i read this as kind of a childhood tale, panel 2 may be tic-tac-toe, a game, play, w/ the underlay of touching oneself, knowing oneself, feeling oneself grow...
panel 5 i read as a pair of police officers, representing cultural conditioning, the double pressures of home & state, what your family expects of you, what society expects of you, often we fall into cultural conditioning w/ no questions asked, because these pressures are great & the feeling of acceptance is rewarding...
in the final panel, i find it interesting that the color of the rain is inverted, red instead of blue, perhaps pointing to blood, once again the body, once again the question, right or wrong, should one follow nature, their own true nature, or adapt oneself to compromise in order to succeed in ones sociological setting?
it is beautiful & i like the way it is so large & the way you photograph'd it to reinforce that fact.
The first and most comprehensive source of abstract comics on the web, tracing the history and surveying the contemporary landscape of abstract sequential art.
On Abstract Comics: The Anthology (Currently SOLD OUT):
The artists assembled by Andrei Molotiu for his anthology ABSTRACT COMICS (Fantagraphics, $39.99) push “cartooning” to its limits... It’s a fascinating book to stare at, and as with other kinds of abstract art, half the fun is observing your own reactions: anyone who’s used to reading more conventional sorts of comics is likely to reflexively impose narrative on these abstractions, to figure out just what each panel has to do with the next.
--Douglas Wolk, New York Times Book Review, Holiday Books edition, December 6, 2009 The collection has a wealth of rewarding material... it is a significant historical document that may jump-start an actual new genre.
--Doug Harvey, LA Weekly It becomes a treat to take a page of art - or a simple panel - and consider how the shapes, texture, depth, and color interact with one another; to reflect on how, when one takes the time, the enjoyment one ordinarily finds in reading a purely textually-oriented, narrative-driven written story can - with the graphic form - be translated into something completely different.
--Adam Waterreus, Politics and Prose, "Favorite Graphic Literature of the Year."
...this arresting book is like a scoop of primordial narrative, representational mud. Which is to say, it has vitaminic powers.
--Design Observer
For years, comics (at least American ones) have doggedly refused for one reason or another, to consider other schools of art and beyond mere representation. It's only now we see artists attempting to branch out and try to push at the edge's of the medium's definition. As such I found Abstract Comics to be a revealing, thought-provoking and genuinely lovely book that I'll be sure to be rereading in the months to come.
Blaise--what do the words say? I can't make it out.
ReplyDeleteyes, it is beautiful.
ReplyDeletethat first panel is a breath-taker especially.
i read this as kind of a childhood tale, panel 2 may be tic-tac-toe, a game, play, w/ the underlay of touching oneself, knowing oneself, feeling oneself grow...
panel 5 i read as a pair of police officers, representing cultural conditioning, the double pressures of home & state, what your family expects of you, what society expects of you, often we fall into cultural conditioning w/ no questions asked, because these pressures are great & the feeling of acceptance is rewarding...
in the final panel, i find it interesting that the color of the rain is inverted, red instead of blue, perhaps pointing to blood, once again the body, once again the question, right or wrong, should one follow nature, their own true nature, or adapt oneself to compromise in order to succeed in ones sociological setting?
it is beautiful & i like the way it is so large & the way you photograph'd it to reinforce that fact.
welldone!
I like that the words are obscured. They become ambient, and it's less about establishing a narrative flow than creating an evocative atmosphere.
ReplyDelete