Skip to main content

Visceral Drawings From Antonin Artaud’s Final Years

I had a conversation with Gray Miller, a writer and visual practitioner here in Madison. He mixes writing and art to convey a message at conferences and public forums. But one of the ways he described his method to me was by calling it "visceral drawing".

I had no idea what that was so I looked it up. In a figurative sense, something "visceral" is felt "deep down." It is a "gut feeling."

The gut feeling part of the visceral drawing explanation brought up some very raw results.

Visceral Drawings From Antonin Artaud’s Final Years

page of pencil sketches of different heads
via - https://hyperallergic.com/visceral-drawings-from-antonin-artauds-final-years/

Like these last collected works by French dramatist Antonin Artaud. He sometimes produced deliberately crude works, testing the strength of the expression by submitting it to the brutal blows of an unhinged craft.

He founded the Theatre of Cruelty which is described as a break from traditional Western theatre and a means by which artists assault the senses of the audience. Which sounds pretty visceral to me.

The last nine years of his life were spent in asylums, undergoing electroshock treatments. He began drawing and often taking anger out on the page.

His longtime friend and editor Paule ThĂ©venin and the philosopher Jacques Derrida were with him his last few years to document his life in the book "Antonin Artaud: Drawings and Portraits" which is available from Amazon and other online retailers.
notebook page with smudged text and burn holes
sketch book page with crudely drawn people drawn all over it

You can hear the conversation with Gray Miller that started all this on my American Bandito art podcast.

Listen To The Podcast

Popular

A quick peek behind-the-scenes of a new webcomic series. Coming soon!

I've recently paused my usual diary comic to dedicate my attention to an exciting new project—a fiction webcomic series featuring two characters that may be familiar to my long-time followers.  These characters, Bobert and the Monster have made appearances on my website before , and now they're taking center stage.  I'm working diligently with the hope of launching the series shortly.  In the meantime, I'd like to share this behind-the-scenes video of the drawing process for one of the upcoming pages.  Stay tuned for more updates as I bring this creative vision to life.

Can I Buy And Resell Copies Of My Own Book From Amazon KDP?

There are two questions that I get asked about publishing my webcomic books on Amazon KDP . 1 - Can I Order A Print Copy Of My Own Book From Amazon KDP? When I started printing on Amazon KDP I also had that question. The reason I put the books together is I was just kind of doing it for myself. I could make a paperback version of my webcomic books and then I and my family could get a copy. It didn't even occur to me that I could actually start selling the book in public.  I thought it was just print-on-demand and then maybe I could order one.  But when I print a book on Amazon KDP I can also get up to 999 copies and sell it on my own!  I was able to get my own copies from Amazon KDP sent to me.  As the author, I can get them at printing cost . So they're at a discounted price. The option to order author copies is right in the KDP publishing setup.  The button is next to the book in KDP. 👇 The other question I get about publishing my book on Amazon KDP... 2 - Can I Sell My A

Working on a new comic

Drawing tablet screenshot I've been working on a new comic book idea. These are some screenshots of a few panels of a comic I'm drawing on my tablet. It's actually based on some characters I've had for a while called Bobert and the Monster . I don't even really remember how I came up with these characters themselves but the concept is:  It's a world made of monsters and humans are the ones that haunt and terrorize them. Specifically, Bobert the human haunts and plays tricks on the main character who is just called "Monster".  When I first started drawing them years ago they were just one-page gag comic strips. I was inspired to draw these characters based on those in-between comic stories I read in those old Gold Key and Dell comics from the 60s and 70s. Those comics would feature a main character like Yogi Bear or Huckleberry Hound . Then there were random one-page stories with a different character in the book to fill it out.  I had drawn a few o

Artwork for the original Candy Land game by Milton Bradley from 1955.

I have a vintage Candy Land game from 1955 by Milton Bradley and I was about to sell it so I thought I would add it to my personal art history course concept I've been doing . I'm going to try and see if I can find out how this game was created, designed and why? Here is what I found out about this game https://candy-land.fandom.com/wiki/Candy_Land_Wiki Candy Land is a board game about children exploring a world made out of candy and other sweets that originally came out in 1949. In every version of the game, there are a group of children that go through Candy Land. In the earliest versions of the game, it was a realistically drawn boy and girl. Drawing of the Candy Land kids I did on my phone ☝ https://board-games-galore.fandom.com/wiki/Candy_Land The game was designed in 1948 by Eleanor Abbott , while she was recovering from polio in San Diego, California. It's rumored that Eleanor also did the original artwork but I didn't find anything that