Art then for art’s sake as opposed to what’s going to pay the utilities.
Right!
Dave McKean
I met Dave’s “super agent” Allen Spiegel in the early stages of CN. Allen’s roster of talented clients was – and remains – a who’s who of illustrators: Jon J Muth, George Pratt, Kent Williams, Thom Ang, to name but a few. Because Allen was so supportive of what we were trying to do, he arranged for Dave to give us a magazine cover and we immediately jumped at the chance. It only stood to reason that we’d want to do an interview with Dave.
A few years later, at the infamous San Diego Comic-Con, I was talking to Berni Wrightson and showing around the cover of the issue which McKean had done the cover for. I immediately began gushing about how great it was and what a delight Dave had been to work with. Suddenly, from behind me, I heard a very English voice say, “Yeah, he’s ok.” I turned and looked into the eyes of none other than Dave McKean himself. That moment typified all of our interactions with Dave, who was always pleasant to work with, cordial, and humble.
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The Chiaroscuro in an Artisan’s Eye – Volume II, Issue 4
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Every so often, an artist comes along who captures an audience’s imagination and redefines what it is that pleases the eye. The form of expression can be widely varied: Caravaggio tested the limits of biblical expression, Picasso redefined what beauty was, Dali bent our perception, and Warhol repeated images ad nauseam. In the past few years, an artist of such unique perspective has given us a glimpse of his vision and added a darkly wonderful view to our collective subconscious. Dave McKean is probably best known for his ground breaking work illustrating the covers for Neil Gaiman’s wonderful Sandman series. The images on these comics and graphic novels only hint at the scope of this man’s talent. His work on Black Orchid, Arkham Asylum and the recently released Vertigo Tarot Deck was phenomenal in their impact and popularity. However, there is so much more to this artist. His music, pen and ink work, and photography have begun to create something of a sub-genre unto itself. Here are Dave McKean’s words and pictures. His perception is more than mere trend to be aped by those less talented; it is the unrivaled voice of a true artiste.
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Let’s start at the beginning…where were you raised and where did you receive your training?
I was born in Maddenhead, England, just west of London, and I went to art school for four years at Bumpshire College of Art and Design.
Have you always been an artistic person? That is, as a child were you always one with pencils and pens?
Yes, I think so. Always drawing things. I played music for a long time as well, so it was always a balance between the two roots, and then eventually having to come down on one side, really.
Art vs. music: Do you find that your ability in one enhances the other?
Yeah, they trade off of each other. It’s nice not to have pressures of any kind to play music. I can just relax. It’s like therapy. It keeps a good balance and yet, one is always present in the other. I only write music with images in mind, and I always work to music; I always have something playing in the background.
What kind of stuff are you listening to these days?
Right across the board. All kinds of things. I’m a big jazz fan as a bassist, but from there, all over the place.
So, you’re a Jaco Pastorius fan?
Oh, certainly. At the moment I have John Zorn playing quite a lot. I really like him. There’s a band that has only done one album called Rage Against the Machine who I really, really like. It really is all sorts. My wife plays classical violin, so I like an awful lot of classical music as well.
Do you remember the first art piece that you sold?
Sold? [laughs] I used to just give stuff away, because I couldn’t stand to have it around the place too long. So, the first thing that sold would be well into actually doing things professionally. It would be Hellblazer covers and things like that.
Do you find that once you finish a piece, it’s done and you jettison it from your mind and therefore your environment?
Pretty much; certainly up until two or three years ago. It was a common pattern. The next piece, whether it was a cover or whatever it was going to be, was going to be the best thing ever and then the doing of it was either the painful struggle or it would go fine, and it would be fun, and then, at the end, I would end up with something that was miles short of being what it was supposed to be. That’s life. Just in the last couple of years, a few have actually got pretty close and I kind of like them still, but only recently I’ve really started to like to keep things hanging around for a little bit.
Do you find yourself to be your own worst critic?
I’ve no idea. I think I could write a very accurate critique, because I know exactly every stroke that’s wrong with these things. I think it must be true for most people making a painting, writing, music, or whatever. There’s a balance you like to strike. I mean, if somebody just comes up to me at a table and says, “How come your stuff is so bad?,” I would leap to its defense. I mean, they’re still my children. I’m allowed to tell them to shut up, but I sort of tense when other people do it. That’s just self defense. On my own, I know exactly what’s wrong with the stuff and I’m more than happy to rip it to shreds, because I don’t really see any point in trying to pretend that it’s otherwise. I mean, there are a few things now I’m pretty pleased with and will defend, but the rest, for one reason or another, failed and better to just accept it and get on with it and try to put the things right, rather than have a fight about it.
Do you find the things you notice in some of your work that are right, you say, “I need to remember that because the next time I come into this, maybe I can incorporate it with some other things that were right,” and come up with, ultimately, a perfect piece?
Yes, what you end up doing is moving from a vocabulary that is not very well-developed and often quite borrowed from other people, and [with] a lot of tricks and mannerisms you pick up from other people, (sometimes knowingly because you love something by somebody else and would just love to do that as well, and sometimes quite unknowingly,) sometimes it just goes in and [it’s not] until someone points it out that you realize what you’ve done. You move from that to developing a vocabulary of your own, and little things show up all the time; you’re thinking, “I haven’t seen that before and it says what I want to say,” and it goes on file and becomes part of your vocabulary and then you look back and you’ve actually put quite a few sentences together on your own. That’s quite a nice feeling.
The flipside of that is, how do you feel when you see other people’s work and you say, “Man, that’s mine. I do that.” At this point, your style is fairly well-known, and I’m starting to see other artists doing Sandman cover knock-offs.
I’ve seen a couple. Your response is two things. One is an immediate bristle, you think, “Leave me alone,” and the other one is, “Christ, I did the same. I did exactly the same.” I’m sure these people will develop and become their own artist as well. I certainly can’t criticize, because I’m just as bad as everybody else.
Were you disappointed with the distribution Cages got in America?
It’s hard to say, really. I mean, it came out of a small company. It’s an odd little book. It doesn’t have anything particularly obvious going for it. It’s not a super hero thing. It’s not an action adventure thing. It’s not a film licensed [book] or all that. It’s hard to see immediately where any kind of guaranteed audience would be, but for all of that, it certainly sold well enough for me to do it. So, I’m not so bothered about that. The main problem was at the time, all the distributors really were centered around Marvel and DC. It was always very hard for an independent company to get a look in, and a lot of shops were the same. There have always been a few shops who have been wonderfully outgoing in trying to push unusual books or just things that they liked, and you try to rely on those to get the message across. I’m always hearing tha
t there are – God knows how many thousands – five thousand outlets for comics in America. I think you can probably count the ones that would actually help you, as an independent comics producer trying to make something for an adult audience, on the fingers of one or two hands. So, of course it’s most frustrating because what I would really would like is to reach the audience who I think would like this stuff, and they are not going to comics shops.
Would you ever collect it into one volume?
I’m working on the last few pages of it now. It will all be finished soon so, Kitchen Sink will put out the final magazine, and then, yes, a few months down the line it will definitely be [put] together. It really is a novel. It’s coming out in chapters simply because that’s sort of established in the format and it’s a way of paying for it to be done along the way.
Did Arkham Asylum end up being the project that you and Grant Morrison wanted it to be, or did the powers-that-be at DC force some changes?
The Joker’s costume was the only thing that they requested to change, which I don’t think was a terrible request. We certainly didn’t jump up and down about it. No, it’s completely our fault, I would think. [laughs] It’s one of those things where you try a lot of things, fired with enthusiasm, and some of them work and a lot of them didn’t and that’s just the way it goes.
I think it’s a beautiful book.
Thanks. Of all the books I’ve done, (obviously because that one’s sold so many copies,) I’ve got more work from that book than anything else, more people have seen it than anything else. You can’t be annoyed at that, but obviously, I would have liked it to have been just a better book.
Do you think that when Cages came out, people looked at Arkham Asylum and said “Wait a minute, is this the same guy?” because one is so lush and the other is stark pen and ink?
No doubt. I know it seemed like a big step to one side, I really don’t think it was, though. The paint and the collage and bits of clocks and what not are all well and good, but that’s just the purpose. The actual drawings are the same. The storytelling, as far as I’m concerned, was pretty much the same, although it was a lot tighter in Cages. As far as I’m concerned, it was a natural step. I have no doubt the reaction by other people was, “This is out in left field.”
The Sandman covers have made you pretty well-known. What drew you to doing them? Was it just that you wanted to be a part of the book?
When I started doing them, it was really at a planning stage with Neil. I was at the meeting when he agreed to do the series, not knowing what on earth he was going to do, and kicking around ideas on how it was going to look. I thought he should look like Bono in a Clannad video. He had other ideas and various other people pitched in ideas. So, the book really didn’t have any kind of reputation or any kind of idea of what it was going to be. I enjoyed working with Neil and it was natural to do the covers. I was already doing the Hellblazer covers, but was sort of drawing to an end on that. I really liked doing a cover every month. It’s a great place to try things out.
Do you think that the covers influenced the book, or at least the market’s readiness to pick it up?
I’m not sure what it did, as far as the comics market goes; that really has been a very unusual chain of events. I don’t think that anybody really knows why it gathered momentum so well, other than the fact that it is a very well-written story and there was a lack of well-written stories around at the time and there still is. And Neil knows his audience quite well. He knows how to play to what people expect, and therefore always be one step ahead of the game, and all those things a good writer can do. I mean, my reaction from a lot of comic retailers was that they were too esoteric and they were always irritated by me changing the logo all the time. Yet, I think where the covers really sort of earn their keep was in crossing over to a market outside of comics. I think it was a lot easier for people to pick up the books, recognizing something that had more akin to a novel or a movie place or a video cover, rather than something that looked obviously like a comic. I think it broke down a lot of those reservations very quickly.
Were you happy with Mr. Punch?
Actually, yes, I was happy with Mr. Punch. I think of all the things that I have done in collaboration with anybody, that was the one that got closest to a well-worked out book…probably because it was the right length. I think Violent Cases and Signal to Noise especially suffered from being too short. Black Orchid had all kinds of problems. Arkham had all kinds of problems. Personally, I think this one got it right. It’s just my cup of tea. It’s the kind of story that I like very much. It’s about an internal world, internal landscapes. I’m still pretty pleased with it.
Was the “Vertigo Tarot Card Deck” something that you had always wanted to do or did it just sort of happen?
Again, somebody just asked me to do it. One of the commissioning editors at DC and Neil had kicked ideas around involving the Tarot. Rachel Pollack, who had been writing some comics for DC happened to be a well-established expert and had written lots of books on the Tarot long before ever doing any comics. So, it just seemed like a good idea and then as soon as I had given it some thought I started reading about Tarot, because I was not an expert at all. These iconic images are just great to work with. There are always endless interpretations available and I was surprised that since there had been so many interpretations, and it had attracted so many major artists, that nobody had ever really done a modern deck. I was quite keen to do that and I still haven’t left it alone. I’m working on another; maybe not a whole deck, maybe it’ll be just a Major Arcana, but another version.
Is that something that is going to be released?
Yes, I’ve started co-publishing some books with an American art agent in California [Allen Spiegel] and we’ve just done a book of photographs, which has just been a real pleasure. We want to continue the momentum, so this would be the next book.
Moving on to something a little bit different, last night, I took some time and listened to Adrift and Salient [a CD of music composed by Dave McKean & Jon J Muth-Ed.]. I gotta tell you, it was a fascinating listen and I was taken aback by your strength as a composer. Is that something we will be seeing more of, you in a recording studio?
I’d like to. I’ve got some friends at Virgin who keep threatening to allow me to release an album, but it’s just getting the time to do it, and getting the time to do it right. It’s not really something you can throw together. The music on that CD was really just made to be backing music at exhibitions. There’s some melody there, there’s some composition, but it’s very improvised on the spot in the studio. Whereas, if I were actually going to do a proper CD, I think I’d really like to compose something properly and leave room for interpretation and what not, but really make a piece of music that works and that takes a little time. It takes getting a bunch of musicians together, sitting down, and really getting a rapport going. None of which I really have time for, at the moment. What I am doing are some CD ROM projects and hopefully I’m making short films next year, but all of that will involve music. So, I’m sort of edging into it. I’m doing soundtrack music and getting to play, getting to record, and keep my hand in, and put some of these composition ideas down, and actually have a purpose for them.
Do you plan on doing it as mostly instrumentals or will you also do some singing?
Almost certainly there will be instrumentals for the CD ROM. There will be some melody for the individual pieces and then just turbulence and background stuff bubbling away underneath for the rest of it. I started to try to get a couple of songs together, including some that Neil has written some lyrics to, and we’ve started to toy around with those and gotten a couple done. Again, who knows what for, but at some point, I’d like to do some more of that.
It’s funny, but on Adrift and Salient there is a song called “Small Room”, and I was listening to the lyrics that you wrote and the way they were presented, and I thought that it almost sounded like Stephen Sondheim’s stuff. Is that something
that you were ever exposed to?
The music that was in my house all the time when I was growing up was American musicals, which my mother loved and jazz from the forties-fifties: Errol Gardner, Duke Ellington, that sort of stuff my father loved. That’s what’s gone in the deepest and very little of that I really listen to now, but it’s just in there. You can’t help it. Neil is the big Stephen Sondheim fan.
Is he really? [laughs]
Yeah. Huge. He got me into going out to see Sunday in the Park With George and Assassins and things. Assassins is the most amazing thing I’ve seen on stage, I think. So yeah… It’s funny you should mention that. Almost since we first met, which is about eight years ago, we’ve talked about doing a musical at some point.
That would be so cool.
We’ve always been kicking those ideas around.
Sunday in the Park With George; I cannot get through that thing dry-eyed.
I know. It got me as well. It really did just go in very deep. I saw it at the Festival Hall in London a couple of years ago and it was amazing.
What can you tell me about your creative process? What goes into deciding which medium to use: photography over pen & ink; painting over three-dimensional pieces?
It’s a mix between just what I’m into at the time; I just go through phases of liking heavily three-dimensional stuff, photographs, fan-out work, computer generated stuff, or whatever, and then what the script demands. Some things just cannot be slotted into what I happen to be doing at the time and demand their own solutions. Most of it can, I just tend to go in phases. You’ll get a bunch of Sandman covers and a bunch of CD covers and a bunch of book covers, a bit of this and a bit of that and they’ll all have a similar feel to them, because that was just what I happened to be into at the time. Chances are, people will only see one of those things and it looks like I keep jumping around all the time. Actually, an awful lot of work gets done while I’m into pen and ink stage. It gets dissipated out across a lot of different media.
Carpe Noctem Interviews - Volume 1 Page 2