May 12th, 2008 John
In the last 10 years — if you’ve been paying close attention — it’s become very apparent that the ephemera of 50 years ago is more influential to our modern visual style than any fine or gallery art. In many cases, a visual idea may start with the boys in the berets, but it’s the commercial artists who take these and run, apply them to outlets in our daily lives and bring them to popular recognition, make them easy on our eyes and our brains, help us accept new ideas. As a result, brilliance crops up in the strangest places.
Like very old children’s books.
Two decades ago, Little Golden Books still had a reputation for the same level of ironic cheese that was reserved for Gumby and “Leave It to Beaver,” but that ended quickly once many of my generation started taking a second look at the line and realizing the artistic power behind the illustrators who created them. The stories run the gamut from charming to educational to odd dispatches from another era — with some timeless exceptions — but the artwork that graced these tales were often of such a high standard that they influenced generations of graphic designers, cartoonists, commercial illustrators and, yeah, children’s book illustrators.
In “Golden Legacy,” author Leonard S. Marcus offers decades-long company history of Golden Books, embellishing the behind-the-scenes revelations of business and editorial decision making with a lush and much deserved document of the company’s output — the work of legends like Richard Scarry, Garth Williams, Tibor Gergely, Leonard Weisgard, Alice and Martin Provensen and ground-breaking author Margaret Wise Brown. It’s part biography, part business history and — most importantly — part gorgeous art book.
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May 10th, 2008 John
Of all the things I have encountered in my newspaper work covering the arts, my absolute favorite is the New York University Interactive Telecommunications Program — or ITP. This is a graduate program that, as their Web site puts it , offers students a chance to “explore the imaginative use of communications technologies — how they might augment, improve, and bring delight and art into people’s lives.”
The program also likes to call itself the “Center for the Recently Possible.”
In other words, it’s a gathering of mad scientists, coming up with crazy and wonderful contraptions that sometimes help you in unexpected ways, other times make you think unexpected thoughts, and still others just give you a good giggle.
A number of these folks have had shows at the nearby Greylock Arts, a gallery in Adams, MA (helmed by former Shuffleboil contributor Marianne Petit and her very good buddy Matthew Belanger) and I’ve had the pleasure of speaking to and writing articles on several of them. I’m putting up the interviews in order to give people a chance to really get to know what goes on at ITP and what sorts of cool folks are doing it.
I’m starting with Leif Krinkle, a man of astonishing energy and imagination, with an eye towards sustainability.
SB: The Krinkl-O-Tron expands the notion of collaboration to include the audience.
LK: It came more from a theoretical perspective, when I first created it, I started making, when I came to ITP, the first question I had was ‘I make these big interactive installations and performance pieces, what kind of space do you have?’ ‘None.’ For about a year and a half, I made really small prototypes. With the Krinkl-O-Tron, even with these small propotypes I had been making with scan imagery and large multi screen displays, so I wanted to make an installation that was able to not only create but display these large format medias in real time and in doing so create some sort of physical interaction with them. That’s what the carousel was and I realized that I was trying to push the boundaries of what new media and electronic media had to offer and I thought that one of the boundaries is obviously power consumption, so I thought ‘Well, let’s see if we can figure out some way to offset the consumption of power or at least bring that to discussion. That’s where the sustainable aspect of this came in.
Different crowds interact differently, it’s more of the culture that you display it in. Interactive art is pretty new and people don’t really come to a gallery or an art show thinking that they’re going to interact or break a sweat or do something in order to fully experience the art.
Coming from a burning man background, where there are no spectators, you all have to participate, a lot of the people I’m around influenced me and inspired me to create things that require effort and group participation, so around here, there’s definitely a lot of people who hop on and start going. Marianne can’t keep off the thing. In Greylock, they’re around Mass MoCA and I imagine the east coast is a little more progressive on the coast than where I grew up in Michigan, so I found it. There was a 90 year old woman jumping on it and kids love it — kids use it way better than adults. I think adults are more concrete in their ideas of what is proper to do in a group of people and riding around on scooters doesn’t figure as one of them, so I think the adults take a little more coaxing.
SB: Adults get far too hung up on naming something art instead of just this cool thing.
LK: I think it’s the context that you put it in. I’ve never really considered myself an artist, so I think of it more as a carnival ride or just a kitschy thing. My background’s in record production and I do all this tech back-up to a lot of more traditional art, so I’ve never really considered myself an artist. As far as what adults would think . . . I’m still riding the fringe of what really is mainstream, galleries are a venue, but I see it more at festivals. It’s almost like a sideshow attraction. I think that’s just me and my concrete thing, because in galleries there are a lot of proper things and etiquette and bureaucracy and, again, this question of is it art or is it not, and I really just forgo those.
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May 7th, 2008 John
I’ve been meaning to put this up for a while. Greta Pratt is easily one of my favorite photographers around. I first encountered her work at Mass MoCA, where her portraits of multiple Lincoln imitators — both separate and en masse — were included in the “Ahistoric Occasion” show. They really grabbed my attention and I immediately contacted her for an interview and wrote an article for the paper.
Greta’s interest lies in Americana and the use of history in everyday life, particularly in advertising. She’s also very attuned the symbols of patriotism and how they are co-opted for various purposes. These days, she’s working on a project called Flag A Day in which, for a year, she offers a photo a day of the American Flag in some setting that she has found. This project is due to end on June 14.
So I contacted Greta again in order to talk about this project and catch up with her own brand of photographic sociology.
SB: Looking through the project, the flag begins to come off as a subliminal message — it’s everywhere you look!
GP: Exactly!
SB: Do you think the prevalence of the flag in signs and packaging and clothing devalues it? Or fetishizes it? Or both?
GP: I think it is a subliminal message used to create a false sense of patriotism. If something has a flag on it whoever is selling it must be patriotic or American.
SB: I find something charming about the American flag - in this day and age of slick graphics, it’s such a nice throwback to a clunkier age - what are your thoughts about that?
GP: I used to have some charming antique flags that I would put up on the Fourth of July but I got rid of them all because I have become so disgusted by the hijacking of this icon for messages I do not agree with.
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April 30th, 2008 John
Howard Cruse lives around the corner from me in North Adams and our first encounters with each other were striking in that I don’t think either of us expected to find another person with a comics background holed up in this slowly growing arts community. But here we were.
Howard began his comic book career in the world of underground comics, most notably “Barefootz.” He also edited the anthology series “Gay Comix” and did the regular strip “Wendel” for the Advocate (the national gay-oriented news magazine). In the 1990s, he broke ground with his graphic novel “Stuck Rubber Baby,” which he did for an imprint of DC Comics.
More recently, Howard financed the first issue of the North County Perp, a zine format anthology of local writers and artists that hearkens back to the days of do-it-yourself comic books — the undergrounds of the 1970s and the self-publishing movement of the 1990s. It was Howard’s idea that he could draw upon the creative lessons of yesteryear and apply them to his current home in a scrappy way.
It was always my intention to sit down and do a comprehensive article on Howard and the dawn of the Perp gave me that reason — but as interesting as the Perp is, I really wanted to explore Howard’s long career in a world that the majority of his neighbors are entirely unfamiliar with, but which I could serve as some sort of guide due to my experience in it.
Here, for the first time, is the complete interview with Howard.
SB: When did you first want to be a cartoonist?
HC: I had ambitions to be a cartoonist from the age of seven. I also wanted to be a writer. I pity the poor editors of national publications who got my submissions when I was 9 years old. I was sending humorous verse to the New Yorker and things like that, I had totally unrealistic visions of how quickly I would be embraced as a major talent. I did get in the habit of going through all those rituals of submitting and getting rejected and all that quite early and I submitted several comic strips for newspaper syndication in the course of my teenage years and college years.
I managed to break ground in our college literary magazine which had never even considered running a comic strip format before I did a four-page comic book story satirizing John Birchism, somewhere in the mid ’60s. They were so timid, so afraid that the board of trustees of Birmingham Southern would get upset that they ran little disclaimers saying that this is not really about any real organization, this is just about a state of mind. But they still let me publish the comic strip.
I got diverted while in college into theater, which has a lot in common with writing comics, particularly play writing and directing. I was under the influence of a very important artistic mentor, who was head of the drama department there, and he became my friend, we stayed friends long after I left college until he died. He changed my ideas about what art was all about and I lost interest in doing the newspaper comic strip because, in general, you had so little creative freedom. I had pretty much given up on comic books until the underground movement came along. I thought I was going to be an academic theater director like my role model and I got a play writing fellowship to Penn State University, when I finished college in 68, but I really hated grad school. Nothing wrong with Penn State, they had a perfectly good drama department and all, but I allowed myself to be propelled along by the expectations of other people that had pushed me onto grad school. I was dissatisfied, I didn’t feel that I knew myself, I didn’t know how to write plays that had any originality.
I got in a funk and left college and moved to New York and lived with my hippie friends in the hippie, 1969 environment in New York City. I did that for about a year and I was freaking out from no income, so I moved back to Alabama, where I got a job working for this local television station and also, there was an editor for a paper that’s disappeared now, it was the better of the two dailies in Birmingham, it was called the Birmingham Post Herald. This editor decided that I was a youngster who needed to be given a chance. I think he knew my father, which probably affected his decision, but he let me do this little comic panel for the paper and that got me back into comics. It was an earlier version of “Squirrel.”
I discovered underground comics and Denis Kitchen opened doors for me. That became a passion for a number of years.
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April 11th, 2008 John
The Berkshires have been well-captured in the past by photography greats like Bill Tague and Randy Trabold, but the current ace practitioner comes from an unlikely place — the world of contemporary gallery art. Gregory Crewdson has built bodies of work on top his impressions of the area, which were forged on childhood trips here from New York City and grew to be an outward expression of a feeling inside him that he described to me as something that “you can’t quite put your finger on.”
With this aesthetic in mind — and unlike his photographic predecessors — Crewdson does not capture the everyday sights of the area, he captures the things you only see out of the corner of your eye and the unseen presence that you feel as you walk around. He captures the impression you get, the invisible world that co-exists alongside the physical one we walk in — an unspeakable quality to the landscape rather than the people, as if in some Berkshire specific form of Shintoism there are Berkshire sprites and spirits roaming the landscape, infecting it with the inherent Bershireness you feel in the atmosphere.
In “Beneath the Roses,” Crewdson reveals himself as one of those sprites whose mission is to show us the truth behind the illusory perceptions of our everyday lives here, as if we are nestled in some rural version of “The Matrix” and his role in the grand scheme of nature is offer revelatory visions to our obstructed eyes.
Crewdson’s work continue along the same theme and line of subject matter as ever before — cryptic staged scenes of small towns, often at night, often involving dazed people in inexplicable actions, usually featuring the hint of an outside perspective happening upon the scene, or sometimes floating into it. In many images, there is a visitation of a shaft or burst of light, piercing the darkness and the intimacy of the scenes.
In Crewdson’s world, cars are parked suddenly with their doors left open, the ground is dug into disarray for the curious containers that lurk underneath and people are face with horrible moments of realization that leave them stunned in their bedrooms.
Though he is often compared to filmmaker David Lynch, here is something about Crewdson’s images that remind me most of Ingmar Bergman. The photos seem as though they are intrusive, capturing moments that we aren’t meant to see, such as the lonely lovers on a dirty mattress in the Eden-like woods or the stunned businessman who has parked his car in Adams and rushed out to feel the torrent of rain. This is all irrational, personal, not for us.
Crewdson’s great brilliance, however, is bringing allure to everyday locales that often feel so mundane that most people don’t give them a second glance. Crumbling small town houses, car parks, motels, storefronts, through Crewdson’s lense these have soul, mystery.
Through his beautiful photos of small cityscapes, Crewdson single-handedly provides a clear argument for Pittsfield’s existence.
The collection closes with a panoramic long shot of a portion of a canal in North Adams seemingly at dawn, a steeple jutting out in the background. In the distance, you can just make out a couple strolling down the dry waterway, trees sprawling into the aging concrete and small plants bursting out of it, the town at odds with the greenery.
Sometimes, I’m met with confusion from old friends who don’t quite understand why my family moved here. In the future, I think I’ll show them that photo, it tells you everything you need to know.
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April 3rd, 2008 John
In a variation of the words of philosopher Marshall McLuhan, photographer Lana Z. Caplan’s work shows that the medium is at least a portion of the message, as is the process attached to the chosen medium. Caplan’s work runs a gamut of alternative processes of photography, taking advantage of the aesthetics related to each in order to explore the themes that interest her, as well as the methods of production. One area of photographic labor for Caplan as been in the production of tintypes, a style of photography popular at the end of the 19th century that employs black metal and negative images to create the finished product. Caplan was as drawn to the potential flaws of the medium as she was to the colors and texture.
Caplan takes a painterly approach to constructing her tintype images, creating mysterious still life scenes involving chairs, suitcases, insect collections and mannequin parts that she augments with the particulars of the process.
In her earlier photographic experiments, Caplan had worked in photograms, which is photography without a camera. The method involves laying objects down on light sensitive material and shining light down for the exposure. The idea is that you are leaving shadows of the image on the paper, but Caplan played with the kinds of objects she worked with to create images that were more texturally complex.
Caplan was doing a residency at the Contemporary Artists Center in North Adams, MA, a few years back when she began to work with cyanotypes, a type of monochromatic photography that uses its chemical coating to turn ultraviolet rays into gray-blue tones on watercolor paper. Caplan used this method to document sights that entranced her along Route 2, between the Berkshires and Boston. She later extended the project and added some images from Atlantic City.
She also worked with palladium prints, a process involving paper hand-coated with a platinum-related substance, which creates a black/brown tone to shadow areas and provides sharp detail. The reasoning behind this process is that the photographer is working to achieve a heightened, smoother print — something Caplan found she was at odds with.
Caplan has lately moved onto film projects, but still embraces the same do-it-yourself aesthetic with those, working with old technology and utilizing the flaws to create its own singular beauty.
While some embrace new technology as the answer to their artistic questions, Caplan has been able to take what is old and point it in a new direction. Caplan has taken the methods of media that most people have long since discarded and pull out the aesthetic qualities of each for use in her expression. The history of photography is the palette she chooses to work from.
SB: What got you started on tintypes?
LC: I’d been working with alternative processes of photography for many years and the tintypes, the palette, the color, and the texture suited conceptually what I was thinking about, darker and thicker and heavier in tone. I really liked the way the actual surface is thick and bubbly. The historic tintypes are much smoother than the ones I’m making, intentionally. I really like being able to see almost like paint, the drips and the bubbles and the gradiation of tone that you get when you coat thicker or thinner, so it really becomes a compositional element in addition to image. That’s one of the things that drew me to using them.
I started making them very small, I started making four by fives, and making them in the camera and from Polaroid negatives.
SB: What’s your process?
LC: With all the alternative processes of photography, there are a lot of similarities. What changes is the chemistry, but the actual physical aspect of coating and exposing, there’s a lot of crossover and similarity. I’m self taught how to do the tintypes with experience I had from other processes. It wasn’t that complicate in theory, but in practice it took a lot of practice to get it to do what I wanted it to do. It’s a very, very finicky process, it’s a hand coated emulsion like most alternative processes. It also requires very extreme temperatures to get things to work – you have to heat things up and they cool down very quickly and then if it didn’t work then you have to reheat things. In that process, everything could spoil. It also requires complete darkness for a good part of the process, so I had to build a special way of getting in and out of the darkroom so I could eat.
I started with them at 4 x 5 size, but now they’re 20 x 20 inches, so they take longer to coat the plate, they take longer to dry, it takes longer to wash the metal. To do everything that it takes to be prepared takes longer, so it gets to the point where I can make maybe one in a session of 12 hours. Sometimes, if I’m lucky, I can make two. I mean, there are editions of three, so when I say one, I mean three of one image.
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April 2nd, 2008 John
Confession: Sometimes I feel sorry for gallery artists, particularly contemporary ones.
My problem is that I sometimes feel no matter the quality of the work — and there’s plenty good and bad out there — gallery art never seeps into the consciousness of a person the same way that commercial art does. Don’t even get me started on contemporary gallery art — for every really wonderful bit of artistry that manages to extract meaning from unconventional mediums, there’s someone putting logs in boots or filming herself trying on multiple hats while crying or whatever it takes to justify your life choice. And yet a commercial artist, with an image in a children’s book or a magazine or a Coke ad can spring something on you where you least expect transcendent vision. You walk into a museum or gallery and you know it’s coming — or, at least, that’s the promise of entering such places — but you pick up a copy of poetry about farm animals, say, and you aren’t quite prepared for the likes of Martin and Alice Provensen or Leonard Weisgard.
Or you pick up an old album in a thrift store and though you expect the music to be boring — let’s say it its some low level dance orchestra from the ‘50s that are meant for country club soirees — the cover and the extraneous art are perversely mesmerizing, intoxicating. So it is with the art of Jim Flora.
Flora was a multi-faceted illustrator who the public recognizes as the stylist behind so many images that adorn our old records — he did numerous work for Columbia Records and RCA Victor in the ‘40s and ‘50s. He also did magazine work through the ‘60s, some book illustration, some advertising and his own gallery-appropriate art that looked like extreme versions of his illustration.
His most common motif was an image made of broken blocks, brought together in an abstraction of the figure he illustrated. These visions were often directed towards portrayals of jazz bands, sometimes vividly colored carnivals of shapes representing incomplete players, other times as black and white prints with even more lines and blocks criss-crossing for complicated realizations. At times, there are so many different components being drawn together for numerous separate images, that the effect is Jasper Johns mess that takes a few moments to focus into a shipyard, a horse, a village or a family.
Flora takes these flourishes and tempers them a bit on the work that appears on actual product — sometimes he drifts into charming cartoonist mode, as in the little graphcc bios of Frank Sinatra and Harry James that he produced for Columbia, as well as the minimal and surreal caricatures for Okeh Records. In the Facade project — which featured Edith Sitwell reading her poetry — for Columbia, however, it’s his broken down style gone mad and any of these are exactly like his private “fine” art. Flora’s work is so strong that it defines our expectation of what the recordings will be and certainly adds to our impressions once needle is put to record. His artwork became a mandatory part of the listening experience.
In his later magazine work, Flora moves more into cartoonist mode — though there are digressions — but these are rich works that use the cartoon styles to their graphic strengths, situating the figures into a design that unfolds often sequentially. Furthermore, his covers for the magazine Computer Design — a regular gig of his for 15 years — are the ultimate marriage of his cartoon and design works where, inside the abstract but nostalgic futurism of the work, he gives an exciting artistic face the probably dry technical world that provided his paycheck.
The book concludes with powerful, jarring images from Flora’s early work for Little Man Press — 1939 to 1942 — a series of independently published letterpress books out of Cincinnati. He captures Depression era bloom and horror, spent faces and despair and urban clutter with a rich vibrancy and one can see this the beginning of the thread that walked through the following decades.
This book is the second of its kind in regard to Flora’s art, the result of exhaustive work on the parts of Irwin Chusid and Barbara Economon. In our current digital age, however, it’s very easy for the Floras of today to be found. Go online, poke around, and you will find multiple commercial artist, children’s book illustrators, comic book artists, and more who not only explode with 
experimentation and ideas, but have come up with a practical way to use such things. It’s not an abstraction, it’s real, living art that has a place in your daily life and, someday, your memory. Oh, sure, they often riff their ideas by what is in the galleries, but that’s the difference between research and development and the real idea guys, the guys who bring the technology into your house. This is not to say that art needs a reason to be in order to be — but as the modern age becomes cluttered with piles of art, good and bad, contemporary and traditional, it’s a madcap race to find your place in the collective consciousness of a nation, as Jim Flora most certainly has.
I’m willing to bet everyone who reads this will have encountered an image by Jim Flora at some point in their life — and upon seeing one now, your mind will race with recognition and meaning.
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March 1st, 2008 John
Drew Friedman plies a creative trade that falls into the realm of cartooning, but also pulls from the often disdained field of caricature. There are important differences between Friedman and that guy who sets up a stand next to the water front though and shills sketches of, say, Sylvester Stallone with a humongous head. One is that while Friedman might well want you to laugh at his interpretations, he probably wants you to cry simultaneously. Another is that for all the simplicity inherent in the field of caricature — focusing in on obvious elements of a person’s face and then accentuating them — Friedman focuses in on the less obvious parts worth noticing. He’s famous for his liver spots and warts and such.
The most important difference, though, is his subject matter. He would probably never draw Sylvester Stallone, though he would probably do a great one. Friedman prefers subjects like Morey Amsterdam — and you can trust Friedman to have not only studied Morey Amsterdam, but to do approach him in such a way that you look at Friedman’s portrait of him and you will know Morey Amsterdam, you will understand Morey Amsterdam, you will weep for and snicker with Morey Amsterdam.
Friedman’s latest collection of artwork “More Old Jewish Comedians” is all about that — Morey Amsterdam is in there, sure, but so Jan Murray, Bill Dana, Bert Lahr , Joe E. Ross and multiple others. And while the familiar comedians are delightful — his Jerry Stiller is both joyful and mind-boggling, while Marty Allen dares you to look away and not be able to marvel at the details that record every strand of hair on the man’s head — it’s the portraits of those less known that are fascinating. Herbie Faye, for instance — I have no idea who he is, but the image of him, cocked head, bar and grill in the background on a New York City avenue, is the epitome of old style, show-biz cool. Equally, there’s a sadness but also a mischievous vigor in the eyes of of Bert Gordon — also unknown to me — who sits in a striped polos shirt, next to his walker and his Florida condo, slacks pulled up to his chest. These are loving portraits of people who do not fit the bill of classic American loveliness, drowning in the sweet, brotherly joy of Herbert and Milton Marx (that is, Zeppo and Gummo), as well as examining the mysteries in the alarmingly manic face of disheveled Larry Storch. This is celebrity artwork that really gets inside the skins of the people being captured, even as it meticulously reproduces the aging faces that protect the spirits within.
It’s a territory that Friedman has walked forever — a Friar’s Club world dominated by a Borscht Belt mentality, with a garnish of after hours bars and intoxicated one-upmanship. Friedman came into prominence in the 1980s, with magazine work appearing everywhere from Spy to National Lampoon and beyond — he often collaborated with his brother, Josh Alan Friedman, a writer. Their stomping grounds were the back alleys of grade-z showbiz — he had captured Ed Wood’s gang in cartoon form long before the likes of Tim Burton ever had the opportunity to make a big movie about them. Friedman’s presentation was like some sort of sleazy tabloid underworld, where reality and fantasy mixed into something that just seemed real. Did Bill Cullen really skulk around the sleazy streets of New York City? Who knows? Probably not, but Friedman made it seem so possible.
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February 22nd, 2008 John
There is a tragedy to the life of photographer Lee Miller that is not one of terror and loss in the usual sense — rather, it is a tragedy that something slipped away needlessly despite every reason for it to be everlasting. Lee Miller never became what it seems she should have become, despite the multiple opportunities to achieve that cryptic goal. From model and lover to Man Ray to accomplished war photographer, Lee Miller’s life is scattered with pangs of what might have been.
In “Lee Miller: Through the Mirror,” filmmaker Sylvain Roumette interviews both Miller’s son, Antony Penrose, and her lover, David Scherman, in order to discover what lurked behind the beautiful but distracted gaze. In the end, more information creates more mystery and the elusive creature in the photographs remains safe.
Miller’s introduction to photography was seedy — she was the young model for numerous gorgeous — but ultimately disturbing — nude photos taken by her father. A stint as a fashion model in New York City gets her to Paris, where her modeling work for Man Ray gets her into the dark room and, eventually, behind the camera. Miller became an accomplished surrealist photographer in her own right, before moving back to New York to pursue studio photography and portraiture with singular artistry.
Eventually, Miller ended up as a war correspondent for Vogue, at first covering the bombings in London and, later, the American march through Germany — Miller’s shining achievement of both art and photojournalism converging was her coverage of the the concentration camps. Miller was one of the first to send images and accounts of the horrors and her work in them was haunting, beautiful, horrifying.
It was after this extremely accomplished career that she took all her photos, stored them away and attempted to settle into a normal life, with husband and son. It was not to be, however — she was every bit the woman captured in photographs, apart from the world of others, and though she could fling herself into a love affair, more familial personal interaction seemed harder for her. Miller crept through life with her greatest creation, her child, at arm’s length — and her personal creations, her photos, shoved in boxes in her attic, meant to be forgotten.
They weren’t forgotten and Roumette’s film is really a brief statement to those who haven not, including her son and his attempt to understand this woman who birthed him. Miller is well worth remembering — certainly as a striking woman and muse, but, more importantly, as a visionary and pioneering female photographer. Roumette’s film does a great job at honoring that deserved place in history, as well as giving the viewer a flavor of the mind and eye that created striking images that deserve not to be shoved aside again.
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February 21st, 2008 John
In Marc-Antoine Mathieu’s “The Museum Vaults,” the Louvre is the setting for a quiet tale of surrealist absurdity, mixed with a style of humor reminiscent of the more intellectual side of Monty Python.
Subtitled “Excerpts from the Journal of an Expert,” this graphic novel concerns an art evaluator whose new assignment has him cataloging and assessing the holdings of the museum. It’s not the simple and officious task one might expect — this Louvre is a Kafkaesque labyrinthine castle that the expert Monsieur Volumer must trudge over years. The mere act of compiling a list turns into an epic and claustrophobic journey.
Each stop along the way in Volumer’s work brings another observation about the art world. On Day 651, Volumer visits a room devoted to reuniting the broken parts of sculpture with the original pieces. Later, on Day 960, Volumer discovers the work of restorers whose job it is to deal with the debris of an era of restoration when reproductions of noses, arms, fingers and more were added to the broken statues — only later to be broken off again when the “era of restoration fell out of fashion.” Not only did they have to be re-broken, but the breaks had to be restored to their original broken appearance.
In this way, Mathieu lampoons the swaying tide of the current wisdom when it comes to art scholarship. Each room represents a certain decision within the curatorial world that is often later changed — any given room might well be collecting the detritus of those whims. Similarly, when Volumer discovers the previous assessor, old and worn and passing on not only his notes, but the notes of his predecessor, Mathieu is making the clear point that a life of art scholarship is a perpetual journey to which there is no final conclusion — as art changes, more paths are created for a diligent, though soon exhausted, scholar to follow. And the work of each is built on by the next — such is the history of art criticism and scholarship, such is its dance with the art being produced and curated.
In Matheiu’s work, the Louvre is a stand in for art history itself, a cavernous array of endless dark passages, nooks and crannies and huge vaults, of damaged goods and false information, and imitations and utter, true inspiration — it’s a journey through the very reason that art is both magnetic and daunting. “The Museum Vaults” works both as a funny in-joke for the followers of art and an absurd, cryptic comedy introduction to those who are ready to fall victim to the allure of art.
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February 16th, 2008 John
Regardless of your religious beliefs, I think there is one thing that isn’t up for debate in the way the Devil has it all over God — his marketable image. God is so many things to so many people, but it’s only through the image of Jesus that there is any brand recognition. The Devil, on the other hand, is classic, simple — red, with horns, pointy ears, sometimes a tail, a pitchfork — and he’s ripe for creative interpretations that veer off the standard while still incorporating the greatest hits.
Plus, you can play him for comedy and offend almost no one. You do that with God and some people really get bent out of shape — heck, you do that with certain Gods and whole nations will demand your execution.
The Devil is pretty safe fodder for yucks, however.
In “Devilish Greetings,” Monte Beauchamp offers page after page of historical images of the great beast that are filled with both whimsy and dread, and all points in between — after all, what is one to make of an image where one happy looking Satan flies away from a small town landscape with two ginning and staring ladies, flanked by the words “Devilled Lobsters?” Is it meant to creep us out entirely or entice us to a new delicacy?
There’s a lot of humor at the expense of the loathsome beast — he’s fashioned into a bicycle for one woman — but he’s most often paired with the evils of the day, most notably Kaiser Wilhelm and booze— two things you probably wouldn’t want in the same room.
In one cartoonish pair of postcards, men with red and bulbous probiscus are tossed into the flames, which almost passes as subtle in context of this collection. It’s not left there, though — women of loose morals also find Satan’s attention and plenty of them. There’s a particularly fetching photo couplet where a shadowy devil approaches a winsome, half nude lass.
One postcard merrily announces the coming of a comet, the end of the world and the recipient’s future in Beelzebub’s stomping grounds.
He’s also utilized in selling, which would seem to be the opposite of what you’d want — it sounds like a competitor’s dream come true. That doesn’t scare away Antoine Inks for using Satan as its spokesperson for an ink removal liquid or Rochbelle Briquettes from doing the same — my, oh, my, but the Devil looks rested sitting in front of that fireplace fueled by Rochbelle.
The collection is a flurry of styles and an evil sort of delight from start to finish. There’s something extremely healthy about not only putting ultimate evil in its ridiculous place, but doing so with inventive illustration and conception. For those of us who have moved onto more rational world views after the fairy tale scares that the Devil elicited on our younger selves, Beauchamp’s invitation to giggle and grin at the beast makes for a delightful exorcism of that silly bit of unpleasantness
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February 5th, 2008 John
Weird ass paintings by inpatients passed along by psychiatric nurses making an extra buck is the kind of low level art world intrigue that widens my eyes — apparently this also happens to reporters for the National Post, who know a good story when they stumble upon it.
As painted by the artist only known as Donnelly, current owner Ron Lucy describes it like this — “It’s a bit creepy” — and he’s trying to find the artist or, more likely, the artist’s family, to hand the painting back to. Can you help the poor guy out — it’s been sitting in his garage for 18 years because his wife doesn’t appreciate said creepiness (though apparently his kids do). They’ve run into one other painting by the mysterious Donnelly, though the owner declined to sell.
Perhaps he’d be interested in this one if the artist’s family can’t be tracked down.
Lucy has set up a Web site for the painting and his quest. Perhaps it will bring other Donnelly collectors out of the woodwork.
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