It doesn't take a genius to see that Dave McKean is a genius, but his latest work, Black Dog, is even beyond the great work he's done previously. McKean's art continues to evolve, which I find very admirable (especially so as he was quite brilliant from early on, and could easily have had a laurel La-Z-Boy), and I am enraptured by the drawings in this book, but it's the writing that really caught my attention. It's just brilliant stuff. Like this--
"The wealthy will always want their trophies--little distractions from reality."
--for instance. And it's just a little side thing, really, not some pretentious purple prose cloud. One of the characters then goes on to talk about his paintings and their worth, and says,
" . . . they might as well be carrots, or bathroom plungers, if it's only the selling of them that gives them purpose."
Now that's some profound shit, ennit? If I can just internalize that idea (working on it) maybe I can get back to writing again. Ahem.
One more favorite quote--not on art this time around:
"We must become an even greater wave of revolution, breaking over our ossified society, tabula rasa, wiping the cant and lies from English life."
I mean, right?
Well . . . okay. One more.
"When you draw, or just look at the world with an artist's eye, you detach, you abstract. You find beauty in the details, even here, they are everywhere . . . . "
I thought that that might be straight from Paul Nash, so I went looking, but couldn't find it presented as such. I did find a very nice blog on wordpress which had lots of Nash's paintings, though, and is mos def worth your time: https://gerryco23.wordpress.com/2014/02/18/paul-nash-and-world-war-one-i-am-no-longer-an-artist-i-am-a-messenger-to-those-who-want-the-war-to-go-on-for-ever-and-may-it-burn-their-lousy-souls/
And just when I thought it couldn't get any better, there was an allusion to Gerard Manley Hopkins's "The Windhover." (My favorite poem:
.)
I'd never heard of Paul Nash before I picked up this book, but he's a very interesting artist. You can see some Paul Nash paintings at http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/exhibition/paul-nash.
BTW, I was checking on some Dave McKean facts with Professor Wikipedia, and was surprised to see that he was also identified as a musician. So I went In Search of . . . and found that he had done an album with Jon J. Muth entitled Adrift & Salient. So I went looking for that, and I happened upon a video called "Life is a Hideous Thing" which was quite interesting. (It is actually a podcast, though I found it as a "video" (one still picture) on The You Tub. Might be worth your time.) Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find much of anything reference to the cd, so if I want to hear it I'm going to have to buy it cold, which is something I don't do much of these days. But my love for Dave McKean says I should do just that . . . and it looks like there are some very inexpensive copies out there, so . . . let's see what kind of music this fellow makes. (The aforementioned podcast revealed to me that Dave originally wanted to make his way as a musician, and made quite a bit of effort in that direction. I'd never heard that before, and I've been a Dave McKean fan for a very long time . . . almost thirty years. So I mos def should look into this Adrift & Salient thing.)
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