July 31, 2010 3 from Paolo Rivera

I enjoy the art of Paolo Rivera and have picked up some things I like over the last few years.

I check the site that represents him and saw this (insert "going gaga" sound effects here):



It was done for an audiophiles calendar, and it is called "Woofer & Tweeter"


And while I was there, I just kept looking at two other pieces that have had my attention for a while:





mineallmine

July 30, 2010 4 Cerebus pages - no buyer

eBay item no. 190421023474
Seller: unovis
Buyer: none
opening bid: $2500
buy-it-now: $4000

Cerebus 234 pp 10-13

The $2500 price is right-on for the nominal average price of a Cerebus page (ca. $600-650).

My take here is that these pages are, somehow, unpleasant and a little embarrassing. I found myself wincing a bit when I was re-reading them.

I have 3 of the next 4 pages (14, 16, 17) where Jaka is asking directions, and they are funny/cute.

These 2 groups of 4 pages were put up years ago by Dave and Ger, and sort of modeled what might happen if the Cerebus original art market got flooded. These 4 sold for $2200 (not as a set, but unovis got them all). They were sold after pp 14-17, which fetched $2450, collectively.

July 29, 2010 All things mustard

Yaaaaaaaaaawn. Waiting for art news.

On NPR this morning, a whimsical report about a guy in Middleton WI who is into collecting mustard containers, and so he has the whole "mustard museum" market cornered. The on-line gift shop of mustards looks pretty good, actually.



On top of it all, he advertises an elite university of mustardology where you can earn your advanced studies certification. This university has some fight songs... but best of all, this university has a name...

wait for it...

wait for it...

ready?


Poupon U


bwahhahahahah

July 28, 2010 Taking the Bad with the Good

In that TED talk (see the previous post), the speaker has an interesting premise (promoting positive... and let's not linger on that word just yet... behavioral changes through capitalizing on time-on-task gaming obsession). I'll assert that her group does not have enough results to make any real claims, or she would.

Um... maybe.

She says, but only as an aside (which is suspicious), that "some" of the behaviors that are consistent with mastering the oil shortage game have persisted with the gamers now that it is over. It they were critical and/or non-trivial behaviors (these kids become eco-evangelists after 80 hours of gaming), then you can bet your ass we would have heard about them.

Um... maybe.

You see, the premise, which is to inspire behavioral change, is interesting AND double-edged... because it would mean admitting that all those super-violent games can also change behavior. So if this group of do-gooders really does demonstrate behavioral change from game-immersion, then games will become one of the most regulated things on the planet.

"We don't need no education. We don't need no thought control."

Basically, then, the better her results are, the more she shoots herself in the foot. It's a cute problem.

And it is an old problem. Everything (anything!) can be a deadly weapon, and so it's only moral sensibility that keeps us from that choice. But what about when tacit culture promotes one set of values over another, so that there is no apparent choice? It's all well and good when there is no one deliberately and intentionally setting out to manipulate the message according to a desired outcome, but what about when it is a decision that someone else is making for you?

Oh, wait. I think I just described all of what passes for modern journalism and contemporary politics.

Maybe a video game about saving the whales is not so bad, after all.

Unfortunately, I am still on the hogwash side of this. In terms of these games, per se, I'd want to know how much of the persistence is tied to knowing that the programmer has put a solution at the end of the effort as a prize. What if you knew that the maze had no solution, and the best thing you could get to was a comparison of paths with no sure outcome? It's the tic-tac-toe problem: do you play a game for very long if you know you have no hope of winning?

Given a new front in the culture wars between "Save the Whales!" and "Global Thermonuclear War!"... there is only one reply:

Greetings.Professor.Falken.
How.about.a.nice.game.of.chess?

July 27, 2010 You just gotta take the bad with the good...

Twiddles thumbs whilst waiting for art news.

Well, let's see what else got my attention yesterday.

Here, watch this. It is a TED talk, so you know it will be interesting.

While I think this is both naive and more-naive-than-that, I'm a little surprised that she does not address the most obvious questions, and I am a more-than-a-little suspicious about what she does not elect to talk about.

http://www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_better_world.html


OK.

Good.

I'll be back tomorrow with (additional) commentary.

July 25, 2010

SItting around waiting for something interesting, art-wise, to happen, gets me thinking about things. Today I started wondering about a word that I had apparently never previously wondered about.

Warning: you will remember and probably repeat this story, in some form, once I am done.

You are all familiar with the olden-days of type-setting: lead pieces (moveable type) stacked into holders, holders racked up to make pages, and so on.

In the early 1800s, a French engraver named Firmin Didot (got to love that name) got the bright idea of casting full phrases, pages, and other recurring units that appeared over and over again, thereby reducing the time to assemble those units over and over again. The type, assembled, was used to make a mold (or matrix), and then the mold was used to make the plate or other larger-sized unit.

These recurring phrases, in printing parlance, were called stereotypes, from whence we derive the social term.

And that it not even the cool part of the story.

They were also called something else...

a French onomatopoeic word for the sound that was made during the stereotyping process when the molten metal and the matrix got together.

Ready for it?

cliché

How much fun is that?

A cliché, completely synonymous with stereotype, was a phrase that recurred so often that it was worth casting it as a unit for printing.

"Jacques! Jacques! Our "easy as pie" cliché has worn down... can you cast another?"

"Certainement, Michel. C'est facile comme tout."

July 20, 2010 Swords Cover

eBay item no. 200495206176
Seller: 55blake
Buyer: pariahstudio
Price: $1,370.67

July 15, 2010 Another 1978 drawing

eBay item no. 160453904430
Seller: the_comiclord
Buyer: oni2112
Price: $180.27

July 12, 2010 Cerebus #10 p5

eBay item no. 190414029360
Seller: unovis (yo! Jim! I did not see this one coming!)
Buyer: comicartboston
Price:$1,026.45



That's two $1000-plus pages in a row.

Anyone want to predict a trend, yet?

Has the relative scarcity of Cerebus pages created a demand?

July 10, 2010 2010 sketch

The third Varkzetta sketch.

eBay item no. 220631319908
Seller: tatteredjeans42 for DVS
Buyer: alchemist57
Price: $118.49



I liked the tone, detail, and mood in this one.

I'm soooo glad I got my two sets of 'head sketches' when I did. Now there's 20 separate auctions.

It's going to be a little confusing, actually, to the casual buyer. I predict that not everyone is going to read the fine print, which tells you that it is not those exact drawings, and that the auction is still for request-a-sketch. You want the zombie one? Just bid on any auction with no bids yet and make that your request. In that sense, it does not matter which of the auctions you select. So, riddle-me-this: why would there be one of these auctions with 2 bids on it when there are still some with zero?

This is an example of going against the expected practice of offering multiple identical items through a single auction and so opening up the chance to confuse the system.

Whatever. Just an observation. Now if you'll excuse us, me and Varkzetta are gonna go slice us up some nomadic barbarians.


************************ BONUS ORIGIN STORY ************************


This is the 724th posting here at Cerebus the Original Aartvark, and something came up the other day (elsewhere) that made me think that some of you might have only gotten part of the reason why I named this blog the way I did, oh, lo, those many moons ago.

So, it's easy to think about changing Cerebus the Aardvark to Cerebus the Aartvark if you are talking about a blog that is going to be focused on artwork (<-hinty hint: I did not only use the word 'art' here).

And it might even make sense to insert the work 'original' in the title, which embeds the phrase 'original art' into the phrase 'cerebus the aardvark'...

But did you know that these are not the two phrases I was intending to merge?

no, no, no...

That's right! Did you get that now?

Aard... vark ---> Art...work

So, "Cerebus: the Original Artwork" (a reasonable blog title) merges with "Cerebus the Aardvark" and gives (at least with the same whacked-out German accent that Graus, the T'Gitan warrior from issues 18-19, whom we thank for giving us all the pronunciation "Zerbutz")...

"Cerebus the Original Aartvark"

And that, my friends, is the rest of the story.

July 9, 2010 1978 sketch

from June 30, 2010

eBay item no. 190408964044
Seller: the_comiclord
Buyer; unknown
Price: $199.99 (one bid)

Every now and then, I check the completed auctions on eBay and come across things that I never saw, and figure that the buyer went ahead and agreed to a price and stopped the auction.

For instance, this 1978 sketch!

July 7, 2010 "Hello, Norman..."

Given Dave's penchant for Norman Rockwell, today's posting is nearly on topic for Aartvark.

I have always liked Rockwell. The guy could compose a scene like any Renaissance master. I just double-dog dare you to study one of his works close up and not have your eyes do exactly what Norman wanted them to do.

I've seen exhibits before. I've been to the museum in Stockbridge. But on July 4, an exhibit opened at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (just exit at the Gallery Place-Chinatown Metro stop and you are there). I went to see it today, and there is a collection of 57 truly unique pieces. And as interesting as they are... and as fun as they are to see... the real charm of this exhibit is that all 57 pieces come from the private collections of two people: George Lucas and Steven Spielberg.

I'm still reeling over that one. There is a lovely 12-minute video that is made up from two interviews done with the guys for the expressed purpose of this exhibit. It's all so familiar, listening to them talk about collecting original Rockwell drawings and paintings in exactly the same way we talk about collecting comic art. There is a moment when Lucas talks about having collected comic art, and then he made American Graffiti, and "so I had the resources to start collecting other things." Spielberg talks about how one particular painting always "spoke to him" so strongly that when he found out it was coming on the market, he had to have it.

I want to know more about how this really works between the two of them. Some art dealer comes up with a Rockwell for sale, and approaches the two of them? Do they keep a little fleet of minions who only report to them? They have to have worked out a deal between themselves, right, so that every sale does not end up as a ping-pong match?

This is not addressed at all in the little movie. I really wish they had put them in the same room to do these interviews... two collectors talking about the stuff in the other guy's collection that they wish they had.

And this ain't about pages from funny books. It's freaking Rockwell originals they are collecting.

Was I jealous while I was watching that movie? Damn straight I was! Green as the Charles River on St. Patrick's Day.

It was fun to have stuff like this, side by side. Of course, it was the first time in decades. The pencil study is owned by Lucas, and the final painting is Spielberg's.




Start of rant.

Rockwell's gotten pretty well beaten up over the years by the post-modernists who criticize the one-note, one-color American ideal represented in his work, and both Lucas and Spielberg's interest in Rockwell is being excoriated as affirming this point of view, because, after all, isn't that exactly what they do in their movies?

This is why it is so easy to find abstract art made up of giant lumps of twisted metal on so many college campuses. Once you actually depict something, you cannot depict everything, so everyone who is not depicted let's you know about it. Safer to stick with depicting nothing in particular and so everything in general.

End of rant.

The exhibit runs until January 2011. It's worth a visit if you're anywhere near DC this year.

July 6, 2010 "Hello, Dalai... well hello, Dalai..."

Today is the birthday of the 14th Dalai Lama, and everyone is running around wishing him a happy 75th... which I don't really get. Is that the way the reincarnation thing should work? Seems to me we should be wishing him a happy 619th, at least.

The reign of his first incarnation was as Gendun Drup (b. 1391) - the first in this line of tulkus, or emanations, reincarnation lineages, of the boddhisattva Avalokiteshvara - one of many different aspects of the Buddha that roam around and provide enlightenment to us mere mortals.



Happy 619th, dude. Hallmark seemed to be out of 619th birthday cards. I guess everyone else got to them first.

July 5, 2010 Cerebus 5 p 20

eBay item no. 330446770633
Seller: malcolm2k
Buyer: johnnyhedge
Price: $$1,429.04

I lost out to someone with a "20" in front of their star on eBay... jeez!

This is an iconic page, for sure, grail-quality, and I liked the inscription a lot: "Thanks for supporting a starving aardvark - 8/14/78"

Actually, I liked the date... so early in the game.

But I was out at $1400, for sure, and no one else came in, either. So congrats to johnnyhedge on picking up this great page!

July 4, 2010 "Unthinkable"

Let's run through this one for a moment.

Cast:
Samuel L. Jackson
Carrie-Anne Moss
Michael Sheen

check!

Plot:
Soldier-turned-terrorist plants 3 nukular bombs in 3 US cities. It's Monday. They are scheduled to go off at noon on Friday. Genuine tension and thrills follow.

check!

Publicity: none
Release: straight to DVD

hmmmm... what up wit' dat?

Apparently, the US audiences did not like two fabulous, high-production value movies ("Hurt Locker" and "Green Zone," which, by the way, make a great double feature). We just don't like knowing these things, apparently.

Don't ask, don't tell... and for pity's sake, don't make a movie about it and put in stars we like to see. Indeed. Just get the job done.

"Unthinkable" is not a Tom Clancy novel. There is no Jack Ryan. The production values are low (I think they rented out a high school, not that it was not an effective choice). No chases. No special effects. No Air Force One barreling down the runway as the ash cloud nips its tail. No press conferences. No somber news conference from the Oval Office.

They catch the soldier-turned-terrorist and they need to get the information from him. And that is the movie. If you recall the scenes of information-extracting from (that great TV show) "Alias" then you really have seen comparable information-extracting techniques. But those, of course, were being carried out by an evil Chinese man with a dentist's drill on our heroes! That you can show on TV, because we (flags wave, anthems play) can overcome great eeeevil!!!!

But what if the guy with the drill is Samuel L. Jackson, family man, and the prisoner in the chair is a US citizen?

What are the rights... the morality... when nuking 3 US cities is on the line?

Apparently, asking this interesting question does not mix well with the super-tub of popcorn, the big blue Icee drink, and a box of Goobers at the Bijou.

Just slide that baby onto DVD and hope to get some of the money back. WTF were we thinking? Making a movie about an idea.

And to make matters even more interesting, the DVD has the "original version" (the one planned for US release) and the "extended version" (the one planned for the rest of the world). The difference is 90 seconds, and it's how you end the story.

Consider this my Independence Day 2010 Movie recommendation.

"Unthinkable" is available from Amazon.