Tuesday, November 01, 2005
Art imitating an unhappy life
I recently purchased the new Acme Novelty Library, a collection of comics by Chris Ware. I recommend it - hesitantly. If you want beautiful, painstakingly designed artwork, and the human condition wrought in bright colours and free-flowing narratives, you should get it. If you're turned off by wrenching stories of heartbreak and loneliness, you've been warned.
But I happen to like wrenching stories, so I love Ware's work. In the latest Acme, he follows different characters through their lives, jumping from episode to episode non-linearly. This means you don't have to read it cover to cover, you can open it up anywhere and see heartrending tales of degradation. His sad child-men - often with adult faces on children's bodies - wander through puberty, adulthood and old age, getting abused by their peers and parents and abusing their friends in turn. Child abuse is a central theme, but even when his characters aren't going through torment, they're still adrift, separate from their fellow humans, watching 'normal life' and not comprehending it a bit.
It's not entirely unrelenting: there are brushes of compassion throughout. Chalky & Rusty, two central characters that grow up social outcasts, share a brief moment of attraction as boys. Later on Chalky's daughter rejects him because of his pro-war stance, and finds solace to the arms of her lesbian lover. For the first time I've seen in Ware's work, he's overtly political, spoofing mail-order ads for x-ray specs by showing what American imperialism can do for poor countries ("One tomahawk missile for letting us patrol only 40 miles of your coastline!") But his focus is intensely personal alienation; I find myself reading his comics one at a time, because together they're too much.
Big Tex, one of the more brutalized child-men Ware depicts (click to enlarge)
As the picture shows, his line and colour sense are brilliant. It's flat, but that flatness echoes the emotional turmoil Ware portrays - there's so much going on just beneath the surface. Part of the effect comes from how gorgeous his artwork is, contrasted with the unrelenting rawness of his subject matter.
Alienation is a central topic for many artists. Ware's bleak but compelling vision gets it right. Perhaps a little too right, but I'd urge you to check him out nonetheless.
But I happen to like wrenching stories, so I love Ware's work. In the latest Acme, he follows different characters through their lives, jumping from episode to episode non-linearly. This means you don't have to read it cover to cover, you can open it up anywhere and see heartrending tales of degradation. His sad child-men - often with adult faces on children's bodies - wander through puberty, adulthood and old age, getting abused by their peers and parents and abusing their friends in turn. Child abuse is a central theme, but even when his characters aren't going through torment, they're still adrift, separate from their fellow humans, watching 'normal life' and not comprehending it a bit.
It's not entirely unrelenting: there are brushes of compassion throughout. Chalky & Rusty, two central characters that grow up social outcasts, share a brief moment of attraction as boys. Later on Chalky's daughter rejects him because of his pro-war stance, and finds solace to the arms of her lesbian lover. For the first time I've seen in Ware's work, he's overtly political, spoofing mail-order ads for x-ray specs by showing what American imperialism can do for poor countries ("One tomahawk missile for letting us patrol only 40 miles of your coastline!") But his focus is intensely personal alienation; I find myself reading his comics one at a time, because together they're too much.
Big Tex, one of the more brutalized child-men Ware depicts (click to enlarge)As the picture shows, his line and colour sense are brilliant. It's flat, but that flatness echoes the emotional turmoil Ware portrays - there's so much going on just beneath the surface. Part of the effect comes from how gorgeous his artwork is, contrasted with the unrelenting rawness of his subject matter.
Alienation is a central topic for many artists. Ware's bleak but compelling vision gets it right. Perhaps a little too right, but I'd urge you to check him out nonetheless.
