Design Literacy: Understanding Graphic Design

always comes up with crazy ideas, and is proud of himself. That’s me, too.”
The third part of the personality puzzle is Pierre Van Ganderen (which,
translated, means “of simple mind”). “He is a working man who does what
he has to do, who is a bit childish and sometimes naïve.”
Swarte is not wed to conventional cartoon situation comedies but,
rather, varies his story lines as much as he pushes the technical boundaries
to transcend any hint of nostalgia. For example, although the adventures of
Makassar resemble 1920 s comic artist George McManus’s “Bringing Up
Father,” it is clearly synthesis not revival. “A young artist must grow out of
the past to build up a solid background,” he says. “But one must find one’s
own way out of nostalgia and stop looking too much over the shoulder.”
When 1930 s type design and early-twentieth-century cartooning converge,
a certain timelessness is evoked. Of Swarte’s mastery, Art Spiegelman,
former RAWeditor/publisher, explains that he “has a refined visual
intelligence wed to a sense of humor and history. He experiments within a
tradition, and is always trying things that are so daring yet made so simple
that by the time they are accomplished it looks so easy that it betrays the
courage involved.”
Every part of Swarte’s lettering and drawing is meticulously
rendered. His clear line may be reduced to the necessary strokes, but
his images are flooded with ideas. Ironically, in an era when coarse,
expressionistic art brutis in vogue, Swarte’s circumspect precisionism is
often called retro. Yet attention to detail is not stylistic conceit, it is
timeless.