Because many of the readers live outside the Netherlands i can not withhold you the cover Joost Swarte made for the broadcasting association VPRO. Swarte is one of the house designers of the printed publicity outings of the Holland Animation festival and this 2017 edition is a very special one. The complete cover of the TV guide is published with a specially designed publicity drawing. Enjoy it and keep in mind that there are more nice Swarte items available at www.ftn-books.com
Robert Crumb, one of the “founders” of the underground comic movement and very important for the evolution of comics. Totally independent , a very personal style and a free spirit in thoughts and subjects, he introduced , sex and drugs into comics.
Robert Crumb was born in Philadelphia in 1943. As a kid, he started drawing homemade comic books, together with his brother Charles, for the amusement of himself and his family. One of the characters he invented back then was Fred the Cat, named after the family’s pet. Eventually, Fred became Fritz the Cat, one of Crumb’s best-known characters.
Crumb left home in 1962, getting a job as a greeting card artist in Cleveland, Ohio. At the same time, he continued his comics, sending one to the public gallery section of Harvey Kurtzman’s Help! Magazine. Encouraged by Kurtzman, Crumb moved to New York to work for Help! Unfortunately, this magazine folded just after Crumb returned from an eight-month stay in Europe. Crumb stayed in New York for a while, making comics trading cards for Topps Gum, among other things, and then returned to Cleveland.
In January 1967, Crumb moved to California, where he did some comics for a magazine called Yarrowstalks. His work was so well received they asked him to do a whole comic book, and soon the first issue of Zap was ready. The publisher however disappeared with all of the original artwork. Crumb, who had not only saved xeroxes of his work, but was already halfway with the next issue of Zap, found Don Donahue and Charles Plymell willing to publish it. And so the material for the second Zap comic was published as Zap #1, after which the older material for the first issue was printed as Zap #0. All of these have become collector’s items.
Zap Comix became a success, and soon other artists, like Rick Griffin, Victor Moscoso and S. Clay Wilson, started contributing their work. Interest in Crumb’s work resulted in ‘Head Comix’, a collection of his comics published by Viking Press, and a ‘Fritz the Cat’ book by Ballantine. Crumb also contributed to other publications from the underground movement, such as the East Village Other. When animator Ralph Bakshi turned to Crumb to make Fritz the Cat into an animated movie, Crumb eventually agreed, but soon became exhausted with the pressure and left it to his wife, Aline Kominsky, who signed the contract. Crumb hated the film so much that he killed off Fritz once and for all in a strip in The People’s Comics.
The end of Fritz the Cat
In the early 1990s, Robert Crumb and his family moved to France, where they still live today. The creator of unforgettable characters such as Mr. Natural, Mr. Snoid, Angelfood MacSpade and Devil Girl still has a tremendous production, which has been collected in many books. He has worked on a series of comic books with Charles Bukowski in the 1980’s, produced a book on Kafka with David Zaine Mairowitz and also illustrated several issues of Harvey Pekar’s ‘American Splendor’ series. Crumb’s daughter Sophie eventually also turned to comic art.
Crumb is also a talented musician. He plays banjo and mandolin, and has performed with R. Crumb & His Cheap Suit Serenaders and Eden and John’s East River String Band. He has also illustrated a great many album covers, including ‘Cheap Thrills’ by Big Brother and the Holding Company and the compilation album ‘The Music Never Stopped: Roots of the Grateful Dead’.
There are some very nice Crumb titles available at www.ftn-books.com including the rare Point d’Ironie title Flesh and Blood
Sixties and seventies are the decades of Pop Art and Valerio Adami was one of the artists outside the US that was influenced by the more famous Pop Art artists and developed his own style from the popular comics, with their thick black outlines (ligne clair). He was not always appreciated for his art, but always was assured of a valuable platform to show his art in the Maeght galleries and publications. He took figures , situations and objects apart to reassemble them again into another composition, thus making them abstract and hardly recognizable.
Personally i am very fond of Valerio Adami. For me he is the artist who bridges comics with serious (Pop) Art. This is another of the artist who s relatively cheap to buy and collect and i predict his works and publications will be in high demand in the next 20 years.
www.ftn-books.com has some nice Maeght and other publication on this great artist.
Yesterday morning in the V part of the Volkskrant the new graphic magazine SCRATCHES was announced with a special cover drawn by Joost Swarte. The new magazine on graphic art will be launched at the Frankfurter Buchmesse ( starts on 19/10) .Contributions by Swarte himself, Nijstad, Tak , Wasco and Herr Seele make this one of the most anticipated new magazines to be launched. The price of SCRATCHES will be eur0 29,90
for more information visit : http://scratch.pr.co/101536-uitgeverij-scratch-presenteert
And for vintage and collectable Swarte publications visit www.ftn-books.com
From the early eighties on i a am an admirer of the french comic book artist…. Jacques de Loustal, better known as Loustal. He invented a comic book art form which is based on illustrations in which a complete scene/story is drawn within one drawing and with these illustrations he tells a complete story and challenges your imagination. Now his books are published all over the world. In the Netherlands they are mainly published by Oog & Blik, but in his early days his books and prints were almost all published in his native country France. One of the books that really stands out is WHAT HE EXPECTED OF HER. an adult view on marriage and relations. A highly recommended title of this fascinating artist. Available at www.ftn-books.com
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In 2002 Raymond Pettibon made the opening exhibition for the GEM museum. The exhibition was curated by Roel Arkesteijn. Pettibon worked day and night to include over 600 drawings and designs, but he finished in time to make it a memorable exhibition. After the opening he had time to make and finish 3 comic books, which were printed ( copied ) and stapled in house by Chantal Sieuw. These 3 titles are since highly collectable Pettibon books , because the edition was only 100 copies for each title.
The Over Easy title is the first to be discussed in this blog.
Artist / Author : Raymond Pettibon
Title : Over Easy
publisher : GEM, 2002
Number of pages : 28
Text language : English
Measurements: 8.7 x 5.6 inches
Condition: MINT
Pettibon had strict demands regarding the way these books were published . As designed and prescribed by Pettibon these were copied and stapled editions and each copy was numbered in pencil ( xxx/100 ).
At the time of the exhibition these special editions were not popular at all. They sold at only euro 20,00 for each copy but only a dozen or so were sold. ………One year later…. everything was sold out and these books were offered and sold on eBay for prices of around USD 350.00 each. It appeared Pettibon had a very loyal following of collectors who were buying these rarities for their collection. Since that date Pettibon has published many more “comics” / art books, but this Over Easy remains one of the very special ones which was specially made for the opening of GEM in 2002 and can be seen as one of the highlights from the first decade in this new millennium
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