As I wrote below, I have some new Abstract and Gallery Comics from the Art Academy of Liechtenstein Foundation Course class students who study with me (Mark Staff Brandl). I'll put a few up directly as there was only a link before.
I was up in NYC last weekend (mostly to see the Garo show at the Center for Book Culture) and visited the MOMA. They've got a show about modern art and mythology up and, lo and behold, I turned a corner and found myself face-to-face with a large Pierre Alechinsky canvas! I snapped this rather poor cell phone picture of it, to share on this blog. (Click for a bigger view.)
Edit (6/12/10): Thanks to commenter Naruse pointing out this piece is viewable on the MOMA site. It's called "The Complex of the Sphinx" from 1967.
Barbara Trinh says, "While I’m sitting waiting for a session to begin, my curiosity was sparked when a man in front of me was enthusiastically speaking about comics and his art on the T-shirt he was currently wearing. Instead of handing someone an ordinary business card, he hands them a button with his contact info on the back. That is because Mark Staff Brandl (http://www.markstaffbrandl.com/) is no ordinary artist. He is interested in comic/ sequential art, painting, and art history. His installations are described as ‘walk in comic books’, a mixture of installation and comic books that are 12 ft tall. In the video, Mark tells us about himself and his experience at CAA."
Barbara Trinh, BA Candidate from the Film & Video Dept
This is a link to larger images from my last, 50-foot (15 meter) long, 12-foot (3.5 meter) high comic "installation." It is not abstract, yet is non-narrative, thus abstract in one of Andre's senses. My Metaphor(m): Meninas Link here.
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.
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