samedi 12 avril 2008

Greenland 4








Greenland 4
This is the turning point in the story. Our woman-character is entering her vision of the dialogue with her companion. Blue makes the first connection. Whatever is seen as blue, whether it's already blue or not, will become a potential symbol of affection : the sky, the water in the bath, the telephone, the river, and finally the dress. Objects are blue not because it is their local color, but because they mean love, closeness, contact. At this moment the metaphors and comparisons are still very expected, but as it goes they will become more and more subjective and hard to follow. The reader is supposed to jump from one pannel to the next one because he/she is supposed to recognise there a common element, and that read is the second degree of the narrative. The story has proved too be illegible for some readers, and very effective for some others. If you are the kind that finds it difficult, just remember this: follow the color, and see what happens to it.

It is also important to consider Greenland was done in 1988 with very small experimental means, and of course no computer.
It was made with xeroxes on cels, the colors were painted directly behind the cels, to keep flat colors equal all the way through, keep the monotony and the possibility to identify without doubt the same color and be able to read the associations.
As the color has a very flat and non-mimetic aspect, the drawings were largely simplified to get an impersonal look, and this bad-print look that I aimed for.
The "impersonal" look was a way for me to stay away from neurotic expression of the line itself.
I was not interested in any psychology for the characters and not interested either to convey my personal feelings through my line work. If a certain expressiveness can be found here, it is through the intention and the device. Now, I also know the the lack of dialogue can be perceived as a very personal device.

I was largely reproched at the time, because of this impersonal linework, to use photographs, and a few publishers even told me I should learn how to draw. The truth is that I was not using photographs but just destroying my own line through the process of multiple xeroxes. I hated my line. Another personal information. 
This digital version is even worse (and therefore better) in terms of coldness and impersonnality. The line work is more compact and closer to what I was looking for. The scans are taken not from the originals but from the italian publication (and slightly restored).

The more it is reprinted, the more the graphic informations are lost, the better it gets.