SELFMADEHERO: CORBYN COMIC / NICK CAVE by REINHARD KLEIST /SPINNING by TILLIE WALDEN

Pleased to receive for review the latest crop of titles from SelfMadeHero [their 10th Anniversary year] which, as usual, cover a very wide field and demonstrate the wonderful richness and variety of the world of graphic publishing.

Published to coincide with this year's Labour Party conference in Brighton, 'The Corbyn Comic Book' is an anthology of 34 contributions by cartoonists, artists and writers from the UK, US and Australia. They include well-known cartoonists and established graphic novelists, a crop of young upstarts alongside a number of illustrators whose work has never before been published.

As you would expect, many of these contributions picture JC as a heroic figure thwarting the evil forces of Conservatism and Capitalism. Many express the passionate expectations and hopes that he has stimulated for an administration that is more in touch with people on the street. There's a lot of dark humour here reflecting the mood of the moment as well as contrbutions that pick up on Corbyn's well-known predilection for working on his allotment and making jam - the latter beautifully written and illustrated by Richard Dearing. There's a touch of Buddhism to this which I like.

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Reinhard Kleist is an internationally feted illustrator with a string of graphic biographies to his credit that have earnt him some of the biggest awards in the Comic world. Perhaps best known to many is his wonderful portrait of the life of Johnny Cash entitled 'I See The Darkness'. From the Man In Black to Nick Cave is in many ways a natural step as blackness is a colour best suited to the character and work, both musical and literary, of his rangy anger-filled persona. Kleist does use colour in some of his work but this 300p+ biographic stunner is pure black and white used to startling effect. It's a masterclass which is worth detailed study.

The book cleverly interweaves episodes from Cave's actual factual life story with the strange and fantastical worlds he conjures up in his songs. Rock's Prince of Darkness, Cave's band The Birthday Party earnt a reputation for their violent on-stage performances. After the band broke up in 1983, Cave formed a band named Bad Seeds who have released 16 albums of original songs to date. In 2006, he also started a garage rock band named Grinderman with two albums so far to its credit. Cave's other outpourings include two novels and a roster of highly regarded film scores.

Kleist the perfect artist to document such an extraordinary life.The sheer amount of detailed work in this book is stunning. particularly his visualisations of the live gigs in which he captures the speed, action and emotion in powerful, energetic frames. Nick Cave himself approves. In a cover quote he says: 

'Reinhard Kleist, master graphic novelist and myth-maker has - yet again - blown apart the conventions of the graphic novel by concocting a terrifying conflation of Cave songs, biographical half-truths and complete fabulations and creating a complex, chilling and completely bizarre journey into Cave World. Closer to the truth than any biography, that's for sure. But for the record, I never killed Elisa Day.'

Check out Kleist's website which includes something I've never seen before - pics from gigs where a band plays and Kleist does live drawing projected on a screen behind the group. Great idea.

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Tillie Walden is just 21 years old and this is already her fourth graphic novel. A twin, born in Austin, Texas in 1996, her extraordinary natural talent flows out of her pen as you can see on her beautiful website. Tillie went to the Centre for Cartoon Studies in Vermont to develop her craft but she told Paul Gravett in an interview here  that it was her father who first lit the spark: 

 “When I was a kid,my dad got me one of those huge collections of Winsor McCay’s Little Nemo in Slumberland [1905–26]. It was so big (and I was so little) that I could sit on top of the pages." and read the comics.”

This new whopping 400+page book is a departure for her as its autobiographical. For twelve years figure and sychronised skating was Tillie Walden's life and 'Spinning' is built on her own experiences.

In the author's note at the back of the book, she explains that she didn't want to collect memorabilia and try and tie all the facts down accurately. She wanted the whole thing to come only from her own memories even if they were not entirely accurate. She says she was trying to capture the feeling:  'I care about how it felt to be there, how it felt to win'. 

She says that in the end she realised it was not only about ice skating as there were lots of other narratives to do with things in her life that influenced her skating which included her sexuality - she is a prominent LGBT figure in the US.

The whole work is realised in a kind of purple ink with the occasional effective highlight in a subtle yellow. Even if it's not your world, the story is touching and affective and emotionally honest. It's a mature work about a confusing adolescence, Walden demonstrates once more her remarkable facility. A stunning career lies ahead.

Interesting recent interview by JA Micheline here.

THE FUTURE IS FEMALE: FRIDA KAHLO / RADICAL WOMEN: LATIN AMERICAN ART 1960-1985

VANNA VINCI / Source: Zero

Like many women artists of her time, Frida Kahlo did not consider herself a feminist. Yet in the 60+ years since her death her extraordinary life and remarkable artworks, have earnt her iconic status amongst the sisterhood worldwide.

Her personal image and the images she created have permeated global consciousness. Plays and feature films have been produced about her and a library of biographies and academic works have examined her life and ouevre in complex detail.

This wonderful new graphic biography by Vanna Vinci is a marvellous new addition to the literature. It not only chronicles her life but also finds ways to reach into Kahlo's inner self. These two double-page spreads document the tragic accident that marked a huge rupture in her life, crippling her body and setting the scene for a lifetime of pain.

As these pages show, she is in conversation with death from then on.Vinci pulls no punches. The blood, the sex, the murder, the infidelities are all vividly displayed. Kahlo's remarkable resilience, the power of her spirit are captured in powerful vignettes. The drawings and colouration are beautiful. A triumph. [Published by Prestel]

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By chance or design, Prestel have published another title - 'Radical Women: Latin American Art: 1960-1985' - which follows on neatly from Frida Kahlo.

A ground-breaking survey of Latin American women artists and Latina and Chicano women artists in the USA, it's a mammoth book linked to a major exhibition that took some seven years to research and stage.

Claiming to be the first genealogy of radical and feminist art in the region, it covers the work of 120 women artists and collectives from 15 countries. Sixteen of the featured artists died during the lengthy reaserch and production process.

The majority of this work has been marginalised and hidden. Most of the artists at the time were unaware of each others' works. Less than 20 women artists from the region are widely recognised in the gallery system and several of those are wives of male artists. In the past Kahlo's work was considered "unhealthy" and her craziness "transmissible".

 [Left] Maris Bustamante: 'The Penis as a work instrument' 1982.

One of the two curators Cecilia Fajardo-Hill (the other being Andrea Giunta) writes: 

'The reality is that many more women artists participated in the shaping of twentieth century art than have been accounted for. In Latin America this has been partly because of sexism and because the system, both on the continent and internationally, judges the quality of  artists' work on the basis of visibility and success,which are often denied to women.'

[Left] Sonia Gutiérrez 'We'll Keep Saying Homeland' 1972.

In the introductory essay, the curators say that most of the work they're presenting is:

  'deeply bound to the political situation in much of the continent at the time, particularly in countries ruled by the authoritarian governments that aimed to control behaviour, thought and bodies...The lives and work of these artists are emeshed in the experiences of dictatorship, imprisonment, exile, torture, violence, censorship and repression.'

Apart from Mexico (since the late 1970s), no other country in the region had a organised feminist art movement. The curators claim their purpose is to write a new chapter in art history.

A word on the book's structure. Front and back are essays - general comments before, at the back a series of country by country papers by various scholars, with an appendix of detailed artists biographies.

In-between is a substantial gallery of Plates showing the artists' work, organised in alphabetical order. The exhibition itself is organised around themes: The Self Portrait / Body Language / Mapping the Body / Resistance and Fear / The Power of Words / Social Places / The Erotic.

[Above] Ana Mendieta. Facial Hair Transplants. 1972

During the 25-year period the book focuses on, the depiction of the female body became the battlefield in these women's commitment  to revolutionary struccle and resistance to the region's dictatorships. In Latin America the relationship between the body and violence was central. Women were being held in detention illegally, or exiled. Their children were stolen. There were specific methods of torture on women's bodies.

In response, these brave artists subverted the portrait, depicted the faces of the "disappeared", made artworks with tortured bodies, works using blood, semen, urine and excrement, portrayed eroticism, sexuality and revolutionary kisses between gays and lesbians.

One of the book's essays is a conversation between three women, practitioners and/or academics, which concludes with a statement that underlines the importance of bringing this work to the attention of the world:

'In the current context of violence against women in Latin America, where, according to the Pan American Health Organization, sexual violence—including human trafficking, domestic and sexual abuse, and femicide—are an everyday reality, we believe that for a work of art to be called feminist it must do more than address the issues that afflict women in patriarchal Latin American societies. Artists must go further and embrace feminist politics. 

'The act of calling oneself a feminist artist or artivist, as those who came before us did, is extremely significant in today's world, which would like to see us dead or disappeared, enslaved or submissive. The legacies of artists from the 1970s are alive in the present. This is evident in feminist art collectives, in the individual work of many artists, and in feminist art organizations...[there are] more than one hundred artists and artists' groups that make up the Latin American feminist art scene.'

[Above] Untitled work, Part of a series by Liliana Maresca. 1983


This remarkable book, beautifully produced to the highest print quality, is a seminal work. The artworks on display cover a huge range of forms of expression: paintings, prints, performance pieces, photography, video clips, sculptures and beyond. True inspiration for the next wave of female artivists and an object lesson in creativity and bravery.

SEE PREVIOUS POST: BRAZILIAN MUSIC: MONICA VASCONCELOS / TROPICALIA / LUAKA BOP / SOUND AND COLOURS / BIXIGA 70