Comics+Arte : Schulz / Christo

Christo Wrapped Snoopy House

Project for the Charles M. Schulz Museum

A hand-collaged, limited edition lithograph is now on sale through the Schulz Museum! The Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center is proud to offer a limited edition, signed and numbered lithograph titled Wrapped Snoopy House— Project for the Charles M. Schulz Museum, designed and drawn by the internationally acclaimed artist Christo.

Comics+Art: Swarte/dutch stamps

Joost Swarte (born 1947) is a Dutch comic artist and graphical designer. He is best known for his ligne claire or clear line style of drawing, and in fact coined the term
The rather excellent Moors Magazine, a Dutch webzine about stuff that its founder is interested in (a bit like the Ephemerist, I guess), has high quality scans of the magnificent Children’s stamps that Joost Swarte did in 1993. I particularly liked them because Swarte used a comic book language to spread their “story” beyond the confines of the stamps themselves. It looked as if somebody had torn fragments from existing comic books and cut them down to stamp size. They also echoed the narrative device used in one of my all time favorite comics, “Kinderen baas”, by having children and adults switch roles. Brilliant stuff !

http://www.sparehed.com/tag/joost-swarte/®

Comics+Art: US SuperHeroes stamps

2006 US stamps: DC Comics Super Heroes

Comics+Art: Twombly

Cy Twombly (1928) is an American abstract expressionist painter. He is well known for his large scale, freely-scribbled, calligraphic style graffiti paintings; on solid fields of mostly gray, tan, or off-white colors. He exhibits his paintings worldwide.  Wiki®

Fine Art and Comics. Derik Badman / MadInkBeard   2006 05 12

Though I went through art school for four years, I’ve always kept my comics separate from my “art,” (I mean this in the sense of the “fine arts” as in those works that fall into the conventionally considered “art world”) not in the sense of what I created (my artwork has almost always been narrative and often sequential) but in how I thought about influences and ways of looking. Lately, a few different encounters have got me thinking about art and comics and how the two intersect, mostly in the way of art influencing comics.
..a room containing Cy Twombly’s ten painting sequence “50 Days at Iliam.” Twombly’s ten large paintings retell, in his own way, part of the Iliad. His paintings use mostly oil crayon and pencil on a white ground. He writes on the canvases, often naming heroes or gods, and scribbles or outlines geometric shapes. This mix of words and abstract images to create a narrative in sequence attracts me to this room. (Unfortunately all the images at the museum site are tiny and one cannot make out any of the details, search the museum site for Twombly if you are really curious.) The Achaeans charging into battle are a grouping of scribbled names accompanying sharp triangles pointing forward. A painting of Achilles avenging Patroclus is mostly a massive blood red smeary scribble that perfectly sums up the fury and violence of the half-god. The paintings are all hung in the same room (except one which is just outside the doorway) taking up all the wall space, and they are hung in such a way that there are two parallel sequences on the left and right, one for the Achaeans, one for the Ilians. In the center is a large painting with three chaotic scibbled circular blobs representing Achilles, Patroclus, and Hector, the heart of the battles.

I cannot do these images justice (hopefully I can find some better reproductions to scan at a later date), but they are dynamic, striking, and very (though I’m not aware Twombly was consciously thinking in this direction) comics like. Between the integration of images and words, the narrative, and the juxtaposed sequential image aspect (particularly the clear organization to their location) all the aspects of McCloud’s or Eisner’s or Groensteen’s definition of comics are met. Instead of pages in a book, the images/paintings/panels are organized on walls in a room.

The abstraction of the images that still tell a clear narrative (in conjuction with the words) is something that is rarely seen in comics. Abstract comics are rare, even though abstraction in painting has been widely seen for at least as long as comic books have existed. (More on abstract comics next week.)

http://madinkbeard.com/blog/archives/fine-art-and-comics

Philadelphia Museum of Art
Fifty Days at Iliam
Made in United States 1978
Cy Twombly, American, born 1928
In ten parts: oil, oil crayon, and graphite on canvas

Comics+Art: Picasso

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) was a Spanish painter, draughtsman, and sculptor. As one of the most recognized figures in twentieth-century art, he is best known for co-founding the Cubist movement and for the wide variety of styles embodied in his work.  Wiki®
Dibujos en formato cómics fueron utilizados por Picasso, como estudios preliminares para la Guernica

Dream and Lie of Franco.  Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881–1973)

Etching and aquatint (38.2 x 56.5 cm)
Picasso made two prints in this format—three rows of three scenes—beginning January 8, 1937, that together form an eighteen-scene narrative. This print is the second of the two. Since Picasso worked on the images from left to right, the etched versions read from right to left. In the upper right, the Facist general Franco is depicted as a grinning monstrous figure, devouring the innards of his own horse, which he has just killed; the next two scenes show the results of battle; and in the next two, Franco is in combat with an angry bull, symbolizing Spain. The last four scenes were added on June 7; meanwhile, the Basque town of Guernica was leveled by bombs, and Picasso painted his famous mural protesting that atrocity. Three of the last four scenes of this print relate to his studies for that painting.

http://www.metmuseum.org/TOAH/HD/pica/ho_1986.1224.1%5B2%5D.htm

Guernica is a painting by Pablo Picasso, depicting the Nazi German bombing of Guernica, Spain, by twenty-eight bombers, on April 26, 1937 during the Spanish Civil War. The attack killed between 250 and 1,600 people, and many more were injured. Wiki®

Comics+Art: Tintin France Stamp

The Adventures of Tintin (French: Les Aventures de Tintin) is a series of comic books created by Belgian artist Hergé, the pen name of Georges Remi (1907–1983). The series first appeared in French in a children's supplement to the Belgian newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle on January 10, 1929. Set in a painstakingly researched world closely mirroring our own, The Adventures of Tintin presents a number of characters in distinctive settings. The series has continued as a favourite of readers and critics alike for over 70 years.

   Tintin France Stamp

The hero of the series is Tintin, a young Belgian reporter and traveller. He is aided in his adventures from the beginning by his faithful fox terrier dog Snowy (Milou in French). Later, popular additions to the cast included the brash, cynical and grumpy Captain Haddock, the bright but hearing-impaired Professor Calculus (Professeur Tournesol in French) and other colourful supporting characters such as the incompetent detectives Thomson and Thompson (Dupond et Dupont in French). 

wiki

Comics+Arte: Koons/Popeye

Jeff Koons (born January 1955), is an American artist. He is noted for his use of kitsch imagery using painting, sculpture and other forms, often in large

Jeff Koons, "Popeye," Nov. 8, 2003-Dec. 19, 2004

"So I wasn't expecting much from Koons's current show, "Popeye." On first sight it didn't disappoint my low expectations: more glitzy Rosenquist spin-offs, plus some showy sculptures of blow-up toys. After repeated visits, however, I've gotten much more out of this exhibition than I imagined I would. This isn't as good as the old Koons, and there aren't any genuinely new ideas on view. But it's the best he's looked in a while." Breathing Lessons by Jerry Saltz
Popeye the Sailor is a fictional hero famous for appearing in comic strips and animated films as well as numerous TV shows. He was created by Elzie Crisler Segar,[1] and first appeared in the daily King Features comic strip Thimble Theatre on January 17, 1929. wiki

Comics+Arte: Murakami/Vuitton

Takashi Murakami (1963 in Tokyo) somtimes stylized as ©MURAKAMI, is a prolific contemporary Japanese artist who works in both fine arts media, such as painting, as well as digital and commercial media. He attempts to blur the boundaries between high and low art. He appropriates popular themes from mass media and pop culture, then turns them into thirty-foot sculptures, "Superflat" paintings, or marketable commercial goods such as figurines or phone caddies.

...Takashi Murakami takes low culture and repackages it, and sells it to the highest bidder in the “high-art” market. Unlike Warhol, Murakami also makes his repacked low culture available to all other markets in the form of paintings, sculptures, videos, T-shirts, key chains, mouse pads, plush dolls, cell phone caddies, and $5,000 limited-edition Louis Vuitton handbags... wiki

Comics+Arte : Lichtenstein

Roy Lichtenstein (1923 . 1997) was a prominent American pop artist, his work heavily influenced by both popular advertising and the comic book style. He himself described Pop art as, "not 'American' painting but actually industrial painting". wiki®

Comics+Arte: 1995 US Stamps

 American Comic strips 1995

The Comic Strip Classics series of commemorative postage stamps was issued by the US Postal Service in 1995 to honor the centennial of the newspaper comic strip.
The series featured drawings of comic strip characters with their logos. The series was restricted to strips created before 1950.