Sue Coe: Elephants We Must Never Forget
Posted by Stephen Kroninger at 4:04 pm on October 6th |
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ELEPHANTS WE MUST NEVER FORGET: New Paintings, Drawings and Prints by Sue Coe, on view from October 14 through December 20 at the Galerie St. Etienne, is the first exhibition ever to document the plight of circus elephants: gentle yet sometimes deadly beasts who have long been exploited for their entertainment value.
Comprising 14 new oil paintings and over a dozen ancillary drawings and prints, ELEPHANTS WE MUST NEVER FORGET: New Paintings, Drawings and Prints by Sue Coe chronicles the lives and deaths of both generic and historically specific circus elephants. Highlights include a sequence of 11 works telling the story of Topsy, an elephant who was electrocuted at Coney Island as a publicity stunt on behalf of Thomas Edison’s electric company. Jumbo—whose name became a synonym for “extra large”—experienced an equally violent death (reprised in two oil paintings, a large drawing and a lithograph) and was then “resurrected” as a stuffed display, seen in the painting The Dress Rehearsal (2008). One of the most moving paintings in the exhibition is Blind Children Feel an Elephant (2008), which shows how the simple sense of touch bridges the gulf between species.
ELEPHANTS WE MUST NEVER FORGET: New Paintings, Drawings and Prints by Sue Coe represents a turning point in the career of one of our foremost contemporary political artists. Sue Coe’s approach has undergone an immense shift since 2001, when she moved from Manhattan to Upstate New York. The tangible presence of nature and complex interactions with the local community have given Coe’s work a more solid basis in lived experience. A consummate draughtsman, she has for the first time felt compelled to paint, and the elephant series evidences a newly robust use of color. The paintings re-create the elephants’ world more completely than is possible with drawing, inspiring a more visceral emotional response from the viewer.
“I think it is possible that in the near future elephants can be rescued from their forced role of doing silly tricks to entertain us, or of being part of stamp-album collections in zoos. They can walk on soft grass, be with their own kind. An elephant never forgets, we just forgot that they have complex feelings of friendship, family, loyalty. They can be free of our oppression.”
Sue Coe
Sue Coe, 57, has earned a broad following that ranges from grass-roots animal-rights organizations to major museums. Almost immediately after emigrating to the United States from her native England in 1972, Coe began working as an illustrator for such publications as The New York Times, Time and The New Yorker. In the late 1970s, she began to create extended series on subjects of her own choosing. Her first independent book, How to Commit Suicide in South Africa, was published in 1983 and subsequently widely used as an organizational tool on college campuses. Coe has frequently been profiled in the press and has been the subject of one-person exhibitions at many museums, including the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. Her work is in numerous public collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Although she has exhibited widely, publication is her preferred means of communication, because Coe’s goal as an activist is to reach the largest possible audience. Her book Dead Meat, published in 1996, details animal lives on factory farms. She turned her attention to abandoned dogs with Pit’s Letter (1999/2000) and examined the sheep industry in Sheep of Fools (2005). The artist is presently engaged in developing her elephant series into a book-length narrative.
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Baby Elephant at Sea 2007
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The Death of Jumbo 2008
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Two Elephants Standing on Stools 2008
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Blind Children Feel an Elephant 2008
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An Elephant Never Forgets 2007
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all images (c) copyright Sue Coe 2008
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John McCain for this week's Joe Klein column in TIME
Posted by Stephen Kroninger at 5:02 pm on September 25th |
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"John McCain and the Lying Game"
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Early Eric Carle
Posted by Stephen Kroninger at 11:32 pm on September 14th |
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For the past few weeks I've been poring over issues of Graphis from the fifties into the early sixties. These images and text are from GRAPHIS 86 published in 1959. This isn't the entire piece. There are many more images. I found these interesting because they are Carle working in a variety of styles, experimenting, searching for his voice. I hope you find them as fascinating as I do.
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"Eric Carle was born in 1929 in Syracuse, New York. He was educated in Germany and trained at the Akademie der bildenden Kunste in Stuttgart, studying under Professor E. Schneidler (1946-60). He was with the promotion department of the New York Times before serving in the U.S. Army. Since 1955 he has been associated with L.W. Frohlich & Co., Inc."
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"Eric Carle was recently appointed Art Director of I.M.S. It is his responsibility to coordinate art departments abroad. An intricate task indeed."
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Carle is a graphic designer without formulas, which immunizes him from trite cliches. He has a warm grasp of a problem that gives images a glowing aliveness. For him, a successful promotion piece must have articulate impact...should work effortlessly without pushing or pointing. He is accomplished in many mediums, and this enables him to use the technique best suited to a particular situation. Casrle believes that a creative individual should maintain an optimistic approach. The moment he starts to worry and fret, he finds that his work becomes dull and cold, therefore the importance of the uninhibted attitude.
Carle likes to play around with a project until suddenly something works out of it spontaneously...this means a standing invitation for the accidental and incidental. In Carle's opinion. pharmaceutical advertising art should possess a certain abstract quality, acting as a diverting counterpoint to the extremely concrete nature of the copy."---P.K. Thomajan
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The Daily Heller: Steve Heller's Blog
Posted by Stephen Kroninger at 11:49 am on September 12th |
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Here's the link to Steve Heller's blog. Fascinating stuff and certainly worth everyone's while. Is there any way to connect this blog to Drawger? It would be a welcome addition here.
http://blog.printmag.com/dailyheller/
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Recent pieces for Joe Klein's IN THE ARENA for TIME
Posted by Stephen Kroninger at 1:57 am on September 12th |
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"What Bush Taught McCain: The GOP candidate's negative turn is straight out of the Bush campaign handbook"
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"Blowing His Top. (McCain's Foreign Policy Frustration): McCain's bellicose, against-all-enemies foreign policy is collapsing--and not a moment too soon."
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"Change."
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"Where's the Passion? (Where's Obama's Passion?)"
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"How McCain Makes Obama Conservative."
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"Kill Your Air Conditioner."
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Uncle George Wants You
Posted by Stephen Kroninger at 2:13 pm on September 9th |
This piece originally appeared in the Village Voice back in 1991, during
Desert Storm. It soon took on a life of its own, and a second life now with
Iraq.
When it was first published, Patrick Flynn asked if he could publish it as
poster and sell it through the magazine as a fund-raiser for the
Progressive. That was an easy yes. I also told Patrick to add a line
running across the bottom saying that the work was copyright free, so that
anyone who wanted to could reproduce it.
It was picked up and republished on op-ed pages all across the country as
well as in Canada and Europe. MTV ran a piece on war merchandise that was
mostly anti-Saddam and pro-war stuff. Saddam toilet paper, dart boards, that
sort of thing. The only anti-war item they showed was this poster with a
phone number at the Progressive for anyone who wanted to order a copy. They
sold tons of them and it went into several printings. The Village Voice gave
away a pile of them as a first-come first serve freebie. The Progressive
also printed up t-shirts, which also sold briskly.
As a news junkie, during the ’92 Presidential campaign I would see the
poster hanging on podiums and walls at various Democratic Party forums and
functions on C-SPAN. The original art and the poster hung in New York’s
Museum of Modern Art. It’s since been included in several museum posters
collections, published in several anthologies and textbooks including Steven
Heller’s Angry Graphics: Protest Posters of the Reagan/Bush Era, (With
Karrie Jacobs) Salt Lake City, Utah: Peregrine Smith Books, 1992.
Heller wrote: ““Illustrators whose ideas were otherwise too controversial
for, and squelched in mainstream publications could stretch their critical
wings. One such, Stephen Kroninger, created a photo-collage send-up of
“Uncle Sam Wants You” (originally published in the Villiage Voice ) showing
the first President George Bush hawking his Iraq war (the ransom note
lettering accompanying the image reads, “Uncle George wants you to forget
failing banks, education, drugs, AIDs, poor heath care, unemployment, crime,
racism, corruption. and have a good war.”). This art was made into a
Progressive poster, and because opponents were starved for alternative
graphic statements in this image-managed war, it also became one of the few
oppositional icons of the Desert Storm escapade.”
In the run-up to the latest war with Iraq I began getting e-mail requests
from around the country, asking permission to reprint the image for regional
protest marches. I offered to update it by changing the old Bush’s head for
the new Bush and altering the text to reflect contemporary issues, but
everyone who asked said it was perfect the way it was.
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Its latest incarnation is as the November 2009 image for the Amber Lotus
“Posters for Peace and Justice” calendar, published by Amber Lotus
Publishing in conjunction with The Center for the Study of Political
Graphics. You may order the calendar here. And here’s what the
publishers wanted to evoke with this calendar:
“From the days of the Quaker broadsides against slavery to the current
conflict in the Middle East, people have used ink and paper to speak out for
peace and justice. Amber Lotus is proud to present Posters for Peace &
Justice 2009 wall calendar, a survey of modern political poster art.
Produced in partnership with Inkworks Press of Berkeley, California, and the
Center for the Study of Political Graphics in Los Angeles, this inspiring
calendar offers reprints of political action posters, many of them still
disturbingly relevant, combined with mission statements on the posters from
the original artists.
Since 1974, Inkworks Press, a worker owned and managed union shop, has
collaborated with many artists and activists in support of peace and
justice. With over 50,000 posters, the Center for the Study of Political
Graphics is the largest collection of post-World War II graphics in the
United States. CSPG is committed to collecting, preserving and exhibiting
this rich visual history of social change.”
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The back of the Calendar showing all of the images inside.
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Kim Deitch: A Retrospective
Posted by Stephen Kroninger at 10:23 pm on September 7th |
"Major Retrospective of Work by Legendary Underground Cartoonist Kim Deitch Opens at MoCCA on September 9
• Exhibition dates: September 9 – December 5, 2008
• Opening Reception: September 12, 2008, 6 – 9 pm
The Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art (MoCCA) is pleased to announce a major retrospective of work by underground cartoonist and graphic novelist Kim Deitch (b. 1944), opening September 9th and running through December 5th, 2008.
Kim Deitch: A Retrospective will display original comics pages and other work covering the artist’s entire career to date, beginning with full-page comic strips drawn for the East Village Other in the sixties up to recent graphic novels including The Boulevard of Broken Dreams, Alias the Cat, Shadowland, and Deitch’s Pictorama. The exhibit will also feature rarely seen work including elaborate preparatory drawings, hand-colored originals, animation cel set-ups and lithographs."
And don't forget to come and hear him speak on September 18 at The Strand Bookstore at 7:00 PM! See you there!!!
Kim's work and Kim himself are wonderful. I can't recommend both events highly enough.
Kim Deitch's Presentation at the 2003 UF Comics Conference
Underground Comix Come of Age: An Interview with Kim Deitch
by Steven Heller
Here are two sites that sell Kim's art but are posted here as galleries of his work.
Beguiling
Comic Art Collective
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