In this exercise, I needed to select two candidates from the following list of artists with a more extreme style, and then consider the relationship between their style and the content of their stories:
Jim Steranko
Aline Kominsky-Crumb
Alex Niño
Dave McKean
Mary Fleener
Frank Miller
Basil Wolverton
Having first done brief research into all of the options, I selected the following two artists.
Basil Wolverton
Researching Wolverton's work I was fortunate to come across a rare interview with the artist. I found it a really interesting read, and you can really get a sense of hit wit and humour which translates into his work.
There was a lot in the interview that resonated with me, particularly when Wolverton recalled
"I was really a reticent person... who couldn't function like an extrovert until he could feel that pleasant, foggy-blue glow from the stage lights."
I really identify with that juxtaposition of wanting to perform but requiring the right environment to make myself seen. It was interesting to read that Wolverton didn't really notice or care about polishing any particular kind of style until he was older. He only then focused on doing that in order to not look like others!
I found this particularly interesting when you compare it to the current day. The proliferation of the internet and social media has made seeing others' work a lot easier, and it seems to have the opposite effect on many people - they spend all their time chasing a style, trying to look like someone else. Maybe we all need to be a bit more Wolverton, who said of this style:
"My style, if it is a style, developed about like one's handwriting, which can sometimes be intelligible to others."
I think this is a really interesting perspective and took it to mean that one should focus on doing what you do, and not what others do. Your style will develop implicitly from external influences. The more your style develops, there is the chance that others might not 'get' it, but that's ok and certainly doesn't invalidate your style or its worth.
Wolverton's style is sometimes referred to as "meatball and spaghetti" and I can see where this description could come from. He has an extremely malleable approach, which reminds me of surrealistic influences like the melting clocks of Dali.
Whilst there is a bendy, organic feel to his work, the rending itself is extremely tight. He uses ink pointillistic shading to great effect in a lot of his work. His lines are bold and he balances those lines with tight compact hatching, cross-hatching and sometimes shaped hatching marks to evoke texture.
The larger the image (particularly faces) the more detail is focused on. This allows Wolverton to caricature and warp faces into grotesque forms. Whilst he might be most famous for these extreme and bizarre exaggerations, his work encompassed a broad range of markets. Of course, comics and satirical illustrations formed a large part of his body of work. However, he also started out doing editorial reportage and was able to adjust and focus his style for humorous and impactful advertising.
He spent a good deal of time creating strips for ongoing characters like Spacehawk and Powerhouse Pepper for Timely Comics (which would go on to become Marvel Comics). When doing strips there was less room for detail, and so his style simplified, using the organic feel to his bendy characters to add humour and storytelling. When in comic form, his work also adopted many characteristics of the animation style of the time.
He was not afraid to show things 'warts and all' and this played into his strength in making the grotesque funny, but it was also used to amazing effect in his most famous 'serious' work, an illustrated depiction of The Old Testament. Here, particularly in the chapter covering the Apocalypse his ability to graphically depict biblical scenes allowed him to create imagery that was brutal and that cut through the typical sanitisation of religious illustration. This would have been shocking in mid-century America.
There was something familiar to his work, and while I may have seen his work when I was younger in M.A.D. magazine, it did make me wonder about which other artists might have been influenced by Wolverton's work. My mind went to other cartoonists like Tom Paterson, and Ken Reid whose comics in the Beano and Dandy in my childhood left a lasting impression. For example, the knobbly knees, bucktoothed mouth and hairy Adam's apple of Calamity James seem to be influenced by the work of Wolverton.
Dave McKean
I found researching McKean’s work really interesting. It bucks against the mainstream aesthetics of comics. I was surprised to see such a wide mix of media used. Whilst he uses lots of different approaches, you can see the DNA of his style running through all of the work. What I really like is how his creative history has given him a breadth of influence which then is brought to, and evolves, his style and creative approach.
From the ink illustrations of Coraline and Cages to his vibrant and coloured images that seem to use mixtures of paint, ink collage and ephemera, often then manipulated digitally. His early comic work seems to form the basis of his dark, baroque sensibility. This plays into his work like Arkham Asylum. After his early comic success his change in direction to explore illustration, photography, film and design all compound and influence on top of each other.
This synthesis of style and influence has allowed McKean to apply himself to so many genres. Not only comics but book covers and album art. It’s like cross-pollination. It’s allowed for a huge variety of how his style is applied, rather than having a variety of style. There is a deep psychological aspect to his work, and he seems to have a wide variety of influences including baroque art, surrealism and cubism. The psychological aspects often seem to be used alongside symbolism and visual metaphor. This seems to then play out in his work both commissioned and self-directed. In Black Dog, you can see this clearly but even when he is collaborating with authors like Neil Gaiman, the subject matter has a thoughtful and deep perspective.
Interestingly his work in photography has also led him to works in advertising and his photo-composite design skills have also been applied to concept art in the creative industries. He seems to favour a consistent gamut of colours, with vibrant reds and blues accenting often muted tan and olive colours. This seems to play to the gothic nature of his work. I get a sense of febrility in a lot of it that creates a sense of unease.
References
Dave, M., 2021. Dave Mckean – Official Site. [online] Davemckean.com. Available at: http://www.davemckean.com [Accessed 10 May 2021].
Gaiman, N. and McKean, D., 2009. Coraline. London: Bloomsbury.
Knudde, K., 2021. Basil Wolverton. [online] Lambiek.net Comiclopedia. Available at: https://www.lambiek.net/artists/w/wolverton.htm [Accessed 10 May 2021].
Lambiek.net Comiclopedia. 2021. Dave McKean. [online] Available at: https://www.lambiek.net/artists/m/mckean_dave.htm [Accessed 10 May 2021].
Voll, D., 1989. Wolvertoons. [Place of publication not identified]: Fantagraphics Books.
Wolverton, B. and Wolverton, M., 2009. The Wolverton bible. Seattle, Wash.: Fantagraphics.
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