The autographic impulse: illustrative dislocations and dissolutions in contemporary illustration
Walker, James (2011) The autographic impulse: illustrative dislocations and dissolutions in contemporary illustration. In: Illustration & Writing: Visual Language, 3-4 November 2011, Manchester Metropolitan University. (Unpublished)
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This paper proposes that the work of Graham Rawle and Matthew Richardson represents a contemporary autographic palimpsest in which the ur-text of the source material is dissolved in the fluidly of the word and image relationship. In particular that such artefact, constructed illustrations are a form of autographic (Goodman 1980) communication. In which traces of its archival form are constantly present and as Walter Benjamin notes "storytelling that thrives for a long time...is itself an artisan form of communication" that "does not aim to convey the pure essence of the thing, like information or a report. It sinks the thing into the life of the storyteller, in order to bring it out of him again. Thus traces of the storyteller cling to the story." (Benjamin 1973 rp 1992:91) As such the reader/viewer is engaged in an immersive experience that provokes a spatial and temporal dislocation in which autographic traces of both the illustrator and authors narrative text are equally present. It is therefore argued that artefact/archival formed illustrations signify their elemental archaeological origins and the shadow sign of the authors biographic, archival impulse (Foster 2004).
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