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Posts tagged "chris ware"




Robert Crumb, “A Short History of America”, 1979
Chris Ware on the strip, quoted in Todd Hignite’s In the Studio: Visits with Contemporary Cartoonists:
I’m obviously prone to hyperbole, but “A Short History of America” has got to be one of the greatest comic strips ever drawn; I find myself thinking about it, looking at it, and stealing from it probably more than any other single page. Even if this was all Robert Crumb ever drew, that’d be enough…
Chris Ware’s mural designed for 826 Valencia
It depicts the parallel development of humans and their efforts at and motivations for communication, spoken and written. It’s a very complex mural, and requires its most devoted viewers to study it for about an hour, from the middle of Valenica Street, by far the best vantage point.
The mural was applied by skilled artisans according to Ware’s specifications. The bottom half of the building, which has been painted black, features gold lettering that states the name of the place. Over the window is a nice burgundy awning.
The mural’s intricate causal diagrams depict the development of the human race, along with its efforts at, and motivations for, communication. The theme is sympathetic with the centre’s philanthropic function to encourage and tutor young writers. ‘I didn’t want it to make anyone “feel good”, especially in that typically muralistic “hands across the water” sort of way,’ explains Ware, ‘I especially wanted it to be something that people living in the neighbourhood could look at day after day and hopefully not tire of too quickly. I really hoped whomever might happen to come across it would find something that showed a respect for their intelligence, and didn’t force-feed them any “message”.’
Ware cracks me up. God forbid he ever makes anyone “feel good.” Still, this is amazing.
See kids? Even Chris Ware The Genius © gets rejections.
See also: a breakdown of the cover with commentary.
Ware’s exhibit at the Whitney Biennial was a life-changing experience for me. The under drawing, measuring… It’s shocking how raw the drawing is. His drawings look so clean when they’re shrunk and colored in print. In the originals they look so labored over, sometimes even crude. You can see the struggle, his thinking on the page. The Quimby original at Angoulême was such an object; the cut zipatone, the scale, the juxtaposition between the interior panels and the more illustrative background landscape. It was engaging by itself, beyond just being preparatory work for a print book.


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