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The NY Comics & Picture-story Symposium is a weekly series of lectures organized by the great Ben Katchor covering a vast range of topics on comics history and craft. Next week they’ll have three events instead of of their usual one, and while this isn’t affiliated with that weekend’s Comic Arts Brooklyn Festival, it can be sen as a sort of panel line-up. The talks run from Tuesday, November 1-Thursday November 3 and all are held at The Parsons School of Design, University Center, 63 Fifth Ave., room L105 (lower level). Starting time is 7 pm.

The line up:

Tuesday, November 1, 7 pm

David Kunzle on Chesucristo. The fusion in word and image of Che Guevara and Jesus Christ: the poetry.

Amid the manifold means by which this fusion was made, in narratives of the life of Ernesto Che Guevara, in word and in image, the poetry stands out, likening Che to Jesus in various moments of Jesus’ life and especially death. In the substance and words of various actions recorded in the Gospels parallels are drawn to Che’s sacrificiality; to his embodiment of the creative forces of a “divine”nature; to his omnipresence post-mortem, even his (spiritual) omnipotence. Extracts from the poetry are intoned simultaneously with projection of some of the infinite variations made of the famous, so often christified visage of Che.
Based on Kunzle’s recent book , Chesucristo, The Fusion in Word and Image of Che Guevara and Jesus Christ.

David Kunzle was born Birmingham England in 1936 and educated at universities of Cambridge and London (PhD 1964, in art history). British Universities Combined Events Olympic Gymnastics champion 1961 and 1962. This taught him to hang on, a life-lesson.  Member of British Universities Gymnastics team at first International Student Gymnastics championship, Moscow 1959.

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Wednesday, November 2, 7 pm
David Sandlin: Hold Back the Rushing Waters, Make the Wind Lie Still.
Artist David Sandlin discusses the influences of country music on his paintings, prints, and comics.
David Sandlin was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in 1956. He currently lives in New York and teaches printmaking, book arts, and illustration at the School of Visual Arts. He has exhibited extensively in the U.S., Europe, Japan, and Australia, and his comics and illustrations have appeared in The Best American Comics 2015, 2012 and 2009; The New Yorker; Raw; and other publications. He has received fellowships and grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, the New York Foundation of the Arts, the Swann Foundation for Caricature and Cartoon, and other institutions.
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Thursday, November 3, 7 pm
David Kunzle on Töpffer and Cham: the amateur and the professional.

Two caricaturists dominate the emerging field of the French comic strip from the 1830s onward: the Genevan Rodolphe Töpffer and the Parisian  Cham (pseud. Count Amédée de Noé). The undisputed father of the modern comic strip or graphic novel, Töpffer always pretended to denigrate his “little follies,” as he called them, among other disparaging terms, and which he executed in spare corners of his life as director of a boys’ school and university professor. Cham, by contrast, inspired by and at one point collaborator with the Swiss, quickly became a dominant figure in the French premier magazine of graphic satire, Le Charivari. He engaged full-time  in all the major caricature formats then practiced, including close to 40 comic strips or graphic novelettes, published in albums and magazine instalments. They represent a fine contrast in their lives, graphic style and satirical reach.

 

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