imagery, iconography and nonlinear narratives

I've struggled with many years with questions relating to meaning and symbol in art. Like the post-impressionists and expressionists at the turn of the last century worked against Academy Art and the idea of painting as illusion and presentation of a perfect ideal- artists today are emerging from the previous ideal of cool- cold- strictly aesthetic art to bring back meaning and emotion.

Reading "Understanding Comics" for my Comic Book Art History class has given me more to think about as far as how the image as presented by the artist conveys representational information as well as iconic imagery. David McCloud created this terrific chart to illustrate the way that comic book artists and writers fall along the spectrum with "Reality" (or representational accuracy) at one corner- "Meaning" (language) at the other corner... with the "Picture Plane" (or abstraction) at the top.

Betty Edwards' 1979 book, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain focuses on these questions as well. By understanding the ways that our mind processes visual vs sequential information, we can effectively switch gears and draw with amazingly accuracy. I love to draw realistically- but accurate rendering isn't the whole story. McCloud's Understanding Comics made me realize why I find journaling so satisfying: it's the interplay between image and meaning that turns me on.

I'm probably one of the most "schooled" person you'll ever meet. I haven't attended the best schools- and I certainly haven't always been the best student- and I've far surpassed the point of diminishing returns in my education (especially if you account for my crippling student loan debt)... but up until now, I've never really been able to find any thing in academia that has really been able to help answer this question related to my own particular struggle between "meaning" and "artistry."

I find myself wondering if the reason I struggle, is that I limit each art piece to an individual image. Comics use a sequence of images to create a sense of time. With passing time, you can more easily create a narrative. But do I really need a narrative to create a sense of meaning?

Here are two artists who are using images and text and meaning in a particularly interesting way:

Jakub Julian Ziolkowski

Art in America article which describes "recurring characters sourced from the deepest recesses of his imagination who interact in non-linear and disjointed narratives"

SEE? THAT'S WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT!!!


An artist friend of my mom, Gregg Coffey posted the art of Dragan Vuk Racic on facebook the other day:

Again- we seen an interesting play between image and words- charts and drawings- meaning and expression combined really successfully with more formal aspects like color, line, form and texture.

I registered for an art course once at Purchase, "Painting and Writing" and was disappointed that the class never once actually combined painting and writing in a single piece. When I suggested it, my painting teacher scoffed. No- one week we'd paint, and one week we'd write. I actually wrote a poem I was pretty proud of- on memory and the mis-remembered, and interpretation and misinterpretation- but the class never got writing into my painting in the way that I wanted because our teacher firmly believed that art should not involve any sort of narrative or meaning- linear or otherwise. She once said, "a dog will look at a picture of a dog because it's a dog." I don't know what else she said about that because it stopped being relevant to me. For the rest of my time at Purchase, I sought out printmaking professors to advise me on my painting. They were a lot more open to my kind of art.

Sequential Art

I'm taking a class on comics that started this week. Yesterday in class, we discussed the various definitions of "comics."

David Kunzle, The Early Comic Strip, 1973: “A sequence of separate images” with “a preponderance of image over text” that appears (and was originally intended to appear) in “a mass medium” and tells “a story which is both moral and topical.”

Will Eisner, Comics and Sequential Art, 1985: “Sequential art”

Scott McCloud, Understanding Comics, 1993: “Juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or to produce an aesthetic response in the viewer.”

David Carrier, The Aesthetics of Comics, 2000: A comic has three essential features: “the speech balloon, the closely linked narrative, and the book-size scale.”

Greg Hayman and Henry John Pratt, “What Are Comics?”, 2005: “x is a comic iff x is a sequence of discrete, juxtaposed pictures that comprise a narrative, either in their own right or when combined with text.”



I think Will Eisner's short and simple definition works the best- but I think it's interesting that McCloud talks about the intent: aesthetic and/or informative. That's a significant different. Fine Art- supposedly- is purely aesthetic. Crafts tend to be functional. Comics can be either or both.

While my own journals tend to employ devices seen in comics- specifically the speech bubble- my images definitely don't have a specific sequential aspect. They don't follow a narrative other than the broad narrative that is my life story. Each image addresses a "day in the life"- and while themes emerge, and images and characters repeat- there's no specific sequential progression.

I think this class will be useful in a couple of ways. I'd like to be exposed to new comic artists. Also, I'm interested in the way that comics merge the written word and visual images and would like to incorporate new techniques and directions in my own art.


Would I consider making my own art "more sequential?"--- I think it could be an interesting exercise. I'm already drawn to art that tells a story- and I think that comics do it quite effectively. I was taught that art shouldn't attempt to tell a story- that it's purely an aesthetic experience. I've always resisted that school of thought. Some of my favorite artists tell stories with their art: Henry Darger, David Wojnarowicz, William Wiley... There are beautiful exceptions to every rule.