Posts Tagged ‘Yuichi Yokoyama’

Baby Boom and the “Comics of Attraction”


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Friday, July 9, 2010


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Ryan Holmberg wrote this excellent piece about Yokoyama’s recent work (I’d be remiss not to mention that while we iron out how best to bring Baby Boom to these shores, PBox is offering a new limited edition book that contains work in that vein, BABYBOOMFINAL), and kindly offered it to Comics Comics.

Ryan, take it away:

If you put the first three Yokoyama Yuichi books together, you have a composite image of the development of a landscape for leisure tourism in Japan, and a playfully dystopian view of its ramifications. In New Engineering, there is the construction of various sorts of landforms and public works projects mainly for recreational use. In Travel, three men ride in one of the icons of Japan as technological and administrative master of space and timetables – the high-speed Bullet Train – consuming landscape from the comfort of their padded seats en route to a seaside getaway. In Garden, a phalanx of men pass through a modern sculpture park-cum-obstacle course – reminiscent of that television show Takeshi’s Castle – playing recklessly with its objects, leading ultimately to the park’s destruction. The association made on the Transatlantis blog between Yokoyama’s structures and Isamu Noguchi’s posthumously finished Moerenuma Park in Sapporo, likewise with man-made mini-mountains and cuboid “play sculptures” for climbing, I think is spot on. In general, I think it useful to think about Yokoyama’s reworking of modernist avant-garde forms (like Futurism) and fantasy architecture (like Boullee’s “Cenotaph to Newton”) through this lens of recreational play, and by extension tourism, considering also the recurring motifs of the sightseer and photographer, especially in a work like Garden, its trespassers the perfect image of the thoughtless tourist group, their activities linked, at the end, directly with the destruction of the consumed landscape, which blows apart in an apocalyptic hurricane. In these and other examples, you have various facets of modernism – mass mobilization, advanced military, surveillance, and transportation technologies, visionary architecture, geometric abstraction, the Futurist obsession with speed and sensation – retooled for a leisure economy, something that has particular resonance in Japan, following the collapse of the Bubble Era and its attempts to physically reshape the archipelago for a first class “leisure society” of parks, art, and resorts. (more…)

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Softly, now…


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Friday, July 2, 2010


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Hello!

Commercial interruption! We are doing a soft launch of the new PictureBox site… now! Over there you will find a whole mess of new stuff. Original artwork from Real Deal and Tales from Greenfuzz, drawings and paintings by Mat Brinkman and Milton Glaser. The new Jimbo comic by Gary Panter, a brand new Yokoyama book. The famed Garo catalog by Ryan Holmberg, a Japanese Jimmy Corrigan poster by Chris Ware, tons of vintage comics and more. The site is not perfect yet, but we’re working on it.

Besides all the “new shit” there’s a whole mess of new content, with much more on the way, to be announced shortly. For now I just wanted to do a quiet test with you, the CC faithful. Ease into it and enjoy.

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E-Z Post of the Moment


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Thursday, June 10, 2010


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Bob Zoell Rules

A couple things to bring to your attention:

1) Sir Gary Panter, recently knighted by the United Schwingdom, has relaunched his web site, and his holding a special contest to celebrate. He is also having a show in L.A. with Bob “50 years of genius work” Zoell and Devin “Lady Pants” Flynn.

2) Over on his “personal” blog, Frank revals that after some 150 years in the comics biz, he’s finally sold out. Thanks heavens. Now come stand over here, Frank.

3) Yuichi Yokoyama recently had an exhibition of new and recent work in Tokyo. Some tantalizing images here.

That’s it. Now go about your morning.

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Hustling the PictureBox Merch


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Tuesday, September 8, 2009


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Summer vacation was fun. But now it’s over….

Here is some shameless promotion from your sponsor, PictureBox.

We have some excellent new and recent items in the store right now: We’re pleased to announce that Cold Heat 7/8 by our beloved Frank Santoro and Ben Jones and Matthew Thurber’s 1-800 MICE #3 are now in stock! Two mighty comics series making bold returns. And Anya Davidson has returned with an excellent new comic, Cosmic Collisions.

Cold Heat 7/8!

Also, back in stock we have Yuichi Yokoyama’s Painting and his full line of posters for your gazing pleasure.

And last but certainly not least, we’re carrying vintage original printings of airbrush posters from the 1970s by Kings Peter Palombi and Charlie White III. We have limited quantities of these masterpieces, so get ’em while you can.

Other news:

ITEM: We are now offering some of our titles on the iPhone via Panelfly. So now you can read Powr Mastrs, The Goddess of War, Travel, and Storeyville on your iPhone!

ITEM: The PictureBox Gallery (online only) is bursting at the virtual seams with original art by Ben Jones, Gary Panter, CF, Charlie White III, Peter Lloyd and many others. Go have a look.

ITEM: We owe a giant thanks to all of you who pre-ordered If ‘n Oof and Powr Mastrs 3. You can look for those in March 2010.

Phew, that was a lot. Now, onto the sale!

For one week (Sept. 8-15) we are reducing our prices by up to 35% on many items in the shop, and for the first time we’re offering “Value Packs” for your shopping convenience. That’s right, we’re making it that much easier to enjoy PictureBox goodness. The sets are as follows:

The Overspray Deluxe Set: Pimp-out your bookcase and walls with a copy of Overspray: Riding High With the Kings of California Airbrush Art, as well as two enormous Peter Palombi posters: This is Why You’re Overweight and Exotic Pets.
All for just $35!

Powr Mastrs Set: Need to catch up on Powr Mastrs before the third one drops! Well, get the first two volumes and CF’s miniature masterpiece, Core of Caligula, for an even $20.

80s Grotesque Set: Pee Dog 2: The Captain’s Final Log and Monster Men Bureiko Lullaby. Feeling overwhelmed by the world? Hopeless and ruined? These two graphic romps through sexual confusion, misery and poop jokes will lift your spirits and have you up and around in no time! Cheap therapy for just $20.

Young Painters Set: Here at PictureBox we sure do love a good painting. So much so that we’ve published books with some of the best damn painters around. Get 6 publications by Eddie Martinez, Joe Bradley, Jonas Wood, Michael Williams, Chuck Webster, Katherine Bernhardt and Brian Belott for just $40. That’s a lifetime of gallery-going for one low price.

The Ben Jones Approved Set: Three books beloved by artiste Ben Jones. Mythtym, by Trinie Dalton; Travel by Yuichi Yokoyama; and Jones’ own New Painting and Drawing. See from whence Jones draws inspiration and sample these goodies. $35 is a small price to pay for a glimpse of immortality.

Rock Set: If you’re not to busy playing Rock Band, how ’bout immersing yourself in a multi-generational rock-out with these fab books. For the Love of Vinyl will teach you the meaning of album design; The Wilco Summer Tour Program will leave you in stitches; Real Fun will bring you back to your indie rock roots (or give you new ones); A fantastic Chuck Berry poster by Charlie White III will loom over you; and all of this can happen while listening to Gary and Devin whale away on their psych-country trip. Rock to build a truck on for just $50.

And that’s it. We hope to see you on the road in the next couple months, either at The Small Press Expo in Washington D.C. or The New York Art Book Fair. Thanks!

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La-Z-Blog with a Vengeance


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Wednesday, August 19, 2009


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I’m busy, people, what can I say? Luckily, Frank and Dash and Jeet are doing an awesome job and my presence is entirely superfluous. Anyway, this time I couldn’t even come up with three things to link to. All the same:


1. You all know the great blog Same Hat, right? If for some reason you don’t, go there now to see a massive post with lots of photos and video from Yuichi Yokoyama’s recent live painting demonstration in San Francisco. Then “bookmark” it. (Or whatever you’re supposed to say these days.)

2. Matthew Thurber made the drawings you see above and the right sidebar. He is a very funny and talented guy. He recently sat down for a panel discussion as part of the CBLDF’s Conversational Comics series at Brooklyn’s Union Pool (with Jessica Abel and Jason Little). You can listen to the audio from that panel here.

(The audio for Dash’s panel from last weekend will probably be up shortly, so stay tuned.)

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Yokoyama Live Drawing!


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Friday, July 31, 2009


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As Tim noted below, I seem to only post PictureBox-related crap. And true to form, here’s another one. But never fear! I am working on a long review of The Hunter. That will happen soon and my good name will be cleared. Anyhow, many moons ago, while in Switzerland for Fumetto, I shot this footage of Yuichi Yokoyama doing a live drawing demonstration. The camera’s a little shaky but it’s still a lot of fun to watch him conjure these faces onto paper. San Francisco denizens take note: Yokoyama will be making his first U.S. appearance on August 15th at the new Viz Pictures store, New People. The store in general looks extremely exciting and Yuichi designed fixtures and other interior details of the store. More details to come. Sadly he’s not able to continue on to NYC or anywhere else this time, but has promised me that he’ll do a proper U.S. tour in the year ahead. So, look out for that! In the meantime, enjoy the picture.

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Fish Fry


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Friday, June 26, 2009


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A Conversation with Yuichi Yokoyama.

One fine day in Lucerne, Switzerland I gathered Frank Santoro, Lauren Weinstein and CF around a table to interview Yuichi Yokoyama. Via his translator he responded to all of our various questions. What we didn’t know was that later, after a few beers, his English got a lot better! Alas, we didn’t record his musings on soccer, baseball, fishing, and Donald Judd. Next time. For now, herewith a conversation with some of the best bugged out minds of my generation and one doofus (me).

April 2, 2009

Dan Nadel: Maybe we could talk for a few minutes about adventure and motion, since everyone here does adventure comics, often involving action — approaches to action.

[Everybody stops to think]

Yuichi Yokoyama: Being here at this moment, at this table, with the publisher, Dan Nadel, this is an adventure. I am surrounded by foreigners, this is also an adventure. I cannot speak your language, that is also an adventure. I have never thought about it before, why it’s an adventure… I don’t think I’m going to draw any so-called “actions.” Not anymore. I’d like to draw an impression of something very quiet, philosophical.

CF: Well, it’s hard to think about what action is, because anything that’s moving is in action, or is an adventure. And everything’s some kind of quest of the will, even if it’s a very unimportant thing. And at some point, it becomes adventure or it becomes action, but it’s always that way. So, in some ways I feel like the hardest thing to do in comics is to make nothing happen, because the panels are always moving forward, so you always have that energy of action, and you always have that energy of adventure, and it’s very hard to “still” that. I think I’ve been trying to do that. The way you show pacing, how fast you make a fight move, is a really strange thing. How the time between panels can be so many different things — it could be like a half second or a number of seconds and the only way you can tell is by the drawing itself. So it’s very weird . . . it’s not rational.

YY: What you have said is very interesting. It’s rather human, very human. After forming actions with rapidity, then you have to read from one panel to the other, quickly — that is very exciting, but you like to go back to another side of humanistic . . . you like to think about “quiet”.

CF: I like to think about everything, but the problem is that, I think, some things are harder to get than others, harder to achieve. I think one of the hardest things to achieve is a sense of stillness. Let’s not say that, even, let’s say a sense of non-action. And quietness is action, too, in a lot of ways.

YY: In my case, I do not have any “stories,” as such. There are no stories in my manga–just the impressions in each panel, that is what I want to consider. In a Hemingway story two friends of Nick Adams get out of a train somewhere in a very humble, dirty, small, coal mining town and they go to the bar. It’s a very rough bar, and they are treated very badly, and they plot their revenge. But don’t take revenge; there’s no story. They go back to the train. Such a simple thing, there’s no story, but there is something lurking in the background anyway. That is what I want to take out of the story. I want to express this sort of thing without words, so readers have to “read between the lines,” between the panels.

CF: And why do you want to not draw action anymore? Because of that?

YY: No, I wouldn’t say that I want to stop completely 100%. For instance, I would like to draw a war for 1000-2000 pages. From the beginning, only scenes of fighting, and the end, the last page, after 1000 pages, they’re still fighting. For that, I need a tremendous amount of time. With my present technique, it takes an enormous amount of time. If I find out I can employ a special technique within a very limited amount of time, I might start action manga again. If I use a magic marker, like in Baby Boom [A new book he’s drawing in a different style], maybe it’ll happen. I’d like to make my own technique to draw faster for this special idea of the 1000 page war comic. I’m very ambitious, I always want to compete with time.

DN: Do you want to compete with other artists or just yourself?

YY: I don’t want to compete with others, I want to draw for myself.

Lauren Weinstein: With the war comic, would you re-enact a battle that’s already been fought, or is it your own war?

YY: It would blend what I have seen in the past through movies, on television, the newspaper, and in photos. I don’t want to describe any humanistic feeling, but at the same time I don’t want to describe any death scenes. For instance: Take an empty town, but the person in the manga thinks that there must be a lot of enemies in this dead town. In this case, nobody can be dead, there are no enemies there. I’m trying to think of how I can avoid a scene of dead bodies lying on the floor. So many things I have to solve technically. If I figure out a technique for that kind of scene, then I can start drawing it.

CF: Why are you avoiding the human? Why is the deleting of human concerns in the work important?

YY: I’d like to read such a manga myself, nobody else writes such manga, that’s why I write, so basically the purpose is to draw manga for me, not for others. Self-contemplation.

CF: Are there any artists working today that you feel connected to, in any way, any kind of artist, contemporary artists?

YY: I mostly feel kinship with Japanese artists.

CF: Who?

Y: Tadashi Kawamata, he lives in France. He used to he used to make oil paintings. Now he’ll use a a piece of a tree, a broken board, or other scraps to create a new building. He’s always invited by art festivals all over the world, he’s considered one of the top artists in Japan.

CF: I realize this might be an impossible question to ask, but why is it that the manga that you want to read has those aspects, no story or anything, like that war comic?

YY: It’s very difficult to describe, but in my personal life I don’t respect human feelings. I’m very far from human society, I’d rather appreciate natural phenomena. I’m very interested in understanding how a bird might see things. I want to delete the human feelings because the reader wants to emotionally take sides with one particular person and I’d prefer they remain neutral. That’s why I don’t want to produce a scene where people feel sympathy with a particular person.

CF: I feel like I’m trying to do the same thing: Creating these situations where people would feel drawn to root for, or side with certain elements, but in the end hopefully there’s no one to side with. Hopefully there’s no one to say “this is good,” or “this is bad,” but still have those human elements in there, and draw people out.

YY: Not to be obnoxious, but I’d like to go up even higher than the human consciousness. What we all can do, as humans, is sort of very limited.

CF: That’s true, but I’m young and I think that’s where I have to begin. That’s how I feel right now.

YY: If we have another ten days, maybe we can go into more details, but I have to go back to Japan tomorrow.

DN: You started manga when you were 31, how did you first learn to make it, was there anyone you were looking at to help you learn to tell stories?

YY: 12 years ago, I switched from oil painting to making manga. I went to a second-hand bookshop and I bought this manga techniques book with a little money and started to train myself.

Frank Santoro: Well your style seems to have come fully-formed. It doesn’t bloom, it just… arrived. It’s just so unique that that’s, I think what we’re trying to…

YY: The first panels I drew, they’re not in a book. Of course, you didn’t see the original drawings, from when I was starting 12 years ago. I still have them but they’re so terrible that nobody would want to buy it or make it a manga. So you only saw the first book, that’s why you think it’s the way you described

FS: I think I’m speaking for everyone, but I speak for myself too, but I don’t see any influence from another style. I see you taking things from modern art, but not necessarily from other manga. So the synthesis of modern art and manga is very unique, and that’s what I think it’s fully formed.

YY: I believe you.

FS: Thank you!

DN: The thing about the Hemingway stories is that most people would say that those have a lot of emotional content because it’s all in the subtle interactions between the two men. Do you see those as having emotional content, or do you only see them as plotless sequences of actions?

YY: Yeah, from the beginning, I delete or disguise this emotion. I don’t see it.

CF: He just likes the grilling of the fish.

YY: All of the conversations in the Hemingway stories, I don’t find them to be very humanistic conversations. I don’t see the humanity. I feel they’re very cold and inhuman. There is something sticking behind the conversation which has nothing to with the warmth of human interaction. There are a lot of short stories with scenes of just people talking in a restaurant, and then I can’t detect any meaning behind those conversations; they’re meaningless. There is one scene in a Hemingway story, this one station scene: Tourists arrive in the station and they decide to go into the local bar and they sit and they encounter three or four local people from the city. They start to talk to each other. The tourists, this group of people, have ordered a very very expensive gorgeous champagne that they give to everybody. One of them explains, “I have just divorced, that’s why I’ve taken this journey” and he talks to the local people about married life. Then he leaves because the train comes, but before he leaves the bar, he tells the locals that they have to share the champagne that is left. But instead the locals bring the half-drank champagne bottle back to the counter and ask for money back. It’s a very humanistic story but it’s also very cold, extreme coldness.

CF: This is a fascination in your work that you’re actively pursuing at all times, and maybe this is inappropriate, but in your personal life I know you have a girlfriend or something. How does it relate to personal human relationships with your family, for instance?

YY: My daily life with girlfriend and with my mother and with my friends, it’s an absolutely normal human relationship, I respect my friends, I feel very warm feelings towards my friends, my girlfriends, and my mother, I eat regularly….

CF: I know that!

YY: So you’re suspicious that I’m also a very cold person

CF: No. I just think that when you’re doing something creative, when you’re exploring things that you’re fascinated by, it’s because you have questions about them; questions are inspiration. I have a desire, I think, to merge what I’m doing in my work and my personal life to some extent. If you’re always in your work trying to get to these higher levels that are beyond humans, to me sometimes it’s kind of sad that you can’t achieve them in your normal life.

YY: Have you ever been to Japan? I think the Japanese are very very emotional people. If you ever watch Japanese television, you will encounter every second, such a scene of appreciation, emotional extremes, emotional expressions. Always crying and uh, emotional. That is our national character. This emotionality disturbs me and I think that that I would say that within me there is an unconscious protest against this tendency.

CF: And you’re making art to reflect that.

YY: I think I do that very unconsciously, but I have to admit that it reflects in my work, as you’ve pointed out. Our emotionality is not like yours in America. It’s so shadowy; even if we express ourselves with joy, appreciation, excitement, somehow a shadow is behind it all. This is not like your emotional life, you express joy, sadness, pathos, enjoyment very differently.

CF: What’s the shadow, the shadow is infinity?

YY: It’s very ghostly. Our emotional environment in Japan doesn’t go up and down so much. It’s relatively balanced. Anyway, I think that geographically Japan is also a nice place to live. Very pleasant place. Under these circumstances, in time, humans become lazy, unambitious, very comfortable. Too comfortable. That weakens us. Like you, in America, when you laugh you open their mouth and the laugh comes out from here. Our laughing is not like that, but I find that your style is more healthy. It explodes. That’s much healthier than ours.

CF: But what’s funny is that “healthy” does not get results that are interesting or tell you things that are new. I think that being healthy or maintaining vitality doesn’t necessarily, or in most cases doesn’t give you results that are interesting or answers that you weren’t aware of, new information, I think, comes out of sickness and out of imbalance.

LW: You’re talking about asceticism though.

CF: It’s just an extreme, it could be decadence.

LW: A search for purity doesn’t mean decadence.

CF: I’m just saying limits of human ability just to survive, I just wanted to make the point that healthy is maybe a little bit beside the point, in creative work.

YY: “Mentally and physically,” this is very important to my creativity.

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storeyvillefan


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Tuesday, June 2, 2009


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YOKOYAMA IS HAPPY.
He wrote me: “I have your book!” and sent me this picture.
Warmed my heart.

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Luzern Jams


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Friday, April 10, 2009


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ICHIBA / YOKOYAMA (1)

ICHIBA / YOKOYAMA (2)

NEWGARDEN / YOKOYAMA

More Luzernnotes: We were having dinner with Yokoyama and Ichiba when I asked them both for their “autograph.” Yokoyama was happy to oblige but instead of just signing his name or making a little drawing in my notebook, he got Ichiba to “jam” with him on the same drawing. It was a drawing game. The notebook is folded back, and the participants are drawing while facing each other, holding the folded notebook between them so that each person cannot see what the other is drawing. Yokoyama made a mark where the top and the bottom of the head will be, a mark that both can see. This way it’s a surprise what the other will draw, but the proportions of the face will “line up.” It was pretty funny just to watch Yokoyama and Ichiba bantering in Japanese and laughing while they tried it twice. Later at the “Jazz Kantine” bar, Yokoyama and Mark Newgarden gave it a whirl and made me laugh so hard I choked on my wine. (I love how on their drawing it’s difficult to tell who did which half. Any guesses?)

Oh, and Yokoyama kept drawing faces with a “Do You Know?” word balloon. I asked him what that was about and he said that everyone—meaning Dan and me—kept asking him questions like “Do you know Jack Kirby?” or “Do you know Suehiro Maruo?” So he began writing it on these head drawing and said to me that the drawing is saying, “Do you know ME?”

Funny shit.

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Lucerne


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Tuesday, April 7, 2009


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A daily drawing by Blutch

Fumetto was certainly a blast. Essentially the festival takes over the town of Lucerne, Switzerland, and mounts about a dozen exhibitions, holds panel discussions and demonstrations, as well as signings and tours. It’s a non-commercial festival, with one great store located in the festival center and that’s it. It was wonderfully well-organized, well programmed and just, well, kinda perfect. It’s also interestingly broad, encompassing illustration and art as well as more traditional comics. By the end, we were told, 150,000 people had been through the festival. For me, it was a great chance to be involved with a different vision of what a festival can be, as well as a fun international cultural exchange. After all, PictureBox was there in the form of an exhibition by Frank, Lauren and CF, as well as a show by Yokoyama. But so was Ever Meulen, with a wonderful little retrospective. And so was Blutch, the “artist-in-residence” who provided excellent new drawings everyday in his hotel lobby. Mark Newgarden mounted, for me, the best exhibition of the festival, with a conceptually tight showing of his original artwork and ephemera. Shary Boyle was there with a fantastic show, and so was David Shrigley, not to mention Daisuke Ichiba, Elvis Studio, Alex Baladi, and numerous others. Anyhow, here are some pictures from the scene and there is much, much more on Flickr. Thanks to Lynn Kost and the Fumetto staff for such a wonderful experience!

Elvis Studio’s show.
Study for RAW cover and finish by Ever Meulen.

Newgarden made gorgeous large-format prints of Love’s Savage Fury.

Preggers Lauren is a great cook.

CF and Yokoyama bonded.

Yokoyama live drawing demonstration.

CF: I love Ernie Bushmiller! Mark Newgarden: Me too! CF: Let’s be friends! Mark: OK!

The epic signings.

Oh yeah, one day me and Frank went to see Lee Perry at his mountain retreat an hour from Lucerne. He and Frank collaborated on this Batman drawing.

At the feet of THE RULER.

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