|
|
Chris Ware (Monographics Series)
|
You are here:
Home > Cook Books > Chris Bunch > Item
|
Chris Ware (Monographics Series)
|
by Daniel Raeburn
Sales Rank : 518387
|
|
|
|
Paperback: 112 pages
Publisher: Yale University Press October 11, 2004
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0300102917
ISBN-13: 978-0300102918
Product Dimensions:
9.4 x 7.5 x 0.4 inches
Shipping Weight: 15.8 ounces
Product Review
This title pairs the most talented postmodern comic artist alive (Chris Ware, author of the justly lauded Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth with perhaps the best writer on contemporary comics, Daniel Raeburn. So little decent writing exists on comics that Raeburn, editor of the fanzine The Imp,has to go back to the very birth of the form to get started, and his writing is always fluent and accessible (with the exception of his insistence on using silly terms like "comixscenti"). Raeburn clearly loves Ware's work with an infectious intensity and it's not bothersome that he is obviously close pals with the subject. To adhere to the strictures of the series, the book seems at times forced to emphasize Ware's graphic design. Ware is first and foremost an insanely adept pillager of early 20th century advertising and comics forms; but it's as a story-teller that Ware is known and celebrated. Raeburn emphasizes Ware's "emotional" use of color and form and decries an art museum's placement of a single page of comic art taken from a larger work on its walls as tantamount to "cutting a paragraph from a short story and framing it." But his book does the very same thing throughout. The book is excellent, although slightly maddening. If only there were more illustrations and Raeburn did not feel such an insistence on staking claims on the very tired highbrow vs. lowbrow divide, this would be a perfect work. --Mike McGonigal
From Booklist
More proof that artist Ware, best known for Jimmy Corrigan (2000), has escaped the comic-book ghetto comes in this entry in Yale's series on eminent graphic designers, Monographics. Raeburn celebrates Ware's versatility by reproducing some 70 examples of his strikingly innovative work: comics pages, of course, but also paintings, posters, sketchbook pages, kinetic sculptures, toys, and even a sign for a bookstore and a lunchbox. Impressively knowledgeable about the comics medium, Raeburn contributes an invaluable essay revealing the autobiographical elements in Ware's work and demonstrating the influences on it of old-time newspaper strips and turn-of-the-century graphic design. Raeburn also insightfully annotates the individual works, explaining Ware's visually complex, postmodern style and his experimentation with narrative and graphic forms. The only fault of Raeburn's commentary is that there isn't enough of it. And while Ware's work itself is brilliant, the book's relatively small pages don't do it justice (much of the comic-strip dialogue is nearly illegible).Still, as a concise introduction to an important artist, it is ideal, especially for comics nonenthusiasts. Gordon Flagg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
|
|
|
|
