October 2009 Archives

Ursula Le Guin has just turned 80 and is going strong. But if she decided to retire this instant it would be as a writer whose legacy to imaginative fiction would be hard for anyone, and I mean anyone, to beat. I would expect little rational argument against Le Guin being the most significant writer of fantastic fiction still working today.

This reputation was launched with the 1969 novel The Left Hand of Darkness. From the onset it established what would be the strong themes in almost all her work, the exploration of sociology, anthropology, ecology and sexual identity, often in the context of depicting details of life and living in alternate cultures.

Le Guin's next big soft science novel comfortably sits in almost every critic's top 100 works of the speculative. The Lathe of Heaven (1971) explored the territory of the metaphysical telling of a man who can alter reality through his dreams. It has been adapted to film twice.

Within 1974 she published what would become an essential text in almost every academic course on science fiction and speculative writing. The Dispossessed is a flagship on the arguments of utopia and dystopia and pitting the two together. The ideas are weighed against each other with complexity and with rich imagination. It is one of the most important works in the field.

Now, if you are already familiar with Le Guin then you know I've been omitting a very important part of her career, she is the author of the Earthsea saga. Began in 1968 with A Wizard of Earthsea this series of young teen fantasies has become one of the most beloved sagas close behind Narnia and Middle-Earth. And sure, J K Rowling over-shadows it these days but there's little guarantee that Harry Potter will still be around in a hundred years while Earthsea will certainly be. These books are true classics of young adult literature.

This high standing as a master of letters is not just for the above but as much for the rest of her vast library of acclaimed works, including well over twenty novels and novellas, including the lauded The Word for World is Forest, ten collections of stories, six books of essays, six books of poetry, more than a dozen children's books and even a rendition of the Tao Te Ching. All this and she is the subject of endless PhDs, has been translated in countless number of languages, not to mention all the multi-media adaptations, makes me think she is a worthy contender for a Nobel.

However, I believe she'll never get one. Why? Because she is too closely associated with that gutter genre called science fiction. And despite her works being studied at universities and being the favourites of major writers and artists throughout the decades the tainted mud of that genre term means she'll never receive that ultimate recognition.

Perhaps this is why she is so vocal when a critic puts down the SF label and she has made public comments about fantastic writings that distant themselves from being referred to as science fiction. Margaret Atwood's future tales and Cormac McCarthy's The Road easily come to mind. Mind you, Le Guin isn't shy when expressing her views.

She was harsh in her opinion of the Earthsea mini-series and expressed quite mixed feelings over the Studio Ghibli adaptation of Tales of Earthsea. Personally, on the Ghibli, I have some reservations over the narrative structure but I certainly didn't mind it.

Anyway, when the time comes Ursula Le Guin will just have to rest her laurels on, amongst other things, her five Hugos, six Nebulas, nineteen Locus Awards, being made a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, given the status of Living Legend by Library of Congress.

But she isn't resting yet. Who knows what else will come from the hard working Le Guin and what other acclaims she'll garner. Even her most recent, Lavinia (2008), is being praised for its feminist retelling of Virgil's Aeneid by a character that never spoke a word in the original. But like I said at the beginning; if nothing more was to come from Ursula Le Guin we have already a monumental body of work that is ever-growing in value to literature and the imagination. And in all understanding will keep growing for centuries to come.

I know nothing about fashion. When it comes to fashion at Planet I leave that to Klara and Eva in the clothing section. The most my involvement there is to occasionally look for a t-shirt with a monster on it (I've bought two). Thus, I have nothing to contribute in regards to fashion.

But I really, really like Scott Schuman's photo fashion book The Sartorialist.

The Sartorialist began and still is a fashion blog by Scott Schuman who had left a career in the high end of the fashion industry to pursue photography. But he didn't go into regular commercial fashion photography but instead went into street fashion photography. Why, well, to quote Mr. Schuman from his own website, " I thought I could shoot people on the street the way designers looked at people, and get and give inspiration to lots of people in the process." And I feel he has done just that.

Of course, it's not simply that he's photographing clothes as worn on the street. If that were the case I wouldn't be writing about this at all. It is the people in the clothes that fascinate me. It's about their personal style. How they wear what they wear. How what they wear is an extension of personality. How the clothes become a statement of self rather than a statement of fashion.

It is how Scott Schuman captures that in his clear, realist photos of people casually posing on the street, whether it be a young guy with a healthy ego, a distinguished businessman outside a restaurant, a housewife who knows how to age with sexy grace, a receptionist getting a latte to go or some elderly street gent wandering the lanes. Thus, what I really love about The Sartorialist is that though the photos are intended as photos of fashion they are equally portraits of personality.

It isn't at all surprising that the fashion world has fallen for The Sartorialist and thus Scott Schuman now goes to the very fashion shows that he chose not to photograph, except he still doesn't photograph them. Instead he photographs the people around the shows, the organisers and the audience, and studies what is style when not paraded in the artificiality of the catwalk or studio. Indeed, he has successfully retained the spirit of his first New York street photos.

The book itself is a thick and rich collection of usually full body photos of people asked on the spot to pose for Scott Schuman's camera. Often he has comments (as from his blog) giving the reasons why he took the picture. The pictures themselves are good enough to justify the book but the comments are what make The Sartorialist a study on style and individuality as expressed through what you wear everyday.

Interestingly, when the usual fashion tome is large and most often designed to be a table book The Sartorialist is relatively small (though not thin) and thus rather a cheap book. It didn't surprise me that was intended. The book is aimed at the very people who Scott Schuman wants to capture in his photos, the average street person who is after an easily attainable sense of style. Of course, there is some outrageously expensive investment edition, but the real book is the one you can pick up off the shelf and take with you to a café and consume like a paperback novel.

Everything about The Sartorialist is about style. I don't just mean the clothes you see in the photos or even just the photos themselves. The whole thing, inside and out. From Scott Schuman's inspiration to take these cool photos and doing the charming blog and all the way through the process of having this modest yet beautiful volume in its physical form - which I'm sure is only the first - that will now be floating around cafes, design studios, bloggers work stations and independent fashion shops, all bent and stained from extensive perusal and study. All of this is an expression of individual style.

And if style isn't individual, it isn't style.

Of all the hot commercial "lowbrow" artists today I strongly suspect James Jean would have the fastest growing following. And going by his super extensive portfolio you'd wonder if he's not the hardest working. Regardless, his growing popularity and stature as the illustrator of looking through the groovy darkly is well established.

Originally from Taiwan James Jean graduated from the School of Visual Arts in New York in 2001 at the age of 23 and it didn't take him long at all to become a regular cover artist for DC Comics, particularly the Vertigo line, particularly for the comics Fables and Umbrella Academy. And from there it didn't take him long at all to start garnering awards and a wider notoriety.

 

 

 

Having accepted commissions from the likes of Rolling Stone, Atlantic Records and Nike James Jean's biggest step into the world of commercial art and design has most likely been his extensive work in 2008 for the fashion label Prada. He developed a complex but unique look that they've very much taken to heart for their signature range. James Jeans' work is also featured in stunning ad campaigns, billboards and shop layouts themselves. And it all seems to culminate in this beautiful animated short that stands entirely alone as a work to appreciate seperate to its marketing purposes, which of course is quite clever branding from a marketing perspective. 

 

The most remarkable thing about his commercial success is also the very reason for it. And that is his exotic style and technique. Cause though he has used classic interpretations and explored the images of mythology and fairytale his personal interpretation has developed into something incredibly refreshing for the commercial world. And his prolific and fast working ability must make him a boon.

Thanks to his ever-growing popularity his work is being compiled and published. Sadly, his portfolios Process Recess 1 & 2 are no longer available. The Hallowed Seam (PR 3) just came out but is quite different to his earlier portfolios, instead being a collection of studies and such that appear to come from his sketch pad or moleskine. More like his earlier portfolios is Kindling: 12 Removable Prints.

 

   

Very cute is his postcard book XOXO: Hugs and Kisses. But my favourite publication would have to be Fables Covers: The Art of James Jean Vol. 1. Not just it is the best collection of his art, even when restricted to covers he did for the Vertigo comic series, but that each work is shown in various stages along with commentary on the process.

Fables Covers is already hard to get, though I hope for a new printing in the near future. But it does seem James Jean's printed material quickly becomes things of rare beauty. But don't to fret too much. There is clearly a long and illustrious future for James Jean. And even though he has stopped doing the Fables covers I think we'll see more of his haunting mythologies and landscapes of the quixotic. And his following will only continue to grow.