Museums, Basel
Richard McGuire
Then and There, Here and Now
Cartoonmuseum BaselWith the graphic novel Here, published in 2014, the illustrator, designer and musician Richard McGuire (b. 1957) of the USA created a cult book, which mixes up the evolution of our planet in one small place – and is currently being made into a film by director Robert Zemeckis, with Tom Hanks and Robin Wright in the leading roles. Here is an ode to life, characterised by simplified aesthetics and a minimalist language of forms: Set in an anonymous lounge, 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 future. The basis for the 300-page graphic novel was a short comic strip that the artist published back in 1989, in Art Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly’s comic magazine Raw. In 2016, Here was awarded the Fauve d’or, the highest French accolade for graphic novels. In a career spanning more than 40 years, McGuire has experimented with all artistic disciplines. Cartoonmuseum Basel brings together this multidisciplinary artist’s wide-ranging oeuvre in a major retrospective for the first time. The exhibition presents his beginnings as a street artist in 1980s New York, as well as his time as bassist in the pioneering post-punk band Liquid Liquid, for which he created an iconic bass line. The spectrum extends from illustrations and covers for The New Yorker, to children’s books and toys, through to drawings that he contributed to the animation Fear(s) of the Dark and originals – for Here and for a current, as yet untitled graphic novel that will merge visual art with music. Curator: Anette Gehrig