Sunday, November 16, 2008

Barron Storey's The Adjustment of Sidney Deepscorn - Coda

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Images:
1. "The Adjustment of Sidney Deepscorn"'s last page (Tales From the Edge! # 1, June, 1993): the original page is too tiny, but, here, you can amplify it reading Barron Storey's amazing words;
2. the last page of "Refried Eyes" (Tales From the Edge # 5, February, 1995): Barron Storey imagines two readers: the father, on the left, is a mature person who understands what he's seeing and reading (his life experience enables him to do a a sophisticated decoding); the son, on the right, understands nothing; the panels tell the story of Barron's deteriorating relationship with Kelly B.;
3. Barron Storey's frustrations with the comics market are distilled into the last page of "Slidehouse" (Tales From the Edge # 7, July, 1995); the text below - on my November, 14 post - is white in the black square;
4. The Marat Sade Journals' cover (Tundra Publishing: 1993);
5. Barron Storey stated many times that he admires his former teacher Robert Weaver (who was an important illustrator: he helped to freed illustration from Pompierism and saccharine à la Norman Rockwell advocating a painterly and personal approach, without denying communication); it's only natural that Barron Storey's visual journalism excludes Naturalism to be highly symbolic (it's painterly in technique and reminds collage in its kaleidoscopic effect; the word "postmodern" comes to mind); at first glance I find Barron Storey's style more suitable to illustrate science fiction or Homer's epic tales than to illustrate simple, plain life (I also have a problem with the excessive use of quotes); what happens is that, as I said before, the content of his comics and journals (the same thing in the expanded field) is so personal that the use of symbols (both to show and to conceal) or words and images from other artists, is perfectly understandable; this also leads to a fascination with masks (Life After Black, Graphic Novel Art: 2007);
6. canvas # 14 from the Victims exhibition (Anno Domini gallery: February 1 - March 15, 2008).

PS A Robert Weaver slideshow (a visual reportage, way before Joe Sacco: February, 1962):

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