Sabato tregua (Saturday’s truce) by Andrea Bruno
Deregulated financial capitalism immersed Southern Europe in a deep social, economical, and political crisis. The euro’s cohesion is at stake at the moment while PIGS countries (hail racism!), especially Greece, see their sovereign debt credit ratings descend into garbage (PIGS countries are: Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain; in 2008 the acronym became PIIGS with the inclusion of Ireland). IMF imposed restrictions choke the economy provoking unemployment. On top of that grim scenario Globalization dislocated factories from the so-called first world to become sweatshops in the so-called third world (if you think that slavery doesn’t exist anymore, think again…). Entire communities were destroyed with millions of unemployed people from all over the world (add post-colonial and post-communist to post-industrial) flocking to the major cities in search of a life. This created huge social problems with riots in France, for instance. Riots in Greece are part of everyday life by now…
These are, in a nutshell, our difficult European times. Any artist worth his or her salt should acknowledge them one way or the other. That’s what Italian comics artist Andrea Bruno eloquently does…
Panel from Sabato tregua (see below). Canicola, 2009. Not paginated.
Sabato tregua is a big format book (18,5 x 12 inches, give or take) reminding two other similar experiments: French Futuropolis’ 30 x 40 [cm] collection, U.S.A’s Raw, in its first series incarnation (both appeared during the eighties). It was published by the art collective from Bologna, Canicola (“Cannicula,” or the star Sirius which announces the hottest days of Summer). Andrea Bruno had the idea to revive this huge format; another book (Grano blu – blue wheat -, by the great Anke Feuchtenberger), was already published in the same format. In case that you’re wondering, Canicola’s books have a (not very accurate, sometimes…) English translation at the bottom of the page. In the image reproduced above the character that is off-panel, Mario, says (I transcribe from the book’s translation):
What are you doing here?
While Christine, says:
Did you know [that,] since the shoe factory closed[,] the population of this town has decreased by 40%[?]
And, then, she continues:
Once it was a workers’ town, now it’s a thieves’ town. When a robbery happens in the nearby towns, the police come[s] here immediately to start the[ir] search.
While Christine speaks there’s a three panel zoom in that ends in a medium shot. Conversely Mario’s face is hidden most of the time by melancholic shadows. The same thing happens to other characters, but it’s not only that: Andrea Bruno’s “dirty” style disintegrates the physical world to mirror the disintegration of post-industrial communities.
Sabato tregua: “Let’s go”: a melancholic view of the world under capitalism.
Another disintegration occurs to the story. Andrea Bruno says a few interesting things about this particular aspect of his work:
What do we mean by “linear discourse?” The storyline, the plot may not be the only way to unify a narrative? Maybe images, signs and moods can also become the parts that “sustain” a story and give it an identity. I try not to do “antinarrative” comics, but I don’t like to draw stories that tell it all.
Andrea Bruno presses ink soaked cardboards to the surface of his drawings. He uses white paint almost as much as he draws and paints with black India ink. The result is a very distinctive graphic style in which chance plays a part, blobs are as important as lines and the white surfaces are as important as the black ones. White, as in Alberto Breccia’s drawings (the old master has to be cited), is pretty much an active part of Andrea Bruno’s drawings, not just negative zones…
Anni luce (light years), original art, Miomao Gallery, 2007. A car is burned during a riot. A violent technique to depict violent acts.
Wherever millions of famished immigrants go xenophobia and racism follows them. Here’s what Andrea Bruno has to say about it:
I try to suppress the surface of well being, of the main fashions and customs, to show landscapes and relationships reduced to the bone. The denunciation is not direct, it’s more in the presuppositions than in what I choose to show. I prefer the peripheral vision. Racism and inequality, in my comics, are not denunciated, but appear as ‘normal,’ so to speak. The effect renders them, maybe, even more hateful.
Sabato tregua: “Mario, [are you] a friend [of the] niggers, now?”
Andrea Bruno appeared in English in Suat’s Rosetta # 2.
Those panels are really lovely, Domingos. The last one, with the dilapidated walls, reminds me of some of the images in Stalker….
Which sort of leads me to wonder…how much of a problem is it to be launching a social critique in such aesthetically beautiful terms. The car burning, for example…you note that it’s a violent image, but it’s also just really appealing formally. Is there an aesthetization of violence and despair, and is that a problem?
” In case that you’re wondering, Canicola’s books have a (not very accurate, sometimes…) English translation at the bottom of the page.”
Interesting and unusual; the equivalent of subtitling films.
Is this a common practice?
Noah: It depends. As we discussed when I posted about Otto Dix’s WWI, art aestheticizes everything (obviously: http://tinyurl.com/6h4chk5 ). As I see it the real question is: is it good art, or is it kitsch ( http://tinyurl.com/62a75f4 )?
Norb: I don’t think so, no. It’s an attempt to enlarge the reading public which for art books is really small.
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Noah Berlatsky says:
…Which sort of leads me to wonder…how much of a problem is it to be launching a social critique in such aesthetically beautiful terms. The car burning, for example…you note that it’s a violent image, but it’s also just really appealing formally. Is there an aesthetization of violence and despair, and is that a problem?
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At least it’s a gritty, harsh aesthetic; as opposed to, say, the way an Alex Raymond — who’d made a knife fight look like ballet — would render it.
Sabato tregua sure seems an extraordinary work! Visually remarkable…
“Which sort of leads me to wonder…how much of a problem is it to be launching a social critique in such aesthetically beautiful terms. The car burning, for example…you note that it’s a violent image, but it’s also just really appealing formally. Is there an aesthetization of violence and despair, and is that a problem?”
I’m not sure why it might be a problem, provided the subject isn’t trivialised through being romanticised? I think it’s aesthetic is somewhat reminiscent of, for example, the French movie La Haine, which I thought was beautifully filmed but also an extremely powerful condemnation of poverty, marginalisation, neglect and racism.
I don’t think stark and arresting is a bad thing.
And, presumably, it would find an even smaller audience if it were less pleasing to the eye. So if it has a message worth reading, isn’t making it visually appealing a good thing? I mean, I’m fairly sure I wouldn’t have been able to persuade as many non-comic reading friends, colleagues and relatives to read Joe Sacco’s Yugoslav and Palestinian works as I have if his art wasn’t so attractive and so accessible. I’d have thought that was a point in Sacco’s favour rather than a strike against the validity of his work.
Hey Ian. I don’t actually have a doctrinaire position on this or anything. I was more thinking out loud than throwing down a gauntlet.
Your points make sense. I guess I still wonder about it though. If you make a lovely image out of violence, doesn’t that in some ways validate the violence? If you make a beautiful picture of poverty, then aren’t you making poverty beautiful?
Beautiful images are there own justification in some ways of course. And pointing out poverty and violence is a worthwhile thing to do. I just feel like putting them together sometimes raises at least mildly uncomfortable issues.
Bruno is a major talent, for sure. I also recommend his previous book, Brodo di niente. I think he still has some way to go before his work achieves the kind of nuance Domingos sees in it, but it sure is impressive.
Oh, and it might be a bit of a stretch to connect Sabato Tregua so directly to the current financial crisis in Europe. As far as I know, it was drawn before shit really hit the fan, but I still like the perspective. In any case, Bruno has been interested in post-apocalyptic settings for a long time.
Regarding subtitles in European alt-comics, it has been practiced by the Finns for a while now, across a wide range of publications, including the great anthology Glömp.
We have Europe going through an economic crisis a level of which boggles the mind, and it gets nary a mention in U.S. news because they are too busy talking about how a jury found a woman not guilty of murdering her daughter despite the media and a bunch of people thinking she did. Oh, and the closet American mainstream comics get to discussing our economic issues is having some guy grumble about wanting a job in “Fear Itself” before somebody with a huge hammer comes crashing down breaking stuff. Moral: I should watch less U.S. news and read more alt-comix.
I can’t wait to see this one. I love those Futuropolis 30×40 books, especially L’Option Stravinsky by Jean-Claude Götting, an artist I’d love to help bring to an English-reading audience at some point.
I agree with Matthias about Bruno’s work, he’s a talent to watch and he’s just getting started.
To add to the subtitles list: the German anthology ORANG has also been using them, probably under the influence of Canicola.
The European “crisis” isn’t nearly as bad as depicted. Depends on where you are.
The PIIGS fucked up. So did Britain. They lied and borrowed beyond all hope of repayment. Germany, France, Denmark, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovenia didn’t fuck up.
Now they’re expected to prop up the douchebag drunken sailor economies?
You forgot Iceland… I wonder why?
But mainly you’re right… I wish to live in Ecuador!… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_yTriIJa9I
Iceland can pay up in sprats.
You kid, but no, Iceland will not pay: http://www.socialistworld.net/doc/5001
I bet that you didn’t even bother to watch _Debtocracy_. It’s a lot easier to have simplistic and racist opinions…
Noah –
“Your points make sense. I guess I still wonder about it though. If you make a lovely image out of violence, doesn’t that in some ways validate the violence? If you make a beautiful picture of poverty, then aren’t you making poverty beautiful?”
I see what you’re saying. I’d rather replace the words “lovely” and “beautiful” with “romantic” and “noble” though.
I think horrible things can be (aesthetically) beautiful – and they can certainly be visually stimulating or intriguing – without being any the less horrible for that. Once you romanticise and ennoble thing though, you’re turning them into at least partial positives.
norb –
“The PIIGS fucked up. So did Britain. They lied and borrowed beyond all hope of repayment. Germany, France, Denmark, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovenia didn’t fuck up.
Now they’re expected to prop up the douchebag drunken sailor economies?”
Britain certainly fucked up and is suffering badly because of it but it’s hardly being propped up by the Eurozone nations. Quite the contrary in fact – the poxy Little Englander Eurosceptics are making great political capital out of the fact that all the bailout money (or at least what’s left after rescuing a number of the world’s largest banks) is all flowing in the opposite direction even whilst public services are cut left, right and centre in the UK.
Also, it’s Germany that stands to lose the most if any of those PIIGS countries default on their national debts so the propping up is arguably mutually beneficial.
Shouldn’t that be PIIIGS? Why isn’t Iceland included?
Anyway…
Noah: There are images in comics, but words may play an important part too. I reread _Anni luce_ and, here’s what I found (I quote from the English translation):
Page 6: “Mario has been making pizza since he was 12 years old.”
Page 8: “In my neighbourhood there are guys going out at night and setting cars on fire. Mila says it’s a new kind of self-statement for young people living in [the] suburbs.”
Page 13: “The night before Mario’s car has been burnt, and he was mad.”
This sequence of events shows how misguided this kind of violence is. But there’s a personal meaning behind the burning cars. Two panels (page 2 and 21) show Lucia (page 2) and Christian (page 21) looking at the flames. It’s a braiding that links the two former lovers who are now “light years” from each other.
“Shouldn’t that be PIIIGS? Why isn’t Iceland included?”
Because it isn’t in the EU.
So? Why does that exempt Iceland from racist attacks?
The acronym was coined to refer to the most dangerously debt burdened nations in the European Union – particularly those that have adopted the Euro (with obvious implications for other Euro Zone economies), hence no Hungary, UK, Baltic States and so forth.
Iceland isn’t in the European Union and it doesn’t use the Euro so it isn’t included.
The term is (deliberately) mildly insulting but the fact that it doesn’t cover Iceland is hardly a racist conspiracy.
In fact, given that the term covers Ireland as well as various Mediterranean economies, I’m not sure whom you think it is racist towards? Predominantly white Europeans generally?
“Mildly” is putting it mildly.
It’s racist towards Southern European countries. Being catholics the Irish aren’t that displaced in said group.
The Irish have long been the target of vicious racism based on their Catholicism. I don’t think it’s much of a leap to suggest that calling them “Pigs” is in that tradition.
Good grief, you two are really clutching at straws here.
a) There are plenty of Catholic EU nations that aren’t covered by the label and at least one predominantly Protestant nation (the UK) which was covered by a variant of it a while back.
b) Even if what you are asserting was correct, insulting a people based on their religion isn’t racist, it’s sectarian. Overusing – and misusing – an emotive word devalues its power when it’s actually needed.
c) The sectarian divide within Northern Ireland (and parts of Scotland) and the historical British distrust of the Roman Church would only be pertinent if the term were originally coined in one of those places.
Of course, it might well have been coined in the UK for all I know (though, as previously noted, the UK was itself covered under the “PIIGGS” variant acronym during the banking crisis a couple of years ago, to the complete disinterest of Britons everywhere) but most of the ire aimed at the PIIGS economies and their threat to the Euro has been coming from half-Catholic Germany and mostly-Catholic, part-Mediterranean France (neither of which has any historical tension with Ireland).
d) Even if all other above were discounted, the non-inclusion of Iceland in the term still wouldn’t indicate that those who coined and used the term were worshipping at the alter of Nordic racial purity. The term applies to members of an international grouping that Iceland doesn’t belong to – not including Iceland is no more racist than Americans not including Göttland within the similarly pejorative term “flyover country”.
Not to mention the fact that Iceland came in for far more public criticism (at least in Britain and the Netherlands, which lost the most when Iceland went belly up) than any of the PIIGS nations. The only pleasant thing the British press have had to say about Iceland in recent years is that it now offers a really cost effective holiday destination.
e) This is a silly argument. The term’s an unfunny, moderately disrespectful pun that some tedious economist or banker came up with and that was repeated ad nauseum by a lot of lazy financial journalists; a term that is, in any case, aimed at economies rather than the individuals living in them. Making out that there’s anything more to it than that is tilting at windmills.
“Even if what you are asserting was correct, insulting a people based on their religion isn’t racist, it’s sectarian.”
The hatred of the Catholic Irish in Britain really qualifies as racist. Catholicism was seen as part of Irish identity. Have you seen caricatures of the Irish from the 19th century? They’re not especially subtle.
I don’t actually have much of an opinion about your other points; I had never heard the term till Domingos brought it up, honestly.
“The hatred of the Catholic Irish in Britain really qualifies as racist.”
QualiFIED, for the most part. I mean, there’s still occasional racist remarks, of course, but they’ve more in common with, by way of example, American comments about Canadians than with American comments about Mexicans, if you see what I mean.
And you mean “England”, not “Britain”. The situation in the rest of the union is much more complicated. And for quite some time the Presbyterian Irish (as opposed to the Anglican Irish) were treated pretty much as badly as the Catholic Irish – only in the past 150 years or so have they started draping themselves in Union Jacks. Indeed, most English people feel quite favourably towards the (southern) Irish whereas the Protestant loyalists in Northern Ireland are generally considered a bit of an embarrassment. Class plays into that, to an extent, but it’s mostly that they break most of England’s social taboos (for details of which, see Kate Fox’s marvellous book Watching The English). The relationship between England and Ireland has never been – even at its worse – as clean cut and obvious as Americans generally seem to think it is.
“Catholicism was seen as part of Irish identity.”
Of some – most – Irish, yes. But outside of Ulster and some communities in Scotland, most of the country has long since abandoned any interest whatsoever in Rome (juicy paedophile scandals aside) and sectarianism is decidedly outré, to say the least. I don’t think anybody is much concerned that the Reformation is going to be reversed because of Irish support for a Catholic pretender to the throne these days, or that the French and / or Spanish will make common cause with their fellow papists and encircle our green and pleasant land in a vice-like grip. We’re certainly not interested in saving their poor benighted souls from idolatry (nor even our own for that matter).
In my grandfather’s youth, that sectarian/racist connection still lingered to some extent but when I was a kid the (fairly common, undeniably racist) Irish jokes told in the playgrounds of the nation were entirely divorced from religion and these days the kids don’t seem to tell Irish jokes at all. The only barbed comments being made about Irish Catholicism I ever see in the popular media are made by secular, left-leaning Irish comedians (quite a number of whom are enormously popular across the UK).
My point being that the relationship between the English and the Irish has been enormously fluid over the past century or so – certainly infinitely more fluid than American (especially “Irish”-American) perceptions of the relationship, which appear to be set in mid-19th Century stone – and is decidedly multi-faceted, complicated and often self-contradictory.
“Have you seen caricatures of the Irish from the 19th century?”
Naturally.
“They’re not especially subtle.”
True but not really relevant. There is no history in those caricatures or elsewhere of a linkage in the English collective consciousness between Irish ethnicity and Mediterranean ethnicity. The nations of Europe have had a very, very long time to hone their prejudices and stereotypes (always mocking, often insulting, sometimes peculiarly affectionate, frequently all three) of other European peoples. More distant peoples – sub-Saharan Africans, say, or Latin Americans – might all get lumped in together in the public mind but when it comes to our neighbours, for better or for worse, our sibling rivalries are generally rather more finely honed than that. Northern Europeans might be inclined to lump the Portuguese in with the Spanish (Just as Iberians might the Norwegians with the Swedes) but we wouldn’t dream of conflating them with the Irish any more than we would the Belgians with the Poles or the Swiss with the Finns. Hence my belief that the Irish being honorary members of a reviled collective of South European Catholics (plus the Orthodox Greeks, whom Northern Protestants also hate, I guess?) is a bit…silly.
I think that history doesn’t quite disappear that quickly. And I think the debt crisis has brought up tensions between the wealthier European nations and those on the margins which have some ugly connotations. But, unlike you and Domingos, I am fairly distant from it, so….
Ian: I don’t agree that the insult is “moderately disrespectful,” but I said that already (and I’m sorry, but I’ll be the judge of that if you don’t mind).
I agree with Noah: history definitely doesn’t disappear that quickly. The proof is that we are where we are because there’s no political EU. Europe’s distant and not so distant past is a bloody mess. Secular multiple tensions (among neighbours, most of the times) prevent European citizens from seeing themselves firstly as Europeans.
What’s happening is partly an attack on the Euro. Americans don’t need to worry though: the euro’s true enemies are Europeans themselves.
Noah –
“I think that history doesn’t quite disappear that quickly.”
Absolutely. But it is mutable (and wasn’t so straight forward in the first place).
“And I think the debt crisis has brought up tensions between the wealthier European nations and those on the margins which have some ugly connotations.”
Sure. The tensions are certainly there – and likely to grow along a variety of lines. I think in this particular instance though, you and Domingos are largely imagining those “ugly connotations”. Sometimes a crappy acronym is just a crappy acronym.
Domingos –
I broadly agree with you about Europe, the Euro and European identity (and I regularly despair of the Euro-scepticism of most of my compatriots).
I just think that being offended by the term “PIIGS” is maybe a bit precious but I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree about that.
Ian: I surely don’t want to play victim when racism against black people or Roma people is a lot more omnipresent and a lot more vicious than this PIIGS thing. If that’s where you’re coming from, I can agree with you. But I suppose that you can also agree with me that stereotypes were bandied about (or, at least, a major one): accusations of laziness…
Suddenly, after reading this: http://tinyurl.com/6zvxelf A text that’s clearly at Nobel prize in economics level, I understood the woman that Robert Stanley Martin described “laughing so hard she nearly fell out of her chair” after watching Crumb’s “Nigger Hearts” panel in the _Crumb_ documentary. What you are seeing is so preposterous that you have to laugh…
Read this instead, by the way: http://tinyurl.com/3k4tvlm
“If that’s where you’re coming from, I can agree with you.”
That’s pretty much what I’m saying, yes.
“But I suppose that you can also agree with me that stereotypes were bandied about (or, at least, a major one): accusations of laziness…”
Oh, certainly – that’s a well-established and continuing stereotype. I’m sure there are plenty of Brits who still believe that the Spanish, in particular, spend half their time sleeping and the other half torturing animals.
As far as British mainstream media coverage of the current economic crisis is concerned though, it’s not had one tone applied to all of those economies equally or consistently.
There’s not been all that much concentration on Spain and Portugal at all (and no suggestions of laziness in the coverage there has been – the stuff I’ve seen has been quite sympathetic) and coverage of Ireland’s collapse has mostly focussed on attacking bankers and the politicians who enabled them (as in the rest of the anglophone world).
Greece and Italy have come in for the most scorn and that’s revolved generally around impressions of governmental corruption and incompetence rather than indolence on the part of workers. Of course, both of those things play into ethnic stereotypes to some extent (which isn’t to say there isn’t a modicum of truth behind them, particularly in Italy) and the coverage has often been highly patronising.
A lot of the coverage hasn’t been interested in the strengths or weaknesses of Mediterranean (or Irish) Europeans at all so much as in an ominous “there but for the grace of God go we” sentiment and, inevitably, especially in the right wing press, a lot of footage of African migrants streaming into Italy, Spain, Malta and France.
The real vitriol has been reserved for the US, Iceland and, of course, Britain’s own finance sector.