Author: Charlotte Simons

Shaun Tan’s style of near-wordless or mute storytelling is definitely very close to animation. I find it is something that I particularly enjoy. In terms of The Arrival, it is definitely something that employs the themes of homelessness, belonging, and immigration. This brings the book to another level. When themes are reinforced in this way, it means that the artist is thinking on multiple levels of how to communicate the idea. Illustration, especially when there are no words involved is essentially all about communication, and this was something that I fully enjoyed seeing realized in The Arrival.

 

It was harder to tell with The Lost Thing, because we didn’t see the book, but I think that the work was not as fully realized. I also didn’t really appreciate the CGI animation- Shuan Tan’s handrawn, sentimental style didn’t translate well enough.

Asterios Polyp is a graphic novel that is printed in an extremely limited color scheme. For most of the novel David Mazzuchelli utilized only four colors: all three primaries (yellow, red, blue) and purple. The last chapter also uses the rest of the secondaries (green, orange). The purple is the only consistent color throughout- it is the color that provides the structure of the novel. It creates all of the outlines, the shadows, the volume. This is significant for two reasons, the first being that it creates a failed symmetry between the three primary colors. This is because purple is a mix of blue and red. The metaphor is the mixing of Asterios’ and Hana’s worldviews. Whenever yellow interferes, something bad is happening, or Asterios is not where he is meant to be, such as an working as a car mechanic.

Darkly humorous, Amphigorey displays a unique style. It is completely black and white, with the line quality alternating in between sketchy and clean. It is clearly rooted in surrealism, although perhaps straying from this theme to mere nonsense tales. This makes sense, however, because Amphigorey is taken from the word amphigory, meaning nonsense composition. “Gorey” is obviously a derivative pun of “Edward Gorey” and the actual word meaning bloody violence. Near every story has an underlying tone of violence, whether or not the main theme of that segment consists of sex, absurdities, couches, or penguins.

Looking at the Sick Rose in class, was interesting. When we talked about the significance behind the symbols, I found it more interesting. It was very nice of Professor Janelle to visit and discuss with us what exactly was going on within the images. The illustration is directly showing the text, while expanding on it with visual metaphors. This is what illustration is meant to do- although it can be done a lot more beautifully. Blake has the basic concepts of illustration down pat, although I have to say that his execution is god-awful. This is especially pertinent because he is a poet, and the words are supposed to be highly importnant. However, because of the way that he has done his typography, it just takes away from the subject matter.

The scriptorium workshop where we got to use a traditional printing press was a lot of fun. Over the summer I had the opportunity in Rome, Italy to attend a week long typography workshop. In the workshop, we also used a kind of letterpress- although the way we went about it was different. Because the workshop dealt in actual prints, meaning acid-etched metal plates, rather than the keys straight onto the paper, the format of the press was different. We put together the keys into the arrangement of text we wanted, added texture to the plate, and literally lit the ground on fire. I have a short video of one of my professors holding up a plate and taking a blow-torch to it. Inside, of course. Europeans don’t have the overly-safe obsessions that Americans do. It was a lot of fun to see how the process worked in both cases, especially since there seem to be many ways to do it and I am very interested in book arts.

Goya is one of the originators of surrealism, which here stems more from the idea of mixed metaphors than the surrealism of Freud and Carl Jung. The surrealism of Goya does not stem from dreams, it stems from a critique of society. The collage aspect of his work that later became such a staple in surrealism in this case is due to plate etchings. Each etching plays directly off of a colloquial saying, meaning that you have to have experienced and grown up in Goya’s culture in order to understand it without analysis. It also is more grounded in reality than most surrealism- it has a direct relationship to everyday life, and a specific message. A lot of other surrealism tends toward lofty ideas and obscure messages, so it was nice to see something that was not that way.

This weeks workshops were interesting. While my main medium is gouaches, paints, and digital drawing on photoshop, it is nice to see how collage works in the act of physical creation. I definitely wished I could have played a lot more with interweaving layers- I had not even finished the background I was setting up when it was time to go. That being said, art takes a lot longer than just 75 minutes.

The collage project also brought to mind some more modern versions of collage, like stop motion animations. Monty Python is famous for its use of collage stop motion, and youtubers have millions of followers from their work. It is something that is simultaneously high-tech and tactile, which is the winning combination in the era of virtual reality.

 

Looking at both Amphigorey and Une Semaine De Bonté we can begin to categorize similarities and differences. Compare and contrast, if you will. First, they are both in the surrealist genre- this is obvious. Une Semaine de Bonté utilizes our associations with animals, water, traditional depictions of the feminine and other popular tropes to critique society in a manner that brings the viewer beyond, or under, reality. Surreal. The same goes for Amphigory, named for the word amphirgory- or a “nonsense verse or composition.” Indeed, many of the stories within Amphigorey reflect this- they are funny, dark, deal with sexual perversions, and make no sense. All of this falls under the definition of surrealism and surrealist themes that are present in Une Semaine de Bonté. Amphigory, though, is perhaps less critically scathing to society.

Unlike in Une Semaine de Bonté, Amphigorey tends to deal more with the mundane, linking it directly back to Freud’s sense of the uncanny. Uncanny is the idea that something that is very familiar suddenly becomes eerie with unfamiliarity. It describes that second where you don’t recognize yourself in the mirror and you think somebody is standing behind you. While elements of this appear in Une Semaine de Bonté, they are not nearly as prevalent.

The passage of time in art seems to be something that Eastern traditions consider much more than Western ones. The hierarchical nature of landscape paintings as well as the method of reading a scroll both lend themselves to an understanding of time as a part of the elements of nature. Meanwhile, Western art tends to be more interested in the formal techniques of fleshiness. I can’t remember whether Yun Fei Ji mentioned this in our class talk or at his gallery talk later that afternoon, but he has been trained in western oil painting in addition to traditional scroll painting. The reason he uses the Eastern tradition to portray his work, excluding cultural factors, is because oil paints are too fleshy- they are meant to capture a single moment and all of its protruding, rounded, subtly colored forms. The gesture of ink, on the other hand is much more representative and plays with the universal understanding. In contradiction it both removes the object from the flow of time and places it within the context of a period of time. The object by itself is the universal representation- something that we saw emphasized in My Name Is Red. The object within the hierarchy of the landscape, puts that universal object within the context of a specific time frame. It is removed from the world that we experience everyday.

In class, we discussed a little bit about what a book actually is. For me, a book is an object that has pages inside of it, and that has words or images that are fixed and no longer/not subject to change. The reason I describe it this way is that for me books can also be an art form. An artist book is an incredibly fascinating object that does not have the stigma of “don’t touch.” While they might need to be handled delicately, they are meant to be handled. Usually they are beautiful, tactile, and have an intellectual meaning- all of the components that make up my favorite kinds of artwork.

 

Here are some cool examples:

Most of these are accordian bound, but there are other kinds of binding which can only be done by hand that are unusual.

A personal favorite is the dos a dos method: