Speaking as someone who’s spent time in arts administration, it can be a daunting place. Egos and budgets are forever at odds, and emotions run high. This world comes across in all its contradictions in Brecht Evens’s “The Making Of”, a Belgian comic published on this side of the pond by Drawn and Quarterly. Blending cynicism and idealism, it brings insight to this chaotic landscape, coming up with a message that encompasses more than art for art’s sake.
Written and illustrated by Brecht Evens
The Making Of is the follow-up to international sensation Brecht Evens’s Eisner-nominated debut, The Wrong Place. With lush watercolors and his characteristic wit, Evens details the fumbling, amateurish foibles of the participants of a small art festival in the Flemish countryside.
Peterson is invited to a small town as an honored guest. From the moment he arrives, things start going wrong, and since no one seems ready to step in, Peterson takes over the show. He decides to build a giant garden gnome as a symbol of Flemish identity, but the construction process brings buried tensions to the surface as the other artists become jealous of Peterson’s authority. In The Making Of, Evens delves deep into the petty tensions, small misunderstandings, and deadpan humor that pervade modern relationships.
With a keen eye for the subtleties of body language, Evens’s The Making Of builds on the iconic visual style showcased in the much-lauded The Wrong Place, which was published around the world. Sweeping watercolors jump off the page, surrealist scenery intermingles with crowds of people, and small suburban plot homes have never looked so lovely.
It’s a good thing that solicit covers so much of the plot; it gives me an excuse to ramble about Evens’s art, and I can’t get enough of it. Bright washes of colour – overlapping one another, blending into each other, or standing out in poppy contrast – are the star of the show. Even the characters are colour coded, from the green of our main character, Peterson, to the raspberry red of the art festival’s organizer.
That the dialogue of each character is coloured to match makes for some interesting storytelling opportunities – you can always identify who’s speaking, without having to follow the long tail of a speech bubble. This is particularly helpful during the brainstorming sequences, with Peterson talking over his fellow artists and trying to marshal them in a coherent direction.
Encompassing a rainbow of shades, the jungley suburban gardens are breathtaking. They veer from detail to abstraction and back again, and the loose layouts, sans panel borders, give them the chance to sprawl.
It’s not all about splashes of colour and inky washes, though – as the scaffolding on the cover demonstrates, Evens’s draughtsmanship is some pretty serious stuff. And interestingly, the precise linework only comes up when Peterson is actively trying to box in some aspect of the festival. The rigid shapes offset all the loose lines, driving home the stubbornness of Peterson’s character.
All told, Peterson isn’t terribly likeable – his moral failings add up over the course of the narrative, making him less and less sympathetic. But he’s an excellent foil; to the earnest and well-intentioned festival organizer, and to his inexpert but enthusiastic fellow artists. Of course, the message here isn’t as simple as all that – “Being open and creative is better than being a controlling dick!” – but the more the limitations of Peterson’s vision are exposed, the easier it is to appreciate the efforts of his colleagues for what they are.
On a related note, one thread that runs through “The Making Of” – without being resolved – is the topic of mental illness. Shaggy-haired, colourless, and communicating only in shouts, Dennis has been included in the festival as something of a courtesy. When he won’t stop drawing his trademark spirals on every surface that presents itself, he gets locked up. This, of course, proves to be the most damaging thing that could have been done – and to the one participant in the festival who had a completely consistent vision.
It’s a neat turn, and it adds to the mildly ironic, satirical tone of the book without necessarily pushing a solution. But it also makes us even more skeptical of Peterson, who completely fails to appreciate Dennis’s needs, in effect preferring his project over any sense of humanity.
Humanity, in the end, is what “The Making Of” values most of all – and without forcing our protagonist to any real epiphany, this value shines through the work as a whole. It’s the secondary characters and their quirks that add up – the portraits of imperfect people who are striving, obviously and in earnest. There’s not a lot of room for earnestness in the urban art world as Evens portrays it, but the good that a bit of earnestness and humanity could do comes across vividly.
“The Making Of” is a gorgeous, painterly book with a refreshing message, from an overseas creator on the up-and-up. For anyone who’s ever been tangled up in a grant proposal – or seen their own project go massively awry – it’s an enlightening read, and a perfect tonic for what ails you.
