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THE STRIP: Cult Fiction
words PAUL GRAVETT As Robert Crumb once said, ‘It’s only a carafe of ice water on his head
lines on paper, folks!’ But as he knew to cool his boiling brain, Dalí
well, there’s much more to comics than proclaimed, ‘Comics will be the culture
that. Comic art may be drawn to be of the year 3794. So you have 1827
printed and sold in multiples rather years in advance, which leaves me
than framed and hung in galleries, but the time I need to create a collage
recently the original art from comics, with these 80 comics I am taking
now fetching high prices, has been with me. This will be the birth of
increasingly exhibited in major Comic Art, and on this occasion we
institutions in the UK and the USA. will hold a gigantic opening with my
Crumb himself has had several solo divine presence on March 4th 3794 at
shows, at venues including London’s 19.00 hours precisely.’ Perhaps Dalí’s
Whitechapel Gallery, and is currently ethereal form will turn up early,
spotlighted at the Yerba Buena Center at the opening of Cult Fiction’s tour
for the Arts in San Francisco, where in Walsall this month.
at the same time the city’s Asian
Art Museum is presenting Osamu Tezuka, From Picasso to pop and beyond,
Japan’s ‘God of manga’. art and comics have long been closely
intertwined, feeding off and
So comics are no longer being reinvigorating each other. Cult Fiction
considered solely as commercial responds to the expanded possibilities
products, found objects or anonymous in comics, from substantial dramas
source material. In their newly to daring experimentation, which have
‘respectable’ forms as works of coincided with a decline in the
art, drawing and ‘authorial dominance of painting and its emphasis
illustration’, and as works of on the large one-off work.
literature, as graphic novels, comics Simultaneously the show examines a
are being re-evaluated, in their own renewed interest among artists in what
right and as formative and provocative comics offer: their use of icons,
influences on all kinds of visual symbols and multiple drawings, smaller
artists. Reflecting this shift, the and more immediate, with or without
Southbank Centre has brought together words, and conceived for reproduction
comic artists, including Crumb, to rather than the exclusivity of the
show their work alongside the work of gallery wall. Meanwhile the dominance
fine artists inspired by comics in a of story in comics is also being
new touring exhibition, Cult Fiction. questioned, liberating comics from
And starting this month, ArtReview strict linear narratives to be ‘read’
is commissioning a series of special as puzzles, maps, diagrams, poems or,
comic/art pages, inviting artists as Philip Guston described his word-
featured in Cult Fiction to produce and-image ‘poem-pictures’, ‘intimate
a two-page comic intervention into and strange situations’.
the magazine: art magazine, as comic,
as art! Prepare for more such ‘situations’
in future editions of ArtReview.
Balancing a carafe of ice This issue Paul McDevitt launches the series with an act of astronomical
water on his head to cool terrorism, the two culprits’ faces, if not their bottoms, masked beneath
his boiling brain, Dalí their speech balloons. Over the coming months, explore other personal worlds
proclaimed, ‘Comics will be and approaches: Travis Millard’s toon-style fever dreams; Killoffer’s self-
the culture of the year 3794’ obsessed visions; Marcel Dzama’s queasy storybook bestiary; Carol Swain’s
soft-drawn yet hard-edged social
observations; Laylah Ali’s fraught,
As long ago as 1967 Salvador Dalí had fragile, ball-headed biomorphs; and
predicted comics’ ascendancy. On a yet others to come. What will fine
visit to one of the first Paris artists make out of comics? What will
antiquarian bookshops specialising in comic artists make out of art?
bande dessinée rarities, and balancing Turn to page 138 to find out.
ARTREVIEW four.linfour.lin
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