I found myself reading this essay by Gorjus about Chris Ware’s Halloween New Yorker cover recently. In case you missed it, this is the cover:
And here’s what Gorjus has to say about it:
The children are literally masked, yet still engaging the world—going forth into that terrible night, mashing down on the button at the house they don’t know, mumbling and punching each other to you go first. They are open to the world; the masks are meaningless, the toys of children, soon to be ripped off to suck in the sweet Halloween night…..
The parents of the children wear a different mask; while there is nothing physical upon their faces, the reflection of their email and RSS feeds and status updates smear across their features, shutting them off from the world more than any Wolverine® latex ever could. It is, in one still image, a surpassing and comprehensive look at American society in the 21st century: we send our children out with masks to play-act traditions that were shaky and hoary when we were young, forcing them to play outside and make friends with the neighbor girls, while shutting down ourselves via 3G and electrons and Cymblata and whiskey more then even our own parents could manage.
That Mr. Ware has evoked this without showing us a single costume, or a single face, or truly, anything other than basic shapes coupled with a flat-matte color palette, again validates the dozens of honors that litter his career.
I’ve been reading a lot of comics criticism recently, as it happens, and one thing I’ve noticed is that writing about super-hero comics is almost invariably better than writing about art comics. That’s because writing about art comics tends to be really unendurably sententious. I mean, “going forth into that terrible night”; “traditions that were shaky and hoary when we were young”; “Mr. Ware”; “again validates the dozens of honors that litter his career”…I mean, come on. It’s like we’ve stumbled into the back cover blurb of a volume of contemporary poetry. The stink of reverence is suffocating.
Again, I don’t blame Gorjus personally. This just seems to be how folks write when they write about art comics. It’s particularly unfortunate in this case, though, because…jeez is that cover a drearily cliched piece of crap. I mean, Chris Ware sure goes way out on a limb there, using the pages of the New Yorker to sneer at contemporary technology and those who use it! Boy, I bet that was a hard sell to Francoise Mouly, huh? Imagine…the stodgy old New Yorker being old and stodgy! Really shifts your paradigm, huh?
Obviously, Chris Ware is a talented designer…but I have to say that personally my patience for his antiseptic blocky buildings and antiseptic toy-like people is pretty much exhausted. And, just out of curiosity, where exactly are the Halloween decorations here? Oh, right…if you included those, the picture wouldn’t be quite bland enough. Yes, yes I know that he’s showing the antiseptic emptiness of contemporary life…to which I say “feh,” and also, “yawn.” The bourgeoise literary tradition where you excoriate the bourgeoisie for their empty, lifeless culture by creating empty, lifeless culture — it’s been going on for generations, and I presume it’ll continue as long as two bourgeoisie are alive so that one can sneer at the other, but I don’t see why we (bourgeoise or otherwise) need to pretend that it provides some deep and humane insight.
Because it doesn’t — it’s just glib. Which is what this cover is; overwhelmingly glib, with the self-satisfied glibness that is the inevitable adornment of a real New Yorker cartoon. You could get the same level of insight from the crank at your local bar. “Damn it, cell phones…they’re ruining the world! People just don’t talk anymore like they used to!”
You want to know the technology that actually affects the Halloween ritual? As somebody who went trick-or-treating in the quite affluent neighborhood of Hyde Park, I can tell you that the mechanical device at the end of everyone’s fingers was not the cell phone, but the digital camera — except for the moments when people were using their cell phones as cameras, I guess. Because everyone was taking pictures of their kids in their cute costumes, for even in this soulless, technology-ridden age in which we sadly toil, taking pictures of kids in costumes is still the sort of thing that parents do more or less constantly.
Gorjus finishes his essay by saying, in reference to both the cover and Ware’s interior story, “It’s bleak, this world; it’s rife with cynicism and misanthropy, as can be said of much of Mr. Ware’s work.” But this image, at least, isn’t bleak or cynical. It’s nostalgic and suffused with easy sentiment and easier moralism. It’s a big slab of maudlin hooey concealed under a thin veneer of urbanity. And it, and its critical enablers, deserve to be hooted.
That’s one boring piece of art, and that excerpt reeks of an attempt to read significance that isn’t there into it. I mean, if you hadn’t told me that was the Halloween cover, there’s no way that this would register as an image of kids trick-or-treating with their parents. Graphical simplicity is fine but it has to convey its meaning; this image is a big blank. I mean, the critic is talking about Halloween masks and stuff, but there’s not even a graphic representation of an actual mask in the art. It’s like, because it’s Chris Ware, it *must* mean *something*, right? Right?
I think Ware’s a phenomenal designer and he’s made comics that I love a great deal, especially some of the increasingly elaborate stuff he’s been working on in recent years. But he can also be incredibly trite and limited in the range of what he wants to express. His radical aesthetic is too often married to a rather bland storytelling sensibility, and he keeps returning to the same themes (loneliness, sadness, alienation) over and over again. I’m also really turned off by his perpetual schtick about what a degraded medium he works in, a trait he unfortunately shares with a lot of alt-comics cartoonists of his generation. OK, we get it, comics don’t get as much respect as you’d like. Get over it and just do your thing. His text pieces are frequently infuriating.
Yeah. The bemoaning his fate is especially infuriating because…I mean, it’s Chris Ware. What accolade hasn’t he received? New Yorker covers, Whitney Biennials, gallery shows…you name it. What more recognition does he want exactly?
I talked about my frustration with that at length in this essay a while back if you find that sort of thing cathartic.
I thought this was a fantastic cover, one of the best of the year for the magazine. I’m not sure what you want from Chris or the New Yorker. More Halloween decorations? I certainly don’t see it as “sneering.” I suspect most of the NYer’s readership (myself included, and quite possibly Chris, as well, as a fellow parent of a young child) relates to this image more than we see it as mocking some other subset of the American populace. Those *are* the NYers readers on the cover. It’s not old and stodgy, it’s a quite contemporary moment, expertly conceived and designed.
Hey Eric. Thanks for stopping by.
Yes, he’s sneering at himself (or ironically poking fun at himself, if you prefer.) That’s the tradition.
And yes, I think divesting the scene of any sign of Halloween is a mistake. Turning a flamboyant, gothy holiday into a boxy blank so it can be safely and ironically appreciated by urbane modernists rubs me quite strongly the wrong way.
For some reason, I find it endlessly amusing that Gorjus tried and failed to remove the UPC sticker from that New Yorker cover.
“I mean, ‘going forth into that terrible night’; ‘traditions that were shaky and hoary when we were young’; ‘Mr. Ware’; ‘again validates the dozens of honors that litter his career'”
Wait a second … I like to refer to people as Mr. or Ms. if I don’t know them. Well, not artists I’m reviewing, I suppose.
I can’t knock Gorjus for his troubles with the UPS sticker; I can totally see myself doing something like that.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen you do that for an artist you were reviewing, Tom. Though it could be okay; in the context of the piece it comes out sounding fusty in this instance, though.
You’re conflating that horrible writing with Wares’ intentions, and conflating that further with the New Yorker. You’ve constructed an ugly little beast out of these parts in order to heroically destroy it.
Yeah, it’s really safe, that cover, but it also looks a lot like a lot of neighborhoods on Halloween, and neighborhoods on Halloween haven’t really looked like that before.
Does every image have to be some kind of radical statement? Is that what Ware was aiming for, simply because that’s what the writer you shit on here says he was up to? Is he a good writer, or bad? If he’s bad, maybe we should dismiss it. But if you did, you couldn’t really claim that he’s “sneering”.
I think to call it glib, you have to discern a clear intent. I don’t think Ware is interested in sneering. I just don’t see that here. The New Yorker might be into that, in a general way, but you can’t put that on Ware and you can’t blame Ware for that kind of writing.
I did like this: “The bourgeoise literary tradition where you excoriate the bourgeoisie for their empty, lifeless culture by creating empty, lifeless culture — it’s been going on for generations, and I presume it’ll continue as long as two bourgeoisie are alive so that one can sneer at the other, but I don’t see why we (bourgeoise or otherwise) need to pretend that it provides some deep and humane insight.”
— though I think that’s an oversimplification. I think a lot of that literature seeks to describe attempts at getting out of that empty culture, or attempt to discern some kind of underlying forces at work. They might often fail, but I don’t think that’s boring, as some kind of rule.
Further, it’s not like the modern condition, as it were, is a fabrication. You’re basically suggesting to boring adults that they not concern themselves with things that seem too adult to you and bore you. I mean, we all can’t be polymorphously- perverse teenage feminist Japanese cartoonists ( or whatever you’re into this month) , you know?
It’s almost as though you’ve decided that the genuine for white/straights is so problematic that the only response is to , uh, sneer at it.
“You’re basically suggesting to boring adults that they not concern themselves with things that seem too adult to you and bore you.”
I mean, sure, as a general rule, I think that things I think are boring are boring. I’d prefer that artists not create boring art. I can’t disagree with that.
I’m not sure where the “adult” bit comes in. I don’t find the cover especially mature or thoughtful myself.
I think Gorjus’ writing stylistically is unfortunate, and that his qualitative evaluation is wrong. I don’t think his discussion of what the cover is doing overall is incorrect though. I don’t generally dismiss everything someone says just because I disagree with one thing they say, or with one aspect of what they say. I don’t think most people operate that way, honestly.
why are people hating on this?
its an illustration…its telling a story in a single,minimal somewhat muted image.
not the best by Ware,but its the New Yorker,so who gives a shit anyways.
I think the “Mr. Ware” is probably a stylistic shout-out to the New Yorker. They call all artists Mr, IIRC.
I don’t find the image very effective, myself. I understand it, but it doesn’t speak to my experience. Around here, the adults are as crazy about Halloween as the kids. Sometimes it manifests as intensely ugly school-secretary sweaters in orange with pumpkin shaped pins and sometimes it’s all-out decadent lawn art in the shape of styrofoam coffins and sheets shaped like ghosts hung from trees.
Was that cover worth the $4000 they paid him for it? Will Ware continue to receive the honor of designing all of the NYer’s holiday themed covers and subsequently be able to continue purchasing multi-thousand-dollar tin toys and century-old architectural ornaments off ebay while, in every interview, bemoaning how awful it all is? Has the New Yorker EVER been worth reading? Is Charles Addams the best cartoonist they ever had? Why is the sky blue?
On Halloween I had candy to give out, but no one came. This happened 2 years in a row. This is my experience of the holiday, which is nothing like the activity shown in Ware’s. But an artist doesn’t have to have to draw my experiences for the art to be good or effective. It doesn’t have to have a full jar of candy at the end of the night — or decorations and pumpkin pins — for me to like it. And I see no sneering in this image.
Jeffrey: Is that $4000 per Ware New Yorker cover a number you pulled out of the air or is it something you read/heard somewhere?
The prose of that thing is pretty overdone, though.
“an artist doesn’t have to have to draw my experiences for the art to be good or effective”
Of course not. But art isn’t just some sort of divine afflatus pulled out of the air; it’s a comment on and conversation about the world. I don’t think it’s out of line to look at what he’s saying and where he’s coming from and argue with it if I disagree. I think it’s disrespectful not to, in a way.
Jeffrey, Seymour Hersch’s investigative reporting is worth reading, I think. I’m not generally a big fan of their cartoons, though.
But if the disagreement is heavily based on the fact that his version is not yours (and it does seem to be) — the poster said “but it doesn’t speak to my experience” — then the argument with it is suspect. I don’t think the poster was respectful or disrespectful, just coming from a highly subjective place that makes the comments less of an engagement with the art than it could be.
Well, but engaging with art *is* subjective.
There’s different ways to do it, but ultimately, either the art moves a person or it doesn’t.
I find Ware’s art here to be wrong. Ware is making an argument that is all over the place right now–people are disengaging with life because they’re addicted to technology/obsessed with their ipods/spend too much time on their cell phones/etc.
My experience with people is different than the picture that Ware is painting. I think people in general, and in particular around Halloween, are engaged in the world and delight in that holiday.
True, but I think there are degrees of subjectivity. It can be taken to a point that makes the criticism too much about the critic.
“I think people in general, and in particular around Halloween, are engaged in the world and delight in that holiday.”
Many are, some are not. Have you ever seen a child do something while parents on a cell ignore her? It happens in life all the time. Go to a playgound and you can see scenes like this — Ware’s cover is a version of that fact.
Hey Gera. The poster is me! I’m the one who commented before too. (Vom Marlowe is a different person…though in this case she has kind of made my argument for me.)
I was speaking to vom’s comments (and quoted her) but mixed in your thing about decorations . . . sorry for the confusion.
Noah,
You say “Again, I don’t blame Gorjus personally.”
But you should. Gorjus is an adult responsible for the prose and the analysis. The “culture of reverence” is not writing through Gorjus, though it may seem that way to you — to remove agency from her/him is an unintentional insult, saying he can’t think for himself. I think you want to make this into a case study about reverence and art comics, but I don’t see gorjus as representative of anything other than not so great writing about comics, which exists for all genres.
I was told ten years ago that the NYer paid like 3 grand for a cover… so, I assume it’s gone up since then. But, I have no firsthand info to back that up (and I guess I never will, harhar!)
I mean, has “Blackest Night” sparked a renassiance in good criticism . . .
I don’t really have a problem with the prose in the Gorjus post, but that’s a subjective judgment and maybe partly conditioned by whether or not one likes the cover. I think what you’re reading as “reverence” may really be “enthusiasm” or “excitement” — a nobler critical motivation, even if you disagree that the cover is anything to be excited about.
I’d argue that what sets this post apart from the other writing on art comics that you deplore is that it represents a thoughtful (if brief) engagement with the piece at hand — it’s not just vaporous pontificating with no substance behind it, which is what I think of when I think of blurbs for contemporary poetry collections (or blurbs of any sort, really).
Though I don’t like the prose, I do appreciate, like BW says, the engagement.
Gera, I’m enough of a Foucaultian to think that discourses actually do often (or at least sometimes) speak through people rather than the other way around. Writing is a conversation; the way your interlocutors talk, or are expected to talk, has a huge amount to do with what you say and how you say it. That’s why it makes sense to have genre preferences in part; different genres really do function differently in lots of ways. It’s not just individuals randomly and romantically pulling tropes (or words) out of the air.
I think Gorjus did engage with the piece and that he had some insights which I found interesting or useful. So I’d agree with BW that it could have been worse, certainly.
As for Blackest Night…I’ve actually read quite a bit of really enjoyable criticism about Blackest Night. Make of that what you will.
I would actually buy a New Yorker subscription if, every time they considered calling up Chris Ware to do a cover, they called Johnny Ryan instead.
I bet their circulation would quadruple if all their covers were done “manga” style. But since Francoise and Artie are obviously cultural imperialists, that will never happen.
“I think the ‘Mr. Ware’ is probably a stylistic shout-out to the New Yorker. They call all artists Mr, IIRC.”
No, that’s the Ny Times. The New Yorker doesn’t use honorifics.
See, I liked that cover. Not because of the high level of commentary or anything, but because I thought it worked as an illustration and a gag. As an illustration I liked that it dealt with current fads and Halloween in an interesting visual way. And I like when illustrations sort of pull together a gag that you “get” sort of slowly after letting a scene soak in. (And I think the commentary is a little less sinister than Gorjus does.) I know this will come off as a hopelessly surface point of view, but to me magazine illustration should deliver the goods to its audience…and this one did. Is it my favorite magazine cover of all time? No–I prefer Jesse Wilcox Smith!
Hey Chris. Nice to see you stop by. Fair enough on your comments…but surely we can all agree with Shaenon that the New Yorker needs to be commissioning more Johnny Ryan covers.
Jeffrey– That would also be boss, depending on the manga artist. I suggest Junko Mizuno.
If Junko Mizuno did a New Yorker Halloween cover, you can bet your drooling, pus-oozing, carnivorous Hello Kitty dolls that there would be real masks on display.
Also decorations.
Damn it.
“It’s not just individuals randomly and romantically pulling tropes (or words) out of the air.”
I don’t think you are really engaging with what I am saying — I didn’t say the above or even imply it. Yes, people use words and ideas that are out there in their writing – no one could deny that. But I think that you are mainly interested in making larger points about “reverence” and art comics, so you are not looking at the objects (art and criticism) in front of you with much care. They become reduced to ideas in your blog war against celebrated cartoonists and the critics who love them. The culture of worship speaks through Gorjus (who can’t think for him/herself), but you alone are able to speak for yourself.
You put so much weight onto this cover to be about so much, that you are forced (the inverse of Gorjus “the “culture of irreverence”?) to sneer at it. Chris Duffy offers another approach.
Please read the above post aloud with an easy-going tone — It reads meaner than it should —
No worries; I’m harder to offend than that!
I don’t think I ever said that I was uniquely capable of thinking up original thoughts. The anti-Chris-Ware position (and/or the anti-New Yorker one) certainly isn’t something I came up with on my own. Jeffrey states it nicely (as he has before, if I’m not mistaken.)
Johnny Ryan New Yorker covers? Lord yes!
“I mean, sure, as a general rule, I think that things I think are boring are boring. I’d prefer that artists not create boring art. I can’t disagree with that.”
I’m saying that your “boring” is often an undeserved sneer at the middle aged, middle class and straight ; anything that represents that to you is “boring”, not because of what’s going on in the work ( the misreading of the cover I think goes to show this), but assumptions of the worst based on who is making it.”boring” , in this sense, is a slur. Probably the worst slur a media critic can think of.
We’ve kind of had this discussion before, Uland. You say, “you’re prejudiced against straight white men!” I say, well, no, look, here’s tons of stuff I like by straight white men. You ignore me. And we go round again.
I think the gist of your criticism is essentially that I’m a race traitor, or the equivalent. And, you know, I can live with that.
But more importantly — hope you’ve had a good holiday! Best wishes to you and the family.
Oh come on. That’s a crazy exaggeration. I’m starting to think you’re more concerned with saying outlandish things in order to get hits than you are with actual criticism.
I don’t care about race here, I’m more interested in trying to get to a reading of this material that makes sense. I guess you’re telling me you’re aren’t going after that here.
My point with the class/race stuff is that you’re taken with this idea of being some sort of radical to the point where any and all readings of material like this are first and foremost meant to confirm your own biases. I’m not sure how much more patience your readers will have for it, honestly. It’s starting to get a little hacky.
Couldn’t stay away.
I hate to burst your bubble— I’m sure it’s every Oberliner’s dream to be called a race traitor— but the reality is that your concerns for the marginalized are affected. That armchair subversive posture can only be taken on from a position of privilege, where the battles can be fought in terms like here’s what I think of the New Yorker. It’s a kind of desperate display; I’m not like the other privileged people. No, you’re not. You’re even more privileged. You’re so privileged that you believe the kinds of real concerns that someone like Ware deals in are basically sets of constructs that can be disavowed. At least Ware is willing to understand and explore his particular lot, privileged though it may be. You view that as a threat; you seem to believe that his m.o is a promotion of the “boring” ( i.e, white, i.e, straight, i.e, not poor), while in reality, it’s a reminder that you’re very much like Ware, and not at all like Edie Fake. It ruins your escapist fantasy; a fantasy so strong, you feel you can enact it from a position of total safety, while earning culture points as you go.
You’re a Marxist LARPER.
Happy Hanukka.
“Oh come on. That’s a crazy exaggeration.”
It’s hyperbole, meant mostly (if not entirely) tongue in cheek. I know it’s cruel to tweak you like that…sometimes I just can’t help myself though. My apologies.
“My point with the class/race stuff is that you’re taken with this idea of being some sort of radical”
See, this is your ax, not mine. It’s not me who see creeping subversion and the end of civilization anytime anyone suggests that they’re more interested in shojo than in American art comics.
I don’t think there’s anything particularly radical about thinking that Chris Ware’s New Yorker cover is kind of shitty. Most people in the world don’t know who Chris Ware is. Of those that do, many don’t like him particularly. It’s hardly a revolutionary stand. Nor do I see how my cultural argument here is in any way particularly edgy. How is it radical to suggest that middle-class parents by and large are quite interested in their kids? I mean, that’s not Marx.
” I’m not sure how much more patience your readers will have for it, honestly. It’s starting to get a little hacky.”
I kind of enjoy the hackery on occasion, honestly. But no fear…soon enough I’ll be back to endlessly blogging about Wonder Woman in a manner sure to bore everyone.
“but the reality is that your concerns for the marginalized are affected.”
The only marginalized people I’m defending in this piece are those of us poor souls who want to live in a world without crappy New Yorker covers.
Don’t you have any pity on us, Uland? All we want is Johnny Ryan New Yorker covers. Is that so wrong?
It could also be argued that Ware’s recycling the same, simplistic, ‘technology ruins the holidays’ joke he used on the November 2006 New Yorker cover.
Link to 11/6 cover:
http://www.nedgallagher.com/journal/images/ware_thanksgiving.gif
Ow. That’s going to leave a mark.
Y’all think Ware is gay, or whut?
No; he’s married and has a kid. He also comes across as very straightforwardly (as it were) interested in tropes around being a heterosexual (albeit a failed one — which is arguably the only kind.)
I talk about his work in relation to gender theory here, if that’s of interest.
Uh, I was joking.
“…being a heterosexual (albeit a failed one — which is arguably the only kind.)”
Say WHAT? Maybe Luke is right about your POV, jeez.
You could read the essay if you’d like my POV. I think masculinity is more or less arranged so that no one achieves the ideal. It’s hardly an original idea; it’s sort of at the basis of Freud.
Also, not sure you care, but I think Uland prefers to try to stay semi-pseudonymous (or however you spell that.)
And yes, I knew you were joking.
Clowesisbetterthanyourblog, in the interest of allowing you to pursue your dream of making great comics, I’m cutting you off. I’m deleting this post, and I’ll delete any other post you make.
You are free. Go forth and make beautiful music.
That cover would have been funnier if all those douchey parents were reading the “e-version” of The New Yorker on their i-phones, all recursive like, but they’re probably reading TMZ… which is a lot more interesting than the NYer