Without Comment - Watterson edition

Golden Age of Comics

Once upon a time, long long ago, I wanted to be a comic book artist. Something in me still does, but it usually keeps pretty quiet, except when I come across blogs like this one.

I am sticking it here so I can go back and wander through it whenever I want.

I think our little friend Mr Miggs would love some of these old illustrations.

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Hi-Tech Saints

This is amazing. Using new laser technology restorers working in the catacombs of Rome have discovered and restored icon paintings of Sts Peter and Paul, and several others. These are the oldest such icons yet discovered dating from around AD 375 or so.

For me, here is the amazing part, using the lasers to burn through several inches of calcium deposits without damaging the paintings:

Using the laser technique, restorers were able to sear off all the deposits by setting the laser to burn only on the white of the calcium carbonate; the laser's heat stopped when it reached a different color. Researchers then easily chipped off the seared material, revealing the brilliant ochre, black, green and yellow underneath, Mazzei said.

We will probably never invent a time machine, but short of that this will do. I can't wait to see what we can do ten or twenty years from now.

An art disappearing.

A simple little film about working class guys.
Producing art.

soon to be gone in a neighborhood near you

The Great Patriotic War in Art

Found a link to a site with artwork from the Soviet Union during World War II (as we call it). You should take a look. Some of it is sappy, some dreadful, all of it hyper-patriotic. But some are arresting.

I like this one, entitled 'Victory Day in Berlin.'

[oops. Forgot the link. Thanks, Jack]

R. Crumb, r.i.p... ooops

Honest, I thought he was dead. R. Crumb. How many of you remember him? He was an underground comic artist of the late 60s-70s and a very strange man. (See this bio-pic if you have any doubts about that!). His artwork was splendid - he only drew in sharp black and white using India ink in a Rapidograph pen (my hero!).

While I have to admit to a certain influence on the budding Clemens' barely post adolescent mind, many critics have "denounced Crumb's work as socially degrading and emotionally immature misogynistic pornography!" (from a web page devoted to his work)

So imagine my surprise when I see in today's Washington Post that the man has illustrated a complete, unexpurgated, literal, word for word version of the book of Genesis. Complete unto every last 'begot'! Don't know if it is a work of reverence, love, or irony, but there is no doubt that it will be regarded as a work of art.

If you go into that sort of thing.

and I certainly do. Keep on truckin'.

How Walt Disney did it

I've always wondered about the consistent productivity of the Disney studios. Andrew Sullivan has discovered how they did it.

Short videos - a new art?

Now there are thousands of little short videos on the internet, some clever, some dumb, and some brilliant. It seems to be that it is a new art form, different even from the short films sometimes shown before feature films at the cinema. Here is a site with 20 of the best. If you watch any of them, let us know what you think of them, and which is your favorite.

Presidents - ALL of them

Found this little video on National Review Online. It's fascinating to watch. All of our presidents morphing from George to Barack set to Bolero. Very educational.

also notice the profundity of NROs commentary.

Oxymoron?

Paging through an old New York Review of Books this afternoon, listening to Ennio Morricone music, I find an ad for a book that sounds almost an impossible concept: Hitler's War Poets.

Is it even possible for such a regime to have real poets?

Probably, I am afraid. But I wouldn't be the one to judge.

the book cover has a portrait of an intellectual looking man, sensitive face and glasses, wearing the uniform of the Death's Head division of the SS. Oh well. Ars longa.

Gettysburg in oil and canvas

When I was about 9 my family went to visit the Gettysburg Battlefield. Back in those days the crush of tourism and capitalism had not yet fully worked its magic. I still remember how awed I was by the gigantic circular painting of the battle called the Cyclorama. You have seen photos of it, perhaps without knowing it, in almost every book on the battle containing pictures. I wanted to be an artist to recreate every nuance of such a work. I wanted to be that artist. Actually it was a team of 20 artists but I thought one person had done it all.

In this Washington Post article the new fully restored Cyclorama is described. The journalist writing the piece can makes no attempt to hide his disdain.

Yet I remember it as something remarkable. Almost like standing in the middle of the battle.

But then I had never seen a computer, 3-D graphics, or anything more sophisticated than small, fuzzy black and white TVs that were less realistic by far than the painting.

progress.

Faces in time

This morning when I came into the office I picked up a copy of Watchmen by Alan Moore, loaned to me, no, forced upon me, by the department lunatic with whom I have altogether too much in common. One of which is a love of comics, and Watchmen is one of the best, illustrated by Dave Gibbons. Not quite ready to get back to the Order of the Templars article I am finishing up ONE MORE TIME* I opened it and my eyes fell upon a paragraph that struck a chord.

Moe Vernon was a man around fifty-five or so, and he had one of those old New York faces that you don't see anymore. It's funny, but certain faces seem to go in and out of style. You look at old photographs and everybody has a certain look to them, almost as if they're related. Look at the pictures from ten years later and you can see that there's a new kind of face starting to predominate, and that the old faces are fading away and vanishing, never to be seen again.

True, with one exception: every time I look at old photos of Civil War soldiers I see relatives of mine. Perhaps we got stuck in the 1860s somehow.

It would explain a lot.



*it came back to me a few months ago for some updates on bibliography. Me being me, I did some more research and started rewriting one important part.

Fun art with pencils

No. Not the way you think. Check it out.
This one is my favorite - reminds me of Ben the Cat, especially around 6 am.


This post was approved by PMS, the Pencil Manufacturors Syndicate.

Western Art and The Woman

Andrew Sullivan has a link to an oddly compelling U-Tube bit. He uses it to strike a blow against the Islamists.

And to take a dig at Starbucks.*

Take a look, for both reasons.




*whose coffee sucks even compared to McDonald's brew, at least according to Consumer Reports.

"Paprika"

"Evidence that Japanese animators are reaching for the Moon, while most of their American counterparts remain stuck in the kiddie sandbox."
Manolha Dargis, The New York Times

See what the fuss is about.