Marc Bell's Hot Potatoe: Fine Ahtwerks : 2001-2008

by Marc Bell

“A gifted . . . cartoonist . . . The delight of his work is in the play of a free-associating and funny imagination.” –Ken Johnson, The New York Times

Marc Bell’s Hot Potatoe seamlessly combines more than a decade’s worth of comics activities with a lifelong devotion to, as Bell calls it, “Fine Ahtwerks.” Part artmonograph, part comics collection, Hot Potatoe is filled with mixed-media cardboard constructions, watercolor drawings, altered found texts, and Bell’s most intense, dizzying comics from the contemporary avant-garde comics anthologies Kramers Ergot and The Ganzfeld . Bell’s works have their roots in draftsmanship, typography, and old-fashioned gags, but morph into assemblages that connect his images into real space. His comics are funny, seat-of-thepants narratives that give the characters an inner life.

Represented by the Adam Baumgold Gallery in Manhattan, Bell is one of the leading lights in the new emphasis on drawing in the art world. He comes on like a stepchild of R. Crumb, Ray Johnson, and Basquiat, armed with a dashing and looping rapidograph.

Genres: Comics, Art, Graphic Novels

269 pages, Hardcover

First published August 15, 2009

Reviews

[Eddie Watkins]

A bit of overkill here, and I'm not too keen on most of his collage/drawing/sculptural objects, but I'm crazy about his drawing and coloring, and even his nonstop trickstery goofiness doesn't get on my nerves too much. There's just something about the physicality of his drawings that gets to me, how everything is so crammed together it all becomes part of a continuum with no separation. He gets a lot from Philip Guston, and acknowledges as much with a long comic included here with a protagonist by the name of Guston (or some variant). There is an obsession with thickness and layering, creating a world that feels like a big living pile of everything you could imagine; a kind of crowded dirty utopia.

[Miss Susan]

Oh my God this book was a headache. X_x I might've gotten along with it better if it hadn't been assigned for class? Because I don't really think this is a book meant to be read straight through, it's more an art gallery in print that you can flip though every now and then to spend a few minutes looking at an installation. Reading it all at once is a headache inducing exercise in attempting to pull out some kind of meaning or coherence or even just a way to approach each page ('how long am I meant to be looking at this? Is there a point where it will start to make sense?' - me on nearly every single page of this collection). X_x I need to pick up something fluffy and easy to read next for a palate cleanser. 2 stars

[Jeff]

Hot Potatoe is a pretty amazing journey through the unique mind of Marc Bell. Given the idiosyncratic (and somewhat repetitious) aspect of his comics work, some of this material does begin to blend into a homogeneous mass after a while. If you can't appreciate Bell's style, you'll never make it all the way through these pages. On the other hand, if the quirky nature of Bell's deceptively simple drawings appeals to you, this is the sort of volume that you can dip into and always find something kooky, strange, and rewarding.

[Drawn And Quarterly]

"Boundary-destroying, wacked-out (and beautifully drawn) material from Canadian artist Marc Bell that will leave you feeling as if you have bees in your head." -Minneapolis Star Tribune

"Marc Bell is a riddle wrapped in a conundrum further wrapped in salty bacon." -LA Weekly

[Wayne]

O.k. Art book. Nice design, not reaaly my favorite art style.

[Kim]

His most complicated (in style-wise) comics are the best.