Sunday, June 18, 2017

thinking once again of jack kirby's collages...

hunger dogs Jack Kirby collage Comic Arti recently found this 2013 text i wrote about jack kirby's collages, and figured i'd post it here...

in 2012 i heard that jack kirby made collages, and i was curious how a great draftsman would experiment in the collage medium... there's a lot  opinions of kirby's around kirby's collages and those images were what got me back into comics (and a closer look at comic art - especially from the 1960's). it took a while to see one in person. 

i know there is a bit of controversy about the value of these works - i don't mean in terms of money, but how do they fit into the king's overall body of work. some folks gripe that kirby slipped collages into the mix in books because they could be done faster than penciling a page (which i highly doubt), while others - such as myself - see them as kirby the artist , experimenting with a different kind of graphic language and effect; and i would say that the fact that he published collages sporadically throughout his career would be enough to suggest that they were not only important to his creative process, but also important to enhance his stories.. i.e. they offer another voice... and another level of story telling. 

i think the collages were not only important to kirby's narratives and landscapes, and are essential part to his process overall  vision - where found forms were used to make new forms throughe a different activity than drawing with a pencil. 

when i turn the pages of a sequence of drawings, and find a world of collage detritus, the landscape offers an "other"... arriving as a shock, as a portal to another dimension. 

the image above, was, i believe jack's last published collage, and one of his masterpieces of his use of the collage medium. it's a gigantic twice-up two page spread filled with complexity along with some very detailed scissor and hand work.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home