Ben Jones Approved
by Dan Nadel
Monday, July 13, 2009
Ben Jones has risen from his bed to pronounce things upon us in this interview. Imagine him saying these things (he looks like Heston in Soylent Green) on a busy street corner in 1895. Macho. Authoritative. Jones!
Labels: Ben Jones
The best line in the interview is when he compares his solo output to Phil Collins' "Face Value" album.
that's the most beautiful interview ever.
Awesome. I always like the comics he made, but was sort of skeptical of "Ben Jones, artist", for a long time. With this interview all of those doubts are gone; he's copped to the reality of what he's doing and has really clear ideas about what it all means.
Only thing I didn't buy was his bit about "evolving" culture via art.
Really good interview in this magazine. thought it was available online, but I guess not…
jeez, fora guy talking about good vibes and stuff like that he sure seems to cast judgements on others pretty quickly.
there's also a great interview with ben in the most recent issue of the journal, with the pam andersen cover. has great self portrait collaboration by ben and tim barber.
uland, you dont need to "buy" anything.
I always think it's funny when people who don't use their real names to post on blogs, etc., complain about the honesty or integrity of an artist.
The idea that there's a difference between "the artist" and "the cartoonist" is so strange to me. There's no difference. Complete freedom in both, same lack of money, same jerkoffs to deal with.
I dig that the dude makes all different kinds of art, but what I really want to see more of from him is comics. I'm just being greedy in that sense.
Oh yeah, and harsh words for European art comics. His criticism doesn't seem any less skin-deep than a lot of the criticism that has been leveled at him in the past.
I guess he can get away with it though. Seems harsh to me anyhow.
Anonymous remarks are completely in line with internet discourse. I agree with comment upthread, this interview seems rather defensive and contradictory.
The distinction between "the cartoonist" and "artist" seems a fine one to me, there are clear differences between the gallery and publishing worlds, cross over though they may, even on a self organised level. It's a distinction Frank Santoro makes in his Multiforce review a few posts down.
Sammy- "buy" is a euphemism for, in this case, believing in the veracity or value of his statement.
Not that difficult.
Since he said it, I presume he had intentions along the lines wanting it to be understood or evaluated in some way. But yeah, we don't "have to" buy anything in the same way we don't "have to" communicate at all.
Dan- Galleries are different spaces than panels in a comic and require different approaches. What makes sense in a comic might not translate well to a gallery wall.
His intentions as a fine artist were not clear to me for a while, but, like I clearly wrote, this interview helped me understand him a little better. Not sure how thats' something to get wound up about.
I think you and Sammy might be taking for granted the insider looks you guys might get due to your respective positions. I don't live in Brooklyn or Silver Lake and have no personal or financial stake in how Ben Jones might be perceived.
This interview is great. Few people seem to note how sad Ben seems in it, but it's really palpable. Maybe that's what people are reading as "casting judgment" but that feels like a projection.
The thing about European Fort Thunder types is weird because of those folks publish Fort Thunder dudes (Nazi Knife, etc).
The best part about that that ANP Quarterly interview is when it's brought up that Ben's been ripped off by MTV and his response is just "they can't fucking touch me." It was right on then, but this feels just as right on to me, years later, with Paper Rad kind of not an entity, and a sentiment that's pretty much the opposite.
Yah, I see a distinction between "artist" and "cartoonist".
But don't ask me to really be able to articulate the difference, haha.
Basically, I think it has to do with PRINT. Books, web, whatever. Comics is about reproduction. Art is about the object, about value, essentially. Don't get me started, but that's been my experience.
I think Frank is basically right, at least from a certain perspective. I also think that making money is a perfectly valid reason for producing gallery work. (Although if it's your main reason, you're probably in the wrong line of work.)
I enjoyed/cringed reading this interview. Ben Jones is clearly a perceptive guy… like Pete Bagge, he's aware of deception/"putting on airs" on a macro/micro level and he's really funny. For me, the attraction to Paperrad and to Jones' work is best summed up by Jones when we states "I insist that there is a deeper meaning beyond the clutter and noise and color on the outside. And that deeper meaning was 'don't worry, be happy.'" I'm amazed how comprehensive this statement reads. It feels like all things stupid, sincere, sarcastic, delusional, childish, wise, etc. colliding into a rainbow colored waterfall illuminating a 3D hologram portrait of Kurt Cobain. Anyway, I finished reading the interview and thought about R. Crumb's intro to Weirdo #8 "…This is great stuff!! This is the REAL ART of America, kids! Fuck a bunch of effete crap in the galleries! Fuck all that money, fame, success!! Fuck paying the rent! Die for truth in the media!! Yeah! Right on!!" And wasn't there a Ron Rege Jr. strip where a character exclaims "Fuck other forms of art! Let's draw comics!" if so, I was thinking of that as well.
I think one of the reasons I'm so much more interested in comics as opposed to contemporary art is that the economics are so upside-down that you know you're getting some real shit.
I like the idea of art without incentives, whether those incentives are economic or cultural. Anything done outside the context of quid-pro-quo is complete generosity, and in my mind pure truth.
So as much as Jones' gallery installations are spectacular, I'll always find something as aggressively retarded as his "Wu-Tang Comics" far more tantalizing.
I think it's clear that comics and gallery art are quite different practices. Different modes of selling, different objects, etc. etc. I mean, that's a given.
I was trying to rather clumsily make the point that while the modes are different, his objectives in both gallery art and comics and whatever else are pretty much the same: The communication of a set of philosophical/spiritual ideas.
As for Uland's remarks: I suppose what I was trying to say is that I didn't really understand the idea of being skeptical of "Ben Jones, artist". It's one thing to not like the work, or think it doesn't really add up, but the skepticism, combined with "" marks, and the follow up with references to Silver Lake and Brooklyn (neither of which, as far as I know, has anything to do with Ben) kinda reeks of a lamentable reactionary attitude that projects a certain exclusive status onto artwork or artists. It's all very juvenile, and something Ben himself addresses in the interview, with his bit about jocks. It's very likely that Uland has never even seen an exhibition of Ben's work in person so it's all the sillier to publicly "accept" it now.
That's all. I just think it's kind of a kooky tendency.
And finally, as to his criticisms of the European and West Coast stuff — Ben doesn't need me to defend him. But suffice to say there is no (and there never was) a unified "Fort Thunder" attitude, so what Ben might dislike has little bearing on what else might be in the same magazine. Anyone who thinks about it for a minute will figure out who he's talking about.
After all that, of course Jason (JTM) hit the nail on the head. It's a hyper awareness that, even when it reaches "Don't Worry, Be Happy" understand the absurdity of that whilst embracing it.
Knut: I think that's a common misperception about comics vs. gallery art. Yes, for maybe 1% of practicing artists the monetary rewards are incredibly high. But for the rest, there arguably as low, and with just as few ways to earn a living, as a cartoonist. An artist can spend 6 months making work for a show and not sell a thing. There's as little guarantee of income as there is for a cartoonist. So, I don't think one is any more "real" than the other. Just different ways of making things.
I honestly don't think Uland's remarks deserve this kind of contempt. There's nothing wrong with being skeptical about gallery art and the pretensions that sometimes accompany it. In any case, his point was that reading the interview brought him around.
I hear you, Anon. I might not be coming from the same place as Uland, but his first comment seemed in bounds to me, too. The internet makes it very easy to overreact, and also to misread people and to miscalibrate tone. I think the danger of escalation into all-out flame war has faded on all sides—or at least I hope it has. Relatively polite disagreement's always good, of course.
"As for Uland's remarks: I suppose what I was trying to say is that I didn't really understand the idea of being skeptical of "Ben Jones, artist". It's one thing to not like the work, or think it doesn't really add up, but the skepticism, combined with "" marks, and the follow up with references to Silver Lake and Brooklyn (neither of which, as far as I know, has anything to do with Ben) kinda reeks of a lamentable reactionary attitude that projects a certain exclusive status onto artwork or artists. It's all very juvenile, and something Ben himself addresses in the interview, with his bit about jocks. It's very likely that Uland has never even seen an exhibition of Ben's work in person so it's all the sillier to publicly "accept" it now.
That's all. I just think it's kind of a kooky tendency."
Well, no, you don't just think it's "kooky", you think it's an example of a "lamentable reactionary attitude", or something a jock might say, whatever that means.
The quotation marks were meant to indicate the contrast that I think a lot of more comics-centric fans of his work might see between that and his gallery work; I came to his stuff via comics, and seeing his work in that other context was, for me, a markedly different experience. Like I already wrote, it's something that I wasn't fully into for a while, like it or not- It's for a lot of reasons that are irrelevant.
Your right though, I have not seen his gallery work in person, not "probably" about it. This is because I don't live in Brooklyn or Silver Lake. That's exactly what I meant by you and Sammy having an insider look at Ben Jones that isn't available to a lot of us.
If that was read as snide, it's cause it was meant to be; Yours and Sammys' responses had this kind of casually authoritative tone to them, like any mild criticism was something to roll your eyes at, but of course you had to let us all know you were rolling your eyes… What do you guys mean by jock again?
It doesn't have anything to do with Ben, you are right. I like his comics, I like his art, I like the interview. I don't like those who have a vested interest in the guy getting wierded out at my expense over my light commentary on a blog.
It's just kind of Kooky.
There's some kind of authority grabbing, or some sense of proprietary interest in Jones that irks me, must say.
I can't imagine my comments would've been met with the same tone if they were about any other artist..
Maybe I'm overreacting, but the insinuation that I don't properly understand the role of contemporary artists, or that I'm projecting something unsound in that direction is ridiculous. I've been up on the majority of the stuff Picturebox has published before they did so, I've been into the a lot of the same contemporary/modern art that Frank S. and Gary P. talked about at MOCCA, for example, for a very long time, I got minis in the mail from Fort Thunder in '98, I've worked at a major art institution in Chicago and been to millions of galleries. There is nothing in my commentary to warrant that insinuation, and I'm pissed that its forced my to embarass myself by listing my art/comics fanboy bone-fides..
I like Ben Jones gallery work a lot but I understand the frustration — being young and without so much money and in a rural area something like Teratoid Heights was a really big deal, and while I like Brinkman's gallery type work a lot too I know that younger me could never have had a chance to run into it by accident like I did the comics work? Paper Radio and all its off shoots seem so much like these crazy little arrows from the heart aimed at those poor teenagers too unlucky to need them — the gallery work is shiny and sophisticated and well out of their reach. That doesn't make it wrong but it's still a good enough reason to look back longing over your shoulder, which I think Mr. Jones does quite explicitly in that interview of his anyway.
Dan: About the Gallery v. Comics distinction and how it affects the audience's perception of the work…
I think a big difference is in the fact that comics are both a shared experience and yet they are personal because each reader has there own personal copy, and on the cheap no less.
Work in a gallery is for sale, but eventually only to one person. Everyone just gets the privilege to gawk at it for a few moments. That process doesn't turn me off when it comes to those top 1% of artists who are making real waves, but it does sort of turn me off to see work that is never going to sell anyway put up on a pedestal.
You are right that 99% of both comics artists and gallery artists find themselves in an economic wilderness, I just find that the comics artists have adapted their work to this reality in a way that strikes a more honest chord.
All I know is that I have friends that make both comics and gallery art, and seeing their comics makes me happy on the same level that seeing their gallery art makes me sad. Whatever that means.
For the record, I'm not even talking about "pretension" or economics.I was unsure of his gallery work for reasons having to do with the work itself, based on what I'd seen and read.
For what it's worth:
I love Painting but it's a whole different PROCESS. I like the immersion of Comics. I mean, the immersion in the making of the narrative. Comics allows me to swim around in this world. Of course painting can be narrative and single works can be strung together – it's just a whole other daily process, tho. Not as "sustainable" as Comics in my experience.
Talk to Gary Panter, man. I watched him switch from making a painting one week to making new Jimbo comics pages. What a LEAP! Truly fascinating. Whole different set of concerns, rules, obsessions –all part of the same process, yes, but like some action packed Star Trek Transporter Room sequence -amazing in it's skill and effortlessness, haha.
As someone who tries to do both comics and gallery work, I gotta say its inspiring that Ben Jones can draw those comic pages and then turn around and reproduce the same aesthetic in a gallery and on a while other level. Going from a page to the white cube is a difficult transition but its one that he seems to do seemlessly.
In my (admittedly limited) experience, there are big differences between cartooning and painting — formally, philosophically, and yes, economically.
Perhaps for Ben the line is blurrier, but I don't have any problem with distinguishing between the two activities.
Frank, thanks for linking to the Spurgeon/Panter interview. Gary's frankness is refreshing and insightful. Required reading!
great interview. I also recommend reading the ANP issue.
One of the most interesting things in the ANP mag interview with Paper Rad is when they discuss SCALABILITY… being able to design your ideas/art so that they can adapt to any space or venue or medium.
from a photocopied page to the size of a building or a giant balloon, a 10 minute performance or a 10 hour TV show. DIY to massively funded stuff. this is kind of how I interpreted it: that there is no real difference in context, just in scale. for me thiis one of the most Radical things about Paper Rad. Its a dizzying, somewhat distressing idea for me. I also wonder if vector based computer programs programs might have been one inspiration for this idea…….
m thurber
why'd you guys delete my comment? you can bag on people but nobody can criticize you?
I deleted it, Terry. Of course you can criticize us. Check out a million comments on a million threads. The first part of your comment, where you criticized Ben and Dan was fine. The part where you started calling other commenters names was not. Sorry for not explaining. I just feel like a jerk writing the deletion policy out over and over again.