 Graphic Witness: Four Wordless Graphic Novels by Frans Masereel, Lynd Ward, Giacomo Patri and Laurence Hyde Books In Print, Audio Books. |
| Home » All Books » Comic » History/Price Guides |
| |
|
|
Graphic Witness: Four Wordless Graphic Novels by Frans Masereel, Lynd Ward, Giacomo Patri and Laurence Hyde
buy bestselling books in print, audio books
|
 |
List Price: $29.95
Our Price:
$19.77
You Save: $10.18
|
| [ + Zoom ] [ Buy Now ] |
Book : Usually ships in 24 hours |
|
Graphic Witness: Four Wordless Graphic Novels by Frans Masereel, Lynd Ward, Giacomo Patri and Laurence Hyde Customer Reviews
|
|
|
|
♥♥♥♥♥
|
What relief
|
These four graphic novels cover a range of relief printmaking techniques: woodcut, linocut, and wood engraving. They cover a range of styles, as well: Masereel's Expressionism, Ward's delicate linework on bold figures, Patri's crisp realism, Hyde's detailed primitivism. And, although they cover very different eras and stories, they all end in pessimism about people's treatement of people.
Masereel's story is the most ambiguous. His imagery has least in the way of explicit continuity and the most in dramatic contrasts. Masereel makes it clear, however, that the urban world has dozens of ways to chew people up and spit them out. Ward's "Wild Pilgrimage" tries to escape an urban hell, but finds rural America is no better. It includes a lynching early on, an ugly blot from the country's not-so-distant past. Patri's "White Collar" conveys the hopeless of The Depression, a world where no amount of hard work can be enough to make ends meet. Finally, Hyde's "Souther Cross" brings us up to the atomic age, examining one of the human costs of 50s-era nuclear testing in the Pacific.
Walker's collection reminds us that the graphic novel, as we know it today, drew from many sources. On one hand, comic strip culture evolved upwards through generations of comics towards today's graphic novels, and now presents very mature works by contemporary writers. In the other direction, fine art printing found itself too constrained by the single image. It needed plots, not just snapshots. As a result, it's easy for today's reader to appreciate these moving graphic series - and maybe easier, when that reader learns about the persecutions and McCarthy-eras black-balling of some of these artists and their works.
-- wiredweird |
|