The Zen of “The Zen of Steve Jobs”

The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of a mountain or in the petals of a flower. To think otherwise is to demean the Buddha—which is to demean oneself (26).

—Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values

I read Walter Isaacson’s biography Steve Jobs with one end in mind, really. I wanted to see how the influence of Zen on Jobs’ thinking was portrayed in the book. And the main reason I wanted to do that is because I wanted to write about the graphic narrative, The Zen of Steve Jobs, sponsored by Forbes and produced by the creative agency Jess3. But I felt that I needed a bit more background in order to do so.

The Zen of Steve Jobs is a “reimagining” of the friendship between Jobs and Kobun Chino Otogawa, a Zen priest and close friend and teacher to Jobs for many years. Our story begins with Jobs seeking out Otogawa after his departure from Apple in 1985, and after a ten-year absence from the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center. He arrives at Tassajara with the intent of learning about ma, one of the underlying principles informing Zen aesthetics. He explains to Otogawa that the computers he’ll be creating at his new company, NeXT, will be superior products not just because of their technological features, but also because of their perfected design—and asks Otogawa to help him understand in greater depth the relationship between objects and the complementary space they inhabit. Otogawa responds, “I cannot. You must experience ma.” He then proceeds to teach Jobs kinhin, or walking meditation.

The Zen of Steve Jobs is an example of ma in its own way. The boundaries of an image’s form are at times expressed through solid blocks of colour, without a line to contain and circumscribe them. The “monochromatic palette” changes colour with each scene in the story, providing an interesting variety of vivid pastel hues.

This is no ordinary graphic narrative; it is based largely on interviews with former students of Otogawa who also knew Jobs. Those interviews were then rendered to capture the pith of their friendship in an illustrated format. This is no small feat. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.” To the extent that The Zen of Steve Jobs treats Jobs’ relationship to Zen and Otogawa far more sensitively than did Walter Isaacson’s biography Steve Jobs, this must indeed be the case.

Was Steve Jobs a Buddhist?

The central question that I’m asking in this exploration involves Jobs’ relationship to Buddhism later on in his life. Popular media often describe Jobs by as a Buddhist, but it’s unclear to me the extent to which this statement was true as Jobs grew older. The goal here is no to attack Jobs as a “bad Buddhist,” but to use him as an informal and incomplete case study for what being a Buddhist may actually mean.

Following his wedding to Laurene Powell (officiated by Otogawa), to what extent did Jobs continue to self-identify as a Buddhist? Did he meditate? How often? Jobs clearly brought tremendous focus to the design and execution of his products, often to the detriment of other areas in his life. Though he may have practiced mindfulness and skilful means to an extreme degree in his work, he also lacked compassion and an empathic awareness of others’ sensitivities, as has been well documented elsewhere.

Did Jobs ever take part in a Refuge Vow ceremony, recognized as a formal indoctrination into the Buddhist path? The vow, also known as taking refuge in the Three Jewels—the Buddha, the sangha (community of Buddhist practitioners), and the dharma (the teachings of the Buddha, and/or “reality”)—is a commitment to being a practicing Buddhist. I suspect that most probably Jobs did take this vow as a young man, enraptured as he was with Zen meditation. Would this not have been a significant event for Jobs, one to be reported in his biography?

Did Jobs earnestly practice the Bodhisattva Vow? If one of the central precepts of Mahayana Buddhist ethics is to not cause harm, can Jobs actually be viewed as a Buddhist? How do we weigh Jobs’ positive contributions to humanity against his negative actions towards others, in terms of his commitment to Buddhism? Does Jobs’ extreme adherence to a Zen-inspired aesthetic compensate for the ethical vacuum within which he often operated on an interpersonal level?

Even after reading Isaacson’s Steve Jobs and Stephen Silberman’s article, “What Kind of Buddhist was Steve Jobs, Really?,” the extent to which Jobs’ early Buddhist practice continued later on in life remains unclear. The Zen of Steve Jobs seems to suggest that Jobs had minimal engagement with the practice as he grew older, even with Otogawa’s infrequent promptings to resume regular meditation practice and to return to the zendo. Author Caleb Melby’s commentary at the end of The Zen of Steve Jobs attributes the falling out of Jobs and Otogawa to Job’s zealous pursuit of perfection in his products, compared with Otogawa’s own tempered view of perfection.

But did Jobs’ aspiring toward perfection in his work make him no longer a Buddhist? Let’s explore more closely Jobs’ relationship to his teacher, and to Zen.

Kobun Chino Otogawa

In his article, Stephen Silberman suggests

The only regrettable aspect of Isaacson’s account [of Jobs’ Buddhist influences] is his clownish portrayal of Jobs’ teacher and friend for two decades, Kobun Chino Otogawa, as a hapless bore who spoke in needlessly cryptic “haiku.”

Silberman does not acknowledge that the speaking “in a kind of haiku” reference is an excerpted quote from an interview with Daniel Kottke. Though Otogawa’s characterization in this passage is not especially favorable, nor does the description suggest that Kottke had a deep connection to Zen. In the same passage, Kottke downplays his involvement with Zen with the admission that he treated “…the whole thing as a kind of lighthearted interlude” (Isaacson, 49), compared with Elizabeth Holmes and Steve Jobs, who took the Zen practice and training more seriously.

Whatever the case, The Zen of Steve Jobs makes up for Isaacson’s perceived authorial deficit in spades. The book depicts Otogawa as a wry and maverick Zen Buddhist, and also as an anchor for Jobs. As readers, we learn about Jobs’ and Otogawa’s time together, and we also learn a little bit about Zen Buddhism along the way.

The one feature of Otogawa that I challenge as presented  in The Zen of Steve Jobs is his being attributed with the quotation “In the expert’s mind, there are few possibilities. In the beginner’s mind, there are many.” Surely Caleb Melby is aware that these words were originally spoken by Shunryu Suzuki Roshi. However, there is no reference to Suzuki where the quote is included (p. 54), making it look as though the quote was first spoken by Chino Otogawa.

In the article, “The Zen of Steve Jobs: Right Livelihood,” author Lama Surya Das remarks,

Kobun seemed focussed too much on cold and clear emptiness, not enough on warm and empathic compassion, attitude-transforming loving-kindness practice. Too much head and not enough heart, a common critique of some Zen Buddhist lineages.

In The Zen of Steve Jobs, Jobs’ primary attraction to Otogawa when he first meets him is explained by way of the priest’s notoriety for breaking with tradition. However, Otogawa’s dispassionate attitude may be equally what led to the long-term mutual respect between Jobs and Otogawa, as Jobs is also well known for his coldness.

Apple, Buddhism, and creativity: learning the ABC’s

“What Zen Taught Silicon Valley (And Steve Jobs) About Innovation” by Warren Berger is a reflection on the influence that Zen may have on business endeavours, in particular within the technology sector. According to Berger, Jobs claimed that his Zen practice increased concentration, and that his employees might also benefit from practising Zen.

Berger quotes Jess3 Thomas, the artist for The Zen of Steve Jobs as saying,

Conceptualizing and prototyping the path of a user’s experience takes a lot of concentration…The Zen approach can help focus on the vision for the experience of the customer.

Thomas believes that Zen is a means by which designers may yield greater insights into the user perspective and experience.

By way of visual metaphor, The Zen of Steve Jobs attributes the architectural design of Apple Campus with Jobs’ time practicing kinhin. Berger mentions that the creation of the iPod trackwheel has been attributed to various inspirations, including the ensō.

There are many examples of Zen practice inspiring creativity in artists. Consider the following books on the subject, to name a few:

• Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg (Shambhala, 1986)
• Brush Mind by Kaz Tanahashi (Parallax Press, 1990); and
• The Zen of Creativity by John Daido Loori (Ballantine, 2005), but to name a few.

However, “no striving” is an essential ingredient in Zen meditation practice, and contradicts the notion that Zen embraces aspiring toward any end other than the practice itself. The Sōtō tradition, tracing its roots back to Ehei Dōgen, takes as its starting point that meditation practice is an expression of enlightened activity in the present moment—not that enlightenment is some alternate state of consciousness to be realized in a distant future.

Among other perceptive remarks, contributors to the comments section of Berger’s article pointed out:

• Zen does not hold a monopoly on simplicity. We can find examples of the value of simplicity embedded in the principle of Occam’s Razor (Western philosophy); parsimony (scientific research) and KISS (keep it simple, stupid) as well (Tim Anderson, posted 04/10/2012).
• No mention is made in Isaacson’s biography of the Zen principle of wabi-sabi: “the embrace of the impermanent, imperfect, and incomplete” (Nick Gall, posted 04/12/2012)
• Zen practice is not concerned with outputs, but more with honouring the process: “the act is the goal” (Maxine Shapiro, posted 04/10/2012).
• Possible inspirations for the circular scroll wheel include not only kinhin (walking meditation) and the enso (Evildoerplatypus, posted 04/09/2012); but also Braun design features (Mike Lee, posted 04/12/2012)—“Or perhaps sometimes a circle is just a circle” (Tim Anderson, posted 04/10/2012).

Randy Komisar is “a Zen practitioner who’s also a partner with the Silicon Valley venture capitalist firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.” In Warren Berger’s article, Komisar suggests:

Steve had an unusual relationship with Zen. He got the artistic side of it but not the Buddhist side—the art, but not the heart.

Lama Surya Das identifies an inverse relationship between Jobs’ rude behaviour and the drive towards minimalism in his product design:

Some wonder exactly what kind of Buddhist could be so famously impatient, rude and demanding. How could he be so emotional, even throwing tantrums? Relentlessly stubborn, he could be brutal to close friends, family and colleagues, act ruthlessly in both business and personal affairs and claim credit for others’ ideas. Speaking as a fellow Buddhist, albeit of a different lineage, I have no easy answer or apology to offer for him in this respect. I think his having been adopted played into it—the master of design simplicity had some very messy elements of his personal life. We teach what we need to learn, as the saying goes.

Maybe that’s why this very complex and even contradictory personality so assiduously sought and loved simplicity.

Isaacson’s biography and the Wired magazine article “The Story of Steve Jobs: An Inspiration or a Cautionary Tale?” (Wired, August 2012) by Ben Austen point out that “dozens” of interview subjects attest to having been pushed to personal limits far beyond what they envisioned were possible, thanks to Jobs’ uncompromising attitude when it came to realizing his ideals for product design and manufacture. Maybe Jobs was practicing his own skewed version of crazy wisdom, albeit an impure strain, on anyone willing to put up with his emotional bullying and manipulation.

Whatever the case, it would appear that Jobs accepted his temperament unapologetically, which could be viewed as his exercising a form of extreme loving-kindness towards himself.

Being a Buddhist

In What Makes You Not a Buddhist (Shambhala, 2006), author Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse suggests that one cannot fully espouse Buddhism without accepting the truth of the Four Seals. According to Khyentse, if the four following questions can be answered affirmatively, then one may be said to identify with the Buddhist worldview.

1. Can you accept that all things are impermanent and that there is no essential substance or concept that is permanent?
2. Can you accept that all emotions bring pain and suffering and that there is no emotion that is purely pleasurable?
3. Can you accept that all phenomena are illusory and empty?
4. Can you accept that enlightenment is beyond concepts; that it’s not a perfect blissful heaven, but instead a release from delusion?

Dzongsar Khyentse suggests that just because these principles have been accepted as truth, one need not continually consciously reflect on them in order to consider oneself a Buddhist. Nonetheless, once accepted, it is possible for the four seals to always remain present in one’s mind:

You don’t walk around persistently remembering your own name, but when someone asks your name, you remember it instantly. There is no doubt. Anyone who accepts these four seals, even independently of Buddha’s teachings, even never having heard the name Shakyamuni Buddha, can be considered to be on the same path as he (Khyentse, 53).

Did Jobs unequivocally accept the truth of these four maxims? In the Steve Jobs biography, Isaacson notes that Jobs’ one-time girlfriend Jennifer Egan used to argue about the hypocrisy of Jobs’ insisting that an attachment to material possessions was unhealthy, contrasted with his drive to create perfect products for economic consumption. Did Jobs actually accept that all phenomena are illusory and empty? Isaacson acknowledges that Jobs’ pride in his creations was greater than his insistence that one ought to admonish a craving even for commodities produced to exemplary standards (Steve Jobs, 262).

Jobs didn’t sparsely furnish his surroundings out of some sort of ascetic mentality, but because he could find little in the way of furniture that met his standards of perfection (Zen of Steve Jobs, p. 31). He may not have been attached to worldly possessions, but he was most certainly attached to ideals. Jobs’ “reality distortion field” may have swayed others to believe in his vision of the world, but fundamentally, Jobs’ frustrations with others arose out of an inability to accept the world on its own terms. This disconnect is what led Steve Jobs to inflict psychological violence on others:

The Buddhist practice of nonviolence is not merely submissiveness with a smile or meek thoughtfulness. The fundamental cause of violence is when one is fixated on an extreme idea, such as justice or morality. This fixation usually stems from a habit of buying into dualistic views, such as bad and good, ugly and beautiful, moral and immoral. One’s inflexible self-righteousness takes up all the space that would allow empathy for others. Sanity is lost (Khyentse, 55).

One of Jobs’ prime weaknesses, then, was a fixation with beauty as manifested in design—and by extension, with the avoidance of ugliness. Jobs may have suffered tremendously from the pain that his uncompromising attitude caused not just to others, but also to himself. And it may very well be that he sought out Buddhism to begin with at least in part to remedy his afflictions, in addition to his pursuing Primal Scream Therapy.

Charity

Jobs was not one to impart his financial wealth to others, in the interests of relieving their suffering. Dzongsar Khyentse is careful to point out that if a person donates thousands or millions of dollars to charities or people in need, but the primary intent behind doing so is to look good, the motivation behind this act is little more than righteousness. Perhaps Jobs’ recognized this, and avoided donating money for this reason.

Jobs’ wife Laurene Powell co-founded a program called College Track, designed to help disenfranchised students finish high school and continue onto college. Jobs never went to visit it, and he generally did not support philanthropic pursuits, though he was supportive of Powell’s efforts from a distance (Isaacson, 543).

Jobs did agree to issue a special iPod in support of Bono’s campaign to raise funds and promote education about AIDS in Africa (Isaacson, 423). And as reported by Lama Surya Das, in 1979 Jobs contributed $5,000 donation that helped establish the SEVA foundation.

Generally speaking, however, it would appear from Isaacson’s biography that Jobs didn’t go out of his way to spread his wealth to those in need—though it’s worth acknowledging that he supported his family as well as thousands of employees, whose livelihood was and continues to be a direct result of many of the business decisions that Jobs made for Apple.

Conclusion

Surya Das speculates that in terms of the Eightfold Path, Steve Jobs most embodied the principles of “Right Livelihood and True Vocation” through his impassioned commitment to creating exemplary, beautiful products, and through his ability to interweave his personal and professional talents into a unified vision.

Jobs was committed to supporting an integrated user experience in every aspect of his products’ design, right down to the packaging and instructions. It was a holistic approach to product engineering and construction inspired by Zen aesthetics. He placed great value on his own intuition, a key principle in Zen understanding (Steve Jobs, 35, 564). At times his convictions placed him at odds with others, they who believed the realization of his vision impossible or irresponsible.

For all of Jobs’ early Zen practice and its corollary benefits to Jobs over time, his personal commitment to Buddhism later on in life appears negligible. Was he still a Buddhist? Rather than answer the question directly, let us consider the following advice, attributed to Shakyamuni Buddha, “the awakened one,” also known as the historical Buddha:

Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it.

Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many.

Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books.

Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders.

Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations.

But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.

—(Kalama Sutta, Anguttara Nikaya Vol. 1, 188-193 P.T.S. Ed.)

CSI Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving!

 

Hignite strikes again: The Art of Jaime Hernandez

The intimacy of Todd Hignite’s In the Studio: Visits with Contemporary Cartoonists (Yale University Press, 2006) blew my mind when I first read it. Profiled within its pages are commentary by Hignite and accompanying passages from interviews with Ivan Brunetti, Charles Burns, Daniel Clowes, Robert Crumb, Jaime Hernandez, Gary Panter, Seth, Art Spiegelman and Chris Ware.

To “hear” all of these artists’ voices between two covers was a revelation in comics form and function, with generous and glorious full colour reproduction of many samples of the artists’ work, as well as work that influenced them.

Hignite has more recently built upon his initial treatment of Jaime Hernandez in In the Studio, and has developed a full volume consecrated to Hernandez’ art. The Art of Jaime Hernandez: the Secrets of Life and Death (Abrams, 2011) is not only exquisite because of Hernandez’ contributions, but also because it is infused with Hignite’s poetic prose. Listen to this: can you hear the music?

Hernandez’s titles are always both iconic and insinuatingly evocative. “Wigwam Bam” is taken from a 1970s pop hit by the Sweet and provides a pop culture springboard that magically evokes a deeply personal flashback. The centrepiece is an entry in Maggie’s diary that Izzy reads while searching for her—to the young Maggie and her friend Letty, the song was a metaphor regarding cultural difference and identity, and in particular the mythic proportions that such childhood experiences take on later in life, themes that Maggie will continue to question throughout her stories. While abundantly engaging, as only the most complex art can be, Hernandez’s comics are also great entertainment. His formal virtuosity is in the service of characterization, altering one’s perception of the world while the full range of humanity dances on and below the surface of the page.

During this page, Hernandez’s cartooning begins to reincorporate the detail of his early work within the starkness of the last few years, but in a way that has virtually nothing to do with the dense shading of the early issues, and doesn’t in any way refute the pinpoint clarity of “The Death of Speedy.” Here, detailed hatching, used judiciously, becomes a framing device, pushing forward and back in the panel plane. As Jaime described in a 1995 Comics Journal interview, readers “don’t know how hard it is not to put in a lot of lines. I just noticed as my art progresses—or regresses—that it’s becoming more abstract in that all the lines are beginning to go somewhere. Where in the early days the lines just fit the drawing. Now I’m balancing a lot of little lines in one corner, and putting less lines in the other corner. I’m actually paying more attention to composition, where I used to just put it down unconsciously. Now I guess with less lines to work with, the more I put them to work.” Or as he states more simply, “I’ve always drawn in the way I felt fit the story.” A single page from the first chapter of “Wigwam Bam” touches on nearly all of the formal and narrative elements found in his work, providing great insight into his refined comics storytelling.

By gradually draining background detail, the first panel fades into a flashback by Hopey. As she turns from Maggie in the second panel, the narrative also pivots away from the temporal and physical space leading up to the exchange, and the deftness with which the switch occurs is merely one example of Hernandez’s constant polyphonic mastery, which harmoniously juxtaposes two or more simultaneous narrative threads, be they visual, verbal, or both. Riot-gear-clad Los Angeles policeman replace the hallway of an East Coast apartment building as 1980 replaces 1990. The transition is simultaneously gradual (linked by the urban backgrounds), and decisive, abruptly completed in the large center panel, the background emptiness replaced by a swarming mass of punks taunting and facing off against the police; stark white is replaced by seething black. Contrasts abound in the page, yet visual and textual links bridge time and space. In no other medium could these scenes be interspersed and produced to the same effect. In no other medium could the reader/viewer experience the same collision of time and locale, emotional involvement, and formal and conceptual flow. Yet Hernandez, as always, foregoes superficial formal experimentation in favor of reader interaction with the characters and narrative progression: his layout is exactly symmetrical, and the focus is within the panels rather than on the structure of the panels themselves (which relies on his standardized traditional comic book grid of three tiers, each composed of either two or three panels). (155-156)

But never mind the words in all their lyricism—how about that art? Look at the cover. Of all the choices that designer Jordan Crane could have made, he selected an unfinished sketch, inked but still with visible pencils, portraying Maggie at a young age staring directly at you. Look at her! How can you not fall in love with Maggie?

This book includes generous, page-after-page sublime Hernandez artwork in all of its lucid line, vibrant colour and beautiful black. Less perceptive readers only learn on the last page that the seemingly pretentious subtitle “The Secrets of Life and Death” is also the title of Izzy Ortiz’s diary in Love and Rockets, and that it originally appeared in the diary of Dr. Frankenstein in the movie Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man. What a movie! I used to have snap-together glow-in-the-dark models of Frankenstein and the Wolf Man when I was five years old!

La Maggie La Loca

The inclusion of “La Maggie La Loca” in its entirety is a generous addition to the beginning of Hignite’s tome. First appearing in 2006 as instalments in The New York Times Magazine, Hernandez’s mature storytelling in this work is exemplary. Hignite remarks,

While showcasing Jaime’s aesthetic sensibility, “La Maggie La Loca” also serves as an introduction to his most important contribution to the medium—literary characterization that surpasses anything previously accomplished in comics. Crucially, characters come alive through facial expressions and telling gestures as much as in dialogue; in the play between expertly crafted image and text, his is perfect cartooning, and the élan evident in his drawing is matched only by wobbly acceptance of her place in the world—from teen mechanic, wrestling manager, peripatetic drifter, to now apartment manager in Los Angeles’s San Fernando Valley. In agreeing to create this strip for the Times, the task of remaining true to the expansive world he created, while also telling a story that simultaneously stood on its own for both a devout readership and an audience with little knowledge of the intricate histories and relationships accrued over the years, gave him pause. (21-22)

Since he was working outside of his comic book element, Hernandez framed each weekly “episode” to end with a dramatic cliffhanger in reference to the style of classic Sunday adventure strips:

“I purposely did the story in a straight, serialized adventure comic-strip mode because I knew every other cartoonist doing this was going to try and impress the New York Times readership. So I decided to go in the opposite direction and do a straight adventure strip with nothing highfalutin about it.” This rejection of overt formal experimentation in favor of ingrained comic book pacing and “clarity” (which is actually quite complex to do in a manner as sophisticated as Hernandez has) is a cornerstone of his work. And the “adventure” of the strip harkens back to his earliest stories involving Maggie and Rena, demonstrating how his take on such conventions has evolved in “trying to find the balance between Maggie’s science-fiction past—and what she did in that past—and her present real life.” As Jaime mentions, the creation of the strip was in good part dictated by single images that appeared in his mind, and his process of nonlinear jumping from episode to episode, panel to panel, and connecting specific images that then lead the direction of the nascent story—and define character—provides the subtle key to his comics’ resonance; specific, iconic panels lodge in the reader’s mind, which wanders back and forth in the narrative long after the comic has been set aside. (25-26)

Introduction by Alison Bechdel

The Art of Jaime Hernandez includes a balanced introduction by Alison Bechdel. Her candid assessment of the Locas stories as “in part, a masturbation fantasy” would be difficult to argue against. But by no means does this detract from Hernandez’ ability to draw sexy, beautiful women—in fact, it probably contributes to it. And Bechdel praises the fact that “Maggie and Hopey were subjects bursting with agency,” especially given the time that these stories first appeared, in terms of the narrative evolution of comics.

But even with Hernandez’ rich characterization of Maggie and Hopey, Bechdel doesn’t sugar-coat their treatment:

…If their on-again, off-again sexual relationship was titillating, it was all the more so because of the rich, authentic delineation of their complicated personalities and their emotional rapport. Perhaps Jaime romanticized the tolerance the other characters have for Maggie and Hopey’s bisexuality. And perhaps his men aren’t drawn with the same lavish sensuality as his women (though I appreciate the egalitarian esprit of the occasional male frontal nudity.) (9)

Bechdel emphasizes, however, that Hernandez’ positive contributions to comics far outweigh these concerns. Especially for a male artist, for all the voyeuristic presentation of women in his work, Hernandez also presents women as autonomous beings with a depth of feeling and intellect unprecedented in the medium. These are not characters portrayed solely through the lens of testosterone-driven objectification.

The Art of Jaime Hernandez includes interview excerpts and reproductions of Jaime Hernandez’ art spanning the entirety of his artistic process from an early age. Hernandez’ work has been analyzed through the lens of academia, gay, feminist, and punk activists, comics critics and reviewers, and mainstream journalists. His work has positively informed the evolution of sequential narrative in innumerable ways, including influencing a generation of comic artists who followed in his footsteps.

I love Hignite’s writing and Hernandez’ comics so much, it’s hard to weigh in with anything except positive praise. And it’s hard to write about Jaime Hernandez’ art when Hignite has already done such an outstanding job, which is why I’ve quoted him at length in this post. Read this book and see for yourself.

Excerpts used by permission of Abrams ComicArts:

The Art of Jaime Hernandez: The Secrets of Life and Death

By Todd Hignite, introduction by Alison Bechdel; Text © 2010, Todd Hignite

Published by Abrams ComicArts an imprint of Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York.

All rights reserved.

Love & Rockets Sketchbook

The Love & Rockets Sketchbook (Fantagraphics Books, 1989) of Los Bros Hernandez is like a younger sibling to The Art of Jaime Hernandez, thoughit’s a valuable complement in its own right for the samplings it provides of both Jaime and Gilbert’s artwork.

The first seven pages of the first volume present a generous selection of Jaime Hernandez’ early fanzine drawings with predominantly Marvel and DC themes, followed by selections from Jaime’s earliest (1977, unpublished) comic series, “Prosolar Mechanics.” These comics star protagonists Rann Race and Maggie Chase, the latter character being one of the earliest incarnations of a Maggie in the Love & Rockets legacy. A collaboration included in the sketchbook (p. 16) between Jaime (pencils), Mario (inks) and Gilbert (letters) shows how far Jaime’s art progressed in only one year.

Interestingly and tellingly, Jaime explains that after creating these comics, his artwork then regressed back to a looser, less polished but more comfortable style originally used when he drew comics for his own entertainment—due to his earliest submissions being rejected by publishers.

The drawings that follow these early works are from Jaime’s sketchbooks. Most are studies of the female form and visage, and unsurprisingly include early appearances of Maggie the Mechanic, Penny Century, and smatterings of woman wrestlers and new age-punky types. In In the Studio, Jaime explains that a recently completed sketchbook took him five years to fill up. He relates that he enjoys trying to draw in styles that he doesn’t use in his comics, though he has also come to recognize how the use of different media can limit the effects an artist can produce on the page, depending on their qualities. For Hernandez, this was a revelation—it made him realize how entrenched his work had become through the use of a consistent comics language, which in turn invited him to think differently.

Many of the more raw sketches in this volume seem to possess a Frazetta-like quality to my eyes, which I find as powerful for its spontaneity as Jaime’s finished pages are for their crispness and precision. The sketchbook also provides a generous sampling of flyers created for music gigs, which are especially interesting for their diverse experimentation with layout and imagery

Beto’s selections include early fanzine drawings (including spot drawings from The Comics Journal), unpublished work, “space age/barbarian chicks” and various loose and playful sketches.

There is an eight-page story featuring Inez at her most fantastic: dreaming tha her breasts have grown larger, that she has grown a male appendage, and that she is laying an egg. Gilbert’s commentary at the beginning of the story remarks, “Included because I can’t believe I did this story at all.”

The last solo Inez story (originally published in the fanzine No-Sex) is a four-pager about Inez being rescued from planet Ponderosa by an interplanetary biology student. Various self-rejected single pages created by Gilbert for different publications are included.

There are also seven full-page illustrations that look as though they’ve may have been drawn with a heavy brush, and which stand out from the rest of Gilbert’s work for their size and the slightly grotesque, visibly radical departure from the style found in most of his other work.

The Love & Rockets Sketchbook Two (Fantagraphics Books, 1992) opens with a dramatic Beto drawing entitled “Jesus Angel and his Swinging Wet Dreams: Bebopaluba and Tonantzin”—Jesus Angel is smiling and kneeling upright, with a scantily-clad Luba thrusting a spear through his chest from behind, Tonantzin is collecting Jesus Angel’s blood in a pan in front of him. The one overarching theme in this series of sketches is large-breasted women: lots of figure studies of Luba and others in bikinis, summer dresses, one piece bathing suits, gowns and with no clothes at all.

There are occasional contour-style drawings, rapidly drawn gesture drawings, playful cartoons, and some more heavily-inked one page studies.

In contrast, Jaime’s selections in Love and Rockets Sketchbook Two seem includes many more serious studies, especially close-ups of peoples’ faces, balanced with a large number of contour drawings.

The range of styles that are depicted between the pages of these two volumes is one more demonstration of the highly refined artistry that so many comic book artists possess, but which is not always on display for the reader. Kudos to Fantagraphics for making these “behind the scenes” collections available for the average viewer.

Holmes on Homesteading

The Artist Himself: A Rand Holmes Retrospective by Patrick Rosenkranz (Fantagraphics Books, 2010)

Given that Lucky’s Comics recently hosted an exhibition of Holmes’ work as part of a book launch for The Artist HImself, and that the artist spent much of his life in familiar territory, I was curious. Before listening to the Inkstuds interview with Patrick Rosenkranz (Holmes’ authorized biographer), I knew nothing about Rand Holmes’ life or his comics. I thought I was going to read the biography of an underground cartoonist. Instead, I read an epic exploration of a complex human being, who just happened to be an underground cartoonist.

Top Quality Shit

When I walk into Legends Comics and Books in Victoria, co-owner Gareth Gaudin (with Lloyd Chesley) is reading Paul Gravett’s 1001 Comics You Must Read Before You Die: The Ultimate Guide to Comics, Graphic Novels and Manga (Universe, 2011) at the cash.

“Is it good?”

“It’s pretty good…there’s only one comic so far that I think should have been included in here that isn’t.”

“What’s that?”

“Harold Hedd #2.” It’s hard to find nowadays, but all of the Harold Hedd comics have been reprinted in here.” Gareth hands me a copy of The Artist Himself: A Rand Holmes Retrospective by Patrick Rosenkranz (Fantagraphics, 2010). “Look at this…” He flips to page 115. “Look at this! Where else will you find an authentic drawing of a BC transit bus in Vancouver, circa the 1970s?”

“Oh! Remember The Buzzer?”

Early Artwork

Early on in Rand Holmes’ life, he was driven to draw every available moment he had. Early inspiration while in high school included Mad magazine, and the hot rod car culture that Holmes admired from afar—until he acquired a 1937 Ford with his brother Rett and friend Gordon Campbell.

Holmes copied Wally Wood and Jack Davis drawings, revering Wood’s artistry even later on in life. He drew posters and billboards for various school functions, and drew constantly in sketchbooks instead of taking notes in class. He defied attempts by teachers and administrators to break his will and artistic drive. Holmes self-identified as a radical, dressing in the Beatnik fashion with sandals, army jackets and a black beret.

At around seventeen years of age, Holmes noticed an ad in Help! magazine, soliciting cartoons from new artists for pay. He sent one off and received a cheque, his first paid assignment and published cartoon.

Home Life

Holmes’ family life was dismal. During his junior year of high school, he moved in with his friend Barry McColl’s family after his father kicked him out of the house. His school experiences were also difficult at times; Holmes was a target, since he wasn’t active in the school sports culture and dressed differently. He was beat up on one occasion, and from that point on, McColl suggests, Holmes may have resolved that he would no longer take abuse from anyone. After hopping a fence to see a football game, another student provoked him and was stabbed by Holmes. He managed to avoid going to prison with the help of a lawyer hired by his father, but was suspended from school. To his teachers and school principal, Holmes was an enigma, McColl relates, since he had one of the highest IQs in all of Edmonton.

Holmes moved out of McColl’s house the next year and lived in a garage; his ’37 Ford was parked in it, and he slept in a loft above the Ford. He met Bob Cantin, the son of a dive shop owner, and asked Holmes to do some diving drawings for their store. He then designed a car show poster for Cantin, the first of its kind to be seen in Alberta. So began Holmes’ early cartoon career. He drew people’s cars on t-shirts using coloured felt pens, and then started a comic strip called “Out to Lunch” in a hod rod magazine called The Benchracer.

Holmes’ next residence was a basement suite that was built into the side of a hill with a dry rot floor, and then he moved into another apartment with his friend Dan Matheson. For five years, he worked at a sign shop. In July 1964, Holmes married Beverly Maga. Holmes’ father offered a house for the newlyweds to live in, they had a daughter, and spent several happy years living in domestic bliss. In a move reminiscent of R. Crumb’s abandonment of his first wife Dana to go to San Francisco, Holmes read a copy of Zap Comix #2 and was driven to find his way to the west coast. He divorced Beverly and moved into an apartment of his own. Beverly was pregnant at the time, and Holmes stayed in Edmonton until she delivered their son Ronald, leaving not long afterwards. In his own words,

In 1968 my brother turned me on to psychedelics. I woke up, left my wife and job and split for the West Coast, grew my hair down to my ass, moved into a communal house and vowed to never again do anything I didn’t want to do, especially for money. After I made that simple decision I was suddenly free. (28)

The Georgia Straight

Passing through Vancouver this week, I picked up a copy of the Georgia Strait. Back in the mid-1970s when Rand Holmes was a regularly contributing artist for the free weekly paper, it contained some brazen material that editorial gatekeepers in today’s cultural climate would most likely never consider appropriate—especially for a print product that has become mainstream for an alternative press weekly, with a circulation of 140 000 copies throughout the Lower Mainland.

    The Georgia Straight, July 24-31, 1975

In the late 1970s Dan McLeod, the publisher of the Georgia Strait, chose to remove sex ads from the paper due to pressure from women’s groups involved in the burgeoning feminist movement. What had begun as a means to promote sexual liberation and free love was increasingly perceived as degrading and derogatory towards women. The ads were also the most lucrative for the paper, so instead of getting rid of them completely, they were moved to a new paper, The Vancouver Star.

Today’s Georgia Straight has conducted a complete about-face, with four and a half pages of sex ads in the back of the paper. And though it is still a hub for arts and entertainment information in Vancouver, unsurprisingly, the radical and underground tone of the paper has diminished in scope, along with the culture at large. However, the Georgia Straight continues to advocate for local issues, and does so with journalistic integrity.

Sexuality

Arguably the most tendentious of Holmes’ Harold Hedd strips to appear in the Georgia Straight depicted Harold Hedd having gay oral sex. Gay activism was building momentum at the time of this cartoon’s publication. However, Rosenkranz suggests that Holmes’ strip reflected a personal exploration, and not a political one. This may be true, to the extent that Harold Hedd was in certain respects Holmes’ satirical alter ego—but in the language of postmodernism, we know that the personal is political.

“The Continuing Adventures of Harold Hedd,” from The Georgia Straight, 1971

A friend of Holmes at the time, Dan Matheson, explains in The Artist Himself that Holmes was unsure about his sexual orientation. From material included in The Artist Himself, it would appear that at least Harold was overtly bisexual, if not Holmes himself. For example, a facsimile of a Harold Hedd script included in The Artist Himself reads:

H: end of book

Nyahh…girls…boys…what’s the difference

…it’s the quality of the relationship that

turns me on

Feminine lead Harold how could you

make it with that…

H: I can’t help it I love

queers I think they’re

beautiful…

…love women too…think

they’re beautiful

Two telling images included in The Artist Himself are suggested by Rosenkranz to represent the male and female aspects of Rand Holmes’ psyche. The male persona’s face is contorted into a violent feral snarl, while the female persona is seductively posed for her audience.

Interestingly, in a half hour video entitled “Rand Holmes Retrospective Art Show, March 2007” (the link provided is to a small segment from the full film) produced and edited by Patrick Rosenkranz and initially intended for release with The Artist Himself, Martha Holmes, commenting on the two paintings below remarks,

““Maybe these are both how he saw himself. You know, the male and the female sides of him.”

In the latter pairing, the male persona is an anatomically well-built full nude, and image seems homoerotically charged. Whatever the outcome of Holmes’ exploration, and whichever pair of paintings more accurately depicts his internal demeanor, it’s obvious that the artist was reflecting deeply on his personality and his sexuality during this time.

This is also especially apparent in the journal entries written toward the end of Holmes’ life, in particular one dated February 10, 2002, in which he reminisces on his time coming out as a gay man in the seventies, then spending time in “the scene,” before realizing that on the whole, the culture did not fulfill his yearnings:

I soon found that the gay scene was not to my liking at all. I also found I felt no real attraction (sexual, I mean, except for fellatio, the penis being the focal point. The attached guy merely a hairy appendage) to other men at all, though some of the transvestites were kind of sweet. (but also very fucked up emotionally). In the few liaisons I formed I found no real sexual passion in myself and was usually unable to perform. I finally gave up on it and a few years later met my present wife.

Looking back I now see that all my most intensely real sexual attraction has been directed towards women. (199-200)

Lasqueti

Rand Holmes met his second wife Martha and moved to Lasqueti Island in 1980. For all of the colourful episodes in Holmes’ past, in my opinion, the real adventure starts here. Letters to and from Martin Voksverlag, Holmes’ German publisher, make it abundantly clear just how much painstaking labour was required in order for Holmes to eke out a living on Lasqueti, working 10 to 12 hour days on constructing his house, then toiling over comics pages in whatever leftover time he could find. Eventually, Holmes burned out on comics, recognizing that for the amount of effort he was putting into his artwork, he could no longer justify continuing to do so when he was able to work as a carpenter for a healthy wage.

Even five years after initially moving to the island, Rand and his wife were still living in a 7 X 9 foot wall tent with a dirt floor, and that in the “coldest November in recorded history on the West Coast.” (175)

Holmes’ hunting journal brings some of his greatest eccentricities to the fore, with his committing to wearing 18^th century clothing when embarking on hunting trips, and building and using only black powder rifles and intricately carved powder horns for the hunt.

Ample selections are also provided from journals detailing Holmes’ work on oil paintings, to which he committed his time during the later years of his life; descriptions of commercial artwork contributions that Holmes made to local businesses; and designing the Lasqueti Mint 2001 coin celebrating the legalization of medical marijuana.

God

During the time that Holmes was dying of Hodgkins lymphoma, in a journal entry dated March 5, 2002, Holmes mentions delving increasingly into prayer, seeking forgiveness for the harm he inflicted on others throughout his life. He describes a “great burst of love and compassion and peace” spreading over him, a reconnection with the universal godhead. He cites lyrics from Bruce Cockburn’s song, “Lord of the Starfields” and mentions how he has broken down, weeping, while transcribing them on the page.

Lord of the Starfields

Ancient of days

Universe maker

Here’s a song in your praise

This entry, the second-to-last in his journal, suggests that for all the toil and hardship in his lifetime up to his last days, this remarkable figure died in peace.

The Artist Himself

The reprint of Fog City Comics #3 is a playful romp into Rand Holmes’ subconscious, and is also the story from which the title of this volume takes its name. Though this depiction of Holmes may speak to some of his deepest frustrations, it does not tell the whole story. The Artist Himself by Patrick Rosenkranz comes closest to capturing the essence of Holmes’ complexity over time, and as such for anyone interested in the radical subculture of early underground comix, this is essential reading.

Comparing Covers

I was looking at the cover of Luke Pearson’s Hilda and the Midnight Giant (Nobrow Press, 2012) and was struck by how much the layout resembles that of Charles Burns’ X’ed Out (Pantheon, 2010).

Central figure, similar scale and depth of foreground and background, sloping terrain from right to left, tall object jutting out in top left corner.

Paintings by Johanne Hemond @ CACGV Gallery, Feb. 19-28

What are these works? First and foremost, they are “scapes.” Not only landscapes, but also configurations of Johanne Hémond’s interior world. To enter into her paintings is to explore a realm inspired by equal parts emotional resonance and site-specific geographies and geometries.

Nearly the entirety of two walls of Hémond’s most recent exhibit at the Community Arts Council of Greater Victoria (CACGV) gallery are consecrated to scenes inspired the natural world. The third wall extends beyond the physical to an environment inhabited uniquely by mood. In total, a remarkable 27 paintings are displayed.

Hémond’s paintings are a logical extension of her earlier photographic work. Just around the corner from the gallery space featuring her paintings, one wall of a long corridor with a ramp descending to tennis and squash courts is adorned with highly fluid and dynamic photographs of tennis, squash and badminton players from various tournaments at the Cedar Hill Recreation Centre.

To borrow a phrase from Gary Panter, painting is first and foremost the act of “putting paint.” But this largely self-taught Montreal native, a Victorian for the last eleven years, additionally applies aggressive swathes of drywall compound to create varying degrees of accentuated relief. Texture is as much a part of her paintings’ settings as are colour and composition, all of which are often inspired by aerial photographs—terrestrial forms of obscure origin.

There is a deliberate counterpoint to the ordering of Hémond’s works on the abstract wall, a rhythm punctuated through the juxtaposition of large and small canvasses next to one another. What their subject matter holds in common is uncommonality. Each conveys a mood entirely its own, with the exception of “Aerial View I and II”, paired on either side of the larger canvas “Male/female.”

Aerial View I

Many of Hémond’s paintings use a combination of just two or three colours. Within this limited palette, resonances of black and white photography are present, as is an exploration of tonal range that merits close attention. The “Ocean” series in particular captures the sombre spirit of coastal overcast skies. Similarly, “Forest I and II” are a meditation on the ambient green rainforests of Vancouver Island, while “Scape Series I-V” capture various states of mountainous abstraction, with Scape Series V proving the most elusive of the batch.

Forest I and II

Scape Series V

The “Black & White Series,” “Female/Male” and “Male/Female” are subtly charged reflections on gender, sexuality and eroticism. “Au Feminen I” is the most outstanding work in the exhibit, and is rightly identified as “not for sale.” This work is Johanne Hémond at her best—its boldness promises a future direction that could yield extraordinarily powerful results.

Black & White Series

Au feminin

“Figure” is a treatise on loneliness; its composition leaves the viewer with an uneasy discomfort. There is a flatness and unfinished quality to the work that makes it distinct as a part of Hémond’s portfolio. For this reason, it is deserving of its own wall. The painting’s relative dominance in size (30” X 40”) compared with Hémond’s other works makes it a curious addition in an already impressively varied show.

Figure

Hémond’s artist statement says much about her approach to art and to life: it is inspired by a symmetry and poetry springing from remarkable depth of feeling and intuition:

While Johanne Hémond’s choices suggest a tremendous breadth of talent within the acrylic medium, they simultaneously suggest a lack of focus—though not an absence of vision. This is an outstanding early exhibit, and we can only look forward to better things to come.

Video by Efren Quiroz, exhibit-v.

The open house for Hémond’s exhibit was accompanied by the musical duo “Beat ‘n Black ‘n Blue,” a soulful pair with Bruce Cobanli on acoustic guitar, and Roderick Deschênes on the cajón, a box-shaped wooden percussion instrument from South America.) Their repertoire included rhythm ‘n blues and gospel classics, and provided an uplifting atmosphere throughout the evening.

Getting Sketchy with Gary Panter

Satiroplastic

The opening pages of Gary Panter’s Satiroplastic (Drawn & Quarterly, 2005) include sketches made while Panter was in Oaxaca, Mexico. In the introduction to the book Panter explains how the sketches are not chronologically ordered. Each time he did a drawing, he opened the book up haphazardly to a page and began drawing; further evidence of Panter’s random-abstract brilliance.

The sketches in Satiroplastic are in many ways more accessible than Panter’s most popularized classic comics, Jimbo in Purgatory and Jimbo’s Inferno. In fact, his loose line and highly impressionistic responses to his surroundings are an inspiration—they “give permission” to stop worrying and just draw. Compared with other cartoonist-artists who have published work from their sketchbooks (in no particular order, Adrian Tomine, Peter Kuper, Seth, R. Crumb, Chris Ware, Hernandez Brothers), Panter’s sketches are on the whole far less refined—in the best sense of the expression. But then, Panter is…different. And the raw reflections of Panter’s inner world are a welcome change from the more stiff and fastidious approaches of other artists.

The jacket cover of Satiroplastic suggests, “SATIROPLASTIC is the first of a three-volume sketchbook series by the legendary artist Gary Panter. Each volume will be an exact, unedited reproduction of Panter’s own sketchbook, allowing the reader a stunning, inside look of a visual genius.” The second and third volumes are slow to arrive, if they will be published by Drawn & Quarterly at all.

Gary Panter (Monograph)

 Volume two of the opus magnum Gary Panter (PictureBox, 2008) is a collection of Panter’s work in monograph form, edited by Dan Nadel. Volume 2 of this exquisite two-volume boxed set includes 323 pages of drawings taken from Panter’s sketchbooks. Many of the sketches span a two-page spread, and every even footer of the spread includes the title of the sketchbook from which the drawing has been reproduced, as well as the date it was drawn.

The opening pages of Gary Panter Volume 2 display a stack of eighteen sketchbooks. The end section entitled “Some Sketchbook Covers 1973-2006” includes photos of 67 different books, and “Some Sketchbook Title Pages 1973-2006” shows six pages of title pages from 43 different sketchbooks demonstrating Panter’s voluminous output.

Of particular note in Volume 1 is an extended meditation found on the sketches Panter drew (included in Satiroplastic) during the bombing of the twin towers on September 11, 2001, and worthy of quoting in full:

 Excerpt from “Gary Panter: Taking Inventory”

Perhaps the most significant observational drawings done by the artist are contained in the sketchbook entitled Satiroplastic, which was completed between December 1999 and November 2001. This sketchbook stands alone in the sense that of its 102 drawings, all but a handful are done from life. Toward the end of the book the flow of landscapes, city scenes, and interior views is interrupted by five drawings: Where Was the Air Force, The Tower Left, Empires, The Second Tower, and The Impossible; all first-hand depictions of the destruction of the World Trade Center on 9/11. In my opinion, these stand among the handful of most important works made by any artist with reference to the events surrounding September 11, owing their power to a humble lack of hyperbole.

While on that day many citizens of New York—artists and non-artists alike—reached for a camera or just turned on the TV, Panter reached for his sketchbook. This simple act reveals not only how drawing is an essential and natural activity for the artist, but more importantly, it shows his true colors as a humanist of the first order. If one believes that art, and drawing in particular, is a means for thinking, feeling, and understanding the world, then drawing the Trade Center towers as they collapses is perhaps the most rational thing one could do when faced with the incomprehensible. On the page in Satiroplastic that follows The Impossible is First Day of Soccer, a simple drawing showing a schoolyard scene later that September when Olive, Panter’s daughter, began a new after-school activity. Gary Panter’s drawing is a true compendium of life as lived in this world: alternatingly absurd, beautiful, strange, and poignant. Thankfully for us, he continues to use his pen to diligently take stock of all human affairs (205).

–RICHARD KLEIN

Richard Klein is exhibitions director of The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Conneticut, where he organized Gary Panter’s 2008 exhibition Daydream Trap.

Source: Nadel, Dan (Ed.) Gary Panter. PictureBox, Brooklyn, 2008. Excerpt used by permission of Dan Nadel.