The following is not really continental, nor is it strictly comics, but I happened to come across it and I am totally enamoured with it. From March 3rd until March 30th, the Freud Gallery (an appropriately-named venue for a psychologically-based series) – 198 Shaftesbury Avenue, London WC2H 8JL – presents the artwork from the Inkspot Monologues by Keith Pointing.
These pictures are created to illustrate a story about therapist specialising in dysfunctional relationships, who uses the Rorschach blot (the test, not the Watchmen vigilante) to help two people come to terms with their unsuccessful romantic relationships. Their stories are told through words and pictures, with people’s personalities and more particularly more unsavoury treats are masterfully depicted using elaborated ink blots.
Even though the art is totally different from his “The Man Who” cartoons, these pictures reminded me of the work by H.S. Bateman, thanks to the way sparse pictures and text work together to very accurately pinpoint man in all his smallness. The story may be the connecting factor of the book, for Pointing it’s the illustrations that count. For that reason, typography was kept strictly low key, so as not to distract from the artwork.
(a page from The Inkspot Monologues – you just knew sex and breasts would come into it somewhere! Borrowed from the PDF preview and (c) Keith Pointing)
As for influences, Pointing himself states an affinity with the works of David Shrigley, Tim Burton and Edward Lear, all of whom indeed seem to have left traces in his work. Later this year, the stories will be published by the Friday Project. More info on the book and the exhibition can be found on the project’s website, which can be found here (you can also check out a PDF preview of the book on the site, which does indeed show those influences – in a good way – and made me laugh out loud – Joe).
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