Andreea Saioc,

Editor (Art)

 

Chris Ware’s graphic novel, Building Stories, comes simply in a box. But its content is anything but simple. Three superbly crafted stories are delivered through 14 ‘easily misplaced elements’: a hard-bound Little Golden Book, a folded board, a tabloid reminding of century-old Sunday newspapers and an opulent madness of leaflets, pamphlets and standalone strips.

What appears to be Chris Ware’s chef d’oeuvre has been greatly anticipated by both critiques and admirers and the extracts that have been circulating in publications such as The New Yorker or the New York Times for more than a decade increased tension even further.

It all started when a much younger Ware- a student at the University of Texas in the late 80′s created a two dimensional art ‘comics box’. He was inspired by a couple of exceptional objects d’art such as Marcel Duchamp’s famed Museum in a Box and a Treasure Box of Famous Comics from the 1930′s. Many years later, after the idea had bloomed into a beautifully matured, multi-layered work of art, Ware wrote on the back of his box: ”with the increasing electronic incorporeality of existence, sometimes it’s reassuring- perhaps even necessary- to have something to hold on to.”

The central character that viewers are invited to follow seems to be, judging by the space given to her in the novel, a lone, nameless florist who lost her left leg as a child. Also a former art student, she lives on the third floor of a 98-year-old building in Chicago, together with a bitterly fallen out of love couple and a landlady with plenty of bygone years and stories, but no one to stay by her side.

Reviewer, Glen Weldon, says “as we read, these stories intertwine, these characters deepen. The medium allows us to adopt a perspective that is not merely omniscient but truly godlike: Ware’s characters remain trapped in their tiny panels, but we are above them, looking in, and can see what they can’t — the travails that await them — with a simple flick of our eyes across the page.”

The novel is a luxuriant interplay of colliding narratives with every image developing into a range of brilliantly illuminating diagrams who repay the patient reader by gradually taking him or her further into the story. A close-up of a sleeping woman flourishes into the complete image of her room, only to afterward reveal in utmost detail all of her thoughts until the last, along with their significant genesis. The narrative constructs itself as an on-going answer at whatever question the reader may have; in this veritable Peeping Tom show nothing is left unexposed.

The God-like artist makes his presence felt as the cadaver of a baby mouse takes a character back to an old abortion, ”what a ridiculous metaphor . . . really, could it have been any more obvious? I was embarrassed for who or whatever was coming up with the script for my life’”

The rooms are laid bare before the force of our scrutiny and each detail works to perfectly portray a world that is usually kept secreted. The artist unleashes specks of dust, minimalistic drawn wrinkles, tampons and chipped nail polish. All of them mirror a completely furnished imagery of desolation and human despair through curiously simple lines, basic colours and seemingly naïve shapes.

We almost never see processes, their work is rendered invisible, but we what we do see is images. The question of how have the characters reached these points is potentially fuelled by the same creative principle that does not impose a certain reading order on those avid to make sense of this brilliantly elaborate graphic novel. “It’s a process that reminds of a human predisposition not to remember events chronologically. Ultimately, one might find chaos as being most revelatory,” says Ware.

Paper is not flesh. However, Chris Ware’s fictional world seems to hurt, to itch, to choke, to blaze and to agonize precisely as the real world does. Its consistency is not given by exhaustive form; featuring real living humans wouldn’t make any more real. But the emotions it sends are exceptionally alive. The way I see it, the universe of Building Stories is a train station where everybody is constantly missing the train.