Hi, I'm Bruce Mutard and I want introduce you to the first book I've published under my new imprint, Fabilaux:
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ART IS A LIE
I bet you didn't know that.
What? Isn't Art about truth, embodied in an idealised beauty, cutting to the core of what it means to be human?
Sorry Sister Wendy, but eat your rosary.
Alright, it's an elitist, pompous, obscurantist and laughable grab-bag of theories desperately in search of relevance in a relativist world that's long since become deconstructed by post-structuralist, post-modern politically correct left of centre of the right-ness. Roger Scruton sez so.
Nope.
Perhaps it's a place where – to paraphrase Oscar Wilde – people like Sotheby, Christie and Leonard Joel know the price of everything and the value of nothing. At least Lucien Freud's estate can now afford to give all his bastards private education.
Close, but no cigar. Or whiskey.
Okay, it's knowing art when you see it, and that's when you like it, right?
Sorry, all wrong. Everything you thought you knew about Art is a lie, but don't worry, the guide to true understanding of art is at hand. Carol Wood and Susan Butcher have spent the past nine years digging for the truth in all manner of cemeteries, crypts, tombs, archives, applying only the most relevant forensic techniques: alchemy, reading animal intestines, tea-leaf dialectics, coffee ground metaphysics, watching cartoons, reading comics and saturnalia.
So with great diligence, skill, laughter and cups of tea, Carol and Sue have written and drawn these exposés:
Did you know Picasso only invented Cubism to get girls?
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Magritte was actually a failed mad scientist?
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That Marcel Duchamp was a serial art criminal: he misappropriated public property, produced pornography, played chess and got people to pay him for it. He was also French.
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Or that Frida Kahlo was really Betty Boop before the accident; Diego knew but Trotsky didn't.
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Butcher and Wood even show you how they make a comic by reanimating John Constable so they can kill him for THEIR art.
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Seriously though, this book collects the strips that have been published under the title Dead Or Alive in Artillery Magazine since 2006.
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In short, I wanted a collection of the strips, and as neither Artillery nor Carol and Sue could produce it, I put my money where my heart is and have published it 'artistically'. This is to say that I've ensured it's the best looking book I could produce, and making money is a secondary consideration. Yes, it has been PRINTED and ready to be shipped. But we will allow time for Carol and Sue to make the other perks that are on offer. For those who are familiar with the Dead or Alive strips, this book also contains five strips never before published, a introduction comic by me, a preface by Amelia Clipart and an index that is itself, mostly lies. Check out the gallery for full page previews!
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So, pick up a book and a reward to your fancy to the right. There's the book, but also postcards, posters, novelties, original art, handmade figurines and a one off, hand-made Statue of Libertinism (formerly known as Liberty) before the International Art Restorers sanitised it (as seen in the strip within the book). Some things are better left to age disgracefully.
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G'wan, this is the best art education in comics form you can buy. I know it's the only one, but why quibble on detail.
xBruce.
Now about the artists:
Carol Wood and Susan are ex-pat Brits who've been out here since the sixties - the nineteen sixties that is. They met and discovered they were both madly in love with comics, cartoons, kids shows, cereal packet toys and all that good stuff, so started collecting and making comics themselves. For a number of years, they self-published their own comic magazine called POX, which was like what you would get if you mixed MAD, Beano, National Lampoon, those weird American Christian comics in a Meret Oppenheim's furry tea cup. It created quite a storm. For the past nine years they have been producing the strips you will soon hold in your hands. Carol also spends time making models and Sue likes tinkering with mechanical things that have no electronics in them, but might have electrics. They live in a town that has a lot of hot springs, which they scrupulously avoid, as then they would have to mix with yuppies and their ilk. But the bonus of the yuppies in town is that a lot of good stuff gets thrown into the town tip, where Carol and Sue have been spotted gleaning.
About the Publisher:
Fabilaux is the imprint of Bruce Mutard Impropriety Incorporealated, set up to publish comics and books that have niche audiences, and then put them together. Bruce has written and drawn the graphic novels The Sacrifice, The Silence, A Mind of Love, The Bunker, and a host of short stories, illos, and so on. He also recently completed a Masters degree researching comics and created one to be encountered in a gallery space, not in print. He also writes and talks about comics a lot, sometimes for academic audiences, sometimes not. When not publishing, he is working on a new graphic novel, another comic project, and more besides. Like this.
