But first…
Short tutorial on how to pronounce Szczepanski
Ok, maybe this is not about all the Arts…
… but about Visual Arts. Not including movies. Or comics, cartoons and illustration. And if you want to venture in the What Is Art territory, good luck with that infinite swamp, because I’m trying to write about other disciplines in the arts that influenced me in doing drawings and comics like La Grande Crociata.
My mother is an artist, a teacher and worked as part of the staff in museums and schools. Even when life was a little harsher than usual, having a book at the reach of the hand was a top priority so important as food and shelter. I was fortunate enough to have access not only to books and art catalogues at home, but at libraries, and it was the coolest thing to circulate freely in spaces where art exhibitions were being installed - believe me, it can be way more fun than any playground.
One of the art catalogues that we had at home was dedicated to Käthe Kollwitz and it had a huge impact on me, not only by the sheer quality of her work, but by the themes, her life, the display of art as sociopolitical engagement, a way of dealing with injustice, suffering and Death.
Kollwitz lived through the two Great Wars, with the Weimar Republic in the middle, and she outlived a son, killed in action in World War I; a husband who died from illness in 1940 and a grandson who died in World War II. Amidst all this tragedies, she worked a lot.
Through techniques as woodcut, lithography or etching, her drawing comes up as a potent life force, the act of drawing seems almost as an act of sculpting - or digging in search not only of form, but meaning.
Even as a kid, it became clear to me that the so called gift of drawing is just a very little part of this craft. Through the art of Kollwitz I saw the huge amount of dedication and work that make it relevant and life changing. But to have the necessary energy to make this journey, one must have a strong sense of purpose.
That dragon by Uccello
Another book that we had at home was a gorgeous edition of Carl Jung’s Man and His Symbols. Between some children’s book, some comics and some book about Joan of Arc and the Hundred Year’s War, I was always diving deep in this book by the good old Carl.
Among the plethora of images and archetypal analysis, there it was: that dragon by Uccello.
Since then this dragon lives inside my skull. It is special not only because displays gothic influences, but it has character. Damn you, Saint George, how dare you hurt such unique creature? This is an ecological tragedy, even that blasé lady seems to be like why?
Years later I got the job of illustrating a book about dragons in different cultures and sure as Hell it has my clumsy but sincere take on this wonderful monster.
It shows that Uccello had a lot of thinking on how this dragon could be, is not that someone ordered a dragon and he did something like Dragon? Ok, take it, a giant lizard! This dragon seems to be fruit from an enviroment, it’s a dragon-citizen from some dragon-world. It is almost as if from the dragon’s point of view Saint George is the monster.
This kind os approach leads us - in a very precipitous, almost irresponsible way - to the work of H.R. Giger, someone who thought about monsters not as puppets, but as individuals with their own civilization, with its ecology, architecture and biology.
That’s why his most famous creature, the alien from, duh, Alien, is such a powerful character: it cames from some complex world and when the producers called to work on this concept, Giger was already living there.
See you next week, brothers and sisters! Keep one eye on reality and other on symbolism and also take a look at this.