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| Hearsay: |
In a recent post, Illustration Art said the current darlings of the graphica scene, Chris Ware and Art Spiegelman, can’t draw. This touched a nerve with readers, and Illustration Art responded with a more detailed analysis of Ware’s work.
50 years ago, there were a thousand key line and paste up artists working for subsistence wages in commercial art studios across the country. They would sit at a drawing board with a T-square and a triangle, creating ads for the backs of comic books and other lofty venues. Virtually all of them could draw as well as Chris Ware. Many could draw better. But because that was an era with different standards, they would have laughed at the suggestion that their drawings were good enough to hang in a museum. Today those key liners have all disappeared, swept aside by technology and the invisible hand of Adam Smith. But Chris Ware is hailed for the same mechanical drawing skills.
(From Design Observer)
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February 25th, 2006 at 7:04 pm
Oh ugh. That’s the same as saying that because Bono’s vocal range is, like, half an octave he’s not as good as Ella Fitzgerald. Or Andrea fucking Bocelli. It smacks of extreme smarty-pantedness.
February 26th, 2006 at 11:21 am
I thought this was going to be about how terribly medicore (and it is terribly medicore) Ware’s WRITING is.
His drawing is good enough and his design sense is EXCELLENT.
He is way overrated though because his writing, in shit like Jimmy Corrigan, is totally forgettable.
February 26th, 2006 at 12:19 pm
I mostly agree with Bort. Ware’s art is purposely boxy and simple, because his stories are meant to take complex feelings and convey them in their simplest components. The problem, though, is that his writing is so terribly boring, and his stories just seem to feel that everything that occurs is deeply significant, it’s not always worth the five years it takes to get through a Ware book.
Spiegelman, though, is awesome.
February 26th, 2006 at 3:20 pm
Yes, yes. Spiegelman is awesome. He can write and draw. Very organic, raw energy.
Ware is a very gifted draftsman and designer and illustrator (to a point), but I must admit that his writing is pretty mediocre at best. But he is a really, really nice guy.
February 26th, 2006 at 4:06 pm
Technically? Yes, Chris Ware doesn’t appear to draw any better than those ’50s commercial artists. What is missed in this argument is the fact that Chris Ware is utilizing that particular style to evoke and explain a fictional world. It is artistically sound in that respect, since he has chosen this style rather than just being able to only use this style. The simplistic line drawings and minimalized figures are part of his visual vocabulary.
I reserve judgment on his written work, though.
February 27th, 2006 at 10:56 am
Ware is indisputedly a great artist. Perhaps he could team up with someone who can write interesting narrative, much in the same way that musical theater used to (or still does?) divide the lyric-writing and tune-writing between two people.
March 11th, 2006 at 7:01 am
It makes my nipples dehydrate and itch to even think that anyone could call Chris Ware’s writing anything less than BRILLIANT. I am ashamed to have possibly breathed a molecule of air that might have at one time come in contact with anyone you have met since you have failed to recognize one of our time’s greatest living poets. His social satires and political metaphors are intelligent and emotional while meticulously packaged in an aesthetic vessel that is as enjoyable to interpret as it is to look at. Opinions are usually subjective…not this time. Chris can write.