KENT WILLIAMS

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I love these powerful pictures by Kent Williams, one of my favorite artists working in graphic novels today. These kinds of images have their roots all the way back in the urschleim.

Williams is also a magazine illustrator, a gallery painter and an art teacher. He teaches contemporary figurative painting in Pasadena, California.

Some of his pictures are more successful than others, but Williams is one of the very few sequential artists who I think makes effective use of the technical tools and creative choices now offered by graphic novels. For example, the following panel from the graphic novel Tell Me Dark displays far more nuanced color and shading than was possible in previous generations of comic books.



As another example, Williams used a kneaded eraser to mold a figure by lifting highlights from a background of vine charcoal. This delicate technique was not possible with the printing technology for earlier comic books.

The golden age of illustration began in the late 19th century as a result of the invention of photoengraving. Prior to that time, art could only be published in a book or magazine by painstakingly tracing the original image onto a wooden block which was then carved by hand by an engraver. The artist was at the mercy of the engraver (who often co-signed the finished block) as well as the printer. Photoengraving inspired a mini-renaissance because for the first time, books and magazines faithfully captured the artist's true talent (for better or worse).

Comics have now gone through a similar renaissance. For most of their history, comics were drawn in pencil by one artist, then traced in ink by a second artist for reproduction. Often, a third artist applied color on a separate page or guide sheet as a reference tool for the printer. Now graphic novels have overcome all these limitations of the medium. Today's artists are free to work with delicate line, or subtle gradations in color and value, or mixed media.

While many writers have taken advantage of the freedom of the graphic novel, very few artists have risen to the challenge. Most sequential artists treat the graphic novel like a super sized comic book on glossy paper. Even successful painters such as Alex Ross, who use the new image quality to convey slick, photo-realistic art, don't add much artistic integrity. Their art may be dazzling but it seems thin and lacking in humanity.

Apart from Williams, there seems to be only a handful of artists-- McKean, Miller, and perhaps half a dozen others-- who are doing artwork worthy of the medium.

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MEET BOB & BOB

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Bob & Bob was a flaky performance art team in the 1970s. They painted themselves yellow and silver and conducted "happenings" in rooms filled with popcorn or foam rubber. They named their happenings "Sex is Stupid" or "Forget Everything You Know." Sometimes Bob & Bob would perform songs against materialistic society:

People go to school and learn from books
Then they get degrees
Then they get a job and drive a Porsche

Bob & Bob had no apparent drawing skills. A booklet of their work describes the team's technique for drawing:

The drawings were nothing more than scribbles but the two found something harmonious there so they decided to draw together on the same sheet of paper.

They also performed comedy routines. Fortunately, Bob & Bob faded away like disco with the dawn of the 1980s. So why am I wasting your time with them? Because recently I looked at some of their drawings and was astonished to find they were truly excellent. I think these deserve a wider audience.

As part of their campaign against capitalism, Bob & Bob copied photographs from the annual reports of banks and large corporations. They drew the corporate executives and boards of directors with magic markers in a crude way. The results were absolutely devastating.





Said Bob & Bob:"These poor bankers have spent their whole lives in classrooms and offices and all they have to show for it is money and wrinkles. We wanted to turn them into art." I find these drawings more lacerating than the art of widely acclaimed social critics such as George Grosz, R. Crumb or Gerald Scarfe.





I am surprised that two goofy featherweights like Bob & Bob were able to produce something so dark and trenchant. These drawings seem close in spirit and quality to the work of Francis Bacon and Marshall Arisman.





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The alchemy of art is so unpredictable, unlikely artists sometimes produce surprising results. Were these drawings intentional or just a lovely accident? I don't know, but they are another reason why (as if another were needed) the time to stop looking with fresh eyes at new artists is never.

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