It was a brilliant move for a shy artist: Jamie Hewlett’s founding of Gorillaz fulfilled his dream of being part of a rock band, but at the same time never having to be on stage. Damon Albarn wrote the music while the British illustrator provided the illustrations. An idea that would have exhausted itself quickly in its meta-reflexive irony, if not done after a short time.
But she didn’t. Because the Blur singer provided the big melodies and production tricks and Hewlett provided a brilliantly composed universe of symbols that has long since dug itself into the collective memory of music lovers.
But to reduce the 49-year-old to just his Gorillaz activities would be a disgrace that only blockheads who have never picked up a comic in their life and prefer to buy art postcards instead of going to museums and galleries can afford. A magnificent illustrated book from TASCHEN-Verlag (“Jamie Hewlett”, now available as a nice-price version) celebrates Hewlett’s complete works on more than 400 pages. In short, it is an experience not to be missed.
First success with “Tank Girl”
Of course, there are excerpts from the legendary “Tank Girl” comics, with which the Briton was successful in the comic magazine “Deadline” founded by Brett Ewins and Steve Dillon in 1988 and immediately conquered a large audience. It took more than seven years until people in this country became aware of the bizarre mixture of feminist-based punk symbolism and the “Mad Max” story. And probably only because the film adaptation of the material by director Rachel Talalay of the same name was released in cinemas that year.
The film, starring Lori Petty, may have stripped the original subversive undertones in favor of clumsy jokes. But in view of the increasingly boring comic blockbusters of recent years, it urgently deserves new viewers because the big guns that usually set the tone in action films have been replaced here with lots of sex and dirtyness. This underground wonder woman has balls, boobs and a cheeky mouth.
and found at every Comic Con
With generous examples, the illustrated book is also reminiscent of numerous other works by the artist that are virtually unknown in Germany. There are highlights from the strip “Get The Freebies”, which appeared in 1996/97 in the influential style magazine “The Face”. (Hard to believe how good this British paper used to be – and not just because they let Hewlett do it!) The main characters are Terry Phoo, a gay kung fu law enforcement officer and Buddhist, and Whitey Action, a perpetually stoned, enigmatic anarchist . A damn clever satire on pop culture and life in Britain in the 90’s, of course. But also a wonderfully explicitly designed pulp number.
Everything from the Gorillaz – and much more
In addition to never-ending insights into the pool of (partly unpublished) Gorillaz illustrations, Hewlett’s side projects also get their appropriate (memory) space: In 2008, the illustrator traveled to Bangladesh for Oxfam to portray a village that was dying after devastating floods threatened to disappear. At the latest with this work, Hewlett matured into a serious, adult artist who combined reportage techniques of street journalism with expressive illustration techniques in water color images.
His work for the music-artistic-art project “Monkey: Journey to the West” is also recognized. For this, the 49-year-old worked again with Albarn – and the images collected in the volume show how much Hewlett has meanwhile emancipated itself from its early works. A circumstance that was not always well received by his fans.
But followers of the first hour as well as demanding comic fans should find pleasure in Hewlett’s previously little-known sketches and sideline activities, which also make up a large part of the book, which is enriched with an interview. From rough drawings to ink paintings to oil paintings, everything is here that the Brit has let off steam in the past.
Whether it’s rough erotic pictorial compositions or “Adolf the Fashion Fascist Student” (a cheeky pictorial demonstration of the cracked rumor that Hitler is said to have tried to study fashion design at Liverpool University at the beginning of the 20th century): it becomes clear here too , that the adult Gorillaz works only have a fraction of Hewlett’s staging possibilities and graphic potential.
Pop Culture Seismograph
On the other hand, Hewlett is particularly brilliant when it cleverly brushes the icons of popular culture against the grain (like in a blasphemous version of the Last Supper of “Star Wars”), when it picks up visual media that have received far too little attention (like tarot cards in the Saatchi Gallery exhibition “ The Suggestionists” in London) or makes conspicuous fun of the male drooling and drooling view of the female body that is so prevalent in the mainstream of the comics industry.
Hewlett therefore also set a provocative, almost touching counterpoint with his photo series “Honey”, in which he made his wife Emma de Caunes the heroine of a fictional sexploitation movie in the 60s and 70s style à la Russ Meyer, Jess Franco or Tinto Brass . The artist created his own sleazy film with several film posters, which were then displayed in London beautifully dimmed for the right train station cinema atmosphere – according to his own statements, also because he was influenced by the porn wave that was still rampant due to the permanent availability on the Internet more than turned off.
A drawn meditation on the structure of trees (“Pines”) forms the antidote to such playful experiments and proves that Jamie Hewlett is one of the most versatile and inspiring visual artists of our time.
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