Trenton Doyle Hancock: Me a Mound

by Trenton Doyle Hancock (Artist)

It's the Mounds versus the Vegans in their inaugural published battle, and the heat is on. This first monograph and storybook from a major young African-American artist describes an ancient the peaceful, organic Mounds may have been created by the same father, Homerbuctas, who made their violent, nightmarish enemies the Vegans, but the two clans have been caught up in a tragi-comic struggle through nearly a decade's installations, paintings, drawings and etchings. Me a Mound combines biblical allusions, gags, food, and sex as it describes their saga in Hancock's laconic Texan prose and lays it out in his explosively colorful paintings. It's filled with new work created just for the book and a comprehensive overview of Hancock's oeuvre, on top of the entire Mounds versus Vegans saga to date, plus trading cards and inserts. Once readers have ventured through the die-cut cover into Hancock's universe--whether they are followers of contemporary art who recognize his name from two successive recent Whitney Biennials, fans of graphic novels, or general-interest browsers drawn in by the book's bright, cartoonish look--they will find it hard to see the world in quite the same way again.

Genres: Art

168 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[J. Blair Hartman III · Rating 5 out of 5]

acquired taste perhaps through all my living and seeing

[Julian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Me A Mound contains a brief biography as well as an in-depth look at Trenton Doyle Hancock's narrative work (all written by the artist himself, there are no essays by art historians or curators). The biography (also written by the artist) is fragmented and contained in 10 different perforated trading cards which are part of a larger group that, when removed from the book, make a larger image of one of Hancock's pieces.

I have mixed feelings about the format – it appears to be an attempt at combining art books and comics but comes off a little awkward. There are maybe 20 images of Hancock's work in full view – all the others are close ups which crop the images to varying degrees. The pages which do contain full views of Hancock's work are muddied by having blocks of color or close ups framing them – this makes many of the images difficult to look at when compared to other catalogues and art books (although this format does have potential benefits none of them seem to be utilized). Another strange element is that many of the pages contain Hancock's narratives on little pink slips which are part of the binding (meaning that many of the pictures, which were already hard to see because they crossed the “gutter” between pages are made even more difficult to look at because a slip of paper further obscures the image).

The book (and Hancock's art in general) owes a debt to underground comics and Dave Sim in particular (the trading cards I mentioned earlier are a mini-version of Sim's “Mind Game” comics). The fantastic visuals from the exploded text to the anti-minimal illustration techniques (particularly the hotel room where Torpedoboy takes the prostitute) recalls Cerebus as well as “outsider artists” like Darger and Finster. The book attempts a similar kind of narrative and formal experimentation like that found in Sim's work while tying itself to the format of an art book (Hancock himself has described his work as a combination of comic illustration and the history of painting). The book's arrangement, content and visuals all hover between states without ever unifying their disparate elements: it is not a great art book because most of the images are cropped or obscured in some fashion, it is not a great narrative work because the art contains text which competes with the storytelling device (pink slips) while the last section appears to be tacked on. The jacket of Me A Mound is a cutout which opens up for the text underneath. This visual strategy, used in many of Hancock's finished works, hints at how successful actual experimentation in the book format would have been as a presentation tool for Hancock's narrative as well as images of his work and installations. Re-creating Hancock's visual strategies in the narrative format (instead of jutting disparate images together and obscuring the images with narrative slips) would have added an additional dimension to the work instead of standing it awkwardly somewhere between storytelling device and art book (which, by the way, do not need to be separate).

So, why 4 stars?
The images themselves are highly detailed and and as good as reproductions of artwork get. Additionally, Me A Mound is a nice all around introduction to Hancock himself as well as his work (although his recent paintings have departed significantly from what is on display here). Although it is a tad bit annoying to look at artwork that is surrounded by details of other works or blocks of color it wasn't so terrible that I couldn't stop looking. I suppose I was intrigued by the hint of a creative book format and was just highly disappointed to see the way it was ultimately realized. The book isn't average – it's just not great either.

[Lou · Rating 5 out of 5]

this books exists pretty nicely as a work on it's own, rather than just a exhibition catalogue.