Bill K's Avant Garde Comics Talk

[whitecomics]

Did anyone else watch this recent talk by Bill Kartalopoulos at the New York Comics & Picture-story Symposium? I was completely taken with it, both because of the individual works under discussion and because of the alternate/parallel history of comics it presents.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=IY5gCNSR9VE

I'd love to hear anyone's thoughts on this topic or suggestions  of others artists who fit into this kind of avant garde comics canon. Austin English has done a good job with Domino of finding stuff like this and presenting it to a comics audience.

Ida Applebroog is a big one for me, there's a good chunk of her work I see as comics although she's moved away from that mode recently:



The main challenge with this kind of work, as a comics person, is that I expect to be able to find it in an affordable and approachable book. You can get some things at a decent price through abebooks and the other usual outlets if you know what you're looking for (again, I welcome suggestions!) but I don't want half the book to be essays I won't read.

[mikesheawright]

Thanks for this, will def peep that vid.

[papersnail]

Definitely up my alley, thanks for sharing this. I'll be giving it a watch later. In a quick scrub through the presentation the only thing recognizable that jumped out at me was Joe Brainard. I know you said affordable but there are a few beautiful recent Brainard books (and a zine) that are well worth the sticker price and that I'm sure our own wigshop would love to sell you: A Joe Brainard Show in a Book, Joe Brainard: Paintings, and Some Drawings of Some Notes to Myself.

[bhanu]

Loved the talk. Didn't know much about any of the collectives and artists mentioned. Wonderfully laid out. Look forward to the rest of the series of these lecture/presentation. I know the talk was already quite long, but would have loved to hear about mangas etc from that era. Hope he includes it later.

[bhanu]

I guess in terms of manga. Something like Screw Style and Ding Dong Circus might be of some importance?

[wigshop]

Aw wow, I just did a quick scrub through and this is absolutely wonderful. Can't wait to sink into the whole thing.

Listened through the Brainard section which is dear to my heart - such a wonderful artist. I love how central he was to his scene - feels like he did covers for all his friends' poetry books, all while having a fine art career. Here's a favorite collage that's at the Met in NY. Big secret is that Brainard's the source of my shop name - there's a little work on paper out there of Nancy's hair on a hat-stand with the words "WIG SHOP" over it. I'll always pick up whatever Brainard books are out there and I'm thrilled to spread the word about him.

There are some terrific publishers out there doing similar things that I'd recommend:

Siglio Press is absolutely terrific and I think of them like a visual continuation of Black Sparrow Press (who published books by Jess and Robert Duncan, also mentioned in the Bill K talk). Siglio used to do some really neat limited editions that came with prints / original artworks, and I hope they do more in the future.

They've got a great Brainard book, some terrific Jess and Ray Johnson books, and lots more. Richard Kraft's HERE COMES KITTY is in the spirit of Jess's cut-ups, and Karen Green's illustrated books are stunning/delicate visual-memoirs. 

RE: Ida Applebroog, a cool-kid gallery in Manhattan called Karma made a terrific book called "MERCY HOSPITAL" - the book is out of print but you can still find copies out there. They're publishing this Lee Lozano book, too, which looks pretty wild. Karma's really interesting to watch if you're following contemporary art scenes - they've got quite the eye for new blood. Not all comic-y but still really cool stuff. 

I've also got my eye on Nieves and innen -- they're doing these little zines of contemporary artists and illustrators that feel in the spirit of all this stuff. 

[maxmorris]

I really enjoyed the talk, got me to finally pull the trigger on getting a monograph of Fahlstrom and Poem Strip. I also was totally fascinated on the Lettrist material- I dearly hope someone prints a book of Roberto Altmann someday. I’ve seen Geste hypergraphique images floating on the internet for ages and would love to see the pages in the flesh.

[whitecomics]

Karen Green is a great person to mention here, I love her work and admire in particular the way she seems comfortable with text and image working together without them necessarily needing to appear on the same page as a traditional comics approach might dictate. I'm reminded of Leanne Shapton's work and in particular Swimming Studies, another book that jumps easily between image and prose -- and, ha, I see she's recently been published by Nieves! The only person I can think of who has come to a similar approach from a comics background is Simon Moreton in his recent book WHERE?. I'm biased, since he's a friend, so I'm sure there are others who don't come to mind and do similar work.

[manoopuesta]

I haven't watched the talk yet, but have to soon.

Anyway, just wanted to mention I have recently watched a talk by John Hankiewicz (also from the NY Comics & Picture-story Symposium series) that was really good, in case others may be interested too. So many great ideas poured onto that lecture he gives at the beginning.

Funny to see all the mentions to Brainard, as I am now for the first time reading his work (specifically, 'I Remember') and I love it. I hope I can dig into more soon.

Leanne Shapton's  Swimming Studies is great. I hadn't heard before of Karen Green, so thanks for the mention!

[pietrykowski]

Thank you all for posting these videos. Kartalopoulos' talk was out standing.

[BubblesZine]

I'm only 40 minutes in but it's a fantastic lecture. I really hope to see some of these 40s-60s work in print, especially that Geste Hypergraphique book. Looks amazing. Really cool point of history, and seemingly often ignored by "fine art" people. Excited to keep watching.

[teemcgee]

Thanks also for the recommendation - even if in some ways, hearing someone talk about these works fires my interest more than the idea of reading the works themselves! So many other talks now to watch on this channel too - EA Bethea, Ryan Holmberg....

[BubblesZine]

I'm getting closer to the end. At first I wasn't sure how I'd feel about all these "fine artists" who made "comics" outside of the canon of comics history, not like it's a bad thing but I wasn't sure how much of a overlap the histories would have. But that really doesn't matter much. But I think Bill does a great job in showing that these were artists who truly believed in the power of words, images and sequence in illustration. While the comics canon & fine art timelines seemingly don't overlap too much, their thoughts did whether they knew it at the time or not. I like how Bill will name drop artists like Brian Chippendale, or Noel Freibert, because to me those are two comic artists who truly take full advantage of the medium and excite me. I grow tired of comics that feel more like illustrated novels. Everyone mentioned in this talk was really trying to do something with words/image/sequence that feels inventive. I was pretty inspired seeing a lot of the work here.

[whitecomics]

I've been working my way through this book on concrete poetry, acquired of course via Domino, so just wanted to recommended that for anyone interested in this kind of stuff. It's a great, broad survey -- gives me just enough to have a sense of each person's work while also allowing me to jump past the stuff (which is there, to be fair) that doesn't do anything for me.

[whitecomics]

I'm resurrecting this thread to share, and solicit any opinions on, part 2 of Bill's talk:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5kVy3sX1Qc

I really loved it. As with part 1, I knew a few of these artists and in those cases appreciated the additional context, biographical info that Bill presented. In other cases the work was entirely new to me, and I want to track down as much of this stuff as I can.