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I don't usually go for artbooks, but Phillips and Fegredo are two of my favourite artists, so I took the plunge.
It isn't just an art book, either. The concept, explained by Fegredo in the Afterword, is lovely. The pair sent a notebook between themselves for 6 months, each time filling a page, inspired by, or riffing on the previous one. The result is a thouroughly engaging "Visual Dialogue".
Beyond the (Brilliant) quality of the art itself, wondering how they made the cognitive leap from one page to the next is great fun, some are quite easy (Fegredo's AM/PM piece, coming after Philips' Meanwhile/later page, and building on the crossdressing themefrom a few pages earlier) but some I'm still puzzling out. One great mystery is the square cut out of one page, which artist cut it out? And during what stage of the book?
Both artists use a variety of styles throughtout, pencil sketches, ink drawings, paintings etc. the fact that both seem so comfortable in any style is really astounding. I've always loved the sense of kineticsim in both of their works, and it seems that a lot of that comes from the speed they both work at, most pieces are dated no more than a few days from the last one.
In general, I think I prefer Fegredo's contributions here, although it's a very close call, his grasp of the absurd is better suited to this sort of project than Phillips' slighty more grounded tone, Phillips occaisionally seems to revert to still-life pieces, f'rexample.
I think that's why I've always preferred Phillips' sequential work, as fast and loose as it is, it never spins out of control like Fegredo's can sometimes.
My favourite pice was Fegredo's "Draw!" one, I loved the speech bubble scrawled in tip-ex, and the BANG!BANG!BANG! in Pencil Crayon down the side. What was yours? |
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