Category Archives: History

Illustration in the Age of Anxiety Video

View Illustration in the Age of Anxiety on FORA.tv

If you weren’t able to attend the Illustration Department’s mini-symposium “Illustration in the Age of Anxiety” this past November, you are in luck! FORA.tv has an archive of the event which you can view at their website. The symposium focused on how illustration handles times of unease and anxiety in our culture, from the atomic anxiety of the 1950s to today’s wars and upheaval and featured three conversations lead by prominent and accomplished writers illustrators. For full descriptions of each session, check out our original write-up and make sure to head over to FORA.tv and watch the video.

[pictured above from left to right: Ruth Marten, Tara McPherson, and Nora Krug.]

Chris Mautner interviews Monte Schulz

peanuts

Over at Panels and Pixels, Chris Mautner has posted an enlightening interview with Monte Schultz, the son of legendary comic artist & Peanuts creator Charles Schulz. They discussed the recent release of David Michaelis’ biography about Charles Schulz and the controversy over how the artist was portrayed. Here’s a brief excerpt:

Q: Ok, so let me read to you a little bit of a quote Michaelis gave to me that didn’t make my story. “How could I write a book about a comic strip genius, how could he not be perceived as a complex person? Maybe it’s an overly complex portrait. Maybe it should be simplified. I should have stepped back and let the sun shine in and lighten up a little. That may be an area where the book could have been greater.”

A: Yeah, I think that if he had let dad … this is something we talked about 10 months ago when we first saw the book. If he had just let dad’s life reveal itself, and it’s interesting because David uses this line, “a live reveals.” But he doesn’t do that in this book. He doesn’t allow a life to be revealed. He makes judgements, he interprets, he mythologyzes, he psychoanalizes. David really didn’t have an interest in telling dad’s life story. He had an interest in analyzing dad’s life and that’s different. Because in doing that he becomes very selective with his wiritng. And I think that’s where the error of the book is.

Yeah, he should have simplified this whole thing. You know what he ought to have done, he ought to have taken himself of the book. If David had removed himself and just let dad’s life reveal itself then he could have alowed his readers to make their own interpretations. In fact, David tells you what to think. He is just not content to let the story reveal itself.

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Read the entire text of Chris’s interview here. Other reviews & reactions to the book can be found here & here.

(Image by Charles Schulz, courtesy of United Media)

Tour the New School’s Art Collection!

kara walker

 

ART ON CAMPUS: WALKING TOUR

Join the New School Art Curators Silvia Rocciolo and Eric Stark for an enlightening walking tour of the paintings, photographs and sculptures on display throughout our university. Visit and learn about our famous Orozco room, with murals painted by Mexican muralist José Clemente Orozco in 1931, and many other important contemporary artists (like Kara Walker and Sol Lewitt) that are part of The New School art collection.

Wednesday, November 14th
From 2:00 to 3:00pm
Email
IEW@newschool.edu to register and for meeting place

(image above of Kara Walker’s installation “Event Horizon” at 55 W. 13th Street)

Japanese picture-book collection online

Kibyoshi (“yellow covers”) were popular picture-books produced in the middle of the Edo Period (1600-1860). They combined woodblock printed scenes with satirical text and dialogue. The text moves through the image like sound through space. Translations of several kibyoshi can be found in Manga of the Floating World: Comicbook Culture and the Kibyoshi of Edo Japan by Adam L. Kern (Harvard University Press). Link to online collection:
Tokyo University

Kibyoshi 1

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