Sunday, 30 October 2011

I don't care for lists. they remind me of the Lord High Executioner. ("They'll none of them be missed, I've got 'em on the list"). But Rachel Cooke has put up her list of '10 best graphic novels' ('graphic novels that transcend the comic book medium') at the Guardian/Observer. Fom Hell is on it. Rachel Cooke is a good commentator on the scene. I linked to her interview with Art Spiegelman last week.
I had a list of my own some time back but I destroyed it. This appeared as the final chapter of How to be an Artist and consited of about three dozen books. Of course it was out of date by the time I corralled Alec: the years have Pants. But Ray Davis says I threw out the baby with the bath water and has posted, with my permission, the three-page framing sequence of that chapter. There's a nice little idea in it that got edited out, about an artist having his own little preservation society, and I took the trouble to set t up early in the book. the setting up is still there, but the resolution isn't. But what can ya do?

6 Comments:

Blogger keepsakes said...

Ha! I'd forgotten that punchline in the original How To Be Artist.

31 October 2011 at 02:52:00 GMT-5  
Blogger Ray Davis said...

I like the new postscript, though. Its illustration of Indignant Correspondent Rictus could go into a medical handbook.

31 October 2011 at 09:50:00 GMT-5  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I was wondering where that went... Very glad I own the original How To Be an Artist now. I usually spurn lists, but for some reason love those compiled by artists. They seem to me less "official", less composed out of byline-lust than obsession. - Brendan

31 October 2011 at 11:11:00 GMT-5  
Blogger h.n. said...

When I was young I read a book on 20th century art and in it was a list composed by Dali, where he rates Picasso, Velazquez, Goya, Vermeer etc on a scale from 1-10 in terms of compostion, colour, light, orginality, technique.

That Dali had put himself in the lead in almost every category, I think Velazquez was a far second, came as a tremendous shock. That someone could have the gall...shortly thereafter I turned teenager.

31 October 2011 at 15:41:00 GMT-5  
Blogger Nick said...

This is just about related to the notion of lists, but I'm really posting it here because it's the most recent vaguely applicable post. I thought you might enjoy this post by Lynda Barry in which she compares calling Chris Ware's 'Lint' a graphic novel to calling an ambulance a 'graphic vehicle' (while suggesting that we're all waiting for the right term to present itself):

http://thenearsightedmonkey.tumblr.com/post/10454263549/this-summer-lynda-barry-wrote-a-little-piece

And you might very well enjoy Lynda Barry's blog in general, of course - best approached thus:

http://thenearsightedmonkey.tumblr.com/archive

2 November 2011 at 10:13:00 GMT-5  
Blogger Eddie Campbell said...

thanks, Nick.
much appreciated.

2 November 2011 at 22:57:00 GMT-5  

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