Random undated sketchbook pages.
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Earl Staley
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I, René Tardi, Prisoner Of War In Stalag IIB Vol. 2: My Return Home by Jacques Tardi
Robert Boyd
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I, René Tardi, Prisoner Of War In Stalag IIB Vol. 2: My Return Home![]()
by Jacques Tardi(Fantagraphics Books, 2019)
This volume is a little more expository than the first volume. As the Russians advanced from the east, René Tardi's stalag was emptied out. He and the other prisoners were marched by their captors to the West, staying out of the hands of the Russians, British and Americans. Jacques Tardi got his father to write a narrative of his imprisonment and gradual liberation some 40 years after the fact, and then researched the route to try to figure out what his father actually did. Like so many displaced persons at the end of the war, the way home was not a straight path. (In this, My Return Home resembles Primo Levi's classic memoir of his liberation from Auschwitz, known variously as The Truce![]()
or The Reawakening![]()
.)
Unlike the first volume, Jacques feels the need to keep us readers informed about what is happening in the last days of the war. René Tardi's group of POWs managed to skirt some of the major events at the end of the war, witnessing occasional aerial battles but avoiding heavy allied bombardments. But while they are slogging through the cold, scrambling to find whatever food they might, we are given a disjointed account of the last days for World War II. It feels overly expository, but it serves the purpose of reminding us readers of how little the vast hordes of wandering displaced persons and foot soldiers knew of what was actually happening all around them.
The book begins almost uniformly monochromatic--black and various shades of greenish grey, but as René gets closer to France, little splashes of color start to appear. In particular the red and blue of flags and red-crosses, which seem to symbolize liberation. Eventually fleshtones return and when Rene is reunited with his wife Henriette, Tardi allows himself a brilliant pink panel filled with flowers.
I want to make a note about the translation. Earlier volumes of Tardi that were published by Fantagraphics were translated by co-publisher Kim Thompson. Thompson passed away a few years ago, which suggested that maybe the Tardi volumes would stop (given that Thompson was their great champion). But thankfully they haven't and the translation is by Jenna Allen. Even though Thompson was fluent in French, I like Allen's translations better. I can't judge their faithfulness, since I can't read French. But a lot of Tardi's characters (including René Tardi) are tough guys, and Thompson's "tough guy" voice never felt authentic. But Allen pulls it off better than Thompson. (It pains me to say so because I loved the man...)
I, René Tardi, Prisoner Of War In Stalag IIB Vol. 2: My Return Home
by Jacques Tardi(Fantagraphics Books, 2019)This volume is a little more expository than the first volume. As the Russians advanced from the east, René Tardi's stalag was emptied out. He and the other prisoners were marched by their captors to the West, staying out of the hands of the Russians, British and Americans. Jacques Tardi got his father to write a narrative of his imprisonment and gradual liberation some 40 years after the fact, and then researched the route to try to figure out what his father actually did. Like so many displaced persons at the end of the war, the way home was not a straight path. (In this, My Return Home resembles Primo Levi's classic memoir of his liberation from Auschwitz, known variously as The Truce
or The Reawakening
.)Unlike the first volume, Jacques feels the need to keep us readers informed about what is happening in the last days of the war. René Tardi's group of POWs managed to skirt some of the major events at the end of the war, witnessing occasional aerial battles but avoiding heavy allied bombardments. But while they are slogging through the cold, scrambling to find whatever food they might, we are given a disjointed account of the last days for World War II. It feels overly expository, but it serves the purpose of reminding us readers of how little the vast hordes of wandering displaced persons and foot soldiers knew of what was actually happening all around them.
The book begins almost uniformly monochromatic--black and various shades of greenish grey, but as René gets closer to France, little splashes of color start to appear. In particular the red and blue of flags and red-crosses, which seem to symbolize liberation. Eventually fleshtones return and when Rene is reunited with his wife Henriette, Tardi allows himself a brilliant pink panel filled with flowers.
I want to make a note about the translation. Earlier volumes of Tardi that were published by Fantagraphics were translated by co-publisher Kim Thompson. Thompson passed away a few years ago, which suggested that maybe the Tardi volumes would stop (given that Thompson was their great champion). But thankfully they haven't and the translation is by Jenna Allen. Even though Thompson was fluent in French, I like Allen's translations better. I can't judge their faithfulness, since I can't read French. But a lot of Tardi's characters (including René Tardi) are tough guys, and Thompson's "tough guy" voice never felt authentic. But Allen pulls it off better than Thompson. (It pains me to say so because I loved the man...)
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The Texas Connection to the George Washington High Mural Controversy
Robert Boyd
Over the past few months, there has been a simmering controversy over a series of murals at George Washington High School in San Francisco. The murals, painted as frescos in 1936 by Victor Arnautoff for the WPA, depict the life of George Washington. The controversy stems from scenes depicting Washington as a slave owner and a scene where Washington is pointing to the West where ghostly grey settlers are migrating--stepping over the dead body of a native American.
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Victor Arnautoff, fresco panel, 1936
These images have been controversial since the 60s. The San Francisco school board convened a panel to decide what to do about the murals and in February, they issued the following statement:
The artist who created the murals, Victor Arnautoff (1896-1979), is an interesting figure. He was born in the Ukraine and fought with the Whites during the Russian Civil War. After the Whites lost, he fled to China where he lived for several years. In 1925, he arrived in San Francisco to study art. After his student visa expired, he and his family moved to Mexico where he worked as an assistant to Diego Rivera. He moved back to San Francisco in the early 30s, and was just in time to participate in Works Progress Administration art projects. As an experienced muralist, he was just what the WPA was looking for. Despite his background as a White soldier in Russia, he was a left-winger in the USA, and his murals often sided with the working class. Diego Rivera apparently influenced him in this regard, and he eventually joined the Communist Party.
He became an art professor and taught at Stanford for the rest of his career in the U.S. After the death of his wife in 1961, he retired from Stanford and returned to Ukraine. He worked as an artist in the Soviet Union and died in Leningrad in 1979.
One can guess that the reason he depicted slaves and a dead native was not to glorify slavery or genocide, but to depict these facts that were often overlooked in American history. In this way, the mural seems the opposite of, say, Confederate monuments. The latter were designed to glorify, whereas I would interpret the dead native American as critical. But now these images are quite painful to any people.
And because they are frescos, they can't be easily moved. Hence the solution proposed--to cover them up.
Arnautoff did two murals in Texas for the WPA. They were post office murals. One was in College Station and one was in Linden. The College Station mural is presumed destroyed during building renovations in 1962.
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Victor Arnautoff, College Station post office mural, oil on canvas, 1938 (presumed destroyed)
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Victor Arnautoff, Linden post office mural, oil on canvas, 1939
As far as I can tell, the Linden mural is still there and in good condition. And by showing the back-breaking labor of African Americans, I think Arnautoff is siding with them. (When I saw these two images by Arnautoff, I thought of the work of KaneemSmith, whose work often features references to and depictions of those long cotton bags used by sharecroppers to pick cotton.)
On one hand, the intent of the artist here was clearly not to celebrate slavery or the genocide of the native Americans. It was, I think, to point out the fact that the "Father of our Country" owned humans and that the settlement of the west was accomplished at shocking human cost--facts that weren't usually included in whitewashed versions of American History in Arnautoff's day. (Indeed, if you look at other WPA post office murals in Texas, they offer mostly an anodyne view of Texas history, as one might expect. But Arnautoff shows African Americans working under difficult conditions.) And in this, they seem the exact opposite of the Confederate statues that were erected by subsequent generations of Confederate apologists to honor the "lost cause". Nonetheless, the intent of an artist 80 years ago won't necessarily have any bearing on the way something is seen now. While the SFISD's proposed solution is not ideal, it's certainly better than whitewashing the mural.
If readers are interested in WPA-sponsored Post Office murals in Texas, there is a beautiful book about them: The Texas Post Office Murals: Art for the People by Philip Parisi. That is where I got the above two images.
Over the past few months, there has been a simmering controversy over a series of murals at George Washington High School in San Francisco. The murals, painted as frescos in 1936 by Victor Arnautoff for the WPA, depict the life of George Washington. The controversy stems from scenes depicting Washington as a slave owner and a scene where Washington is pointing to the West where ghostly grey settlers are migrating--stepping over the dead body of a native American.
Victor Arnautoff, fresco panel, 1936
These images have been controversial since the 60s. The San Francisco school board convened a panel to decide what to do about the murals and in February, they issued the following statement:
“We come to these recommendations due to the continued historical and current trauma of Native Americans and African Americans with these depictions in the mural that glorifies slavery, genocide, colonization, manifest destiny, white supremacy, oppression, etc. This mural doesn’t represent SFUSD values of social justice, diversity, united, student-centered. It’s not student-centered if it’s focused on the legacy of artists, rather than the experience of the students. If we consider the SFUSD equity definition, the “low” mural glorifies oppression instead of eliminating it. It also perpetuates bias through stereotypes rather than ending bias. It has nothing to do with equity or inclusion at all. The impact of this mural is greater than its intent ever was. It’s not a counter-narrative if [the mural] traumatizes students and community members.”The school district budgeted $600.00 to paint over it. (It sounds extremely expensive, but apparently part of that was to cover the cost of anticipated lawsuits.) Not surprisingly, this has caused an uproar. As of two days ago, the SFISD board had reversed itself, planning instead to cover the murals (in some way that doesn't permanently destroy them) after digitizing them so that scholars could still study them.
The artist who created the murals, Victor Arnautoff (1896-1979), is an interesting figure. He was born in the Ukraine and fought with the Whites during the Russian Civil War. After the Whites lost, he fled to China where he lived for several years. In 1925, he arrived in San Francisco to study art. After his student visa expired, he and his family moved to Mexico where he worked as an assistant to Diego Rivera. He moved back to San Francisco in the early 30s, and was just in time to participate in Works Progress Administration art projects. As an experienced muralist, he was just what the WPA was looking for. Despite his background as a White soldier in Russia, he was a left-winger in the USA, and his murals often sided with the working class. Diego Rivera apparently influenced him in this regard, and he eventually joined the Communist Party.
He became an art professor and taught at Stanford for the rest of his career in the U.S. After the death of his wife in 1961, he retired from Stanford and returned to Ukraine. He worked as an artist in the Soviet Union and died in Leningrad in 1979.
One can guess that the reason he depicted slaves and a dead native was not to glorify slavery or genocide, but to depict these facts that were often overlooked in American history. In this way, the mural seems the opposite of, say, Confederate monuments. The latter were designed to glorify, whereas I would interpret the dead native American as critical. But now these images are quite painful to any people.
And because they are frescos, they can't be easily moved. Hence the solution proposed--to cover them up.
Arnautoff did two murals in Texas for the WPA. They were post office murals. One was in College Station and one was in Linden. The College Station mural is presumed destroyed during building renovations in 1962.
Victor Arnautoff, College Station post office mural, oil on canvas, 1938 (presumed destroyed)
Victor Arnautoff, Linden post office mural, oil on canvas, 1939
As far as I can tell, the Linden mural is still there and in good condition. And by showing the back-breaking labor of African Americans, I think Arnautoff is siding with them. (When I saw these two images by Arnautoff, I thought of the work of KaneemSmith, whose work often features references to and depictions of those long cotton bags used by sharecroppers to pick cotton.)
On one hand, the intent of the artist here was clearly not to celebrate slavery or the genocide of the native Americans. It was, I think, to point out the fact that the "Father of our Country" owned humans and that the settlement of the west was accomplished at shocking human cost--facts that weren't usually included in whitewashed versions of American History in Arnautoff's day. (Indeed, if you look at other WPA post office murals in Texas, they offer mostly an anodyne view of Texas history, as one might expect. But Arnautoff shows African Americans working under difficult conditions.) And in this, they seem the exact opposite of the Confederate statues that were erected by subsequent generations of Confederate apologists to honor the "lost cause". Nonetheless, the intent of an artist 80 years ago won't necessarily have any bearing on the way something is seen now. While the SFISD's proposed solution is not ideal, it's certainly better than whitewashing the mural.
If readers are interested in WPA-sponsored Post Office murals in Texas, there is a beautiful book about them: The Texas Post Office Murals: Art for the People by Philip Parisi. That is where I got the above two images.
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Dispossession by Simon Grennan
Dispossession![]()
by Simon Grennan (Jonathan Cape, 2014)
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Adaptations of classic literature into comics form are almost universally terrible, so one would be forgiven for imagining that this adaptation of Anthony Trollope's novel John Caldigate would be similarly bad. But I was very pleasantly surprised. Grennan (best known for his collaborations with Christopher Sperandio) manages to take this 600-page Victorian novel and condense it convincingly into 93 pages. How does he manage it? He does it by a careful elliptical construction. He lets the pictures tell the story and skips anything unnecessary to the telling. (It helps if you know the outline of the novel before you read it.)
This approach allows him to add a subplot not present in the Trollope novel--a story of an aboriginal second wife who leaves her husband as they interact with the European city dwellers and miners of the story. Their dialogue is in the Wiradjuri language. The Wiradjuri are an ethnic group of Aboriginal people who lived in New South Wales. This subplot seems kind of tacked on, as if Grennan thought it necessary to remind readers that John Caldgate and his companions were all extracting wealth from Australia as colonizers, but it has parallels to the story in Trollope's novel. Caldigate essentially has two wives, which causes him much trouble, as does Gulpilil, the Aboriginal man in the Wiradjuri subplot.
If you had seen Grennan's photo-based comics done with Sperandio, you will be surprised by the artwork here. He has a very loose style, that recalls Blutch's comics. He tells the story in a rigid 9-panel grid on the page, and the work is uncinematic. There are no close ups and the angles are usually straight-on. Most of the characters are shown in full-figure, which reminds me of Gabrielle Bell's work.
The format is quite lovely. 9" x 11" trim-size with glossy, full-color pages. The edition I have is a hard-cover, but Amazon has a Kindle version available as well.
by Simon Grennan (Jonathan Cape, 2014)
Adaptations of classic literature into comics form are almost universally terrible, so one would be forgiven for imagining that this adaptation of Anthony Trollope's novel John Caldigate would be similarly bad. But I was very pleasantly surprised. Grennan (best known for his collaborations with Christopher Sperandio) manages to take this 600-page Victorian novel and condense it convincingly into 93 pages. How does he manage it? He does it by a careful elliptical construction. He lets the pictures tell the story and skips anything unnecessary to the telling. (It helps if you know the outline of the novel before you read it.)
This approach allows him to add a subplot not present in the Trollope novel--a story of an aboriginal second wife who leaves her husband as they interact with the European city dwellers and miners of the story. Their dialogue is in the Wiradjuri language. The Wiradjuri are an ethnic group of Aboriginal people who lived in New South Wales. This subplot seems kind of tacked on, as if Grennan thought it necessary to remind readers that John Caldgate and his companions were all extracting wealth from Australia as colonizers, but it has parallels to the story in Trollope's novel. Caldigate essentially has two wives, which causes him much trouble, as does Gulpilil, the Aboriginal man in the Wiradjuri subplot.
If you had seen Grennan's photo-based comics done with Sperandio, you will be surprised by the artwork here. He has a very loose style, that recalls Blutch's comics. He tells the story in a rigid 9-panel grid on the page, and the work is uncinematic. There are no close ups and the angles are usually straight-on. Most of the characters are shown in full-figure, which reminds me of Gabrielle Bell's work.
The format is quite lovely. 9" x 11" trim-size with glossy, full-color pages. The edition I have is a hard-cover, but Amazon has a Kindle version available as well.
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Michael Galbreth, RIP
Michael Galbreth, the tall half of the Art Guys, died yesterday. I'm staggering under this news. There is much to say about this man and his work. Perhaps once I have collected my thoughts, I will write something. For now, I thought I'd publish some of the photos I've taken of Michael over the years, usually while he and fellow Art Guy Jack Massing were doing a performance.
These were all taken at a performance the Art Guys did at Notsuoh in July, 2013.
A month later, they did this performance in front of City Hall.
This is from a performance they did in November, 2013.
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Tod und Verklärung
Robert Boyd
Today I went to a lunch lecture put on by the Houston Symphony for the education of those of us who work for Symphony. Calvin Dotsey, the editor of our program magazine, InTune, gives talks over lunch about upcoming classical concerts. (He is perfect for these talks because his knowledge of classical music is staggering and his passion for it is unmistakable.) Today he spoke of Trifonov Plays Tchaikovsky, three concerts happening in late November, andA Musical Feast: All-Strauss Thanksgiving, which is happening the three days after Thanksgiving. As he spoke, I found myself thinking of Michael Galbreth, who died last Saturday, October 19.
The first concert includes Modest Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition (composed for piano in 1874, and orchestrated by Maurice Ravel in 1922). The story of its origin is well-known. Mussorgsky was friends with a painter/architect named Viktor Hartmann, who like Mussorgsky was kind of a Russian nationalist when it came to art. They both advocated for an authentically Russian art. (Such artistic nationalism was common in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, especially in music.) Hartmann died quite young of an aneurysm and after his death, his friends put on a memorial exhibition at the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg. It was while walking through this exhibit that Mussorgsky was moved to write a tribute to his dead friend. Each of the pieces refers to specific Hartmann paintings or drawings. By now, of course, the music is much better known than the artwork.
I was moved by the idea of a composer paying tribute to his dead friend. I hope that someone organizes a memorial exhibit of Michael Galbreth's work. Because so much of it was in the form of performance, such an exhibit would necessarily contain a lot of video and other documentation.
I know Galbreth knew composers--in 1986 he helped organize and stage the New Music America festival in Houston, a festival of experimental music. He wrote about it:
Michael Galbreth deserves his own Mussorgsky or Feldman.
Then Dotsey spoke of our upcoming all-Richard Strauss program, which includes Tod und Verklärung (aka Death and Transfiguration) from 1890 as well as Strauss's Four Last Songs. Dotsey narrated excerpts from Tod und Verklärung. An artist lays dying, has a vision of transfiguration, dreams about his life, experiences pain then ends with a glimpse of transfiguration. Strauss was agnostic and completely secular, so I wonder what he imagined transfiguration would be.
Then fast-forward to 1948, and the elderly Strauss embarks on his last musical journey with songs based on poems by Joseph von Eichendorff and Hermann Hesse. Dotsey, who has heard everything and has an encyclopedic knowledge of orchestral music, called them the most beautiful pieces of music ever composed. Strauss died before they could be performed, but they seem to describe the autumn and winter of life.
I couldn't hear these two pieces (and Dotsey's erudite descriptions of them) without thinking of Michael. May your transfiguration be glorious.
Today I went to a lunch lecture put on by the Houston Symphony for the education of those of us who work for Symphony. Calvin Dotsey, the editor of our program magazine, InTune, gives talks over lunch about upcoming classical concerts. (He is perfect for these talks because his knowledge of classical music is staggering and his passion for it is unmistakable.) Today he spoke of Trifonov Plays Tchaikovsky, three concerts happening in late November, andA Musical Feast: All-Strauss Thanksgiving, which is happening the three days after Thanksgiving. As he spoke, I found myself thinking of Michael Galbreth, who died last Saturday, October 19.
The first concert includes Modest Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition (composed for piano in 1874, and orchestrated by Maurice Ravel in 1922). The story of its origin is well-known. Mussorgsky was friends with a painter/architect named Viktor Hartmann, who like Mussorgsky was kind of a Russian nationalist when it came to art. They both advocated for an authentically Russian art. (Such artistic nationalism was common in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, especially in music.) Hartmann died quite young of an aneurysm and after his death, his friends put on a memorial exhibition at the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg. It was while walking through this exhibit that Mussorgsky was moved to write a tribute to his dead friend. Each of the pieces refers to specific Hartmann paintings or drawings. By now, of course, the music is much better known than the artwork.
I was moved by the idea of a composer paying tribute to his dead friend. I hope that someone organizes a memorial exhibit of Michael Galbreth's work. Because so much of it was in the form of performance, such an exhibit would necessarily contain a lot of video and other documentation.
I know Galbreth knew composers--in 1986 he helped organize and stage the New Music America festival in Houston, a festival of experimental music. He wrote about it:
We received 719 proposals for New Music America 1986. In the end, the 10-day festival comprised of more than 200 participants spread out over 50 events at almost as many venues and locations. In numerical terms alone, there was nothing like it before in Houston, and there hasn't been anything like it since.This festival was right up Michael's alley. He wrote:
At that time, most of my work was devoted to experimental music. I had presented work at Lawndale, DiverseWorks, various other alternative spaces, and on KPFT radio. I was among a tiny handful of Houston practitioners of this esoteric form of music. To work with some of the world's greatest composers, many of whose work I revered, would be the chance of a lifetime.Imagine one of those composers dedicating a work of experimental music to Michael. I think of Morton Feldman composing a 4 hour tribute to his friend Philip Guston.
Michael Galbreth deserves his own Mussorgsky or Feldman.
Then Dotsey spoke of our upcoming all-Richard Strauss program, which includes Tod und Verklärung (aka Death and Transfiguration) from 1890 as well as Strauss's Four Last Songs. Dotsey narrated excerpts from Tod und Verklärung. An artist lays dying, has a vision of transfiguration, dreams about his life, experiences pain then ends with a glimpse of transfiguration. Strauss was agnostic and completely secular, so I wonder what he imagined transfiguration would be.
Then fast-forward to 1948, and the elderly Strauss embarks on his last musical journey with songs based on poems by Joseph von Eichendorff and Hermann Hesse. Dotsey, who has heard everything and has an encyclopedic knowledge of orchestral music, called them the most beautiful pieces of music ever composed. Strauss died before they could be performed, but they seem to describe the autumn and winter of life.
I couldn't hear these two pieces (and Dotsey's erudite descriptions of them) without thinking of Michael. May your transfiguration be glorious.
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I laughed at the great god Pan
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The Best Comics of The Decade
Robert Boyd
In 1990, I worked on one of my favorite publishing projects, a two-volume anthology called The Best Comics of the Decade, published by Fantagraphics Books and co-edited with Gary Groth and Kim Thompson. The thesis behind these volumes was that the 80s had seen an explosion of great comics in anthologies (like RAW and Weirdo), in newspapers (specifically in alternative newsweeklies), and in what at the time was called alternative comics (which included publishers like us, Fantagraphics Books). Another part of our thesis was that most of the greatest works had been in short stories. The age of the graphic novel hadn't yet arrived, although Maus volume 1 had been published in 1986.
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Our volumes excluded superheroes from Marvel and DC, partly because we were snobs about mainstream comics, but partly because we didn't have access to that material. If we had, would we have included something? Maybe an excerpt from Watchmen? We did include an Alan Moore story which we loved, called "Pictopia," which is a weird story about how the innocent fun of old-time heroes in comics had been replaced by a grim and cynical type of superhero--one that Alan Moore himself is partly responsible for (along with Frank Miller).
The thing about assembling this volume was that we editors felt that knowing what comics actually were published in the 80s was a doable task. We had each read thousands of pages of comics and felt like we had a grasp of what had been published. (Because we thought that book buyers back then would never shell out for a 240-page book of comics, we published it in two volumes. That's another thing that has changes a lot in the past 30 years.)
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Things have changed. Back then, "alternative comics" (i.e., anything that wasn't super-hero comics) were eking out an existence on the fringes. While superheroes now dominate our pop culture, in the world of comics, they are no longer utterly dominate comics mind-space as they once did. They still do to a certain extent--I know when I tell someone I am interested in comics, they usually ask about superheroes. As I have pointed out many times before, I am interested in comics as a category of art, like literature, theater, music, film, visual art. (To limit it to one genre or format is something I am not willing to do, especially a genre controlled by two large entertainment megacorporations, Warner Brothers--which owns DC Comics and all its properties--and Disney--which owns Marvel and all its properties.)
But in the 2010s, so many comics have been published that there is almost no way one person could have read them all. (I would fear for the sanity of anyone who tried.) Nonetheless, some brave souls have attempted to construct their own "best of the decade" lists. This decade has been dominated by book-sized publications, which is reflected in their lists. The lists I looked at were:
The best list in my opinion is Comic Books Are Burning in Hell's, and it is also the shortest. The Beat's is the longest. The total of all five lists is 130 titles (or 129, because there is some overlap on a Batman title). The lists are mostly unranked. (I'll put the whole list at the bottom of this post.)
It occurred to me that one way to rank the comics would be to look at which ones appeared on multiple lists. So with a long morning of Excel-ery, I have made a list of the most highly regarded comics of the decade by that criterion (appearing on multiple best-of lists).
Here are all the titles that appeared on at least two lists:
Perhaps a better way to look at it would be to see which authors and artists were referenced most frequently by appearing on multiple lists with multiple titles. Of course, I made a similar list.
I'm willing to agree with the consensus in one small way: Eleanor Davis is the comics artist of the decade. What a privilege is has been to see her blossom as a cartoonist.
It is interesting to look at this list and see who among them were also in The Best Comics of the Decade in 1990. The only three who made both were Charles Burns, Jaime Hernandez and Alan Moore (three giants, to be sure).
OK, given that I have read only a small fraction of the comics that were published between 2010 and 2019 (and given that I have only read some on the master list that I will reproduce below), here are my favorites, selected by perusing my bookshelves 10 minutes ago:
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Here is the combined best-of list mentioned above:
I want to dedicate this post to the memory of my friend Tom Spurgeon, who died in November.
In 1990, I worked on one of my favorite publishing projects, a two-volume anthology called The Best Comics of the Decade, published by Fantagraphics Books and co-edited with Gary Groth and Kim Thompson. The thesis behind these volumes was that the 80s had seen an explosion of great comics in anthologies (like RAW and Weirdo), in newspapers (specifically in alternative newsweeklies), and in what at the time was called alternative comics (which included publishers like us, Fantagraphics Books). Another part of our thesis was that most of the greatest works had been in short stories. The age of the graphic novel hadn't yet arrived, although Maus volume 1 had been published in 1986.
Our volumes excluded superheroes from Marvel and DC, partly because we were snobs about mainstream comics, but partly because we didn't have access to that material. If we had, would we have included something? Maybe an excerpt from Watchmen? We did include an Alan Moore story which we loved, called "Pictopia," which is a weird story about how the innocent fun of old-time heroes in comics had been replaced by a grim and cynical type of superhero--one that Alan Moore himself is partly responsible for (along with Frank Miller).
The thing about assembling this volume was that we editors felt that knowing what comics actually were published in the 80s was a doable task. We had each read thousands of pages of comics and felt like we had a grasp of what had been published. (Because we thought that book buyers back then would never shell out for a 240-page book of comics, we published it in two volumes. That's another thing that has changes a lot in the past 30 years.)
Things have changed. Back then, "alternative comics" (i.e., anything that wasn't super-hero comics) were eking out an existence on the fringes. While superheroes now dominate our pop culture, in the world of comics, they are no longer utterly dominate comics mind-space as they once did. They still do to a certain extent--I know when I tell someone I am interested in comics, they usually ask about superheroes. As I have pointed out many times before, I am interested in comics as a category of art, like literature, theater, music, film, visual art. (To limit it to one genre or format is something I am not willing to do, especially a genre controlled by two large entertainment megacorporations, Warner Brothers--which owns DC Comics and all its properties--and Disney--which owns Marvel and all its properties.)
But in the 2010s, so many comics have been published that there is almost no way one person could have read them all. (I would fear for the sanity of anyone who tried.) Nonetheless, some brave souls have attempted to construct their own "best of the decade" lists. This decade has been dominated by book-sized publications, which is reflected in their lists. The lists I looked at were:
The best list in my opinion is Comic Books Are Burning in Hell's, and it is also the shortest. The Beat's is the longest. The total of all five lists is 130 titles (or 129, because there is some overlap on a Batman title). The lists are mostly unranked. (I'll put the whole list at the bottom of this post.)
It occurred to me that one way to rank the comics would be to look at which ones appeared on multiple lists. So with a long morning of Excel-ery, I have made a list of the most highly regarded comics of the decade by that criterion (appearing on multiple best-of lists).
Here are all the titles that appeared on at least two lists:
- Hawkeye, Matt Fraction and David Aja, 4
- Mister Miracle, Tom King, Mitch Gerads, and Clayton Cowles, 3
- The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, Ryan North, Erica Henderson, Derek Charm, 3
- Prince Of Cats, Ron Wimberly, 3
- Hark! A Vagrant!, Kate Beaton, 3
- Lumberjanes, Grace Ellis, Noelle Stevenson, Shannon Watters, Kat Leyh, Brooklyn A. Allen, Carolyn Nowak, Carey Pietsch, Ayme Sotuyo, Maarta Laiho, Aubrey Aiese, with Brittney Williams, Faith Erin Hicks, Aimee Fleck, Rebecca Tobin, Felicia Choo, and T. Zysk, 3
- Daytripper, Gabriel Bá and Fábio Moon, 3
- My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, Emil Ferris, 3
- Saga, Brian K. Vaughan, Fiona Staples, 3
- Batman, Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo, 2
- Copra, Michel Fiffe, 2
- The Nib, Matt Bors and a cast of thousands, 2
- Monstress, Marjorie Liu, Sana Takeda, and Rus Wooton, 2
- This One Summer, Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki, 2
- The Wicked + The Divine, Kieron Gillen, Jamie McKelvie, 2
- The River At Night , Kevin Huizenga, 2
- House Of X/Powers Of X, Jonathan Hickman, Pepe Larraz, R.B. Silva, Marte Gracia, Clayton Cowles, and Tom Muller, 2
- Giant Days, John Allison, Max Sarin, Lissa Treiman, Whitney Cogar, and Jim Campbell, 2
- Black Hammer, Jeff Lemire, Dean Ormston, 2
- Thor, Jason Aaron, Russell Dauterman, 2
- The Love Bunglers, Jaime Hernandez, 2
- Goodnight Punpun, Inio Asano, 2
- You & A Bike & A Road, Eleanor Davis, 2
- Last Look, Charles Burns, 2
- O Human Star, Blue Delliquanti, 2
Perhaps a better way to look at it would be to see which authors and artists were referenced most frequently by appearing on multiple lists with multiple titles. Of course, I made a similar list.
- Matt Fraction 6
- Eleanor Davis 5
- Scott Snyder 4
- Brian K. Vaughan 4
- Tom King 4
- Jamie McKelvie 3
- Jason Aaron 3
- Blue Delliquanti 3
- Emily Carroll 3
- Greg Capullo 3
- Jaime Hernandez 3
- Jillian Tamaki 3
- Kieron Gillen 3
- Mariko Tamaki 3
- Emil Ferris 3
- Gabriel Bá 3
- Fábio Moon 3
- Kate Beaton 3
- Ron Wimberly 3
- Ryan North 3
- Alan Moore 2
- Jason Latour 2
- Olivier Schrauwen 2
- Raina Telgemeier 2
- Sam Alden 2
- Charles Burns 2
- Inio Asano 2
- Jeff Lemire 2
- John Allison 2
- Jonathan Hickman 2
- Kevin Huizenga 2
- Marjorie Lu 2
- Matt Bors 2
- Michel Fiffe 2
I'm willing to agree with the consensus in one small way: Eleanor Davis is the comics artist of the decade. What a privilege is has been to see her blossom as a cartoonist.
It is interesting to look at this list and see who among them were also in The Best Comics of the Decade in 1990. The only three who made both were Charles Burns, Jaime Hernandez and Alan Moore (three giants, to be sure).
OK, given that I have read only a small fraction of the comics that were published between 2010 and 2019 (and given that I have only read some on the master list that I will reproduce below), here are my favorites, selected by perusing my bookshelves 10 minutes ago:
- Sir Alfred No. 3 by Tim Hensley (Pigeon Press, 2015)
- Tenements, Towers & Trash by Julia Wertz (Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, 2017)
- Motel Art Improvement Service by Jason Little (Dark Horse Comics, 2010)
- Over Easy by Mimi Pond (Drawn & Quarterly, 2014)
- The Propertyby Rutu Modan (Drawn & Quarterly, 2013)
- Berlin by Jason Lutes (Drawn & Quarterly, 2018)
- The River at Night by Kevin Huizenga (Drawn & Quarterly, 2019)
- Sam Zabel and the Magic Pen by Dylan Horrocks (Fantagraphics Books, 2014)
- Incidents in the Night by David B (Uncivilized Books, 2013)
- You & a Bike & a Roadby Eleanor Davis (Koyama Press, 2017)
- The Love Bunglers by Jaime Hernandez (Fantagraphics Books, 2014)
- Your Black Friend and Other Strangers by Ben Passmore (Silver Sprocket, 2018)
Here is the combined best-of list mentioned above:
- “Time” by Randall Munroe
- 20th Century Boys by Naoki Urasawa
- A Silent Voice by Yoshitoki Olma and Steven LeCroy
- Afterlife With Archie by Robert Aguirre-Sacasa, Francesco Francavilla, and Jack Morelli
- All-New Wolverine by Tom Taylor, David Lopez, David Navarrot, Marcio Takara, IG Guara, Bob Wiacek, Victor Olazaba, Walden Wong, Nik Virella, Scott Hanna, Djibril Morissette-Phan, Leonard Kirk, Cory Hamscher, Marc Deering, Terry Pallot, Juann Cabal, Marco Failla, Ramon Rosanas, Nathan Fairbairn, Jordan Boyd, Mat Lopes, John Rauch, Michael Garland, Jesus Aburtov, Erick Arciniega, Nolan Woodard, and Cory Petit
- Archival Quality by Ivy Noelle Weir and Christina “Steenz” Stewart
- Arsène Schrauwen by Olivier Schrauwen
- Basquiat by Julian Voloj and Søren Mosdal
- Batman by Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo
- Batman: The Black Mirror by Scott Snyder, Jock, Francesco Francavilla, David Baron, Jared K. Fletcher, and Sal Cipriano
- Batman: The Court of Owls by Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo
- Beautiful Darkness by Fabien Vehlmann and Kerascoët
- Becoming Unbecoming by Una
- Berlin by Jason Lutes
- Big Kids by Michael DeForge
- Bitch Planet by Kelly Sue DeConnick, Valentine DeLandro, Cris Peters, Kelly Fitzpatrick, and Clayton Cowles
- Black Hammer by Jeff Lemire and Dean Ormston
- Black Panther by Ta-Nehisi Coates and Brian Stelfreeze
- Boxers & Saints by Gene Luen Yang and Lark Pien
- Brazen by Pénélope Bagieu
- Building Stories by Chris Ware
- Check, Please! by Ngozi Ukazu
- Clyde Fans by Seth
- Copra by Michel Fiffe
- Criminal by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips
- Daredevil by Mark Waid, Chris Samnee, Javier Rodriguez, Matt Wilson, and Joe Caramagna
- Daytripper by Gabriel Bá and Fábio Moon
- Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes by Mary M. Talbot and Bryan Talbot
- Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles by Mark Russell, Mike Feehan, Mark Morales, Sean Parsons, Howard Porter, Jose Marzan Jr., Paul Mounts, and Dave Sharpe
- Fatherland: A Family History by Nina Bunjevac
- FF by Matt Fraction and Mike Allred
- Frontier #7 by Jillian Tamaki
- Gawain’s Girlfriend and the Green Knight by Polly Guo
- Generous Bosom by Conor Stechshulte
- Giant Days by John Allison, Max Sarin, Lissa Treiman, Whitney Cogar, and Jim Campbell
- Girl Town by Carolyn Nowak
- Goodnight Punpun by Inio Asano
- Grip by Lale Westvind
- Guts by Raina Telgemeier
- Hark! A Vagrant! by Kate Beaton
- Hawkeye by Matt Fraction and David Aja
- Hellboy in Hell by Mike Mignola
- Helter Skelter by Kyoko Okazaki
- Here by Richard McGuire
- Hilda & The Black Hound by Luke Pearson
- Hip Hop Family Tree by Ed Piskor
- Hot Comb by Ebony Flowers
- House Of X/Powers Of X by Jonathan Hickman, Pepe Larraz, R.B. Silva, Marte Gracia, Clayton Cowles, and Tom Muller
- How To Be Happy by Eleanor Davis
- How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less by Sarah Glidden
- Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh
- Is This How You See Me? by Jaime Hernandez
- It Never Happened Again by Sam Alden
- Julio's Day by Gilbert Hernandez
- Killing and Dying by Adrian Tomine
- Last Look by Charles Burns
- Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me by Mariko Tamaki and Rosemary Valerio-O’Connell
- Lore Olympus by Rachel Smythe
- Lumberjanes by Grace Ellis, Noelle Stevenson, Shannon Watters, Kat Leyh, Brooklyn A. Allen, Carolyn Nowak, Carey Pietsch, Ayme Sotuyo, Maarta Laiho, Aubrey Aiese, with Brittney Williams, Faith Erin Hicks, Aimee Fleck, Rebecca Tobin, Felicia Choo, and T. Zysk
- March by Rep. John Lewis, Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell
- Margot’s Room by Emily Carroll
- Mister Miracle by Tom King, Mitch Gerads, and Clayton Cowles
- Monstress by Marjorie Liu, Sana Takeda, and Rus Wooton
- Mould Map 3 by Aidan Koch, Amalia Ulman, Angie Wang, Ben Mendelewicz, Blaise Larmee, Brenna Murphy, CF, Cody Cobb, Daniel Swan, Dmitry Sergeev, Gabriel Corbera, GHXYK2, Hugh Frost, Jacob Ciocci, James Jarvis, Joseph Kelly, Jonas Delaborde, Jonathan Chandler, Jonny Negron, Julien Ceccaldi, Karn Piana, Kilian Eng, Lala Albert, Lando, Leon Sadler, Matthew Lock, Noel Freibert, Olivier Schrauwen, Robert Beatty, Sam Alden, Sammy Harkham, Simon Hanselmann, Stefan Sadler, Viktor Hachmang & Yuichi Yokoyama
- Ms Marvel by G. Willow Wilson, Adrian Alphona, Jacob Wyatt, Elmo Bondoc, Takeshi Miyazawa, Nico Leon, Francesco Gaston, Marco Failla, Diego Olortegui, Ian Herring, Irma Knivila, and Joe Caramagna, with Saladin Ahmed, Rainbow Rowell, Hasan Minhaj, Devin Grayson, Eve L. Ewing, Jim Zub, Gustavo Duarte, Joey Vazquez, Kevin Libranda, Minkyu Jung, Juan Vlasco, and Bob Quinn
- My Favorite Thing Is Monsters by Emil Ferris
- My Friend Dahmer by Derf Backderf
- My Hero Academia by Kohei Horikoshi, Caleb Cook, and John Hunt
- My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness by Kabi Nagata
- Nimona by Noelle Stevenson
- O Human Star by Blue Delliquanti
- Octopus Pie by Meredith Gran
- On A Sunbeam by Tillie Walden
- Patience by Daniel Clowes
- Peplum by Blutch
- Poochytown by Jim Woodring
- Prince Of Cats by Ron Wimberly
- Prison Pit by Johnny Ryan
- Providence by Alan Moore and Jacen Burrows
- Rock Candy Mountain by Kyle Starks and Chris Schweizer
- Sabrina by Nick Drnaso
- Saga by Brian K. Vaughan, Fiona Staples
- Scott Pilgrim’s Finest Hour by Bryan Lee O’Malley
- Sex Criminals by Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky
- Sex Fantasy by Sophia Foster Dimino
- Silver Surfer by Dan Slott and Michael Allred
- Sir Alfred no. 3 by Tim Hensley
- Smile by Raina Telgemeier
- Smut Peddler 2012 Edition by Rebecca Ruby, Megan Furesz, Trisha L. Sebastian, Erin Basie, M. Magdalene, Mr. Darcy, Betty Jean Doe, Nora Riley, Kel McDonald, Rennie Kingsley, Erika Moen, Leia Weathington, Algesiras, Dwam, Argets, Ursula Wood, Jennifer Doyle, E.K. Weaver, Magnolia Porter, Shari Hes, Steve Horton, Erica Leigh Currey, Alice Fox, B. White, Ambrosia, Alice Hunt, Dechanique, Carla Speed McNeil, Karate McDanger, Jess Fink, Blue Delliquanti, Nechama Frier, Pupcake Jones, Lee Blauersouth, Abby Lark, Theo Lorenz, C. Spike Trotman, Diana Nock, Amanda Lafrenais
- Southern Bastards by Jason Aaron, Jason Latour
- Spider-Gwen by Jason Latour, Robbi Rodriguez
- Sunburning by Keiler Robert
- Sunny by Taiyo Matsumoto
- Super Late Bloomer by Julia Kaye
- The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye by Sonny Liew
- The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui
- The Encyclopedia of Early Earth by Isabel Greenberg
- The End of the F@(U$*#+g World by Charles Forsman
- The Fifth Beatle by Vivek Tiwary, Andrew Robinson
- The Hard Tomorrow by Eleanor Davis
- The Hospital Suite by John Porcellino
- The Immortal Hulk by Al Ewing, Joe Bennett
- The Love Bunglers by Jaime Hernandez
- The Multiversity by Grant Morrison, Ivan Reis, Joe Prado, Chris Sprouse, Karl Story, Walden Wong, Ben Oliver, Frank Quitely
- The Nao of Brown by Glyn Dillon
- Nemo by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill
- The Nib by Matt Bors and a cast of thousands
- The Oven by Sophie Goldstein
- The Passion Of Gengoroh Tagame by Bruno Gmuender
- The Private Eye by Brian K. Vaughan, Marcos Martin
- The Property by Rutu Modan
- The River At Night by Kevin Huizenga
- The Sandman: Overture by Neil Gaiman, JH Williams III and Dave Stewart
- The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl by Ryan North, Erica Henderson, Derek Charm
- The Vision by Tom King, Gabriel Walta, Jordie Bellaire
- The Walking Dead #193 by Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard
- The Wicked + The Divine by Kieron Gillen, Jamie McKelvie
- This One Summer by Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki
- Thor by Jason Aaron, Russell Dauterman
I want to dedicate this post to the memory of my friend Tom Spurgeon, who died in November.
↧
One More List
Robert Boyd
This list comes from Kim Jooha, who was the associate publisher of 2dcloud and is a writer about comics. 2dcloud is one of the most adventurous publishers of comics today, which gives you an idea of where Jooha is coming from. (She's the kind of person who uses the adjective "Deleuzian.") She expresses an ambivalence about lists, quoting from Elena Gorfinkel's manifesto "Against Lists":
Lale Westvind. (Who was also on the Comic Books Are Burning in Hell list.)
Jillian Tamaki (highly ranked on many best-of lists)
Patrick Kyle (who I don't think featured on anyone's list that I have seen)
Ilan Manouach (ditto)
Francesc Ruiz (whose work is somewhat conceptual)
Mushbuh (not on anyone's list)
Char Esme (ditto)
Ben Mendelewicz (ditto)
Gina Wynbrandt (ditto, but her work has been widely discussed outside of "best comics" lists)
Aidan Koch (She didn't make any of this year's lists that I noticed, but she made my personal 2015 list.)
Margot Ferrick (as far as I can tell, she is not on any other lists)
Aurélie William Levaux (Her works are not what I'd call comics, but I welcome an expansive definition)
Rantan (A Korean artist whose work has not been published in English as far as I know)
Tillie Walden (as far as I can tell, she is not on any other lists)
Some of the reprint projects of Sunday Press Books (kind of a cheat, since all these comics are nearly 100 years old).
Reprints of women cartoonist. Also kind of a cheat, but surely there should be a "best of the decade" list for archival and translation projects of comics that are older than 10-years-old.
Super-Structure. A Franco-Belgian anthology.
This list comes from Kim Jooha, who was the associate publisher of 2dcloud and is a writer about comics. 2dcloud is one of the most adventurous publishers of comics today, which gives you an idea of where Jooha is coming from. (She's the kind of person who uses the adjective "Deleuzian.") She expresses an ambivalence about lists, quoting from Elena Gorfinkel's manifesto "Against Lists":
Lists aggregate the already known and consolidate power…
Lists pretend to make a claim about the present and the past, but are anti-historical, obsessed with their own moment, with the narrow horizon and tyranny of contemporaneity. They consolidate and reaffirm the hidebound tastes of the already heard...
Lists will always disappoint…
Torch your list. If you must count, write as many words about any film not on your list. Read as many words about a woman filmmaker or filmmaker from the global south. Or convert those words and characters into units of time, watching a film never on your list…What makes her list different than the ones I analyzed in my last post (and my own list that was included therein) is that she lists artists rather than works. Here are the artists she put on her "Best Comics of the Decade" list:
Lale Westvind. (Who was also on the Comic Books Are Burning in Hell list.)
Jillian Tamaki (highly ranked on many best-of lists)
Patrick Kyle (who I don't think featured on anyone's list that I have seen)
Ilan Manouach (ditto)
Francesc Ruiz (whose work is somewhat conceptual)
Mushbuh (not on anyone's list)
Char Esme (ditto)
Ben Mendelewicz (ditto)
Gina Wynbrandt (ditto, but her work has been widely discussed outside of "best comics" lists)
Aidan Koch (She didn't make any of this year's lists that I noticed, but she made my personal 2015 list.)
Margot Ferrick (as far as I can tell, she is not on any other lists)
Aurélie William Levaux (Her works are not what I'd call comics, but I welcome an expansive definition)
Rantan (A Korean artist whose work has not been published in English as far as I know)
Tillie Walden (as far as I can tell, she is not on any other lists)
Some of the reprint projects of Sunday Press Books (kind of a cheat, since all these comics are nearly 100 years old).
Reprints of women cartoonist. Also kind of a cheat, but surely there should be a "best of the decade" list for archival and translation projects of comics that are older than 10-years-old.
Super-Structure. A Franco-Belgian anthology.
↧
↧
Revised Best Comics of the Decade Lists
Robert Boyd
At the beginning of the year, I conflated 6 best-of-the-decade lists into one list (two actually--one for publications, one for artists). I figured my work was done. Then this week, I heard about another list that intrigued me, so I wrote about it. At the risk of beating a dead horse, the site that published Kim Jooha's list also published best-of lists from its other contributors. So there were five best-comics-of-the-decade list on this site, a new comics news and criticism site called Solrad. The lists were by:
Best publications
As you can see, the top titles of this revised list are quite different than the previous list. As for the best-ranked artists, the new list looks like this:
The addition of the Solrad lists moves Carolyn Nowak way up on the lists, and adds a lot of artists not present on the previous list.
Solrad is brand new. Their first post was on January 1. Tom Spurgeon's sudden, unexpected death has ended his site, The Comics Reporter. I don't think Solrad will replace it--their focus is a lot more art comics, whereas Tom was kind of an open filter. But art comics are my interest, so I am looking forward to what they publish. If they display a weakness in their first week of existence, it's that their 5 best-of lists were produced by four white guys and one woman (who I think is of Korean ancestry--at least Jooha seems to be a Korean name). Dudes--this is 2020!
At the beginning of the year, I conflated 6 best-of-the-decade lists into one list (two actually--one for publications, one for artists). I figured my work was done. Then this week, I heard about another list that intrigued me, so I wrote about it. At the risk of beating a dead horse, the site that published Kim Jooha's list also published best-of lists from its other contributors. So there were five best-comics-of-the-decade list on this site, a new comics news and criticism site called Solrad. The lists were by:
- Ryan Carey
- Rob Clough
- Daniel Elkins
- Alex Hoffman
- Kim Jooha
Best publications
| 4 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 4 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 4 |
As you can see, the top titles of this revised list are quite different than the previous list. As for the best-ranked artists, the new list looks like this:
| author | Number of times ranked |
| Eleanor Davis | 7 |
| Matt Fraction | 7 |
| Carolyn Nowak | 6 |
| Fábio Moon | 5 |
| Gabriel Bá | 5 |
| Jaime Hernandez | 5 |
| Jillian Tamaki | 5 |
| Brian K. Vaughan | 4 |
| David Aja | 4 |
| Emil Ferris | 4 |
| Emily Carroll | 4 |
| Noelle Stevenson | 4 |
| Ron Wimberly | 4 |
| Scott Snyder | 4 |
| Tom King | 4 |
| Alan Moore | 3 |
| Aubrey Aiese | 3 |
| Ayme Sotuyo | 3 |
| Blue Delliquanti | 3 |
| Brooklyn A. Allen | 3 |
| Carey Pietsch | 3 |
| Derek Charm | 3 |
| Erica Henderson | 3 |
| Fiona Staples | 3 |
| Gilbert Hernandez | 3 |
| Grace Ellis | 3 |
| Greg Capullo | 3 |
| Inio Asano | 3 |
| Jason Aaron | 3 |
| Kat Leyh | 3 |
| Kate Beaton | 3 |
| Lale Westvind | 3 |
| Maarta Laiho | 3 |
| Mariko Tamaki | 3 |
| Michael DeForge | 3 |
| Mitch Gerads | 3 |
| Ryan North | 3 |
| Shannon Watters | 3 |
| Tillie Walden | 3 |
| Tom Muller | 3 |
| Aidan Koch | 2 |
| Al Ewing | 2 |
| Ben Mendelewicz | 2 |
| Charles Burns | 2 |
| Chris Ware | 2 |
| David Hine | 2 |
| Dean Ormston | 2 |
| Francesco Francavilla | 2 |
| Gabrielle Bell | 2 |
| Gina Wynbrandt | 2 |
| Inés Estrada | 2 |
| Jamie McKelvie | 2 |
| Jason Latour | 2 |
| Jason Lutes | 2 |
| Jeff Lemire | 2 |
| Jim Campbell | 2 |
| Joe Bennett | 2 |
| Joe Caramagna | 2 |
| John Allison | 2 |
| John Porcellino | 2 |
| Jonathan Hickman | 2 |
| Kaoru Mori | 2 |
| Kevin Huizenga | 2 |
| Kieron Gillen | 2 |
| Kyoko Okazaki | 2 |
| Lissa Treiman | 2 |
| Marco Failla | 2 |
| Margot Ferrick | 2 |
| Marjorie Liu | 2 |
| Marte Gracia | 2 |
| Mat Bors | 2 |
| Max Sarin | 2 |
| Michel Fiffe | 2 |
| Olivier Schrauwen | 2 |
| Pepe Larraz | 2 |
| R.B. Silva | 2 |
| Raina Telgemeier | 2 |
| Rus Wooton | 2 |
| Russell Dauterman | 2 |
| Sam Alden | 2 |
| Sana Takeda | 2 |
| Sarah Glidden | 2 |
| Shaky Kane | 2 |
| Simon Hanselmann | 2 |
| Walden Wong | 2 |
| Whitney Cogar | 2 |
The addition of the Solrad lists moves Carolyn Nowak way up on the lists, and adds a lot of artists not present on the previous list.
Solrad is brand new. Their first post was on January 1. Tom Spurgeon's sudden, unexpected death has ended his site, The Comics Reporter. I don't think Solrad will replace it--their focus is a lot more art comics, whereas Tom was kind of an open filter. But art comics are my interest, so I am looking forward to what they publish. If they display a weakness in their first week of existence, it's that their 5 best-of lists were produced by four white guys and one woman (who I think is of Korean ancestry--at least Jooha seems to be a Korean name). Dudes--this is 2020!
↧
Pictures of Artists
Robert Boyd
Last weekend, Jack Massing hosted a one-day only exhibit dedicated his recently deceased partner Michael Galbreth. (They were the Art Guys.) The entire Houston art community showed up. I decided at some point to take phone photos of as many of the artists, collectors, etc., who were there. I missed a lot of people I wanted to photograph, but I got a few. And here they are.
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Britt Thomas. Thomas has an exhibit up at the Galveston Arts Center through April 12, 2020.
![]()
Clint Willour
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David Aylsworth
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Dean Ruck. I've written about Havel + Ruck projects several times over the years.
![]()
Debra Barrera. Here is a post that Dean Liscum wrote about a Debra Barrera exhibit.
![]()
Dennis Nance.
![]()
Elaine Bradford. Here's a post I wrote about Elaine Bradford.
![]()
Emily Peacock. I've written about her several times over the years.
![]()
Emily Sloan. Emily Sloan was one of the first artists in Houston I ever wrote about.
![]()
Iva Kinnaird.
![]()
Jack Massing.
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James Surls. I've written about this giant of Houston art several times.
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Jim Pirtle. Jim Pirtle has appeared in this blog many times.
![]()
Joachim West.
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Julon Pinkston. Julon Pinkston has had several appearances on this blog.
![]()
Neil Fauerso.
![]()
Paul Kremer (l) and Phillip Kremer. I wrote about Paul Kremer's former collective (maybe it would be better to be call it a club), I Love You Baby.
![]()
Paul Middendorf. Runs Space HL (formerly Gallery Homeland).
![]()
Peter Lucas.
![]()
Scott Gilbert.
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Sharon Kopriva (center) and Brad Barber (right)
![]()
Susan Budge.
![]()
Travis Hanson.
![]()
Tudor Mitroi.
![]()
William Camfield.
![]()
Xandra Eden. Director of Diverse Works.
Last weekend, Jack Massing hosted a one-day only exhibit dedicated his recently deceased partner Michael Galbreth. (They were the Art Guys.) The entire Houston art community showed up. I decided at some point to take phone photos of as many of the artists, collectors, etc., who were there. I missed a lot of people I wanted to photograph, but I got a few. And here they are.
Britt Thomas. Thomas has an exhibit up at the Galveston Arts Center through April 12, 2020.
Clint Willour
David Aylsworth
Dean Ruck. I've written about Havel + Ruck projects several times over the years.
Debra Barrera. Here is a post that Dean Liscum wrote about a Debra Barrera exhibit.
Dennis Nance.
Elaine Bradford. Here's a post I wrote about Elaine Bradford.
Emily Peacock. I've written about her several times over the years.
Emily Sloan. Emily Sloan was one of the first artists in Houston I ever wrote about.
Iva Kinnaird.
Jack Massing.
James Surls. I've written about this giant of Houston art several times.
Jim Pirtle. Jim Pirtle has appeared in this blog many times.
Joachim West.
Julon Pinkston. Julon Pinkston has had several appearances on this blog.
Neil Fauerso.
Paul Kremer (l) and Phillip Kremer. I wrote about Paul Kremer's former collective (maybe it would be better to be call it a club), I Love You Baby.
Paul Middendorf. Runs Space HL (formerly Gallery Homeland).
Peter Lucas.
Scott Gilbert.
Sharon Kopriva (center) and Brad Barber (right)
Susan Budge.
Travis Hanson.
Tudor Mitroi.
William Camfield.
Xandra Eden. Director of Diverse Works.
↧
The Man Without Talent
Robert Boyd
![]()
Yoshiharu Tsuge, The Man Without Talent (2019, New York Review of Books)
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Yoshiharu Tsuge, "Red Flowers" published in RAW 7, drawn in 1966, published in English in 1985
Back in 1985, Yoshiharu Tsuge's "Red Flowers" was published in RAW number 7. It was published as an inset booklet inside RAW's oversized pages. It was for many art comics readers our first encounter with the work of this genius. RAW published another Tsuge story in 1990. I have been waiting over 30 years for a book of Tsuge's work to appear in English. When the flood of translated manga started being published in English in the 90s, I felt certain some publisher would step up. But for some reason, Tsuge was reluctant to allow it. (The story of that reluctance would be worth knowing. I had heard that he had given up comics to spend his life fishing, but reading Ryan Holmberg's essay in this volume suggests a psychological reason.)
In any case, he stopped drawing comics in 1987 and withdrew from public life until he drew this book in 1998. It may have felt a bit like Marcel Duchamp withdrawing from art making to play chess, only to return with one final work, "Étant donnés: 1° la chute d'eau / 2° le gaz d'éclairage" (1966). Tsuge returned with this book in 1998. But while Duchamp was officially involved with chess, Tsuge's withdrawal seems to have been fueled by depression.
This book is a first person novel that is quite autobiographical, although the primary activity of the main character, Sukezō Sukegawa, is selling stones, something that Tsuge apparently never did. (Tsuge's life is described in the introduction by Ryan Holmberg, who also translated the book.) Even though Sukezō had worked as a comics artist, for some reason he has given that up. He and his wife and son live a precarious existence of abject poverty as Sukezō comes up with various improbable schemes to support his family. He briefly has a little success buying and repairing old cameras he finds at flea markets (something Tsuge did), but when the fad for buying old cameras fades, so does this source of income. In the meantime, he encounters a variety of equally pathetic entrepreneurs scrapping together existences on the margins of one of the richest capitalist economies on Earth.
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Yoshiharu Ysuge, The Man Without Talent p. 166
In this page, we can see that he has given up his old profession, dramatically demonstrated by the fact that his ink has become moldy. (Note that the pages are designed in a mirror image of how western comics pages are design--right to left.) You can see that his art is not flashy. It is simple and unadorned, without flash. It is basically realistic, but the figures are undeniably cartoons. This somewhat stripped-down approach typifies Tsuge's work, although he has a gift for drawing beautifully detailed scenes of nature. But his bitterness towards art comics--of which his work is a shining example--is understandable. There are few art forms as labor-intensive and unremunerative.
He meets a bookstall owner, Yamai, who is like himself. He, too, strives to vanish from society by being useless and invisible. He gives Sukezō a book of haiku by a 19th century poet Seigetsu Inoue, who appears to have been a real person. In reading about Seigetsu, Sukezō seems to have found an earlier avatar of people like himself and Yamai. Perhaps that is Tsuge's intent--to describe a class of people who by their very nature choose to become invisible, to fade out and vanish. Apparently Tsuge has done this frequently throughout his life. Though the book doesn't say overtly that this a result of mental illness, a reader could conclude it. The Man Without Talent is a profoundly sad book, but there is a kind of embedded hopefulness in it. Tsuge did, after all, write and draw it. He could have just vanished instead.
Yoshiharu Tsuge, The Man Without Talent (2019, New York Review of Books)
Yoshiharu Tsuge, "Red Flowers" published in RAW 7, drawn in 1966, published in English in 1985
Back in 1985, Yoshiharu Tsuge's "Red Flowers" was published in RAW number 7. It was published as an inset booklet inside RAW's oversized pages. It was for many art comics readers our first encounter with the work of this genius. RAW published another Tsuge story in 1990. I have been waiting over 30 years for a book of Tsuge's work to appear in English. When the flood of translated manga started being published in English in the 90s, I felt certain some publisher would step up. But for some reason, Tsuge was reluctant to allow it. (The story of that reluctance would be worth knowing. I had heard that he had given up comics to spend his life fishing, but reading Ryan Holmberg's essay in this volume suggests a psychological reason.)
In any case, he stopped drawing comics in 1987 and withdrew from public life until he drew this book in 1998. It may have felt a bit like Marcel Duchamp withdrawing from art making to play chess, only to return with one final work, "Étant donnés: 1° la chute d'eau / 2° le gaz d'éclairage" (1966). Tsuge returned with this book in 1998. But while Duchamp was officially involved with chess, Tsuge's withdrawal seems to have been fueled by depression.
This book is a first person novel that is quite autobiographical, although the primary activity of the main character, Sukezō Sukegawa, is selling stones, something that Tsuge apparently never did. (Tsuge's life is described in the introduction by Ryan Holmberg, who also translated the book.) Even though Sukezō had worked as a comics artist, for some reason he has given that up. He and his wife and son live a precarious existence of abject poverty as Sukezō comes up with various improbable schemes to support his family. He briefly has a little success buying and repairing old cameras he finds at flea markets (something Tsuge did), but when the fad for buying old cameras fades, so does this source of income. In the meantime, he encounters a variety of equally pathetic entrepreneurs scrapping together existences on the margins of one of the richest capitalist economies on Earth.
Yoshiharu Ysuge, The Man Without Talent p. 166
In this page, we can see that he has given up his old profession, dramatically demonstrated by the fact that his ink has become moldy. (Note that the pages are designed in a mirror image of how western comics pages are design--right to left.) You can see that his art is not flashy. It is simple and unadorned, without flash. It is basically realistic, but the figures are undeniably cartoons. This somewhat stripped-down approach typifies Tsuge's work, although he has a gift for drawing beautifully detailed scenes of nature. But his bitterness towards art comics--of which his work is a shining example--is understandable. There are few art forms as labor-intensive and unremunerative.
He meets a bookstall owner, Yamai, who is like himself. He, too, strives to vanish from society by being useless and invisible. He gives Sukezō a book of haiku by a 19th century poet Seigetsu Inoue, who appears to have been a real person. In reading about Seigetsu, Sukezō seems to have found an earlier avatar of people like himself and Yamai. Perhaps that is Tsuge's intent--to describe a class of people who by their very nature choose to become invisible, to fade out and vanish. Apparently Tsuge has done this frequently throughout his life. Though the book doesn't say overtly that this a result of mental illness, a reader could conclude it. The Man Without Talent is a profoundly sad book, but there is a kind of embedded hopefulness in it. Tsuge did, after all, write and draw it. He could have just vanished instead.
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An Apocalyptic Dream
Robert Boyd
I dreamed I was living through a societal collapse. Things were breaking down and not getting repaired, and people were just dealing with it as well as they could. A slow-motion apocalypse. In this environment, I was trying to organize my various family members into a string quartet. Why this seemed like an important thing to do, I don't know. It was a bit of dream logic.
But when I thought about it, I was reminded of the story of Quatuor pour la fin du temps by Olivier Messiaen. He was interned in Stalag VIII-A after being captured at the beginning of World War II. He composed this startling music in the camp and premiered it there in the rain before an audience of prisoners and guards. It must have seemed to listeners like a tiny piece of culture in the face of the end of civilization. As the USA continues its slow motion collapse, we still need art to be created, even when is seems at times like a frivolous indulgence.
I dreamed I was living through a societal collapse. Things were breaking down and not getting repaired, and people were just dealing with it as well as they could. A slow-motion apocalypse. In this environment, I was trying to organize my various family members into a string quartet. Why this seemed like an important thing to do, I don't know. It was a bit of dream logic.
But when I thought about it, I was reminded of the story of Quatuor pour la fin du temps by Olivier Messiaen. He was interned in Stalag VIII-A after being captured at the beginning of World War II. He composed this startling music in the camp and premiered it there in the rain before an audience of prisoners and guards. It must have seemed to listeners like a tiny piece of culture in the face of the end of civilization. As the USA continues its slow motion collapse, we still need art to be created, even when is seems at times like a frivolous indulgence.
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Go Read My Review of Patrick Renner's Current Exhibit
I wrote about Bounty, Patrick Renner's huge new installation up not at Redbud Gallery. The review is up at Glasstire.
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Archive Art
Robert Boyd
Just before coronavirus shut everything down, I went to San Antonio for Novel Ideas, Blue Star Contemporary's art book fair. The keynote speaker was Julie Ault, who had been a member of the art collective Group Material from 1979 to 1996. Group Material is probably best known for the AIDS Timeline produced in 1990. They produced research-based artwork, usually very political. Listening to Ault speak got me thinking about this kind of art. I've seen examples of it many times over the years, but for whatever reason, Ault prompted me to think of it as a specific genre of art. A kind of art that doesn't, as far as I know, have a name. I've been calling it "archive art" in my mind, but if any of you know an already existing name, please let me know.
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I stumbled across a workable definition while reading America Starts Here, a big art book about the work of Kate Ericson and Mel Ziegler. It's been on my "to-read" shelf for a long time, and this quarantine moment seemed like a good moment to crack it open. The first essay is by Bill Arning, written before he moved to Houston to become director of the Contemporary Art Museum. In it, he wrote:
In 2012, artist Robert Gober produced a notable example of archive art for the Whitney Biennial. He created a mini-exhibit of work by Forrest Bess. The archive part of came in vitrines devoted to Betty Parsons (Bess's gallerist) and John Money, a researcher who studied sexuality and who corresponded with Bess. This doesn't exactly fit into the approach outlined by Arning, except maybe 1) and 4). But it did require original research on Gober's part. This micro-exhibition was expanded into a major solo exhibition by the Menil Museum. Gober is not typically an archive artist--he is best known as a maker of intriguing, enigmatic objects. But he totally stepped up to the plate and knocked it out of the park in this project.
Two years later, the Biennial had another notable piece of archive art, The Gregory Battcock Archive by Joseph Grigely. Grigely serendipitously discovered a bunch of Battcock's papers in the building where he had his studio in 1992. Battcock was an art critic who appeared in several Andy Warhol films over the years and was the subject of a notable Alice Neel painting. He was murdered in 1980; the murder remains unsolved. In his statement about the work, Grigely describes the archive as a kind of portrait of Battson: "A document is both a material artifact and a node within a network of human relations. We both draw and draw out Battcock from these relations--the artists he talked with, the critics he argued with, the meals he shared, the students he taught, and the tricks with whom he had sex--they are all here, some with names, some with pseudonyms." I remember being fascinated by The Gregory Battcock Archive when I saw it at the Biennial--it was perhaps where the idea of "archive art" first lodged itself in my mind as a distinct category. That said, the problem with such art is that it doesn't have much visual interest. I'd much rather see an Alice Neel painting.
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Alice Neel, David Bourdan and Gregory Battcock, 1970
The lack of visual pleasure is the biggest failing with this genre of art. But Kate Ericson and Mel Ziegler are exceptions to this airless approach. The work they did fits into Arning's schema while also being visually beautiful.
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Carrie Schneider, installation at the CAMH, 2014
One local artist who has long engaged in this kind of artwork is Carrie Marie Schneider. Her exhibition, Incommensurate Mapping, at the CAMH in 2014 was a perfect example. She studied the CAMH's archives and used them to critique the CAMH in an amusingly subversive way. I wrote about this exhibit at length when it came out in two posts for this blog.
There have been other notable examples of this kind of art (loosely defined) in Houston. For example, City Council Meeting, a semi-theatrical piece of participatory artwork put on by Aaron Landsman, Mallory Catlett and Jim Findlay under the auspices of DiverseWorks at the El Dorado Ballroom in 2012, or Liz Magic Laser's Tell Me What You Want to Hear at DiverseWorks in 2012. Or Ericson and Zeigler's Red House (1979) and several other projects from the same time in Houston, as well as an installation at DiverseWorks in 1987. Obviously, DiverseWorks has been a major venue for this genre of art for several decades.
For me, this work sometimes is remarkably good. The idea of researching and presenting one's research has a natural appeal to a bookish person like me. It depends on how well the artwork is constructed and how much the artists' obsessions line up with my own. In the case of The Gregory Battcock Archive and Incommensurate Mapping, they worked for me very well indeed.
Just before coronavirus shut everything down, I went to San Antonio for Novel Ideas, Blue Star Contemporary's art book fair. The keynote speaker was Julie Ault, who had been a member of the art collective Group Material from 1979 to 1996. Group Material is probably best known for the AIDS Timeline produced in 1990. They produced research-based artwork, usually very political. Listening to Ault speak got me thinking about this kind of art. I've seen examples of it many times over the years, but for whatever reason, Ault prompted me to think of it as a specific genre of art. A kind of art that doesn't, as far as I know, have a name. I've been calling it "archive art" in my mind, but if any of you know an already existing name, please let me know.
I stumbled across a workable definition while reading America Starts Here, a big art book about the work of Kate Ericson and Mel Ziegler. It's been on my "to-read" shelf for a long time, and this quarantine moment seemed like a good moment to crack it open. The first essay is by Bill Arning, written before he moved to Houston to become director of the Contemporary Art Museum. In it, he wrote:
The list of strategies Ericson and Ziegler used to make artworks seemed very unusual at the time, though today's young artists regularly employ these methods, which include the following: 1) Researching arcane areas of knowledge and pursuing a passion for the aura of the archive; 2) Using mapping and other similar ways of schematizing life; 3) Creating a system that dictates all significant visual decisions about a work's presentation; 4) Employing found elements rather than causing something new to be made; 5) Viewing the entire country as a text to be read, engaged and decoded; 6) Using natural materials, like stone, leaves, and water, as they are inflected or coded by culture; 7) Critically engaging decoration and architecture for what they reveal about society; 8) Using Americana as topic, material, or motif; 9) Engaging cultural institutions, museums, and monuments, such as the Supreme Court, libraries, and universities; 10) Investigating governmental decisions about urban space and making them public; 11) Collecting and collating found language, which can subsequently function as a kind of found poetry; 12) Using the practical business decisions of others as a structuring device for works; 13) Designing projects that exist in multiple states, each of which creates meaning; from the first research to the final use of materials; 14) Insertting delays into a process that unnaturally extends the in-between period of a simple task such as landscaping or cleaning, rendering otherwise invisible processes conspicuous and examinable; 15) Allowing works to disappear through transformation, making them cease to be "art" and instead begin to fulfill a useful function; 16) Cooperating with people outside the specific disciplines of the art world in a way that gives them a non-artistic way to participate; 17) Choosing to work with each other as collaborators.That is quite a list! And really, I think the totality of this list only applies to Ericson and Zeigler. But I think big portions of the list apply to many of the artists who create "archive art," like Group Material.
In 2012, artist Robert Gober produced a notable example of archive art for the Whitney Biennial. He created a mini-exhibit of work by Forrest Bess. The archive part of came in vitrines devoted to Betty Parsons (Bess's gallerist) and John Money, a researcher who studied sexuality and who corresponded with Bess. This doesn't exactly fit into the approach outlined by Arning, except maybe 1) and 4). But it did require original research on Gober's part. This micro-exhibition was expanded into a major solo exhibition by the Menil Museum. Gober is not typically an archive artist--he is best known as a maker of intriguing, enigmatic objects. But he totally stepped up to the plate and knocked it out of the park in this project.
Two years later, the Biennial had another notable piece of archive art, The Gregory Battcock Archive by Joseph Grigely. Grigely serendipitously discovered a bunch of Battcock's papers in the building where he had his studio in 1992. Battcock was an art critic who appeared in several Andy Warhol films over the years and was the subject of a notable Alice Neel painting. He was murdered in 1980; the murder remains unsolved. In his statement about the work, Grigely describes the archive as a kind of portrait of Battson: "A document is both a material artifact and a node within a network of human relations. We both draw and draw out Battcock from these relations--the artists he talked with, the critics he argued with, the meals he shared, the students he taught, and the tricks with whom he had sex--they are all here, some with names, some with pseudonyms." I remember being fascinated by The Gregory Battcock Archive when I saw it at the Biennial--it was perhaps where the idea of "archive art" first lodged itself in my mind as a distinct category. That said, the problem with such art is that it doesn't have much visual interest. I'd much rather see an Alice Neel painting.
Alice Neel, David Bourdan and Gregory Battcock, 1970
The lack of visual pleasure is the biggest failing with this genre of art. But Kate Ericson and Mel Ziegler are exceptions to this airless approach. The work they did fits into Arning's schema while also being visually beautiful.
Carrie Schneider, installation at the CAMH, 2014
One local artist who has long engaged in this kind of artwork is Carrie Marie Schneider. Her exhibition, Incommensurate Mapping, at the CAMH in 2014 was a perfect example. She studied the CAMH's archives and used them to critique the CAMH in an amusingly subversive way. I wrote about this exhibit at length when it came out in two posts for this blog.
There have been other notable examples of this kind of art (loosely defined) in Houston. For example, City Council Meeting, a semi-theatrical piece of participatory artwork put on by Aaron Landsman, Mallory Catlett and Jim Findlay under the auspices of DiverseWorks at the El Dorado Ballroom in 2012, or Liz Magic Laser's Tell Me What You Want to Hear at DiverseWorks in 2012. Or Ericson and Zeigler's Red House (1979) and several other projects from the same time in Houston, as well as an installation at DiverseWorks in 1987. Obviously, DiverseWorks has been a major venue for this genre of art for several decades.
For me, this work sometimes is remarkably good. The idea of researching and presenting one's research has a natural appeal to a bookish person like me. It depends on how well the artwork is constructed and how much the artists' obsessions line up with my own. In the case of The Gregory Battcock Archive and Incommensurate Mapping, they worked for me very well indeed.
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A Coronavirus Dream
Robert Boyd
I had a dream last week that illustrates this theory.
I was at an art exhibit’s opening night. It was in a non-art space, a large room that seemed like a cheap banquet hall with wood paneling. It was a casual group show as opposed to a curated show. The vibe reminded me of Houston’s great defunct art space, the Joanna, but the space was much larger than the Joanna had been.
There were two huge stone and metal sculptures—they were roughly ovoid-shaped boulders wrapped with bands of a shiny yellowish metal. As I looked at them, I wondered how the organizers transported them into the space. They looked like the weighed tons. I was wondering if the floor was sturdy enough to support them. I walked over to one of them and it disappeared, turning into a energy bar in my hands. Somehow I didn’t question this remarkable transformation and instead unwrapped the energy bar and ate it. But almost instantly I felt guilty for eating the art. Hanging next to the remaining boulder were a couple of crudely made sculptures. One was a model of plane, like a really old Cessna. But it was not perfect—it was kind of rough and lumpy, as if it had been made of papier-mâché. It reminded me a little of Tom Sachs’ work. Brandon Zech was standing nearby and I asked him if he knew who the artist was. He shrugged his shoulders.
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Tom Sachs, Crawler, 2003, foamcore, thermal adhesive, wood
There was a table with a variety of artworks on it. It was a folding banquet table, the kind you might see at a zine festival. And like that kind of table, it was strewn with small objects for sale. Some were three-dimensional, and some were small drawings. One pile attracted my attention. They appeared to be watercolors of faces, mostly of well-known people. They had a savage quality without being out-and-out caricatures. There were several pictures of Ronald Reagan. I wondered who had made them. I looked on the back for a signature and saw only a penciled price. They were all really inexpensive: twenty six dollars and some cents. It was a weirdly specific price and well within my price range.
I decided to buy two Reagans, then I noticed another artist had also painted a Reagan on paper. It was different but also appealing. I decided to buy all three. I explained to someone there that I thought Reagan was worth memorializing because it was his presidency that had started the USA on a dystopian libertarian downward path. By the end of the dream, I had also picked up a video with a Reagan theme. Why was Reagan in my subconscious last night? I don’t know. Then I woke up.
“What is common in all these dreams is obvious. They completely satisfy wishes excited during the day which remain unrealized. They are simply and undisguisedly realizations of wishes.”
Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams
I had a dream last week that illustrates this theory.
I was at an art exhibit’s opening night. It was in a non-art space, a large room that seemed like a cheap banquet hall with wood paneling. It was a casual group show as opposed to a curated show. The vibe reminded me of Houston’s great defunct art space, the Joanna, but the space was much larger than the Joanna had been.
There were two huge stone and metal sculptures—they were roughly ovoid-shaped boulders wrapped with bands of a shiny yellowish metal. As I looked at them, I wondered how the organizers transported them into the space. They looked like the weighed tons. I was wondering if the floor was sturdy enough to support them. I walked over to one of them and it disappeared, turning into a energy bar in my hands. Somehow I didn’t question this remarkable transformation and instead unwrapped the energy bar and ate it. But almost instantly I felt guilty for eating the art. Hanging next to the remaining boulder were a couple of crudely made sculptures. One was a model of plane, like a really old Cessna. But it was not perfect—it was kind of rough and lumpy, as if it had been made of papier-mâché. It reminded me a little of Tom Sachs’ work. Brandon Zech was standing nearby and I asked him if he knew who the artist was. He shrugged his shoulders.
Tom Sachs, Crawler, 2003, foamcore, thermal adhesive, wood
There was a table with a variety of artworks on it. It was a folding banquet table, the kind you might see at a zine festival. And like that kind of table, it was strewn with small objects for sale. Some were three-dimensional, and some were small drawings. One pile attracted my attention. They appeared to be watercolors of faces, mostly of well-known people. They had a savage quality without being out-and-out caricatures. There were several pictures of Ronald Reagan. I wondered who had made them. I looked on the back for a signature and saw only a penciled price. They were all really inexpensive: twenty six dollars and some cents. It was a weirdly specific price and well within my price range.
I decided to buy two Reagans, then I noticed another artist had also painted a Reagan on paper. It was different but also appealing. I decided to buy all three. I explained to someone there that I thought Reagan was worth memorializing because it was his presidency that had started the USA on a dystopian libertarian downward path. By the end of the dream, I had also picked up a video with a Reagan theme. Why was Reagan in my subconscious last night? I don’t know. Then I woke up.
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Robert Boyd's Book Reports: 3 New York Dadas + The Blind Man
by Robert Boyd
I decided to start using my free time (being an unemployed guy whose job was ended by COVID) creatively. I've been reading a lot, so I decided I would record brief reports of books as I read them. This is my first attempt (which I think will be obvious when you watch it). The book being discussed is 3 New York Dadas + The Blind Man.
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Robert Boyd's Book Reports 2: The Mystery of Rio
Robert Boyd
I read another book this week, and talk about it here. The book is The Mystery of Rio by Alberto Mussa.
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Robert Boyd's Book Report 3: Evil Geniuses
This week I'm talking about Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America: A Recent History
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Robert Boyd's Book Report: Ganzfeld 7
Today, my book is an old one (published in 2008): Ganzfeld 7 edited and published by Dan Nadel. I've reviewed Nadel's books and exhibits in the past, including his work on HairyWho, his exhibit at RISD, What Nerve!, The Brooklyn Comics & Graphics Festival, and reviews of various books published by Nadel's own publishing house, Picturebox.
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