-Sir Alan Bowness
Art is often about the process of discovery to me. I try to make my process of drawing and creating such that I don't know what I'll ultimately end up with. I'm most satisfied with what I've done, not when it fulfills some criteria or plan I've decided on before making it, but when the result is completely different and exciting in a way I hadn't expected. I feel similarly about comics or any culture that I really love.
The first time I saw the work of Jason T. Miles was when I bought a mini from him at APE called "Airdrome" in 2005, I think. It was one of those great con/zine-fest experiences (like a couple years before that when I bought "Ramsden" from Sammy Harkham) where you serendipitously run across something amazing you hadn't ever heard of before. I checked Jason's stuff out whenever I saw it in Arthur magazine or Kramers, and I still always dig his stuff.
I read about "Ed the Happy Clown" in the 1989 "Hot Issue" of "Rolling Stone." It described a comic about a guy whose penis-head was transplanted with the head of an inter-dimensional Ronald Reagan. I stole it from this awesome comic shop called Stage and Screen that used to exist in Dallas (it was on the same trip that I bought Raw Vol. 2, No. 2 - only had enough $ for one of 'em). It became my favorite book. I loved at how complexly the stupid plots were woven together. I lent it out, had to buy another copy, bought everything Chester Brown did. "I Never Liked You" is still probably the comic I like more than any other.
Soon after that I bought issue 138 of The Comics Journal because it had an interview inside with Alan Moore. I'd never heard of this magazine before. I'd read V and Watchmen and loved Alan Moore. This interview opened up the whole world of undergrounds and alternative comix to me. I read about Crumb, Clowes, lots of other key folks. And, of course, that started me reading the Journal, itself. One of the seminal cultural experiences of my life, for sure.
Blah, blah, blah - I was gonna talk about Ron Rege, the anthology from SPX 2001, Kevin Huizenga, how the first time I heard of Frank Santoro was when he was on Inkstuds and blew me away, seeing the early-sixties Fantastic Four covers by Jack Kirby at a comics' shop I worked at in high school... I could go on...
The point was going to be that what makes the greatest impression is something unexpectedly incredible. Dylan Sparkplug and I were talking today about the beauty of minis and shitty comic books vs. fancily produced books. The nicer books force the contents to compete with the form in a way that doesn't always work out well. The crappier, throw-away variety, on the other hand, can so much more easily surprise you with how great they are - they can become totem objects in a powerful way.
16 comments:
i would like to see airdrome and/or ramsden if you still have them
also,
fancily produced books = high expectations
zines = low expectations
yeah... hm...
i like what you said before about failure
failure can happen on both these levels
Yep, yep.
I'll try to find 'em.
But you guys don't make fancy books, so you can't speak to what the experience is of creating them. You can only speak to self published, small work. Someone like Ben Jones can do it all, and can speak to those experiences. Ask him what it is like.
It's hard to value your apparent bias.
the 'process of discovery' is why i don't use sketch books and do every page of a book there and then, leaving them in good or bad. much more fun than sketching stuff out.
and for the record, 'Lions' looks pretty fancy to me.
Oliver- yeah, I only keep sketchbooks as notebooks, to plan things or write down ideas. There's a good Inkstuds interview with JTM where he talks about this.
Anon- why does that matter? I'm talking about my response as a viewer, not about my experience as a creator (other than relating the two). I don't dislike nicely made books, but they live differently as artifacts and foster different expectations. These objects we make have a life outside of the one we give them. They can get stuffed in the back of an old, musty book store and sneak up on you. I'm just saying long-windedly that I'd be more likely to be unexpectedly delighted by a crumbly old issue of Jimmy Olsen than by an art book with reproductions by Rauschenberg. I might or might not like Kramers or the Rausch book more than the dopey comic, but the comic has a weird power by virtue of it's unexpected beauty. It might shock me like a koan or something.
It doesn't matter that you produce fancy books. But it's weird that you keep obsessing that other people do.
sorry. one more time.
It doesn't matter that you don't produce fancy books. But it's weird that you keep obsessing that other people do.
Ha! Is that some kind of meta-joke?
It's amazing how much shit you get, mainly from this dude Anonymous, just for throwing out questions and ideas..
I didn't get any kind of bias against "fancy books", just musings on the pros and cons of both types.. I did find it rather bizarre that you linked to a review of The Blot and Asthma as examples of "crappier production value books that might surprise you with how good they are"? Is that a joke? Both of those books had really nice, if totally different, production values.
I still have my copy of "Airdrome" that I picked up at that same APE.
oops! That was a fuck up! I was trying to link to one of Hankiewicz's older, more home-made minis! Yeah, I think Asthma and the Blot are beautifully packaged - they look great.
I think it was at that APE that I bought that studygroup antho from you, Zack, which was also hand-made and really cool.
Link changed
I like the topic lines for this: 'beatingatopictodeath', 'sorry', etc.
imo though the only area where the 'book' format of a comic kind of usurped the content was KE7. god, that thing sucked. otherwise, I dont know.
maybe I'm just super naive but I think that getting published-- or definitely more accurately having a decent 'artifact'- a 'profesh' book- isnt that hard nowadays.
very few comics are presented in a way that kind of throw me off the trail of it's content. like I said, KE7 did but that's because the content was bad and the book was badder. I mean, if there were comics that were like packaged like an art book, or boxed like GoGo Monster or the Gary Panter book, I might be like 'aw damn this is going to be a great book!', but even then I dont know.
Im never really pissed at the format, just the content. Like if it's a shitty photocopied zine I'll look through it but if it's not any good then I wont look through it (read that twice). Same goes with books. Maybe you guys are just easily affected by glossy covers and flap jackets.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AezWjFQ2hfc&feature=related
Trash is a really appropriate metaphor. I feel similarly when I look at works by Rauschenberg.. I've seen some of these cardboard pieces at museums in Barcelona and here in Portland, and they're some of my favorites. The recontextualization of actual garbage - calling it art - is like transubstantiation.
When I installed the Picturebox show show at Fumetto last year the director said to me: "How am I going to explain this show to the trustees? It looks like trash!"
haha
(It was me, CF and Lauren Weinstein)
Ha! guess comics don't always have the presence on a gallery wall that an actual piece of trash does.
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