…our favourite comic artist, like, ever, is opening a show, or rather two shows, in New York and Chicago, with drawings from his forthcoming magnum opus Building Stories (let this be all we need to say: 11 years in the making). What he had to say about it, in typically humble Chris Ware fashion:
With the increasing electronic incorporeality of existence, sometimes it’s reassuring—perhaps even necessary—to have something to hold on to. Thus within this colorful keepsake box the purchaser will find a fully-apportioned variety of reading material ready to address virtually any imaginable artistic or poetic taste, from the corrosive sarcasm of youth to the sickening earnestness of maturity—while discovering a protagonist wondering if she’ll ever move from the rented close quarters of lonely young adulthood to the mortgaged expanse of love and marriage. Whether you’re feeling alone by yourself or alone with someone else, this book is sure to sympathize with the crushing sense of life wasted, opportunities missed and creative dreams dashed which afflict the middle- and upper-class literary public (and which can return to them in somewhat damaged form during REM sleep).
View some of his inspirations over at The New Yorker, for whom he also penned the current cover – and why do magazines from the US always put dates, like, one week later than they appear? It’s one of the mysteries that I have been wondering about for years. What was the point of that again?
