17 May 2012

[art_liff] Shaun Tan Makes An Excellent Gift Idea

2821.The real dear gift was from The Wife™ who knows my number, too.

I am a huge fan of Shaun Tan. I am a late arrival to that party, sadly, because his books generally get marketed to children, but he's a fantasist on the level of, say, a Harlan Ellison, but one who wields a pencil with the same gusto and sense of surreality that he does with his words.

Many of you already know of his wondrous book The Arrival, and if you don't you should. It's not just an immigrant's experience, it's the immigrant experience, portrayed in a world that is fantastical and phantasmagorical in its way, wondrous and cool, with vistas open to great colossi and geometric cities that can't exist but do in this world. It tells its story without words, but tells it clearly enough.

Surf this link to see pictures from the book: http://www.shauntan.net/books/the-arrival.html. Tell me this man isn't God's gift to the pencil. The incredible imagination and deep humanity blazes fort from every page.

Shaun Tan has forgotten more than all my other favorite artists have known about illustration. 

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