Even More Crumb
Saturday, November 14th, 2009

Austin Kleon went to a talk between Robert Crumb, Art Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly. And he took notes as only he can.
(artwork © Austin Kleon – Creative Commons license)


Austin Kleon went to a talk between Robert Crumb, Art Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly. And he took notes as only he can.
(artwork © Austin Kleon – Creative Commons license)

The Mutts mailing list always sends out comics that are two weeks old, and so I didn’t see this one before today, but I immensely like it. And I think it’s especially meant for Austin Kleon. Heh :
(Mutts © 2008 Patrick McDonnell – Distributed by King Features Syndicate)

With his newspaper blackout poems Texas writer Austin Kleon constantly walks the thin line between literature and visual arts, and in his recent creations this distinction becomes even vaguer.
Kleon creates new meaning from existing newspaper articles by blacking out most of the content, and leaving only a few keywords which can be read as a new and original message. In Kleon’s case this new message often has a Koan-like, poetic feel to it.
In his latest poem Kleon introduces traditional comics graphemes, such as gutters and trails to guide the reader’s eye through his poem. Even though he explains this as some sort of deus ex machina to overcome the limitations of western left-to-right reading conventions, these in fact generate a new dynamic in terms of time and space, and, in my opinion, render the result all the more interesting. The rather scrawly blackouts only strengthen this impression, by adding texture and depth to the overall picture.
(newspaper poem © Austin Kleon 2008)
Austin Kleon is a cartoonist and poet from Austin, Texas who has a quite original and intriguing way of working. He takes a page from an existing book or newspaper article and blacks out words until he finds a new and hidden meaning in the text, using the block of text as a visual and poetic element, on a par with the actual words.
Some of the results are hilarioius, some are profound and even unsettling, but they are never bland or boring.
Bad Behavior has blocked 2909 access attempts in the last 7 days.