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“Vogelmen Diaries” – Exhibition film and related archive articles (Melton Prior Institute im Heidelberger Kunstverein, 17.11.2012 – 27.1.2013)
Exhibition Film. Click on the image to play. . Fletcher DuBois performs the “Vogelmen Diaries” at the opening. Main Hall, Southern Wall: Thomas Nast, “Our System of Feathering Nests ..” Main Hall, Northern Wall: Thomas Nast, “Let Us Prey!” > Faits Divers – Illustrations: Crashes and Collapses > Thomas Nast: “Dead Men´s Clothes Soon Wear […]
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Animal Fury (Masters of Faits Divers – Painting III)
“Le Petit Journal” was the origin and the leading example of the faits divers press. “Somewhat analogous to a surrealist writing game, fait-divers reportage was an impersonal form of literary production that owed everything to the coincidental arrangement of its sentence elements.” (Robin Walz, Pulp Surrealism) The cover illustrators of” Le Petit Journal” created congenial […]
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spiegeln (mirroring) – Pictorial Improvisations on Heine´s Winter´s Tale (Cycle of aquatint etchings)
In her extensive cycle of graphics, which she began with in 2011, Manuela A. Beck references in a free associative manner motifs drawn from Heinrich Heine´s complex philosophical-political verse-epic. The technique of etching is not employed for reproductive purposes here, but as the original medium of pictorial composition.The artist succeeds in creating pictographic-abstract formulations that […]
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Tiger Hunting with the Shah. A Golden Era of Visual Journalism.
Daniel Zalkus, a renowned illustrator, who himself works as an artist-reporter from time to time, has put together an excellent commented series of historical drawings on-the–spot, representing a golden era of graphic reportage in the American magazines from the 1950’s and 60’s. Zalkus´ series Visual Journalism. The Artist as Reporter was publised recently in five […]
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Accidents will happen (Masters of Faits Divers – Painting II)
The list of outstanding illustrators who worked for the weekly supplement of the tabloid “Le Petit Journal”is impressive: Jose Belon, Charles Bombled, Henri Brispot, Eugene Damblans, Frederic Lix, Fortune Louis Meaulle, Henri Meyer, Lionel Royer, Osvaldo Tofani and Charles Gaston Yrondy. Most of them were trained history painters with a specific talent for catching the […]
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Death in the Shadows. “Black.Light Project”
The Black.Light project, which was initiated by war photographer Wolf Boewig and his companion, the travel writer Pedro Rosa Mendes, togehter with the graphic designers Henning Ahlers and Christopher Ermisch, is in many respects an adventurous one and, when it comes to openness and extension, without precedent: Ten comic artists, which are renowned for their fictitious work […]
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Robert Weaver VII: The Woolworth – Motion
What´s Come Over Old Woolworth? (Fortune, January 1969) “There are assignments for `Fortune´, where I am realistically and symbolically going up the corporate ladder at Woolworth´s. It starts with the stockboy, and I use chairs as a metaphor for power. The chairs become more and more elaborate as we go to top. The drawings where […]
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Algerian Guerrilla War II: Les Portes de fer – The Iron Gates of Subjugation
Pictorial Reports from the Algerian Guerrilla War II After a series of devastating defeats against the insurgent Arab militias led by Abd el-Kader, the French tried to gain valuable time through the Treaty of Tafna to consolidate their military. The agreement, concluded in May 1837, granted Abd el- Kader sovereignty over the largest part of […]
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Retraite De Constantine / Prise De Constantine
“Retraite de Constantine” was one of the most widespread examples of Auguste Raffet´s series of annual lithography albums. It was published in spring of 1837 by Gilhaut Freres and gives an account of the first failed attempts at conquering the Algerian fortress. The ignominious retreat of the French army in November 1836 was mainly blamed […]
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Crashes and Collapses (Masters of Faits Divers – Painting I)
In 1863 a new kind of journalism with particular emphasis on sensational news stories, the so called faits divers, was introduced to the French press landscape by the foundation of the daily “Le Petit Journal”. It´s editor M.P. Millaud had coined the much quoted phrase “dare to be stupid”. In the 1890s this leading French […]