tobyminnett*

i can only talk about the artist-as-director, i can only talk about choices the artist makes: decisions, executions. to talk about a work i need distance from it, i need to see it as an instance of a broader category of similar objects. vacuous work is preferred because it allows space to think, it gives the distance required to actually consider it. art occupies a space in my mind when it gives me no pleasure to experience irl except as parasocial artifact (felix gonzales-torres) or as a mirror to my own psychology (rothko). the artist-as-director can be very warm, immersive, non-abstract as well. if the fabrication process is complex enough, the result is like a movie: immersive in itself, but mystified. in comics you have the hand of the artist there in every line. the better the artist, the more they approach an abstract ideal in which each image is as legible as an emoji, while still preserving some ineffable magic that can't be explained. comics are a series of interlocking parts, an engine that makes each aspect functional in relation to the next, just like literature. but writers produce a uniform gray texture of readymade glyphs. visually, writers are the most austere. literary books are like record albums: the image is the cover, the rest is in your head. if anything the distancing effect of comics is their clinginess, their hystrionics: extreme reactions and an overall pathos or silliness. the feeling of being inescapably, psychedelicly stuck in one person's world, in their bedroom, in their closet. squirming, cringing, not even being able to note these feelings because you're too awash in the moment itself. there's no choices happening here, it's just spilling out of them.