By Lars Fiske (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-68396-041-6 (HB)
Although I bang incessantly on and on about the communicative power of word and pictures acting in unison, I will never deny the sheer efficacy and raw potency of the drawn image. Therefore, whenever an author makes the extra effort to create a narrative that stands or falls on vision alone, I’m ready to applaud mightily and shout “oi, look at this!â€
Today that means taking a little lesson in art history and social awareness via a truly radical pictorial biography of Dadaist anti-fascist, caricaturist, artist and commentator Georg Ehrenfried Groß AKA George Grosz.
He was a complex and amazing man, risking his life for his beliefs but deeply flawed at the same time, and this cartoon confection really captures the feel of him and his tempestuous, self-annihilating life…
Devoid of verbal narrative, an edgy and uncompromising picture play adds reams of emotional kick to the history of a radical non-conformist who grew up in Imperial Germany, found his true calling during the Great War and fought a seditious and dangerously lonely struggle against the growing National Socialist (Nazi) party in the post-war Weimar Republic, all while embracing the heady sexual decadence of that pre-apocalyptic era…
In brief visual sallies supported by brief quotes from his writing – such as ‘Pandemonium: “I am up to my neck in visions‒, ‘Amerikanismus: “Day by day my hate for Germany gains, new, blazing nourishment‒ and ‘Nationalsocialismus: “The Devil alone knows how things will turn out‒ – Lars Fiske traces the one-sided conflict and follows the artists as he relocates to his long-loved-from-afar USA… and what happened next…
With this book there’s no half-measures. Oddly, I suspect that the reader will be best served if you know a lot about Grosz or nothing at all, but if he’s an artist you vaguely recall, there may be many rapid consultations of Wikipedia before you come away awed and amused…
© 2017 Lars Fiske, by arrangement with No Comprendo Press.