Abstract Comics: The Blog

"say when"

2012-01-28T08:14:00.000-05:00

"say when" by Rosaire Appel.
(Three 16x20 digital prints from an accordion book by the same name.)

Anonymous abstract comic, c. 2007-2008

2012-01-25T18:35:00.014-05:00

I bought this comic, together with another one (less obviously sequential) clearly by the same artist at Forbidden Planet in NYC around 2007-2008. I asked at the counter who had drawn it, since it it had no information whatsoever, and they had no idea. I also asked their minicomic purchaser at the time, Austin English, and he told me he had not bought it for the store, the price label wasn't even one the store used, and that occasionally people would sneak in and put their own comics on the minicomics shelf without the store's knowledge. Further inquiries online yielded no answer, unfortunately: too bad, because I would have liked to put it, or something new by the same creator, in the Abstract Comics anthology. I held a hope that, once the anthology came out, he or she would contact me, but that hasn't happened. So here it is. If you drew it, please contact me! Even if you didn't draw it, but know or at least have a suspicion who did, please let me know.

One last thing--I'm not really sure which way is up on this book. This direction seems to me to flow best, but the price tag might seem to indicate that what I have posted as the back cover is actually the front. So you could also start from the other end, and flip all the images over (at least in your imagination) to read it.

Interiors 4

2012-01-25T00:00:00.000-05:00

Latest comic up on my website Drawingsilence.com I'll be posting something every Wednesday for the next few weeks.

David Greenberger Tuesday! (Instrumental edition)

2012-01-24T19:22:00.005-05:00

"When Harpo Played the Harp"

"Vibes, Marimba"

"Drum Solo"

"Photo of My First Bass Guitar and Amplifier"

The Intercorstal: Witches

2012-01-23T08:18:00.003-05:00

"Pleasure Dancing"

Following on from my earlier post, which was about 'The Intercorstal' in general, I thought I'd share one of the standalone comics I've produced as part of the project.

During 2011 I started to experiment with new ways of producing pages for The Intercorstal, which led to applying packing stickers to found materials and using the outlines of the shapes that showed through to inform the direction of my pen marks. My wife and I were sent a set of promotional postcards by P&O Cruise company, and they seemed perfect. Over a period of about a month I created 8 pages from those postacrds -- I've posted a selection of them here. I then had 'art roadie' Daryl Morris create a PDF of them and handed copies out at events, and sent some off through the mail.

"The Blue Peter"

In much the same way that there's an argument as to whether The Intercorstal is 'abstract', I find myself asking whther these pages are 'comic pages'. They tell a narrative, and parts of a narrative, and the boundaries of the stickers create the panels, but because the images in those panels connect together the pages also stand as single images. I think I'm most happy thinking of them as splash pages -- each one announcing a new narrative path, or a defining piece of action. Would be intersted to see what you all think?

"The Rat King"

"And His Angry Ghost"

2012-01-23T05:35:00.001-05:00

Here a little exercise I made from my "DIY a abstract comic" grid ; You can read it in three distinct ways : aabb, abab or abba.

Button Eye by Kurt Kranz (1970 ?)

2012-01-22T05:28:00.000-05:00

A straight (and very interessant) comic strip of Bauhaus artist Kurt Kranz :

Kurt Kranz, Button Eye, 1970 ?, (crédit : http://bauhaus-online.de/en/atlas/werke/button-eye

(Andreï, I hope you didn't want to post this…)edit : another abstract comic, from 1966, by K. Kranz here.

Martin Vaughn-James, "Après la bataille," 1974

2012-01-22T02:51:00.003-05:00

This piece first appeared in Minuit no. 10, 1974. Not abstract, except syntactically. Still I think it's an important related genre to abstract comics. And notice the purely formal connections from panel to panel.

Rick Griffin, pages from "The Man from Utopia," 1970

2012-01-20T03:42:00.005-05:00

The Intercorstal Pages 47, 48 and 49

2012-01-18T19:35:00.002-05:00

A few of you may remember my project The Intercorstal from a little while ago (terrifyingly, I think it was years, rather than months...). Work has continued apace on it -- the last news featured on this blog about it was when I was celebrating reaching the end of the first third of my arbitrary 96-page target by producing a free-to-all 32-page comic.

Since then, the project's been through a few twists and turns. Since that first comic, I've produced another four, each one moving further and further from the style of comic I'm presenting here. I'll go into more detail on each of those in a later post, but hopefully if I tell you that the latest Intercorstal comic was a site-specific collaborative comic using photographs of a barber shop and some postage stickers, you'll get some idea of how far I've drifted from these 'traditional Intercorstal' pages.

My focus for the project for the moment is to return to the original Intercorstal style pages, and the three pages I've posted here are a result of that. As I complete more of them, I'll post them here, hopefully in groups of images that work together.

If anyone's keen to have a look at the pages I've completed so far, along with some details of the stand-alone Intercorstal comics I've done, they can be seen at The Intercorstal Blog.

A story for SOPA day

2012-01-18T04:49:00.003-05:00

David Greenberger Tuesday! (Rosebud edition)

2012-01-17T14:10:00.006-05:00

"Ballpoint Pen Springs and Pennies Along a Border"

"My imaginary Ballpoint Pen Spring Collection Intermingled With Actual Pennies"

"If Staples Coast a Penny Each"

""I Made This With My Dad When I was Ten - We Stapled Ballpoint Pen Springs and Glued Pennies to a Board"

episode x

2012-01-16T16:36:00.000-05:00

an abstract comic book with asemic writing

click here for more info

CONVOLUTED NOISE: Abstract Comics based on and inspired by avant garde noise music from Japan

2012-01-16T14:52:00.003-05:00

Artchéologisme 2

2012-01-16T12:37:00.000-05:00

the first "sunday strip" of artchéologisme is here

David Greenberger Tuesday! (Int'l Standard Percentages edition)

2012-01-10T16:48:00.000-05:00

"25% Spaghetti, 25% Ballpoint Pen Springs, 25% Staples, 25% Dogs"

"50% Dogs, 25% Staples, 25% Ballpoint Pen Springs"

"25% Staples, 37.5% Teeth, 37.5% Olives"

Jem Eaton, "The Canal of the Eternal Sun"

2012-01-10T00:50:00.003-05:00

Jem (also known as Jeremy, for those of you who might know his earlier comics such as A Sleepyhead Tale, The Island of Dr. Moral, and A World of Trouble) describes this piece as "a sequential grid, based on certain central conceits proposed in my new novel, Funny Sunday." The novel-in-progress, described by the artist as "a fantastic and darkly-humorous epic tale of sex, murder, theology, philosophy and cartoons, one featuring homicidal adolescents, hard-drinking bible salesmen, horny cartoonists, sinister birds, contemplative parasites, and talking trees," can be found here.

1 by Andrew R. Clark

2012-01-06T18:11:00.004-05:00

this is from Andrew's blog 88arc88.blogspot.com.

New Book - Amorphous Thoughts

2012-01-05T20:05:00.005-05:00

Hi everyone,

It's been a long time since I've posted - but I've been hard at work wrapping up my latest project, Amorphous Thoughts. This book is a sequel to my 2008 book - Stray Thoughts. (Originally covered by this blog here)

Page 5

You can read the whole book here.

There's a more detailed rundown of the project in the book itself - but I hope everyone enjoys it!

- Chris

TENM (third part).

2012-01-05T16:22:00.000-05:00

the first part is here ; the second is here.

tenm pl. IV

TENM (suite)

2012-01-05T09:24:00.000-05:00

pl. II and III :

Tenm pl. II

Tenm pl. III

TENM

2012-01-04T12:46:00.000-05:00

Mod 24

2012-01-03T19:59:00.000-05:00

David Greenberger Tuesday! (Maritime edition)

2012-01-03T17:08:00.004-05:00

"Waters of the World"

"The Water Was Full of Periscopes"

"Bottom-Dwelling Sea Creatures"

Intercells

2012-01-01T18:36:00.000-05:00

P.S. Wishing everyone the best for 2012!

Chapter 4

2011-12-31T19:13:00.005-05:00

Avalanche

2011-12-31T11:36:00.002-05:00

It's the winter :

best possible new year to all

2011-12-30T18:15:00.000-05:00

David Greenberger Tuesday! (Sixties edition)

2011-12-27T17:20:00.005-05:00

"By 2009 No One From The Jimi Hendrix Experience Was Still Alive"

"They Kicked Out Pete And Then Ringo Joined"

"The Dying Off Of The Mamas & Papas"

Convoluted Words by James Mahan

2011-12-24T07:00:00.005-05:00

Thunderstorm In Neo Tokyo

2011-12-23T19:32:00.001-05:00

I remixed portions of old Thor comics with Akira and came up with this little two pager. I'll probably put it in my next mini which will hopefully be out in the Spring. (Don't worry, Draw, I'm still workin' away on a new version of the Chase.)

AC Film Festival: "The Dot and the Line," Chuck Jones, 1965

2011-12-22T19:24:00.000-05:00

Think of it as a refreshing sorbet in between heavier courses...

Based on Norton Juster's 1963 book of the same title. More info here.

Jochen Gerner, Abstraction (1941-1968)

2011-12-22T06:42:00.000-05:00

(Sorry, it's in french language ; the translation in english language is under)

Abstraction : Action d'abstraire, opération intellectuelle par laquelle, dans un objet, on isole un caractère pour ne considérer que ce caractère ; résultat de cette action. Sans l'abstraction, l'esprit humain ne pourrait conduire aucun raisonnement un peu compliqué. L'abstraction ne crée pas des êtres et n'est qu'un artifice logique. Le pouvoir d'abstraction. Par une abstraction puissante, il a saisi ce qu'il y avait de plus général dans son sujet. La blancheur considérée en soi est une abstraction, puisqu'il y a dans la nature, non la blancheur, mais des choses blanches. Il faut bien se garder de prendre des abstractions pour des réalités. (Le Littré)

Après TNT en Amérique et Panorama du Feu, Jochen Gerner, avec Abstraction (1941-1968), poursuit son œuvre de recouvrement de bandes-dessinées (que l'on pourrait qualifier de) populaires ; par ce travail d'abstraction, il entend mieux révéler ces dernières ; Less is more.*


Jochen Gerner, Abstraction (1941-1968), 2011

Le point de départ d'Abstraction (1941-1968) fut l'acquisition de deux exemplaires d'un même "pocket de guerre" (bande-dessinée industrielle de poche mal imprimée sur du mauvais papier) des années 60 et d'origine géographique inconnue (française ? italienne ? anglo-saxonne ?), le numéro 124 de la série Navy, "sueurs froides".
Récit de guerre donc ; mais aussi -- par le titre ; par le contenu même des cases -- récit de l'abstraction picturale d'après-guerre (et, plus généralement, des mouvements artistiques de 1941 à 1968). À moins que cela ne soit une (sorte de) biographie du peintre abstrait allemand Sigmar Polke (1941- juin 2010**), qui, en 1968, fraichement diplômé, a peint un tableau nommé Moderne kunst. ***

Notons que, comme Panorama du feu (et TNT en Amérique ?), Abstraction (1941-1968), avant d'être publié en tant que bande-dessinée, a été exposé sur les murs d'une galerie ; bande-dessinée et art contemporain donc… ****

TNT en Amérique>/a> est le recouvrement de l'album d'Hergé, Tintin en Amérique.
Panorama du Feu est le recouvrement de couverture de "pocket" de guerre et autres.
Abstraction (1941-1968) a été publié en avril 2011 à L'Association.

Jochen Gerner's website is here.

*cacher pour mieux révéler ; joli paradoxe.
** époque où J. Gerner recouvre "sueurs froides". Sur Sigmar Polke : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigmar_Polke
*** source : (l'excellente) postface de Christian Rosset.
**** Je renvoie ici le lecteur à cette très intéressante interview (in french) de Christian Rosset à propos de l'exposition de la bande-dessinée -- et où il est question de J. Gerner.

[edit : translation] After TNT en Amérique and Panorama du feu, french comics' author and artist Jochen Gerner, pursues his work of covering of popular comic books ; by this work of abstraction, he better intends to reveal these last ones ; less is more.

The point of departure of Abstraction (1941-1968) was the acquisition of two copies of the same "pocket de guerre" (war comic book badly printed on bad paper), published in 1968 and unknown geographical origin (French ? Italian ? American ?), the number 124 of the series Navy : "Sueurs Froides".
War narrative thus ; but also -- by the title ; by the panels' contents -- narrative of the post-war pictural abstraction (and, more generally, of the artistic movements between 1941 and 1968). Unless it's a biography of german abstract painter Sigmar Polke (1941- june 2010*), who, in 1968, recently gradued, painted a picture named Moderne kunst.

Let us note that, as Panorama du feu and TNT en Amérique, Abstraction (1941-1968), before to be published as comic book, has exhibited on a gallery's wall ; comic book and fine art thus…

(@Andrei : pourrais-tu corriger les éventuelles erreurs de ma traduction (en particulier pour "recouvrement", dans le sens de peindre par-dessus pour cacher), s'il-te-plait ? Thanks).

* Jochen Gerner covers "Sueurs Froides" in this time.

Star Wars #38: Lasers, Explosions and the Bio-Mechanical Organism!

2011-12-21T17:33:00.001-05:00

Plotted, Pencilled and Colored by Michael Golden. Inked by Terry Austin. Published by Marvel Comics, August 1980.

David Greenberger Tuesday! (Secret origins edition)

2011-12-20T17:16:00.002-05:00

These are all from 2010.

"I Cut Wood, I Saw Dust"

"You Drive Really Boring"

"You Continue to Drive Really Boring"

L'oiseau est tombé au sol

2011-12-19T16:35:00.002-05:00

You can see a premier jet here.

"A Bout de souffle" by Warren Craghead

2011-12-19T13:49:00.002-05:00

It's not abstract, but this impressionistic shot-by-shot re-drawing of Godard's "Breathless" by our very own Warren Craghead, over at Hooded Utilitarian, has to be seen to be believed.

Now if I can only convince Warren to post some more work here! (Hint hint...)

2011-12-19T06:23:00.000-05:00

A little abstract comic I did after I seen this Nina Roos' comic yesterday :

Sans titre, Mattias-Fausse-Monnaie, dec. 2011

2011-12-18T13:43:00.000-05:00

AC Film Festival: John Whitney Sr.

2011-12-16T06:58:00.000-05:00

"Catalog," 1961

"Permutations," 1966

"Matrix," 1971

"Matrix III," 1972

Mythes de Cthulhu, by Breccia

2011-12-16T05:58:00.000-05:00

In the same way of The Fourth Dimension Is A Many Splattered Thing ! (réalisme pompier vs abstract forms), there are Alberto Breccia's comics adapted from Cthulhu's Myth's Lovecraft. Indeed, to paint the fall in madness and horror, Breccia used techniques as collages, expressionist and abstract forms ; and he confronted it with academic drawings.


Breccia, Le monstre sur le seuil. (crédits : http://www.alberto-breccia.net/les-mythes-de-cthulhu/)

Breccia, planche original ((crédits : http://www.alberto-breccia.net/les-mythes-de-cthulhu/)

Few Breccia's planches originales here

Frames, by Florian Huet

2011-12-15T20:31:00.004-05:00

this is just one of Florian's innovative creations. taken from ===.

he's part of the polystyrène gang: revue.polystyrene.free.fr & editions.polystyrene.free.fr.

Jack Kirby went to abstract comics !

2011-12-15T12:47:00.000-05:00

(I didn't found this comic book on this blog, so…)

In 1957, Jack Kirby drawn a comic, The Fourth Dimension Is A Many Splattered Thing ! which is quite similar to tv show Twillight Zone, whose two pages are proto-abstract comics (others are more conventionnal) :

(whole story is here).

Constructions et événements aléatoires en six strips.

2011-12-15T05:58:00.000-05:00

A thing posted yet in my own blog (but I think it will have a best visibility here ; and I like this…).
It's one of my bandes-dessinées aléatoires ; so, think to refresh this webpage (or come back on) for fully appreciate it.

Inserer une animation Flash
http://sites.google.com/site/annuairevin/flash-reader

constructions et événements aléatoires en 6 strips, novembre 2011

More "bandes-dessinées aléatoires" here, here ore here.

Mattias Fausse-Monnaie's DIY comics exercise

2011-12-14T17:52:00.005-05:00

Mattias posted this exercise over at his blog.

Allow me to quickly translate/summarize: download the grid pdf on his blog (of much higher quality than the jpeg above). Print it out or open it in Photoshop or some other image-manipulating software. Draw the panel frames based on the straight lines in the grid (Mattias suggests using a lightbox if working over a print-out, but I think it might also be cool to draw directly on the print-out [EDIT: Mattias pointed out he does mention drawing directly on the print-out; I was just reading too quickly and like an idiot missed it. Sorry!]). Draw the images in the individual panels based on the elliptical lines in the grid. Et voila! (See Mattias' blog for illustrations of all the stages.)

If several people do this and send me the results, we could post them here all together.

I do think Mattias deserves to become a member of the blog for this, don't you? The invitation is on its way!

In case you've ever wondered what it would be like to take a final exam in a history-of-comics class...

2011-12-14T16:10:00.002-05:00

Romancez by James Mahan

2011-12-13T16:45:00.010-05:00

David Greenberger Tuesday!

2011-12-13T10:03:00.000-05:00

"The Path to Three Dozen"

"The Tide Comes In, The Tide Goes Out"

"Suddenly"

a section from "enigma"

2011-12-13T08:36:00.000-05:00

on view at the International Print Center New York through Jan 7, 2012.

pages from Alvaro de Sá's 12 x 9

2011-12-13T00:57:00.006-05:00

2 pages from Alvaro's 12 X 9, published in 1967.

he was a co-founder of the Brazilian process/poem movement (= poema/processo, in Portuguese), whose members wrote many visual poems about visual communication.

these pages purloined from one of Amir Brito Câdor's web places: seminariolivrodeartista.wordpress.com/2010/10/24/alvaro-de-sa-poemics

it appears that he's posted every page of 12 x 9. a wonderful book, deserving a new edition.

Query--abstract comics in shows

2011-12-12T17:13:00.006-05:00

I received the following query from Kym Tabulo, who is doing a Doctorate of Creative Arts at Sunshine Coast University in Queensland, Australia, on the topic Concerning the Spiritual in Abstract Sequential Art:

Currently I am researching Gallery Comics.

I know of Silent Pictures and Out of Sequence.

Can you please tell me if anyone has undertaken a solo abstract gallery comics exhibition?

Perhaps Nina Roos, Rosaire Appel, Mark Staff Brandl or Andrei Molotiu?

Kym is referring to the shows Silent Pictures, organized by Linda Norden and myself at the James Gallery at CUNY in September 2009, and the traveling show, Out of Sequence, organized by John Jennings and Damian Duffy for the Krannert Art Museum, and which went to two other locations. Mark Staff Brandl and I were featured in that one.

To begin to answer Kym, there also was an abstract comics contingent in the NeoIntegrity show at MoCCA in 2010--Mark Badger, Richard Hahn, and I, in this case, plus a 1992 piece by Peter Halley. Also, there was an "abstract comics" section--featuring Warren Craghead, Blaise Larmee, Rosaire Appel, Derik Badman, and me--in the Party Crashers show at the Arlington Arts Center, in 2010-2011 (Here is my work in that show).

As for me, I've had solo shows featuring abstract comics at the University of Louisville in 2005(Here is the essay written about my work on that occasion by Jay Kloner), at ArtLexis in Brooklyn in 2009 (unfortunately the gallery seems to be out of business now, and I can't link to it directly--but see image above), and at Franklin College in 2010. (Plus I've had abstract comics in a bunch of group shows.)

Anyone else? Please post all the shows in which you've had abstract comics in the comments. Thanks!

AC Film Festival: James Whitney

2011-12-10T23:06:00.000-05:00

"Variations on a Circle," 1941-42

"Yantra," 1957

"Lapis," 1966

For more by James Whitney and his brother John Whitney Sr., see this earlier post.

Box algebra: logic as abstract comics / abstract comics as logic

2011-12-09T00:49:00.006-05:00

From here. This "box algebra" or "box arithmetic" is adapted from G. Spencer-Brown's Laws of Form (1969), one of the strangest books ever written, about which I'm going to have to post some day in much more detail.

EDIT: afterthought. Maybe I should briefly explain why I'm posting this here, beyond the possibly fortuitous resemblance of its diagrams to abstract comics. Or maybe, I should explain that I don't think that resemblance is all that fortuitous. Yes, "Laws of Form" essentially rewrites, with supposedly only one sign (actually two, the marked and the unmarked space) the laws of Boolean logic. But, before getting to that level, you can see it as simply a formal exercise, whereby arbitrary rules are established for the manipulation of a simple form (and its absence), together with spatial notions of juxtaposition and containment. The simple rules allow for the transformation of one spatial structure into another. Then these transformations can be enchained, to either complicate or reduce those structures. We are talking about a set of formal constraints, basically, that help create a sequence of structures made up of rectangles and lacks. It's pretty clear how each structure in a"logical" sequence can be seen to correspond to a panel, and there even is a kind of "narrative" logic to how you get from the first structure in a chain to the last; this narrative logic is purely formal, but it has a clear directionality, leading to the final intended structure (the "theorem" it is trying to "prove").

This logic of transformation can be appreciated rationally, as a model for logical development; but it can also be appreciated aesthetically. (And, perhaps, deep down, mathematics is always appreciated aesthetically; after all, mathematicians probably use the word "beautiful" to describe a proof more often than artists or critics use it to describe a work of art.) And maybe that aesthetic appreciation--in being an appreciation of the rules of transformation of form, and how they are manipulated--is the very same thing as that rational appreciation; there is no difference.

In the same way, it seems to me, abstract comics can--and often do--establish a formal narrative arc by establishing a kind of formal logic, that leads from first panel to last, though one that is most often perceived only intuitively, not based on strict and clear rules. Nevertheless, it's nice to see for once the rules being made explicit.

Well, maybe not just once--here is an exercise I created based on formal constraints:

http://abstractcomics.blogspot.com/2009/04/abstract-comics-exercise.html

And here is a comic by Ibn al Rabin/Mathieu Baillif, which seems to be based on a very clear development of only a few formal rules (which makes sense, since Mathieu in his day job is a mathematician):

http://abstractcomics.blogspot.com/2009/04/syntactic-comics.html

6 decemb / abst com

2011-12-07T12:55:00.002-05:00

David Greenberger Tuesday!

2011-12-06T17:25:00.005-05:00

"The Come-Hither Finger Curl"

"Communication via Finger Wiggling"

"The Illusion of Nudity"

All images ink on paper, image area 7.25" square

AC Film Festival: John and James Whitney, Film Exercises, 1943-44

2011-12-05T18:54:00.001-05:00

"Five Film Exercises" 1, 1943

"Five Film Exercises," 2-3, 1944

"Five Film Exercises," 4, 1944

On John. On James. We'll have further posts on their solo works.

(I couldn't find the fifth exercise online. If you find it, please post the link in a comment or send it to me, and I'll add it.)

An appreciation of AC contributor Andy Bleck

2011-12-05T18:38:00.002-05:00

Click the pic.

Interview with Draw

2011-12-01T05:54:00.003-05:00

I guess Draw was too modest to post it, but I just found this interview with him from earlier in November: http://www.comicaddicts.com/2011/11/abstract-comics-interview-with-nz.html. Well worth reading.

Draw also recently got props here.

Edit: deleted the last link after Tim Gaze pointed out it went to a piece about Andy Bleck. I had been planning to post it in its own right, then somehow spaced out and stuck it here. Sorry, Draw!

AC Film Festival: Len Lye

2011-11-30T18:38:00.000-05:00

"Tusalava," 1929

"A Colour Box," 1935

"Kaleidoscope," 1935

"Swinging the Lambeth Walk," 1940

"Colour Cry," 1953

"Free Radicals," 1958

"Particles in Space," 1966

More on Lye. His influence is, of course, all over McLaren's work as well as over that of Stan Brakhage, and many others who experimented with direct animation, painting on or scratching directly into film stock.

Abstract Language #5: Roberto de Vicq de Cumptich’s Men of Letters and People of Substance

2011-11-29T11:13:00.003-05:00

Roberto de Vicq de Cumptich’s Men of Letters and People of Substance (David R. Godine Publisher, 96 pp., $14.95) takes a playful position towards visual poetry.

Instead of metaphorically constructing portraits of writers and famous personalities though literary description, de Vicq projects those writers’ chosen media back upon them.

Born in Brazil—but now a resident of New York City working in graphic design—de Vicq works in a richly illustrative style, using typefaces to create portraits of famous authors made entirely out of the letters of their names. Each portrait is made out of a suitable, characteristic typeface—from the blocky Ziggurat typeface used for Ayn Rand to the flourished Nuptial Script of Gustave Flaubert

With Bembo’s Zoo (2000), de Vicq crafted a menagerie of animals, each in the typeface Bembo, using only the letters in each’s animal’s name. De Vicq has more anthropological prey in Men of Letters and People of Substance. With this volume, de Vicq continues under a similar constraint, using only the letters in each author’s name—and includes a listing of the frequency of each letter’s usage.

As an example, de Vicq’s portrait of Kurt Vonnegut is crafted in the flourished script “Aja” capturing Vonnegut’s playful, fanciful style in a typeface of his time. Just as much of Vonnegut’s prose engaged with self-examination and personal history, de Vicq’s portrait of Vonnegut uses only the letter’s in Vonnegut’s own name (2 K’s, 3 u’s, 8 r’s, 3 t’s, 4 V’s, 4 o’s, 7 n’s, 1 e and 4 g’s) created a self-reflexive textual portrait.

Men of Letters and People of Substance is a light-hearted book, but one that is a useful introduction to shaped poetry and portraiture will appeal to enthusiasts of unusual writing, graphic design, and the visual arts.

David Greenberger Tuesday!

2011-11-29T10:31:00.000-05:00

"Staring Contest (Tie)"

"Their Limited View of the World Didn't Include Triangles"

"Pages 1-4"

All images ink on paper, image area 7.25" square

AC Film Festival: Norman McLaren

2011-11-28T18:05:00.002-05:00

"Dots," 1940

"Boogie-Doodle," 1948

"Begone Dull Care," 1949

"Blinkity Blank," 1955

"Lines: Vertical," 1960

"Lines: Horizontal," 1960

"Spheres," 1969

"Synchromy," 1971

More on McLaren.

distillery fint / a page from

2011-11-26T08:07:00.000-05:00

view the whole piece at: http://issuu.com/rappel/docs/fint

Protest

2011-11-25T14:36:00.000-05:00

David Greenberger Tuesday!

2011-11-22T10:54:00.000-05:00

[If you are viewing this on a small screen, please right click to view image or download, so as to be able to read the captions.]

More KenKen funnies

2011-11-19T23:26:00.000-05:00

In a copy of Friday's New York Times.

twelve part drawing

2011-11-19T07:44:00.002-05:00

A troylloyd two ways

2011-11-18T14:56:00.003-05:00

So, I've had this untitled (and as far as I know unpublished) strip by troylloyd hanging on the wall of my bedroom since he sent it to me, about three years ago:

Then, recently, I had to take it down for some cleaning, and while it was lying on the bed, I caught a glimpse of it upside down, and noticed some things that I had never noticed in it before: there are some figures there, it seems, and even something like speech balloons:

I don't know which way I like it better--all the way abstract, or only partially so. Troy had never told me which way to hang it. (But this also reminds me of the anecdote of Kandinsky "discovering" abstraction by seeing his paintings upside down... Only in reverse. Or something.)

This is also a post to ask if anyone knows whatever happened to Troy--he hasn't posted here or updated his own blogs in a couple of years, and my emails have remained unanswered. If anyone knows, please contact me. Or if you are reading this, Troy, speak up, dude!

Abstract comic strips by Dunja Jankovic

2011-11-16T15:02:00.006-05:00

More here.

David Greenberger Tuesday!

2011-11-15T16:48:00.003-05:00

David (about whom more here) has been making so many of what could be called "abstract cartoons" that, in trying to make a selection for a post here, I thought there was no way I could offer a single representative sampling. So David has graciously agreed to make this a weekly feature. We'll feature three cartoons a week, but we'll begin today with a double-sized post:

By the way, it's a good idea to friend David on FB. The original art for many of his cartoons is for sale there, priced the same as his age (which is currently 57).

The Balloon

2011-11-13T19:00:00.002-05:00

Abstract comic using famous art as a foundation.

Original:

The Balloon, or the Rising of the Montgolfier

Francisco José de Goya

1818 – 1819

Oil on Canvas

Musee des Beaux-Arts, Agen, France

Drawingsilence.com

Hope! The comic

2011-11-13T05:56:00.000-05:00

I made this a couple of years ago--well, you can figure out when--and then, for some reason, I decided not to post it. But now it doesn't seem quite so cheesy as it dit back then...

couple recent ones

2011-11-12T19:19:00.003-05:00

Spidey and Ab Cmx, and a couple of other announcements

2011-11-12T18:30:00.001-05:00

Some of you may remember my old monster post on Ditko's Spider-Man of almost two years ago, and how I promised there would be a second part to it. Well, that second part mutated into a proper scholarly article, "Abstract Form: Sequential Dynamism and Iconostasis in Abstract Comics and in Steve Ditko's Amazing Spider-Man," which is now available in Matt Smith and Randy Duncan's new edited volume, Critical Approaches to Comics: Theories and Methods. Please check it out if you get a chance.

Also, I have some abstract comics coming out in periodicals: in the Canadian literary journal, Carousel, in the Yugoslavian comics journal Stripolis (actually, they came out in Stripolis no. 2, earlier this year, but I haven't seen a copy yet), and in the Swedish anthology C'est Bon, I guess in issue 13. Having already been published in Swiss, Portuguese, and Australian anthologies, I guess this is all part of my project of world domination...

2011-11-11T10:54:00.000-05:00

James Mahan's "CONVOLUTED NARRATIVES:Filmstrips from an imaginary abstract film"

2011-11-10T18:33:00.001-05:00

James also has a color version of the first image above, but I'll let you discover that if you friend him on FB, or on his upcoming website. He will soon be joining us as a member of this blog.

Nina Roos on YouTube

2011-11-09T01:04:00.001-05:00

This blog's own Nina Roos speaks, reads, and shows images from her book, "Narrative in Abstract Drawing," at an arts festival in Rotterdam. Unfortunately, it's in Dutch. But you can see the images at least!

"Emma" by Nico Vassilakis

2011-11-08T06:11:00.002-05:00

Nico, along with Crag Hill, edited The Last Vispo Anthology: Visual Poetry 1998 - 2008, forthcoming from Fantagraphics Books, Fall 2012 (so I guess it's kind of like our sister anthology?). Samples of Nico's work can seen at http://staringpoetics.weebly.com.

Mirage 3

2011-11-07T18:50:00.004-05:00

Created using four colour ball point pen and twink (correction fluid). I really like the how the eye mixes these four colours together. Mirage 3 is definitely my favourite comic so far from this series. For more see the category.

Drawingsilence.com

Mattias Fausse-Monnaie on Eggeling and Richter

2011-11-07T15:23:00.007-05:00

Mattias Fausse-Monnaie writes in with the following quote and comment:

"En déchiffrant ces notes programmatiques, on comprend que la peinture, en tant qu'inscription immobile, devenait un support trop étroit pour l'exploration d'un contrepoint généralisé des formes. […] Aussi Eggeling et Richter se tourneront-ils vers une écriture dynamique, d'abord sur des rouleaux où les dessins étaient disposés en séquences pour suggérer un déroulement temporel, […]."

Son et lumière, catalogue centre George Pompidou, Paris, 2004, p 158

(In my translation: "In deciphering these programmatic notes, one sees that painting, being just marks frozen in place, was becoming too confining a medium for the exploration of a generalized counterpoint of forms. [...] Thus Eggeling and Richter turned toward a dynamic writing [mark-making], first on rolls of paper on which drawings were arrayed in sequence to suggest a temporal unrolling." The quote refers to abstract film pioneers Viking Egggeling and Hans Richter. More on them here.)

Mattias continues: "So, were Viking Eggeling and Hans Richter abstract comics' pioneers ? Probably… I'm curious to see it (if this proto-abstract comics always exist…)"

Andrei speaking now: Well, I don't know if theirs survived (I should look into it), but I know that one of the pioneers of abstract sequential art, Kurt Kranz, got to it by conceiving his images almost as storyboards for animation. See my earlier post on Kranz. In his case, the situation is inverse. I've heard that, later in life, he did transform some of his sequential pieces into abstract films, but I've never been able to track those down.

From the above link, which is well worth reading--Richter:

Eggeling:

And please, if I may--compare the Richter to my piece here, for which it was certainly an inspiration.

Also, just a few days ago, I wrote "The relationship between abstract comics and abstract film needs to be further investigated." (in the Bea post). I'm glad we're beginning to do just that!

By the way, it's well worth checking out Mattias's new blog. Here is his piece, "D'après Poussin 1: les aveugles de Jericho":

--based on this image (I think):

Having also (but more cryptically) done an abstract comic based on a Poussin painting, I can totally dig it.

whit eboar d com ic

2011-11-07T08:25:00.000-05:00

"Franz Kline, Road Crew Employee," by David Greenberger

2011-11-07T00:42:00.000-05:00

More on the artist. We will have another post, with David's abstract cartoons, soon. "Franz Kline" is available for purchase as a $10 poster. David does not have a website for his abstract pieces, but you can see some other kinds of his work at his Duplex Planet website, or you can contact him via his Facebook profile.

Peanuts - June 12th, 1960

2011-11-06T14:30:00.004-05:00

Abstrakt Comix by James Mahan

2011-11-06T00:12:00.010-04:00

So, it turns out that we have a precursor to our title! James Mahan published a zine called "Abstrakt Comix: The Journal of Non-Linear Sequential Graphix" back in 1998-99. These are the only images I have from it:

Recently, James has returned to making abstract comics. Here are some pieces of his from the last year:

James does not have a website, but if you want to see more of his work you can try to friend him on Facebook.

"Pequenos Mundos" by Diniz Conefrey

2011-11-05T00:58:00.000-04:00

I can't find an easier way to link to it directly, but go here and open the pdf under the first thumbnail to see the entire 41-page comic.

Diniz writes "I´m a Portuguese comic author that since the 80's has done some experiences with abstract forms in comics." This is his "full first experience entirely abstract in comics... The name of the sequence is Little Worlds."

Back in March, Diniz also wrote a series of three posts about his experiences with abstraction in comics. If you read Portuguese, or just want to look at the beautiful drawings, go here, here, and here. Again, I don't speak Portuguese, so if anyone were willing to provide a quick translation or a summary, I'd be very grateful.

Thanks to Diniz for writing (and apologies for my delay in posting this!), and also to Pedro Moura for a heads-up.

What KenKen is good for

2011-11-04T19:30:00.003-04:00

From today's Times, doodled during my son's soccer game at the Y, after I'd finished the puzzle.

Abstract Comics by Jose Maria Bea, 1968

2011-11-04T03:07:00.006-04:00

From the Spanish magazine "Nueva Dimension" no. 5, 1968, as found on Joan Navarro's blog. Thanks to Joan for allowing me to re-post it here, and to Alvaro Pons for the heads-up!

More on the artist.

As can be seen on the first page, these comics were influenced by the abstract animation of Norman McLaren. The relationship between abstract comics and abstract film needs to be further investigated.

By the way, I can sort of read the opening text, but if any Spanish speaker here would be willing to provide a proper translation in the comments, I would be tremendously grateful.

Abstract Language #4: bpNichol’s Konfessions of an Elizabethan Fan Dancer

2011-11-03T16:51:00.003-04:00

To begin with a little genealogy: KonfessIonS of an ElizAbeThan Fan Dancer (note the capitalization) was first published in January 1967 through Bob Cobbing’s Writers Forum Quartos, with a second edition coming from the same press in August 1969. Five years later in 1974 (although the book is dated 1973), the revised Canadian edition was published by Nelson Ball’s Weed Flower Press. The editions were not identical, with 5 poems removed and a further 5 poems added for the Canadian edition.
This new edition of Konfessions of an Elizabethan Fan Dancer (Toronto: Coach House Books, 2004. ISBN: 978-1-552451-37-3) follows the manuscript order of the 1973(1974) edition—with the excised poems from the 1967 edition appended at the end of book—along with valuable end matter, bibliographical work and a new introduction from editor Nelson Ball.
The Coach House version of Konfessions of an Elizabethan Fan Dancer returns a collection of poetry to print which is a vital section of bpNichol’s oeuvre; his typewriter concrete (not to mention the inclusion of some of Nichol’s more well-known visual poems like “Cycle #22”, “Blues” and “Easter Pome”). While Nichol continued to write concrete and visual poetry through-out his career, after Konfessions the amount of typewritten concrete was eclipsed by hand drawn, lettered, and letraset work, not to mention his longer lyric work The Martyrology. Konfessions represents an interesting aspect of Nichol’s oeuvre in as much as it is much closer in style to Henri Chopin, Pierre Garnier and Cavan McCarthy’s typewritten-driven work than his other work.
Being that this is a re-release of a book almost 40 years old, I am more interested in discussing the book and the design as opposed to the poetry contained within the book. What I find quite intriguing about this edition is some of the decisions that Nelson Ball and designer damian lopes have made concerning its presentation. Much of the design is extremely sensitive and thoughtful. This text is dependant on a fixed-space typeface (that is, a typeface where every letter takes up the same amount of horizontal space on a line), and lopes has thoughtfully re-typeset the entire manuscript in Prestige Elite creating a wonderfully clean and sharp finished text. The fixed-space typeface is necessary for the success of many of these poems. The grid structure of “Cycle #5,” like many of the poems in Konfessions of an Elizabethan Fan Dancer, is dependent on the fixed space between letters to create a verticality / acrostic style which foregrounds a sort of visual rhyme. In my opinion, these typewriter-based poems owe a great deal to Olson’s theorizing of the typewriter as a precise instrument for writing.
Additionally, the cover has a few little nods of irony in its imagery. The cover image consists of an old Underwood typewriter with a page in progress. There’s also a wonderful little visual pun on the spine where the Coach House pressmark has been placed directly over the ‘8’ key—obscuring the number eight (Nichol’s favorite letter was ‘H’, the eighth letter of the alphabet) with the Coach House pressmark, underlining Nichol’s role at the Coach House, and that press’ dedication to keeping a large portion of his work in print both on paper and online. A nice touch.
For the most part, the poems of Konfessions of an Elizabethan Fan Dancer are short, concise poems (which Nichol at one point categorized as “ideopoems”) seeming to me, to be more grounded in a haiku-like concision than in an awareness of page-size and the political uses of white-space.
Konfessions of an Elizabethan Fan Dancer allows renewed access to a deceptively complicated and elegant suite of poems too often overlooked.

so fast i could barely catch it

2011-11-01T20:10:00.000-04:00

page from EUY, by mIEKAL aND

2011-10-25T18:05:00.005-04:00

this is the final page of mIEKAL's EUY, A zaumist biography of Alexei Kruchenykh.

it's the only comicsy page. (pages 8 to 98 contain only one, two or three words, most of them invented zaum words.)

zaum is usually translated to mean transrational language.

originally published through mIEKAL's imprint Xexoxial Editions in 1986. now on-line via Mycelium Project.

Uneasy

2011-10-18T00:00:00.002-04:00

UNEASY UNEASY UNEASY UNEASY UNEASY UNEASY UNEASY UNEASY UNEASY UNEASY UNEASY UNEASY UNEASY UNEASY UNEASY UNEASY

Drawingsilence.com

Good Night

2011-10-12T00:00:00.000-04:00

Good Night - Unknown 19 my latest comic in this series experimenting with found images from across the internet. With these I am interested in juxtaposing images to form emotive responses. I see these as provoking rather than leading narrative. To see more of these go here.

Drawingsilence.com

"funnies"

2011-10-09T19:32:00.000-04:00

digital print by Rosaire Appel

Drip

2011-10-07T12:00:00.001-04:00

Recent comic of mine. Ball point pen over Indian Ink drips.

Drawingsilence.com

Cut-out abstract comics by Silvia Inés Gonzalez

2011-10-04T15:00:00.005-04:00

Here is an earlier abstract (or nearly abstract) strip by Silvia:

Silvia started making abstract comics after attending a workshop I gave at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, back in April. See more of her work on her site or on her blog

Abstract Language #3: Mark Laliberte’s brickbrickbrick.

2011-10-01T23:51:00.003-04:00

Mark Laliberte’s brickbrickbrick (Toronto: Bookthug, 2010. ISBN: 978-1-897388-57-0) is a meditation of how the details explain the whole. Studiously expanding how dozens of comic book artists (from Frank Miller to Charles Schultz; from Charles Burns to Martin Vaughn-James) represent bricks, brickbrickbrick revels in the details by looking beyond the dominant narratives of comic books into the ubiquitous cityscapes. brickbrickbrick deftly uses comics to create a metaphor for writing, entreating that readers explore how idiosyncratic writers build their environments one word at a time, brick by brick. Laliberte’s volume is a metaphor for contemporary avant-garde practice as it moves the centre of attention from narrative and its hallmarks (character, dialogue, plot) and, in a form reminiscent of Alain Robbe-Grillet’s nouveau roman, focuses instead on setting. Robbe-Grillet argues in his “A Future for the Novel” (1956) that

[…] words are neither significant nor experimental. They are, quite simply. That, in any case, is the most remarkable thing about them. And suddenly the obviousness of this strikes us with irresistible force. All at once the whole splendid construction collapses; opening our eyes unexpectedly, we have experienced, once too often, the shock of this stubborn reality we were pretending to have mastered. Around us, words are there. Their surfaces are distinct and smooth, intact, neither suspiciously brilliant nor transparent. All our literature has not yet succeeded in eroding their smallest corner, in flattening their slightest curve.

This conflation of words and surfaces is what drives brickbrickbrick and visual poetry as a whole. By focusing on the surfaces in any given frame, Laliberte moves the lens of our reading from the narrative to the smooth, intact (though not particularly brilliant nor transparent) surfaces that are an author’s stylistic quirks. Published in a beautifully designed 3-colour volume, brickbrickbrick is a thoughtfully humourous exploration of how writers struggle with their own linguistic bricks.

Purple

2011-10-01T00:00:00.000-04:00

Last animation, from this comic.

Drawingsilence.com

Abstract 3 animated

2011-09-29T20:15:00.001-04:00

It seems I have never posted any of my animations here before, I thought I had. You can see all of them here on my blog.

One of my early Series two comics animated. You can see the original comic here.

Drawingsilence.com

What happened to 'The Chase' by Grant

2011-09-29T19:41:00.003-04:00

Hi Grant I've just been going over the archives here and I wondered what happened to The Chase? I would like to see more of it.

Draw

As long as we're sharing animations...

2011-09-29T16:46:00.003-04:00

Here's one from 2010:

More of my animations here.