Quote(s) for the Week 8/2/11

Josh (@IamJoshKopin) and I attended a panel event held at the Whitney Museum here in New York City when he was in town a few weeks back. The panel itself was made up of Gary Panter, Art Spiegelman, and Chris Ware; moderated by John Carlin. The subject of discussion was, ostensibly, the art of comics.

"Where I used to strive for movement and restlessness I now attempt to sense and express the complete total calm of objects and the surrounding air."

~ Lyonel Feininger (1871-1956), comicsmith, painter, musician and caricaturist, translated & quoted in the 2oo4 textbook "Expressionism" from Taschen books

The panel event was held in conjunction with an exhibit at the Whitney Museum (@whitneymuseum) exploring the work of the man who wrote that, one of the Twentieth Century's first comics creators: Lyonel Feininger. He was both a comicsmith and a traditional painter who was intentionally brought into newspaper comics in order to bring some legitimacy to the medium. Feininger had the luxury of coming into comics from a fine art perspective as a result. So a search for stillness seems to be right in line with his other work: painting, a single image static art. In fact, there's no way to know exactly which discipline he was speaking of when he said the above quote but its implications for comics are just as interesting as its implications for painting. If not more so.

Here's why:

Eddie Campbell, the excellent comicsmith, comics publisher, and comics artist, said this in a 2oo6 interview with Tom Spurgeon of ComicsReporter.com:

"... all our theories about how comics are put together are invariably about time. The duration of a panel's action and the duration between one panel and the next. We haven't added very much to the Eisner-Steranko concept of 'sequential art.' And if the form is to say something important, rather than just involve itself in the kinetic thrill of drawn characters chasing each other, then we have to think harder."

Motion seems to be more exciting than stillness. More sexy. Things moving from point A to point B over time open the reader/viewer to be captivated and one might be tempted to think that motion was a requirement for narrative in comics, as it might be in film, but I'm not so sure anymore.

I myself once wrote on this blog that the medium of comics...

"exists frozen forever in snap shots, yet feels animated in sequence... moves without motion and speaks without sound"

but perhaps it would be best to embrace the stillness of the comics page. To "think harder" as Campbell implores and do as Feininger suggests: find "the complete total calm of objects".

~@JonGorga

An Opportunity I'm Not Library To Pass Up

I don't like winter break very much. It's not that I don't like the time off (I do), and it's not like I don't like my family (I love them, that's why I come home), there just isn't very much to do in Chicago's north suburbs in late December and early January. Rather than find things to occupy me, then, I have often to make them.

Luckily, my local library has a pretty sweet graphic novel and collected comics collection. It's growing, too: when I started checking books out as a freshmen in high school, the whole shebang occupied maybe four bookshelves. Today, when I walked into the library for the first time in probably about a year, it took up four whole bookcases.

Clearly, someone at the Highland Park public library likes me very much.

I always use the opportunity of being home to read some stuff I wouldn't have read otherwise; things that just aren't my speed enough to buy, or things that are just too big, unwieldy or expensive for me to consider purchasing on a normal occasion. This vacation, I've chosen three things to read, all of which encompass both categories of comics I borrow from the library.

The first, Fantagraphics' complete collection of Gilbert Hernandez's Palomar, is my introduction to Los Bros Hernandez. That I've read nothing of their work means that I have a pretty big hole in my comics knowledge, and I hope the experience of this tale, which originally ran in the Bros' Love and Rockets anthology, is as fantastic as everyone says it is. The HPPL also has Luba, Locas I and Locas II, so it's possible I'll also get to at least one of those before the break is over.

The second, Top Shelf's collection of Eddie Campbell's Alec comics, entitled The Years Have Pants, is something I've thought about buying a couple times, on the strength of recommendations alone. It's a huge, beautiful, book- I hope I enjoy reading it as much as I enjoy looking at it.

The last maxi-sized comic currently on loan to me is Brian Wood and Ryan Kelly's Local, which looks about as perfect a comic for me as there ever was. If Wood's Demo proved anything, it's that he writes a great short comics story and this collection of twelve interconnected ones, about a girl who sets out from Portland, Oregon and just travels around the country, looks perfect. And pretty.

I'm hoping to review each of them; I'm curious how their massive size and quality paper changes the experience of reading comics. I'll let you know how it goes.