RE Digest #357

Mattias Hallin Mattias.Hallin at jurenh.lu.se
Thu Jun 16 15:38:07 CEST 1994


HELLO, EV'RBODY!

                Ole Reichstein mentioned his visit to Copenhagen last week-end;
I too was there, together with some 12 or 15 other NAFS(k) members, to see the
oilpaintings, the exhibition at the Kulorte "dash-that-o" Bibliotek and -- I
guess of course -- the Duck Man hisself, all of which we brought off.

I'm afraid, Ole, that I cannot agree with your wholehearted and enthusiastic
recommendation of the oils exhibit: I used to think from what I had seen in
printed reproductions that maybe Barks isn't exactly Rembrandt, but at least
fairly OK as an oilpainter, so I was SORELY disappointed in seeing the real
McCoy. IMHO, and without mincing the words, Carl Barks the oilpainter STINKS!!!

(sacrilege! stone him! stone him!)

Not only are these paintings prime examples of muddled compositions and VERY
bad technique, but worst of all: the man has no knowledge whatever of how to
create volume through light and colour, which is what figurative oilpainting is
really all about. If one actually tries to "read" what is painted on those
canvases, the result is pitiable, with distorted bodies, absurd angles and
bizarre light. I haven't really reacted to this before, since I've only ever
seen promotional material with small not-too-well-printed reproductions, but in
the flesh -- oh, brother!

Well, then we saw the exhibition-to-be at the Kulorte Bibliotek (which is
actually, correct-me-if-I'm-wrong, a Public Lending Library for COMICS!!!) --
they were then still hanging it -- including at least parts of Horsing Around
With History, which at a glance seems to be OK (there is a semi-qoute there
that you'll just LOVE, David!). The art is entirely van Horn (no underlying
Barksian sketches that I could percieve), and good at that, though I didn't
really get enough grip of the story (I only saw a few odd halfpages) to have an
opinion on that... Probably worth waiting for, though!

Oh, and at Tivoli (a large amusement park in downtown Copenhagen, for those who
don't know) I saw, but didn't meet, Carl Barks; and then met briefly with
Vicar, Tello, Rota and Byron Erickson, who all seemed to be nice guys. Byron
was BTW real happy when NAFS(k) member Joakim Gunnarsson lavished praise on the
new-improved-back-to-Gottfredson Mickey. Oh, and yeah: the same Joakim
Gunnarsson was the real lucky one, next day! Barks officially opened the
exhibition at the Kulorte Bibliotek (which is on very cramped premises), so
everyone present (I for one wasn't there) crowded into the room where he was,
while in the next room sat Tello, Vicar and Rota all by theirselves; so Joakim
decided to talk to them instead, only when Barks was going to leave, he was
first shuttled into that second room without any entourage -- so Joakim
suddenly found himself alone with four live duck men, including Carl Barks...!
Lucky, lucky, lucky!

All my best

Mattias

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!* Mattias Hallin ** <Mattias.Hallin at Jurenh.lu.se> ** Phone: +46 46-14 84 43 **!
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