Richard McGuire: Then and There, Here and Now

The illustrator, designer and musician Richard McGuire has lived a thousand artistic lives. With the graphic novel Here, he created a cult book, which is currently being made into a film by director Robert Zemeckis, starring Tom Hanks and Robin Wright. In the 1980s, McGuire was part of the boundary-breaking avant-garde art scene in Downtown New York, which mixed art with music and launched the genre of street art. Cartoonmuseum Basel—Centre for Narrative Art presents the first comprehensive retrospective Richard McGuire. Then and There, Here and Now on the wide-ranging oeuvre and 40-year career of this multidisciplinary artist. At the same time, his first overview publication is being released by Christoph Merian Verlag.

With his graphic novel Here (2014) the US-American artist Richard McGuire, born in 1957, created a book that is rightly regarded as a significant driving force for comics. The 300-page graphic novel, which is currently being made into a film, jumbles up the past, present and future of our planet in one small place. Here is an ode to life in the form of a dizzying narrative, characterised by cleverly simplified aesthetics and a minimalist language of forms: Set in a living room based on the one in the McGuire family home, Here lets us travel through billions of years as if in a time machine—from the first appearance of life on Earth, past the moment when the house and its living room are standing, and into the distant future. The basis for the graphic novel was a short six-page comic strip that McGuire had published back in 1989, in Art Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly’s comic magazine RAW. In 2016, the graphic novel, which has since been translated into 20 languages, was awarded the Fauve d’or, the highest French accolade for graphic novels.

The exhibition presents McGuire’s beginnings as a street artist whose stencil drawings of a character called Ixnae Nix were seen in 1980s New York, as well as his time as co-founder of the pioneering post-punk band Liquid Liquid, for which he, the bassist, created a much-sampled iconic bass line that was adopted by Grandmaster Flash and Melle Mel.

The spectrum of the exhibition extends from illustrations and covers for The New Yorker, which he worked on after the band broke up, to children’s books, toys, and animations that he designed and directed, through to originals—for his key work Here and for a current, as yet untitled graphic novel that will merge visual art with music.

The show and book comprise the enthralling and vital essence of an artistic development that never rests and, driven by creative curiosity, constantly opens doors for itself. The presented body of work, despite its enormous breadth, also has many constants and internal references. It is therefore no surprise that certain aspects can be found throughout McGuire’s oeuvre, from its beginnings to the present day. The artist started out at the interface between sound and image, and now his latest works bring these two sensory impressions together again: There is Listen (2022), a book created in the wake of the isolation caused by the corona pandemic, which gives graphic form to sounds around McGuire’s house north of New York City. There are also the sound drawings produced in recent years, which act as a kind of notation invented by McGuire, as well as works for a graphic novel that will look into the meaning of sounds.

Cartoonmuseum Basel
Centre for Narrative Art
St. Alban-Vorstadt 28
4052 Basel
T +41 61 226 33 60 / info [​at​] cartoonmuseum.ch

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