Abstract thought fills McKean’s picture book

By Keith Demanche
HippoPress.com

“Pictures That Tick: short narrative book one,” by Dave McKean, 2002, Hourglass/Allen Spiegel Fine Arts, 184 pages.

“Pictures That Tick” is an oversized edition of collected graphic stories, a picture book if you will.

This picture book, though, is definitely for adults, in its abstract nature at least if not in disturbing content. Dave McKean is an artist in every sense of the word. While not for everyone, his art connects with many people because of the raw energy and emotion captured in each distorted or grainy image, or sometimes just in simple lines.

It is hard to categorize McKean’s work because he doesn’t limit his media: pen and ink drawing, painting, photography, and computer-generated images are all on his palette of possibilities. In his books, he writes the text and designs and lays out the material as well. Oh, and don’t forget his budding movie-making career—his major motion picture directorial debut is forthcoming in 2004, an adaptation of the graphic novel “Signal to Noise,” created with Neil Gaiman.

“Pictures that Tick” is a collection of short pieces, most of which have been published before in assorted magazines, comic books and collections. Many of the pages have no words whatsoever, simply images the reader must connect on their own, with McKean’s subtle hand behind each move.

Two pieces stand out to me, “Ash” and “His Story.” Both are a mix of computer-enhanced paintings, photography and possibly sculptures—it’s hard to tell sometimes.

“Ash,” as McKean writes in a brief intro, is a horror story of sorts, the main image being a girl with a branch growing through her. McKean tells Ash’s story of growing up with a stepmother and without love in a series of disturbing images: the branch grows out of her mouth, pulling her higher and leaving her more and more detached from everything below.

“His Story” is about a father’s life story: “hard and sharp. It was cold and smooth. And clear. I couldn’t really see it. Just the sharp edges which I tried not to touch.” It is represented as a shard of glass in the paintings. When the father dies, the child tries to see the world through the piece of glass, but only when the child has grown old can he fully comprehend what it meant:

“(O)ne morning, I woke up and realised that I was the same age as my father had been when he told me his story. That was a big shock to me, I can tell you. I don’t think I had any breakfast that morning.”
What makes mere stories or pictures become art and what makes a painter/designer an artist is the process of discovery. In “Pictures That Tick,” McKean’s pieces are often made of simple parts, but when taken together they reveal great depth and insight. They force the reader to find common ground between seemingly separate objects: readers must discover truths for themselves in what is being shown.

Keith Demanche can be reached at hippo@hippopress.com