Derek Beaulieu, "Local Colour"

Derek writes of his piece "Local Colour," from which you can see an excerpt below: "Local Colour is a page-by-page interpretation of Paul Auster’s 72–page novella Ghosts. Ghosts concerns itself with Blue, a private detective hired by a mysterious character named White to transcribe the actions of Black, a denizen of Brooklyn Heights. As Blue reports his findings, the reader becomes more aware of the intricate relationship between Black and White, and a tactile awareness of the role of colour spreads through the narrative. I've removed the entirety of Auster’s text, leaving only chromatic words—proper nouns or not—spread across the page as dollops of paint on a palette. What remains is the written equivalent of ambient music—words which are meant to seen but not read. The colours, through repetition, build a suspense and crescendo which is loosened from traditional narrative into a more pointillist construction."







http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/beaulieu/

Aran Marciniak

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Whole Number Divisors of 360 Resulting in Whole Numbers: CMYK Colored Dots

click to enlarge

Blots

My minicomic Blots, from 2003.

MWM Graphics

I came across a very cool graphic designer today, and wanted to share his work. Haven't asked for permission to post it, so please just follow the link! Certainly challenges my aesthetic.

The Anxiety of Influence, part I

Scott Bukatman wrote to ask me whether the similarity between the 1930 Gasoline Alley Sunday page below and my piece "The Amoeba Wars" (from 24 x 24: A Vague Epic) was intentional:



It was not, I told him, but I have taught that Gasoline Alley page repeatedly in my Art of Comics class, so I knew it very well, and it probably influenced me subconsciously. Then Scott suggested that I post this here, and so that's what I'm doing.

Kurt Kranz, “20 Pictures from the Life of a Composition,” 1927-28

A double-sided leporello (the first two rows are the first side, rows three and four the second side). Kurt Kranz was a student at the Bauhaus (though it seems he made this at the age of seventeen, before starting at the Bauhaus), where he took course with Paul Klee and Kandinsky. In the introduction to the anthology, I speculated that his interest in abstract sequential art may have influenced his teachers.

And from the recent MoMA show, Bauhaus 1919-1933: Workshops for Modernity, here is Kranz's 1930 Untitled picture series (Project for an abstract color film):

distill

(click the image to view the scribd booklet)

de Kooning/Schulz

Sorry, couldn't resist:

Rich Kreiner reviews the anthology on the Comics Journal site

Here’s a book that was initially attractive as an intriguing, if intellectual, curiosity, only to reveal itself in short order as a continually fascinating experience...

Rich mentioning my reading of de Kooning in the introduction reminds me of this comparison I had intended to use but ended up cutting out for lack of space:

sketch

JP

Black and White Polyptych, c. 1950 (two views)




Red Painting 1-7, c. 1950




Hans Namuth photo of Pollock's studio, 1951 (including pieces that will later be cut down into individual "panels")




Untitled (after CR# 328), 1951




Number 7, 1951

Dynamism of the Night Train redrawn

see here.

Rotation Experiment: Perpendicular Shrinking Circles: B&W and Colored: Near and Far

click any image for an enlarged version

Molotiu, Hahn, Badger in NeoIntegrity show at MoCCA

I just got back from spring break in NYC, where I went to see the newly opened NeoIntegrity show (specifically, "NeoIntegrity: The Comics Edition"), curated by Keith Mayerson, at MoCCA. Despite MoCCA's tight confines, the show is huge, including 250 or so artists from Winsor McCay, Harvey Kurtzman and Jack Kirby to, well, us! Designed to foreground the closeness and areas of overlap between comics and the gallery art world, the show also includes sequential and cartoon work from artists such as Peter Halley, Carol Dunham, H.C. Westermann, and many others. (Here is a review of the first NeoIntegrity show, from 2007, which gives you a flavor of the curatorial approach.)

Here is the original art for my 2005 piece "Expedition to the Interior," right under Kirby!





(in the second picture you can also see, in the same row as the two top Kirbys, a Dr. Seuss cartoon; and, oh yeah, in the case next to them, those are puppets by Tim Burton for "Corpse Bride." Around the corner are a piece by Gary Panter and, above it, some drawings of Wild Things by Maurice Sendak. Nice company to be in!).

Unfortunately, I did not think ahead, so I didn't take close ups of Richard's and Mark's pieces, but here you can see them in the wider context of the walls on which they hang. Here are Richard's, in the center-left of the image--notice especially the Klee-like abstract comic on a dark background:



And here, in the bottom row to the right of the "Crawling Walling" piece, are prints of Mark's recent abstract comic which he posted a while ago on this blog:



This is more or less it for abstract comics (and members of this blog) in the show, but with more pieces by Panter, Victor Moscoso, R. Crumb, and Patrick McDonnell, the anthology is quite well represented. I say "more or less," because there is also this 1992 piece, titled "Narrative," by Peter Halley:



I mentioned here a while ago that Halley's paintings reminded me of comics. I did not know "Narrative" at the time, but I'd say this pretty much clinches it, doesn't it?

carbon fold

scanography. an exercise with carbon paper

click the image for the scribd version