The latest release from Providence-based noise cartoonist Christopher “CF” Forgues is something of a departure from his previous output, but it’s one that makes sense. Over the past decade or so, CF has gone from a marginal figure in the culty art-comix circle to perhaps the most influential cartoonist making noncommercial work on a regular basis. Though his stories in Powr Mastrs, Kramers Ergot, and The Ganzfeld (among numerous others) ring with conceptual focus and clarity of execution, the biggest reason for Forgues’s catapult to the top of the other comics heap is his often imitated but never equaled drawing style, which fuses childlike simplicity to virtuosic nuance beneath a pencil line that crackles with a raw energy wholly its artist’s own. The more work he puts out, the more CF emerges as that rarest of creatures: a true visionary who has chosen to devote himself to making comics. Read more
4 comments:
Why do you refer to his work as noncommercial? Is that true?
Not insofar as that he sells his books for money like anyone else does. It's a convenient shorthand for the motivation behind the work. Most comics are made in order to be sold. Noncommercial comics have artistic expression as a primary goal, and sales as a secondary one from creation through publishing.
Oh. Noncommercial makes me think that it is given for free and not sold. This seems to be work with intentions that are less commercial than average. Would you say the intention of artist defines the work more than the reality of the object? You could simultaneously describe a book sold on Amazon as the opposite of noncommercial. I look forward to buying it in any case.
I don't think you can separate the intentions of the artist from the reality of the object. Case in point, this CF book is 30 bucks for 60 tiny-ass pages, and that's exactly what he wanted it to be. When Darwyn Cooke puts out a mag-size pamphlet for $2, that's what he wants it to be. Unless the artists aren't given a chance to dictate the form the object takes (as in mainstream comics), that's an inextricable part of the creation process.
Post a Comment