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THE BLOG AT THE CROSSROADS
Pop Matters Gives Comics Art 9-Out-Of-10 Rave Review!
Posted: July 9, 2014
“Gravett loves comics.” Mightily chuffed about this long, considered review by Daniel Rasmus, including Dorothy Fields music clip, at Pop Matters of my recent book Comics Art from Tate in the UK and Yale University Press in the US. Here’s an extract:
“Known as one of England’s foremost authorities on comics, Paul Gravett was in the mood for love when he wrote Comics Art, a book that demonstrates his deep passion for the world of panels, speech balloons, fine lines and grand colors, subtle shading and transformative images. In Gravett’s view, comics create heightened reality, a third-person perspective that passes life through a variety lenses to alter the ordinary so that we learn to appreciate simple moments with greater heart, and when necessary, to fear the dreadful and the dishonest more deeply than allowed by the overburdened filters of the human mind.”
Reinhard Kleist Interview: Harry Haft - The Boxer
Posted: July 6, 2014
After American music legend Johnny Cash and Communist Cuban leader Fidel Castro, Reinhard Kleist turns to Polish Jewish boxer and Holocaust survivor Harry Haft (above) in the latest of his compelling graphic biographies which reveal the secrets of extraordinary 20th century lives. For the launch of The Boxer, translated into English by SelfMadeHero, the German artist came from Berlin to the Goethe Institut in London for an interview with me and shared his fascination with documenting complex personalities in comics. Read my Interview with Kleist here…
Books To Read: Best Graphic Novels September 2014
Posted: July 3, 2014
What wonderful comics are you looking forward to reading this September as the autumn approaches? Here are September’s sizzlers selected by me. You’ll notice that the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War continues to cast a long shadow over current and forthcoming releases, while several other new titles take other slices of history from the Middle East Crisis to America’s Dust Bowl, from beer to the Borgias. As I start gleaning my recommendations each month, I always wonder if I’ll be disappointed and find very little to choose, but as the range here demonstrates, the 9th Art never fails to inspire and excite me and I hope it does for you as well. Read my PG Tips here…
Tove Jansson Centenary Exhibition at the ICA London!
Posted: July 3, 2014
To coincide with the 100th anniversary of the birth of Tove Jansson (1914 – 2001), the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London will host an exhibition in the Fox Reading Room presenting original unseen photographs and material relating to her life and work, illustrated books and early first editions. Tove Jansson, an accomplished Finnish author and artist, had a life every bit as fascinating as her famous creations, The Moomins.
Tove Jansson: Tales From the Archipelago draws an intimate portrait of the artist’s life on her private island in the archipelago of Finland, where she regularly spent the summer months with her female companion Tuulikki Pietilä and at her artist studio in Helsinki. Shot over a period of 60 years by her dear friend, renowned Finnish photographer C-G Hagström (b 1940) and her brother, photographer, Per Olov Jansson (b 1920), rare family photographs reveal a story of an extraordinary life.
Running from July 15th to August 24th, the exhibition is curated by Susanna Pettersson, Director, and Animaya Grant, Head of Events at the Finnish Institute in London, with the ICA. To read more about Tove Jansson, check out my Article about the exhibition Tove Jansson’s Dreamworld, which I curated in 2010 for the Belgian Comic Strip Centre in Brussels.
Manga Artist Seiichi Hayashi in London this week!
Posted: June 30, 2014
Seiichi Hayashi is an award-winning multi-disciplinary artist. After beginning his career as an animator at Toei Studios in 1962, Hayashi became a leading figure in the vibrant avant-garde cultural scene of late 1960s and early 1970s Tokyo. As a regular contributor to the legendary alternative manga magazine Garo, Hayashi became renowned for pioneering new territory in the medium of comics, with stories ranging from allegorical critiques of postwar Americanisation and the Vietnam War, to touching reflections on motherhood inspired by Japanese woodblock prints and pop music. Hayashi is perhaps best known for his graphic novel masterpiece Red Coloured Elegy, translated by Drawn & Quarterly.
On Tuesday July 1st from 6.30pm, The Japan Foundation in Russell Square, London is delighted to host Seiichi Hayashi for this special event, exploring the significance of Hayashi’s achievements and introduce his multi-faceted work to a UK audience. In conversation with art historian Ryan Holmberg, who will begin with an introduction to the counterculture of the 1960s, Hayashi will speak about his comics, animation, and illustration work, as well as his central participation in this most innovative and turbulent era of postwar Japanese history. The event will be a rare opportunity to hear a Japanese artistic legend speak about his life and work. Admission is free but booking is essential. To reserve a place, please email your name and the title of the event you would like to attend to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
And then on Wednesday July 2nd, in celebration of Hayashi’s famous 1969 “blues manga” Flowering Harbor (above) being translated into English for the first time by Breakdown Press, Seiichi Hayashi and Ryan Holmberg will walk listeners through the pop songs that have inspired Hayashi’s work from 7.30pm. This free event kicks off at Gosh Comics, 1 Berwick Street, London W1F 0DR between 7-9pm and will conclude with Seiichi Hayashi signing copies of the book.
Breaking into Comics: The Art of Self Publishing
Posted: June 26, 2014
If you’re keen to break into comics, this free discussion and Q&A session is the perfect event, with guest panelists & artists including Andrew Salmond from Gosh!, Christophe Bruchansky, Tom Pearce & Emanuel Adelekun and others. It’s running at Westminster Reference Library, 35 St Martin’s St, WC2H 7HP, just off Leicester Square, on Wednesday July 2nd from 6.30-8.00pm. Free but please book!
London Graphic Night at Salon for the City!
Posted: June 25, 2014
Most of the uncountable images of London have something fantastical about them – whether it be the earliest crazy birdseye panoramas of the 17th Century, Gustave Dores’s gothic documentary engravings or the aspirational chimeras of the current crop of property developers. But tomorrow night at Westminster Reference Library off Leicester Square, Salon for the City No 17 presents London Graphic and brings together two imaginary friends: writer and comic historian Paul Gravett and pre-eminent graphic artist Dave McKean, to illuminate the realities of the truly imagined city.
First up, writer Paul Gravett co-curator of the current extraordinary exhibition Comics Unmasked at The British Library will take us time-travelling through the history of comics, graphic novels and manga to explore and explain the myriad portrayals of the capital. These range from the Roman Londinium of Asterix and the fear-filled Victorian streets of Jack the Ripper to the futuristic visions of flooded Drowntown (above) and chaotic Brit-Cit of Judge Dredd. Paul’s illustrated talk will embrace both the fantastical and the documentary, and both British and international creators. London emerges through these writers and artists not only as a vibrant backdrop but as a compelling character in its own right.
Then we are very pleased to welcome Dave McKean to the Salon. Described by his collaborator Neil Gaiman as ‘the most artistically talented person I had ever encountered’, Dave is an illustrator, photographer, comic book artist, graphic designer, filmmaker and musician. His work incorporates drawing, collage, painting, found objects, photography, digital art and sculpture. His collaborations with Gaiman on works such as Coraline and Sandman plus countless CD and book covers have inspired many other artists and writers. Dave will discuss London in his work including his collaboration with writer Iain Sinclair on “Slow Chocolate Autopsy”. And to conclude, we may have the pleasure of a short audiovisual musical performance..
Our Favourite Orb: Adventures In Comics 4 Winner!
Posted: June 23, 2014
For the fourth year, Marine Studios in marvellous Margate have organised their Adventures in Comics international competition, this time on theme of ‘Orbs’. I was asked to pick my favourite, so here’s what I wrote:
Orbs come in a brain-spinning diversity of spherical forms in these inventive two-page comics from hither and yon for this fourth absORBing, absORBant but not exORBitant compilation of Adventures in Comics. You might expect a fair share of crystal balls, and some ghostly manifestations, extraterrestrial life forms, magical sprites, alien motherships, royal and religious treasures and our own Sun and Planet Earth. But how about the eye of Sauron, goldfish bowls, a mysterious egg, even rockstar Roy Orbison and his eyeball?
The funniest of all may be a humongous ball of wool and the weirdest viewpoint or ‘camera angle’ must surely be from the inside of a bowling ball looking out through the holes as the fingers poke in! As every year, it’s agonising to pick just one overall winner with so much talent, technique and imagination on display and styles and stories stretching from the ridiculous to the sublime.
But the story that made me smile and laugh out loud and stayed with me the most was Steve Alexander’s brilliantly nutty family secret behind a forgotten British sporting hero, the world’s heaviest wrestler, Bill ‘The Orb’ Orbison (see below). Champion!
Steve wins a copy of the spiffing catalogue I have co-authored for the British Library’s exhibition Comics Unmasked: Art and Anarchy In The UK. All the 2014 entries are readable online at the AIC website along with their creators’ biographies.
Roz Chast: Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?
Posted: June 21, 2014
In some families, the generation gap can yawn more like a unbridgeable generation canyon. The struggle of children to re-connect with their parents, especially in later life, has become a recurring theme in autobiographical graphic novels from Art Spiegelman’s foundational Maus to Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home and Are You My Mother? Several of these, notably Joyce Farmer’s Special Exits and Brian Fies’ Mom’s Cancer, provide one more-or-less cathartic outlet for offspring to make some order, if not sense, out of the passing of their parents. Read the rest of my Review of Roz Chast’s Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? here…
Woodrow Phoenix Presents She Lives! at Comics Unmasked
Posted: June 17, 2014
One of the highlights of the Comics Unmasked exhibition at The British Library is the remarkable one-metre-square giant comic, a one-off original-art wonder entitled She Lives!. It’s a bit frustrating that this book-as-art-object in all its inky splendour and crinkling paper has to be housed securely inside a display case. But its creator Woodrow Phoenix is presenting the whole story to visitors during the run of the exhibition. His next ‘performance’ is tonight at 6pm, followed by 6pm on Tuesday 22nd July, then 3pm on Tuesday August 12th. There’s a high-speed flip-through here to give you a flavour of the story and art - enjoy!
SHE LIVES - a fast preview of a very big book by Woodrow Phoenix from superadaptoid on Vimeo.
