Re: rules discussion below
When we talk about rules, we usually mean preference/style. And when we talk about how there have to be rules in art, what we mean is that we want everyone to obey our preference/style.
On some level it is similar to liking people with short blond hair (or whatever your dumb thing is). Anyone who only thinks that short blond hair people are 'the way' is totally a dork/moron. If you only associate with people who fit your visual preference, you are going to lead a pretty lame life. But in art, committing to your arbitrary aesthetic preference/type and then making your OWN art BASED on this type is so common and even encouraged. Sure, I'd like to hang out with Alexis Bledel. But I'd also be into spending a ton of time with Wallace Shawn.
Jesse expanded on this to say something along the lines that the area you get to beyond the preference/style line is the sweet spot of all art. When you're doing your thing to the best of your abilities and not obeying your preference/style, that's a place where beautiful things start to happen.
I just saw Murnau's Faust recently and loved it. So much of me would like to spend my life trying to make something like that. But that would be like me trying to make something that I really like (preference) and not making something that is within me. Guy Maddin has spent his life making Murnau movies. I respect Maddin a ton...he's a talented guy. But I wonder what would happen if he would make whatever is in his strange unique brain. If we all put our preference in one room and our own art in another room and saw what happened...that might be a different world.
23 comments:
Really happy you used Wallace Shawn as your example.
Maybe you guys are already familiar with Sol Lewitt? Seems pretty relevant: Sentences on Conceptual Art
'sol lewitt rules'
I got into a debate with a family member a while back, and at one point he said, "I don't believe this stuff because I'm Catholic, I'm Catholic because I believe this stuff. "
Like I was doing, I think you're putting the ideational cart before the horse.
I think when you describe rules as "preferences", you're undercutting their necessity in all forms. It's not just a kind of random draw, having to do with how a given thing might merely look.
Wherever you start from, you're starting from a set of rules, if it's "I want to communicate idea "x"", you immediately start banging the idea and form together, and where they intersect, you'll find a rule, or a method that precludes the use of another method.
I think the problem might be that we take these basic rules for granted; If you want to paint a red flower, you shouldn't use black.
Usually, in forms like painting, you don't have to hew to a rigid set of rules; the materials are the rules. Everything but technical aspects can go unsaid, and those are just tips, really.
The written word has a clear parallel in human speech, so the basic rules of that form are presupposed as well, though it gets much more involved as you move into real writing.
Obviously, comics are very different. The materials don't matter so much, as long as it can be reproduced on a page ( or a screen), and comics have no "real world" parallel. It's not something we do growing up. It's not a common language.
So, yeah, if you want to communicate idea "x", you literally have to create a schematic for getting there , whether it's in your head or in thumbnail form.
Comics are not a form where some kind of subjective feeling the creator might have while making it will translate at all to the readers experience.
If you aren't figuring that translation out, it's not a real idea. It's a whiff of one, it's a feeling like an idea. Anybody can do that. Most people give up after they figure out that what they're putting down isn't translating, but I think some "art" cartoonists have decided that what they're putting down is better for not translating; it's super freeing, right? You get that buzz when you're finished, but it's a self-inclosed feedback loop. There is no reader. It's the revolutionary ethic as self-gratification, everything Chomsky was scared of. ,,
I think people take this route because it feels very much like being a "natural". There are people who seem to be "naturals", like Crumb, or the Hernandez Bros., but that's the result of deep, pre-rational understandings of comics that came out of childhood fixations. They have a huge set of rules that go unsaid.
There's nothing wrong with not being a genius, and understanding that you really have to work through all these angles, even though you might have to drop the magical naif act while you're doing it.
Guys like Kim Deitch, Kevin Huizenga and Zak Sally are good examples of cartoonists who've worked through these angles in really concerted ways and come out the other end as really good cartoonists. Chris Ware is another, but he's much smarter and more disciplined and driven than most, so he's achieved even more, I think, than the real "naturals".
Sorry for all the tangents. It's just really hard to read these posts when the author makes comics that are, to me, unreadable. Not because they're full of bad ideas, but because those ideas can't be deciphered.
Also, just in a really basic way, I think a lot of art comics people just want drawing to be comics and comics to be drawings. That is to say that they want making comics to feel like drawing feels, but that's like showing up to a building site with a bucket of paint and some rollers when the foundation hasn't yet been poured.
Rules are good for focusing sometimes. Haiku, the idea of human forms, the way speech is represented visually, but I'm always wary of my rules becoming empty rituals. I mean, they are mostly empty, but they can be counterproductive or visually uninteresting or cause things like concept albums.
Frank mentioned this great essay by Dave Hickey in that other post.. Hickey talks about the game of basketball and how players can sometimes make beautiful, amazing things happen by being on the verge of breaking the rules, but operating within them in an unexpected way. That's what Crumb started out doing, I think - inhabiting a comfortable, familiar form and inserting his weird obsessions into it. The rules of everything are constantly changing and not getting trapped by them can be a feat.
And I agreed with everything you said, ULAND, until the part about Austin's work. There are so many premises we accept as de rigeur, unquestioningly. To me, Austin's comics create a space that is confusing, but specific. It's like you're actually viewing a scene as it happens in real life (or in a Cassavetes movie): it's happening, there is no meaning, no correct way to parse it, characters behave irrationally, the world has no organizing principle, unlike comics usually, which are just extrapolating an idea (virtually all of my comics, for example) or following the predictable movements of understood characters or objects (Jaime H, tons of others).
Just extrapolating an idea can be very difficult, rewarding, or nonsensical, depending on the idea itself, of course. I don't think we've run out of interesting ideas to exchange, and I wish more comics concerned themselves, first and foremost, with trying to present the most interesting and edifying ideas they can muster. If what follows is predictable, it might be because it's following a logical course of action that our brains have already created a pattern for. That can be a boring experience, sure, but usually that's only when you haven't made some kind of emotional investment. That's an irrational thing to do ( sorta), and, in my view, that's where the magic is happening. I don't care how that is done, as long as it happens.I don't really have a problem making that investment that are presented in pretty traditional ways. I can get really into science fiction and Mystery/crime novels, for instance.It's more about how it's done.
I think one difference we have is that I don't necessarily see any added value in achieving these ends in "new" ways, other than it being just sort of interesting in a fleeting way, suggesting to me that the newness isn't really what you take with you. ( And, really, we have a genre of popular music called "noise". There really isn't anything "new" you could do, I don't think. What, more post-modern grab-bagging?). I'd really like to ask you guys what the fixation is with being avant-garde. What is the motivation? I see so much old stuff that I never knew existed; why burn through all that just to get to some unknown, vacant space?
Either way, it seems to me like you need to know the rules before you can break them. If that's not the case, then why even mention rules? Not abiding by rules isn't the same thing as breaking them. Breaking implies a concerted action, not a failure to act.
Charlie Kauffman isn't interesting because he's invented some new language, it's because he uses a language we all know to say things we didn't really know how to say before. He didn't get there by refusing to speak in a common tongue.
ALSO — I'm sure Austin is a swell guy. I think, based on how vocally he promotes his vision of comics, he won't get too upset with my criticism. Also, I'm sure he knows that his comics are pretty out there. I might not even be qualified to talk about his comics, cause I can't get past the surface.
I don't want that to sound like a dig, but this might be an instance where telling the truth means making it sting a little.
I think what you're saying makes sense. I actually abandoned something I was working on (that I really liked) primarily because I felt like the only person who'd get anything from it other than the outre way of putting images together was myself. And I don't want to make stuff only for me.
Regarding avante-garde: I'm not really into it - I'm just searching for something. I've said too many times that I don't find much satisfaction in comics, but I feel like most of the ones that have made the biggest impressions on me over the years have been fairly traditionally structured.
"Either way, it seems to me like you need to know the rules before you can break them."
But doesn't that mean we have to agree what those rules are first? I think that's what I'm wondering. Or do we just accept what most comics are as the method for making comics and learn that method before going any further? I think this idea that you must know the rules before you break them is simplistic because of the assumption of what the rules are. What is the form of comics? Is it just recognizable forms couched in a traditional narrative?
I'm really not interested in "new" or breaking boundaries, more just asking questions about our assumptions. But I will admit that when I see something unexpected or something that skates on the "razor's edge of the "rules" (rules in an intuitive sense, not a normative one), it can cause the hair to stand up on the back of my neck.
Today's avant-garde is tomorrow's structure. You don't have to set up camp, you can be the one who clears the brush for the next generation of settlers. I don't really have any goal to bring an edifying message to the world via comics. I'd like to crack the code wide open though. It's a toy that I want to unscrew and put back together the wrong way.
I agree that it starts with an understanding of the rules though. I see that in Jason's work. Not so much in Austin's though. I think their comics are very similar though, but with Austin it's like one step too far. Maybe there is still value in that though. I always find myself coming back to Austin's work and trying to get it. I guess there is an allure to it. Maybe that's all that he needs.
Jason's work is like Ben Jones in a way to me. With both of them you see the structure of comics in front of your eyes, but then in piece by piece disintegrates into something more interesting.
I don't know if it's a matter of agreeing with the rules, or just recognizing that they exist. The latter suggests you have a choice in the matter, the latter that these rules aren't about our individual choice. I kind of think that because the rules are based on our ideas about what is going to make sense to others, it's not entirely in our hands; we can't decide what is going to "read" and what isn't.
Ian- I don't think the next generation is going to come to the area you've cleared out unless you can speak to some interests that aren't just "comics".
BUT I'd like to make clear that I don't know how to do all of this stuff. I feel like I can write an interesting script, and I can draw, but I can't bring them together in comics form.
You're outsmarting yourself Uland. All drawings have a narrative element to them. They tell you something about time and place, mood, etc. Comics are just a bunch of drawings next to one another multiplying that narrative. If you love to draw and you love comics you should draw them. Don't worry so much about what it's supposed to be before it actually happens. Look at some of Frederic Fleury's comics. The images don't seem to have any connection to one another, but they still work as comics in some sense.
I used to think the same way, ULAND - then I told myself I'd draw a page a day and see what happens; after a couple years, that became Exploding Head Man.
That comic is not always the easiest to follow, but it works, and I think I've improved since then.
In all my polemics about freedom and such, I'm just telling people "Try anything! Just make comics!"
"Comics are just a bunch of drawings next to one another multiplying that narrative. "
Right. Agreed. Recently I've been making drawings that are not panels for a comic. Just drawings. Then i line them up on the floor in a row, left to right. Narrative sequence. I could put 'em on the wall or in a book in order. Cool. Doesn't feel like I'm making comics tho. it's like montage - a film unfolding.
When i break up the page into panels, that feels like comics. but it feels funny to start sectioning off the page after just making drawings and NOT dividing up the page. Following me? So, it's this really weird thing, to me anyhow, where "drawing isn't just comics" it's a conscious dividing up of the page that makes it comics, To me. That FEELS like I'm making comics. when i just draw and sequence bits of paper on the floor, that is not comics - and in a book in order, say one image per page, that might be comics, but it doesn't feel like I'm making a comic. Weird.
Frank, it makes you wonder about the first comic strips. Did those guys compose on a single page for the aesthetic advantage, or just because it was pratical for the production process? This is how technique becomes dharma over time.
What would Windsor McCay have done with Adobe CS?
I don't know that an abstract drawing tells us much about specific places/times, etc.., at least not in really intentional ways.
— That's something I'm after. I want to have some kind of authorial vision of something before I dive in. Every time I've finished a comic, I'm just haunted by the massive gulf between what I think are really great ideas, and the actual results. It's just dry, dead , lifeless stuff. My drawings do not evoke a narrative sense within me, so it's difficult to make that leap without it looking really forced..
I've always seen old strips on one page - meaning the sequencing is divided on one page - boxes or lines to denote the next image in sequence even stuff from the mid 19th century there was sequencing on the same piece of paper - so that is what i'm saying that when I draw just to draw - a landscape - a figure - I'm not sequencing these images - later sure they could be put in order in a book on a wall - even on the same page but that's later - composing comics to me is about dividing the single sheet of paper - that FEELS like comics to me - it's the intention of the sequencing.
this often leads to growing bored with the story - but I never get bored just drawing images and wish that the ease of composition, in making drawings would bleed over into wanting to draw a comic - they sort of cancel themselves out. that's just my current mood to. Check back later.
@ULAND:
" don't know that an abstract drawing tells us much about specific places/times, etc.., at least not in really intentional ways."
no, but they create their own space that is not describing a pre-existing space or an idea of one. In combination with words, the vagueness can lend mystery or unspecificity in a good way.
@Frankie:
I usually approach comics by gridding a page out first, and that ritual is so pleasing to me. I mostly like sequencing words much more than making drawings in comics. I really like to draw, but I hate having to draw certain things or make environments where everything coheres.
There's a good interview with Dan Clowes from TCJ #233 where he talks about how you have to be inventive as a cartoonist to get around that. don't have it in front of me right now - I'll make a post with quotes from that interview tomorrow probably. I almost never use images to create a sequence in my comics. It's kinda hard to specifically say what are the images and what aren't. The words, themselves, are a visual element, and I use them for the motion of the story. I design whole pages to look cool (to me) and the "images" are there to provide counterpoint, visual interest, or add another aspect to what the words are saying or the story is doing.
talked to Blaise about his process the other day, and it seems like he does what you were talking about Frank - he makes a lot of images and put them together as a form after the fact. I think I (and probably you) probably like structuring things more than he does.
RE: grid - yah I like using grid to sequence at a base level sure - that process is pleasing to me to - ut often a game -and drawing for drawing sake doesn't feel like that. I like playing the game - but drawing is just drawing. Sequencing is different. Poetry vs Prose - same apples and oranges convo
It's funny how the grid seems like the most conservative aspect of a comics page, particularly the 6-panel, yet you find it in comics as far out as Jason's. How many artists have really deconstructed the grid? Chippendale's snake grid is great, but nobody will touch it because they don't want to get labeled a biter. It's a shame, it's a really practical solution for highly animated comics.
Simple compositions are a pretty effective tool for making sure the craziness doesn't overwhelm the reader. That was always one of the most appealing things about CF or Brinkman or Chippendale for me - there's a minimalism beneath all the dirty mark-making. It's kinda like listening to Mindflayer - all this chaotic energy is focused by the beat - there's this simple thing driving the music, allowing it to be so wild.
These are the local rules, the ones I've found work for me, allow my comix not to be mud. Doesn't mean some other person won't come along and blow the lid of of that, show me a completely different way to do things.
MOSTLY
Rules are for those who
can't or won't think
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