ECC · 2018
Dave McKean's artistic and expressive talent is amply demonstrated in multiple publications, many of which I have been lucky enough to review. However, this occasion is special, since McKean is measured against another not easy artist, Paul Nash, making their world and their voice their own without giving up expressing their personal imprint, so characteristic. The project has its origins in the commemoration of the centenary of the First World War, why the organization 14-18 Now proposed to McKean to develop a graphic story for this reason.. The choice of Nash's life and experience as the common thread is a success., since it allows the author to address a historical event with the heartbreaking expressive power of art and individual experience. This way, McKean merges life and dreams of the surrealist painter, deeply marked by his participation in the conflict, to get closer to the horror of the trenches, of human unreason, of the absurdity of war, but also a life of anxiety between artistic desires, loving and torturous memories, in which inner world and external reality are difficult to distinguish.
So, We have before our eyes an impressive display of graphic resources and artistic styles, with deep inspiration in the avant-garde of the moment, like surrealism or German expressionism, in addition to frequent nods to the images shown in Nash's paintings. McKean shows his power not only through his famous photomontages, but a masterful use of drawing, chromaticism and an astonishing richness of expressive effects that do not detract from the unitary conception of the work. Through them we dive into the darkness of a tortured soul in pursuit of a black dog that is, at once, Nash himself and his fateful destiny. Immersed in the painter's mind we see the outbreak of war, apparently a trivial fact and considered to have a near end by the world; the harshness of the trenches; the explosions of bombs and shells; the deceptive stillness of the hospital; the triumph of collective neurosis and, above all, the trauma that takes over Nash's memories and is present in his pictorial work.
As with great works of art, McKean achieves in this graphic narrative – nominated for the Eisner Awards 2017 and included in the official selection of the Festival de Bande Dessinée de Angouleme 2018 – reaching the universality of the experience through the most intimate and raw memories of the interior of a human being. The war is so absurd that we do not know if what we are told belongs to reality or to the ravings of a deranged mind., and yet McKean knows how to imbue with a hard beauty, stark and forceful everything that creates. The height and artistic quality that comics can achieve as art are widely shown with this work., what makes your reading, and even his repeated consultation, are absolutely recommended. RAQUEL J.R.
