March 14th, 2011

Burning Giraffes

by Wayno & Piraro

Bizarro is brought to you today by Validation.

Given the subject of today’s cartoon, this would be an excellent time for a serious academic discussion of surrealism. Unfortunately, I am not qualified for such discourse and cannot find an art history expert within shouting distance of this computer, so we’ll just chat.

I have always been attracted to surrealist art and the landscapes of artists like Dali, Magritte, Ernst and Tanguy left an iconic impression on me. Here, I combine this type of image with the “pick your own (fruit/vegetable)” roadside attraction and voila – a surreal cartoon.

I consider myself a surrealist painter and hope to build something of a career in this, the (presumably) second half of my life. But I attempt to avoid derivative images (unlike many modern surrealists) and stay away from sweeping landscapes full of weird things. This is, in my opinion, an all-too-easy and tacky method of composition. Art of this sort is not just about hand skills and imagination, but also about inventiveness and substance. There is nothing inventive about knocking off someone else’s style. It reminds me of another pet peeve of mine; the habit many recording artists have of rerecording an old classic in the same style as the original. That approach always seems like an amateurish mistake. If you’re going to record an established classic, do it completely differently.

That said, I emulate classical art in many ways, but I do it in ways that make a statement about the art, the belief system involved in its production, the difference between now and then, or some other concept that I hope is conveyed in the art. Perhaps others will see my work as derivative but I hope that those with an eye for this kind of thing will see the difference. Here are some samples of my oil paintings, I hope you can see what I mean. All of these are fairly large, the longest dimension of each is 48 inches. The Virgin and Her Daughters…Four Clerics Ignoring a Vision…Jesusman to the Rescue…(a lousy photo of) Parson Weems’ Fable Redux.

Why am I discussing this in such self-indulgent detail on a cartoon blog? I’m not sure.

In closing, remember that today is the beginning of Daylight Savings Time in most of the U.S.  This represents an excellent opportunity to save daylight for retirement or when the power is out in your community and you want to read at night. But perhaps most importantly, this is the best time of the year to both show up to work an hour late on Monday proclaiming you didn’t know about the time change, and to let your boss and coworkers know that your life is so devoid of social interaction that you could go 24 hours without noticing that the rest of society is an hour ahead of you.

Pining for products with this cartoon on them? Click this…Surreal Landscape