I Like __ A Lot
Chris Ware’s New Yorker cover
"Natural Selection" by Chris Ware, New Yorker, February 2010
Of the four covers for New Yorker‘s 85th Anniversary Issue, my favorite (while I appreciate all of them) is Chris Ware’s. He has a way of condensing large amounts of narrative into small hints or incidents; this is what I enjoy most about Ware: the visual riddles in his work. Eustace Tilley, as implicated by his top hat and green shirt — just a sliver, see it? — resting on his stool, is seen in a sort of aesthetic Darwinian tussle, unknowing of the prophetic butterfly outside his window, a lateral view which places us at the shared “fly’s butterfly’s eye” view. Check out the arc of evolution starting from from the wall: insects to arthropods to aves to primates, to eventually, Eustace himself. Ware’s sense of visual space is simply genius, his empathy abound. We see a pudgy Eustace in sock garters, cutting off his self-portrait just above the belly. And there on the floor rests the butterfly’s shadow, evoking a distance between our orientation as invited voyeurs outside the window and the space inside the artist’s studio. What looks like a self-assured “thumbs up” is, if we are to assume common draftsmen techniques, really just Eustace blocking out the affixed subjects with his thumb, still tentative, despite the cultivated naturalism of this wonderful scene, about what he will select.
Tags: Chris Ware
Yeah this cover is really quite incredible. You nailed it, Jimmy. Chris Ware is pretty much always great.
Yeah this cover is really quite incredible. You nailed it, Jimmy. Chris Ware is pretty much always great.
Chris Ware is one of my favorite fiction writers. I think this aspect of his work goes a little underappreciated.
Chris Ware is one of my favorite fiction writers. I think this aspect of his work goes a little underappreciated.
Bravo!
Bravo!
It took me ten minutes to figure out the butterfly thing.
It took me ten minutes to figure out the butterfly thing.
Remember when HTML G had a “what do you read on the toilet?” post? Well, just suffice it to say that this morning I studied this TNY cover. And the alternate male model one on the foldout inside the cover. And the four others on page 18.
Not a lengthy study; a quick perusal, really. I did not figure out the butterfly thing until reading your post. I thought (fleetingly, this morning) “Why does he have a big construction paper cutout of the butterfly on his studio floor?” (You know how your brain immediately tries to “explain things”?) I did not catch the butterfly shadow.
Thank you Professor Chen.
Remember when HTML G had a “what do you read on the toilet?” post? Well, just suffice it to say that this morning I studied this TNY cover. And the alternate male model one on the foldout inside the cover. And the four others on page 18.
Not a lengthy study; a quick perusal, really. I did not figure out the butterfly thing until reading your post. I thought (fleetingly, this morning) “Why does he have a big construction paper cutout of the butterfly on his studio floor?” (You know how your brain immediately tries to “explain things”?) I did not catch the butterfly shadow.
Thank you Professor Chen.
Thanks, Jimmy. Love this post. I would have never figured it out on my own. Sadly.
Thanks, Jimmy. Love this post. I would have never figured it out on my own. Sadly.
jimmy your posts lately have been awesome
jimmy your posts lately have been awesome
i love chris ware a lot
i love chris ware a lot
funny, now i see the big butterfly cut-out on the floor. the eye is a stubborn thing.
funny, now i see the big butterfly cut-out on the floor. the eye is a stubborn thing.