Monday, December 9, 2013

I am an Invisible Snark



THE HUNTING OF THE SNARK by Lewis Carroll, a graphic novel by this artist and explained here, page by page, panel by panel, squiggle by squiggle … right now we're in Fit the Seventh … the Banker, played by Karl Marx, is going blackface

 In an earlier stanzel we subjected The Banker/Karl Marx to the indignities of vamping as a perfumed houri in the lascivious environs of a Turkish harem but that is nothing to his current employment in a Carrollian minstrel show.

Yes, the Bandersnatch has worked its magic at last, the hypnotic spell of the Orient has done its groovy hypno thing and both reader and Snarquista stand amazed at this climactic thing-um-a-bob at the heart of Fit the Seventh.

Reflexive readers will grasp that there is a bit of artistic commentary going on here, most of it focussed upon Victorian British attitudes towards their Indian subjects but lighter-hearted readers can just go ahead and spit up their mulligatawny soup whilst sitting in their bungalow, enjoying their calico pajamas and taking a good dekko at this latest instalment of The Hunting of the Snark.

And why not? It's all Nonsense and has hardly any bearing on anything at all except whatever I've surreptitiously meant it to have, ie. it's a wonderful thing to be seen!
Clear as rain, I should think.

NB. My memory is its usual swiss cheese holey thing but I remember reading somewhere of a minstrel show version of the Snark performed in the USA shortly after its publication … perhaps one of Doug Howick's more startling discoveries?

 The ultimate Christmas gift for the Adventure Time fan


… my original art for the cover/interiors of the NYT-best selling Adventure Time Encyclopaedia (2013, Abrams) … on sale at The Beguiling. This original art is unlike any other contemporary inking you’ll see: resembles copper-plate engraving on Japanese rice paper … extremely tight and delicate line-work floating above a translucent matrix … crosshatched like a dollar bill but TIGHTER, RETINA-CRUSHINGLY-TIGHT … no pro-white, no scraping. Just pure “mathematical”, psychotropically linear eye-candy. There's more description at The Beguiling's blog …

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