The Adam Baumgold Gallery is currently showing a series of drawing by Chris Ware, Drawings for New York Periodicals. His series that ran in the NY Times and his Thanksgiving New Yorker covers are included. Feb 1 - Mar 15, 2008. (thx, evan)
Related to Jason Salavon's work from last week is Brian Piana's work, the layouts and colors of web sites with all of the text and graphics stripped out. For instance, Barack Obama's Twitter page. The flowchart stuff is lovely...reminds me a bit of this page from Jimmy Corrigan. (thx, jonathan)
McSweeney's in a spot of trouble
Bad news from McSweeney's: their distributor filed for bankruptcy late last year and now they're out $130,000:
As you may know, it's been tough going for many independent publishers, McSweeney's included, since our distributor filed for bankruptcy last December 29. We lost about $130,000 -- actual earnings that were simply erased. Due to the intricacies of the settlement, the real hurt didn't hit right away, but it's hitting now. Like most small publishers, our business is basically a break-even proposition in the best of times, so there's really no way to absorb a loss that big.
To try and make up the gap, they're having a big sale and are also auctioning off some "rare items" like original art from Chris Ware, proofs from issues, signed copies of things, a painting by Dave Eggers of George W. Bush as a double amputee, and so on. In addition to Ware and Eggers, there's stuff from David Byrne, Nick Hornsby, and Spike Jonze. I've long admired McSweeney's for their editorial and business approach...it would be a shame to see them go out of business because of another company's financial difficulties. So give them a hand by purchasing something, if you'd like.
Longish detailed interview with Chris Ware about comics, which he calls "the weird process of reading pictures, not just looking at them".
Fascinating clip from the This American Life TV show about some grade school kids who became obsessed with using fake video cameras. Animated by Chris Ware. The thing is though, I remember fights in grade school and even in the absence of fake video cameras, students didn't step in to stop fights. (thx, matt)
Recent Chris Ware talk
A friend of mine who works at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln emailed to let me know that they've posted both audio and video of a talk that Chris Ware gave at the school last week. If you're short on time, the real meat of the video starts around 18:30 when Ware starts a slideshow that delves into his process. In addition to his series of Thanksgiving-themed New Yorker covers from last year, he also talks about some of his other work, including Rusty Brown and the strip he did for the NY Times Magazine.
This week's New Yorker features 4 different Thanksgiving-themed covered by Chris Ware. Collect them all! This one's my favorite.
"From September 27th - October 21 the Museum of American Illustration at the Society of Illustrators will host '30 Years of Fantagraphics,' a retrospective art exhibition of over 100 pieces of original art published by the Seattle underground giant." Artists in the exhibition include Chris Ware, Daniel Clowes, and Robert Crumb.
Short interview with Chris Ware upon the occasion of a show of his work at the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art. "I've found that anything I do [to] carefully plan and pare down in advance feels utterly false and constructed once I actually do it, having nothing of the sort of accident and unevenness of real life that I hope to, at least, modestly edge towards."
Chris Ware, unwilling to compromise the quality of his products, moves his ACME Novelty Library series from Fantagraphics to Drawn & Quarterly. (via waxy)
Chris Ware overrated? That's what this illustration fan thinks.
Short Chris Ware interview in the Guardian. When's he going to cheer up?
Peter Schjeldahl, in a harsh review of graphic novels for the New Yorker (with particular contempt for Harvey Pekar), suggests that the artistic breakthrough of graphic novels has occurred, been recognized, and "that a process of increasingly strained emulation and diminishing returns has set in", citing Chris Ware's Jimmy Corrigan as the form's peak. Here's a positive review of Ware's newest collection.
Three weeks in, I'm quite enjoying Chris Ware's contribution to the NY Times Magazine The Funny Pages, Building Stories (pt 1, pt 2), maybe because I often imagine inanimate objects like buildings having personalities.
The NY Times Magazine has launched The Funny Pages, their comics+ section. PDFs of the comics are available online...here's the first Chris Ware strip. They're also podcasting and the first episode is an interview with Ware by John Hodgman, assisted by organist and radio-man Jonathan Coulton.
New feature in the NY Times magazine: comics! First up, a six-month-long strip by Chris Ware, on whom I have a non-sexual crush.
Chris Ware's new book is out soon and Salon has an early review. Ware's Jimmy Corrigan is one of my favorite books of all time.
