Ephemerist: Dickie moves!

Boerke (or Dickie, as he is known around the world, see also earlier), Flemish cartoonist Pieter De Poortere’s hapless hero celebrates his twentieth birthday!  To celebrate that glorious occasion, a new collection of strips was recently published full to the brim of pop culture references, with Boerke facing one disappointment after another with his heroes. VRT, the Flemish government TV…

Read Pieter De Poortere’s comic book “Boerke kijkt kunst” (2018).

That’s Dutch but the language is irrelevant because there is no text in the drawings.

“Kunst” means “art” and that’s all you need to know - do you recognise the artists on the cover?

The Flemish graphic artist has an irreverent look at art history.

You get 54 one-page stories about a painter. And when you only have a single page to evoke the painter’s world, you have to be quick, not subtle. The drawings therefore adopt the artist’s style: cubist drawings for a cubist artist etc.

The humour is equally brutal: De Poortere comes up with alternative explanations for well-known facts in art history. How did Vincent van Gogh lose his ear? How come Andy Warhol painted Campbell soup cans?

In the Ghent altarpiece, the lamb of God is gone but a butcher’s preparing charcuterie on the altar. Johannes Vermeer’s milk maid pours sperm in a cryobank.

Cheeky but hilarious and excellent!