>>REVIEW
YOU CALL THIS ART?!! A GREG IRONS RETROSPECTIVE
Greg Irons; edited by Patrick Rosenkranz
Fantagraphics Books, 296 pp.
"Imagine Dürer tattooing a dragon on a Hell’s Angel’s ass. That’s the Greg Irons story" – Tom Veitch
Greg Irons was killed at the age of 37 in Bangkok, Thailand, hit by a bus while crossing a road. He was, by all accounts, a drifter, unwilling to compromise his devotion to art, even if it left him living perpetually hand-to-mouth. He was an avowed iconoclast who later became one of the best examples of the alienation of post-counterculture horror and fear.
The new Greg Irons retrospective, You Call This Art?!! (Fantagraphics Books, 296 pp.) thankfully lets his work speak for itself. The brief chapters by Patrick Rosenkranz are compiled mainly from comments from Irons’ family, friends and business associates. It doesn’t pathologize Irons, which would seem the easy or obvious thing to do, but rather traces his biography through his development as an artist. Looking at his images in their entirety, over time, his line work becomes more nuanced, the storytelling more precise. But the fascination with the grotesque, an amalgamation of classic styles and EC nastiness was there from the beginning.
This is a gorgeous collection (if that word applies). Irons was concerned with making a living, yes, but only enough to survive. He followed his interests esthetically – even the creation of a comic book was an opportunity for research and consideration. He bounced from concert posters to political comics, horror, then back again. He ended his life as a tattoo artist, which offered an opportunity to indulge his predilection for intense practice.
The collection features a number of sketches, covers and full stories, including the nasty "A Gothic Tale," and the infamous "The Legion of Charlies," juxtaposing the Mai Lai massacre with the Manson murders, leading to a scathingly hilarious tale of the Manson clan eating the world’s despots and an attempted coup by Nixon. He could employ different techniques to suit his need, retaining the gritty, frightening aura that makes his work so identifiable, from the intricately detailed images of whaling, to the Robert Crumb-like degeneracy of characters like Gregor, the Purpleass Baboon.
What emerges from the lumpy faces, mutilated genitals and assorted viscera is the portrait of an era guided by opposing interests of war and flowers that conveniently edited out the venereal disease, drug overdoses and blood. Irons never really seemed to latch onto one side or another, and there his true freedom lay. The researched tales of pollution and genocide are raw and furious, but the real horror is the pain rendered mainstream by politicians and a collusive media. The final drawings in "Minamata," detailing the fate of a small Japanese village racked with mercury poisoning from a nearby factory, show adults and children disabled and twisted, one unable to walk, another being gently bathed. It’s these images that show Irons at his best – nausea, a repulsion of the world’s horrors and humanity’s frailty. |
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