Books &Illustration 10 Dec 2010 08:20 am
Chwast’s Dante
- Seymour Chwast has been one of our most important designers for generations, now. He has influenced art as one of the founding members of Pushpin Studios and has touched all phases of illustration and design.
This year he produced a graphic novel version of Dante’s Divine Comedy: A Graphic Adaptation. The book doesn’t simplify but has reduced the Epic poem to a detective story. The pages are black and white, but the color is all in the drawing. The only similar work I can think of is Robert Crumb’s The Book of Genesis, an equally brilliant work.
Here’s a sample of Book I – Inferno. In other posts, I’ll share a bit of the remaining two parts – Purgatory and Paradise.
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on 10 Dec 2010 at 10:19 am 1.David Gale said …
What do you think of Gary Panter’s Dante stuff?
on 10 Dec 2010 at 11:08 am 2.Eric Z Goodnight said …
Wow, totally love these. I own Crumb’s Genesis and I think I have to have this, too.
on 10 Dec 2010 at 11:28 am 3.Michael said …
Gary Panter’s Dante books are great. They’re different than what Chwast did, but they’re just as original as everything else that Panter does.
Apparently he did them by doing one drawing a night for three years. That gives him plenty of time to think about what he’s doing.
on 10 Dec 2010 at 5:56 pm 4.Hachtman said …
Gary Panter is one of the nicest, sweetest people I have ever met. I have had the misfortune to meet Seymour Chwast and the experience was so unpleasant I can hardly look at these drawings. It doesn’t surprise me he is thinking about Hell.
on 10 Dec 2010 at 6:08 pm 5.Michael said …
I knew Seymour for a w hile back in the late 70s. he designed a 20 min film for Blechman that I pulled together despite his designs. He was cold and disant but not bad, really. He obviously thought well of himself – as did Blechman, think highly of Seymour.
on 10 Dec 2010 at 7:33 pm 6.Hachtman said …
I was a student – 1969. This is like something out of ‘Art School Confidential’. My illustrations were heavily influenced by MAD, Ed’Big Daddy’Roth, Mouse/Kelly, Robert Grossman and early R. Crumb. Chwast came down to Philadelphia to critique a project – the assignment? – to do a cover for a prestigious architectural magazine. My airbrush ‘portrait’ of an architect was, in Seymore’s eyes, ‘ugly’ and ‘insulting to the architect’. He was simply being honest and probably correct about the commercial potential of this drawing. I too found him ‘cold and distant’ – but who knows – maybe he was helpful.
on 10 Dec 2010 at 7:54 pm 7.Michael said …
He got you not to work in his style. That’s positive.
on 11 Dec 2010 at 1:47 am 8.Hachtman said …
Style is a trap – find a successful style and you end up being Danielle Steele. btw Danielle Steele’s 63rd best selling novel is about a gallery owner and an offbeat artist. Or is that Steve Martin’s new novel? btw 2 – I hear that James Thurber was also a jerk.