Tobias Tak: In Tribute:

Cartoonist and Dancer

The doubly gifted Dutch artist Tobias Tak expressed himself through dance and art, the two combining in his comics as a perfect partnership of motion and rhythm. After graduating from the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, Tak had his earliest strips published in the progressive Dutch underground magazine Talent (formerly Tante Leny). Then he moved to New York, determined to learn from the masters of tap, and embarked on a global career of over twenty years as an acclaimed jazz tap dancer, singer and choreographer.

His return to comics came in 2003 with his first collection of short stories, Upside Down (Top Shelf, 2003, above). Tak would contribute to numerous anthologies, notably Witch, Le Gun, Pood (below), The Comix Reader, Hotwire, Blood Orange, Smoke Signal, Blurred Vision and Scratches.

Gaboon’s Giant Journey from Pood Magazine 2, 2010
Click image to enlarge.

His short stories confirmed his inimitable imagination, as he conjured up fantastical characters in a dream-like realm, inspired by Alice in Wonderland, Winsor McCay’s Little Nemo in Slumberland, Hollywood’s glamorous classics and the paintings of fellow Dutchmen, Hieronymous Bosch. Tak’s eccentric cast includes Gaboon, a benign but clumsy wizard, the alluring blonde Schlenzy and numerous bizarre and bewitching creatures, whose appearances in many anthologies were gathered in the 2011 compilation Gaboon’s Daymare (below).

In 2017, Scratch Books, Amsterdam released his distinctive graphic reworkings of twenty of Federico García Lorca’s seventy-seven lyrical poems written between 1921 and 1926 and published in May 1927 as Canciones, a supplement of the Málaga magazine Litoral. Lorca was born as the son of a well-to-do landowner in Fuente Vaqueros in 1898, and from the servants he derived a love and vast knowledge of peasant life and rural lore that influenced all of his writing. When he was very young he knew a lot of folk songs by heart, which was of great influence of (especially) his early works like Canciones.

Tak explained what drew him to adapting Lorca’s poetry: “An underlying theme is Lorca’s longing without object: longing for what was, what could have been, or what will never be. The Canciones are mostly short poems, influenced by Japanese haiku poetry, ballads and lullabies and the Cante Jondo (‘Deep Song’), folk songs which Lorca knew by heart since his youth, in a traditional style of flamenco music and dance. Lorca liked the directness of their lyrics. Lorca wanted his book of poems to have ‘the high air of the Sierra’. It was an anthology designed to show off, as Lorca once said: ‘All the strings of my lyre.’ This work can be considered the culmination of his early poetry. Christopher Maurer describes Lorca’‘s work in his book Federico Garccía Lorca Collected Poems: ‘In all his works - including his plays - Lorca spoke unforgettably of all that most interests us: the otherness of nature, the demons of personal identity and artistic creation, sex, childhood and death.’”

An underlying theme which Tak saw in some of the Canciones is Lorca’s longing without object: “Longing for what was, what could have been, or what never will be. Lorca’s poems evoke feelings like sadness, desperation and longing or they describe innocence, love, death and fatalism. The lyrical presence in the Canciones is a complex one: the child’s view of the world, open-eyed and open-minded, alternates with adolescent anxieties and with more adult themes.”

For his Strip for ArtReview magazine in 2017, Tak chose the “small jewel’ of ‘De Otro Modo’, also from Canciones. “An important element in Lorca’s character was his love for the countryside. ‘I am tied to the land in all my emotions’, he once said. The way the landscape is described in such a lyrical and mysterious way in ‘De Otro Modo’ immediately prompted images to me. The poem evokes that landscape of Andalusia with its many streams and rivers, the vastness of the fields, the amazing colourful evening skies, and its abundance of trees, flowers and patches of dry earth.” To this setting Tak introduces some of his recurring characters such as the man in the tall hat, based on the Alice’s Mad Hatter, and the inquisitive cat who “looks at the world through his telescope, like Lorca, who always questioned the world around him.”

De Otro Modo (‘In Another Manner’) for ArtReview Magazine
Click images to enlarge.

Tak’s atmospheric drawings here are inspired by his research trip in February 2016 to Granada to see where Lorca lived and worked. Tak recalled, “I stayed at an organic farm on the Sacromonte. Each morning, I walked down the mountain with an amazing view of El Alhambra in the distance, and back up in the evening, witnessing beautiful skies and sunsets. This landscape had not really changed and must have been a lot like what Lorca saw in his adolescent years.’

Tak pointed out that Lorca once observed in a lecture, ‘Unlike us, the child’s creative faith is still intact and he does not yet carry the seed of destructive reason. He is innocent and therefore wise. He understands better than we do the ineffable key to poetic substance.’ Tak’s richly imaginative visualisation enhances the wonder of Lorca’s contemplative poem.

Tobias Tak passed away on Tuesday, January 7th 2020. So many will miss his smile, energy and creativity - he leaves so much to treasure.

He left two unpublished graphic novels, De Droommaker (‘The Dream-Maker’), and its sequel The Land Behind the Mirror. It has been announced that De Droommaker will be published by Concerto Books, and here are elegiac images from both projects, with his beloved character, Schlenzy, and below Schlenzy with Gaboon.