Five for: David Shrigley
1) What are you working on at the moment? I’m working on a new set of drawings that I will show at the Frieze Art Fair in London in October. 2) What’s the most over-used word about your work? Faux-naive. 3) Which piece of art best describes you? Probably a Keith Haring painting. I feel […]
Mutations
The analogy I like to draw is with the rave era. Putting on drug-fuelled parties in disused warehouses was illegal, of course. But because the government didn’t crack down on it in time, Britain developed the finest dance music scene in the world, and it’s now an enduring part of our legitimate creative economy. If you stifle deviant behaviours early on — whether it’s bored teenagers sitting on steps, or the 1930s gay nightclubs where some of the novel is set — you block off mutations in society that may in retrospect come to seem not just acceptable but indispensable.
Ned Beauman interviewed by Susan Tomaselli.
Japanamerica: A Tribute to Satoshi Kon
More than almost any other animator in Japan, Kon had truly liberated himself from what anime was supposed to be. He didn’t envision his audience to be mainly young children or adolescents, and he shied away from creating stories laden with robots, cute sexy girls, and inane, formulaic, feel-good plots. As a result, he was able to create works that stand up well to the best in serious live-action film making. But he was also able to exploit the strengths of hand-drawn animation, and to utilize its potential for infinite deformation and flexibility, while still retaining a special human warmth. In the process, he created something uniquely powerful, a blend of the reality we live in, with the borderless imagination of his own mind.
By Roland Kelts.