{"id":30072,"date":"2024-06-28T08:00:04","date_gmt":"2024-06-28T08:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/?p=30072"},"modified":"2024-06-27T16:34:22","modified_gmt":"2024-06-27T16:34:22","slug":"grosz-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/2024\/06\/28\/grosz-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Grosz"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nBy Lars Fiske<\/strong> (Fantagraphics Books)
\nISBN: 978-1-68396-041-6 (HB\/digital edition)<\/p>\n

As we in Britain and France enter the final stretch of our elections and seeming agreement to abandon consensual truth and classical democracy, lets revisit a born dissident, repeat immigrant and visual vigilante who lived through painfully similar times and trials as our own. His generation\u2019s party chic, desperate searches and minimal resistance led to some pretty bad outcomes. I for one can\u2019t wait to see how this \u201cyear of elections\u201d treats us…<\/em><\/p>\n

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\u2019m ready to applaud mightily and shout \u201coi, look at this!\u201d…<\/p>\n

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 Gro\u00df <\/em>AKA George Grosz.<\/p>\n

He was a complex and amazing man, risking his life for his beliefs but also deeply, dangerously flawed at the same time, and this cartoon confection really captures the feel of him and his tempestuous, self-annihilating life…<\/p>\n

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…<\/p>\n

In brief visual sallies supported by brief quotes from his writing – such as \u2018Pandemonium: \u201cI am up to my neck in visions\u201d\u2019<\/em>, \u2018Amerikanismus: – day by day my hate for Germany gains, new, blazing nourishment…\u2019<\/em>, \u2018America: New York: The City!!!\u201d\u2019<\/em> and \u2018Nationalsocialismus: \u201cThe Devil alone knows how things will turn out\u201d\u2019 –<\/em> Lars Fiske traces the one-sided conflict and follows the artist as he relocates to his long-loved-from-afar USA. He then reveals what happened next in notional comic strip excursions that conclude with return to Berlin at the height of the Cold War as wryly seen in \u2018Kaputt: Ugh! I have spoken\u2019<\/em>…
\n\"\"
\nJust like life and our current predicament, with this book there\u2019s no half-measures. Oddly, I suspect the reader will be best served if you know a lot about Grosz or nothing at all, but if he\u2019s an artist you vaguely recall, there may be many rapid consultations of Wikipedia before you come away awed and amused…<\/p>\n

The same seems to apply to the voting conundrum. Apparently the only wrong thing to do is nothing at all…<\/em>
\n\u00a9 2017 Lars Fiske, by arrangement with No Comprendo Press.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Lars Fiske (Fantagraphics Books) ISBN: 978-1-68396-041-6 (HB\/digital edition) As we in Britain and France enter the final stretch of our elections and seeming agreement to abandon consensual truth and classical democracy, lets revisit a born dissident, repeat immigrant and visual vigilante who lived through painfully similar times and trials as our own. His generation\u2019s … <\/p>\n

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