late the afternoon yesterday, so last night was spent mostly catching up. As mentioned in several places already, the big story here is the ongoing strike at L’Association (I’ve been writing about it here and here). Their booth, which is placed at the head of the big so-called Noveau monde tent…
Jimmy Castor’s death this week brought me back to the early days when hip hop first came to town. People breaking, popping and locking on street corners to that 808 sound, but also to old tunes that held great mystery to us kids. Later we would learn their names: “Apache,” “Dance to the Drummer’s Beat”,…
Flemish Renaissance painting is known for its sharp focus on reality. The first great master of oil painting, Jan van Eyck (active 1422, died 1441), was widely admired in his day for his ability illusionistically to reproduce the seen.