Every so often, an artist comes along who captures an audience's imagination and redefines what it is that pleases the eye. The form of expression can be widely varied: Caravaggio tested the limits of biblical expression, Picasso redefined what beauty was, Dali bent our perception, and Warhol repeated images ad nauseam. In the past few years, an artist of such unique perspective has given us a glimpse of his vision and added a darkly wonderful view to our collective subconscious.
Dave McKean is probably best known for his groundbreaking work illustrating the covers for Neil Gaiman's wonderful Sandman series. The images on these comics and graphic novels only hint at the scope of this man's talent. His work on Black Orchid, Arkham Asylum and the recently released Vertigo Tarot Deck was phenomenal in their impact and popularity. However, there is so much more to this artist. His music, pen and ink work, and photography have begun to create something of a sub-genre unto itself. Here are Dave McKean's words and pictures. His perception is more than mere trend to be aped by those less talented; it is the unrivaled voice of a true artiste.
CARNELL: Let's start at the beginning... where were you raised and where did you receive your training?
DAVE McKEAN: I was born in Maidenhead, England, just west of London, and I went to art school for four years at Berkshire College of Art and Design.
C: Have you always been an artistic person? That is, as a child were you always "one" with pencils and pens?
DM: Yes, I think so. Always drawing things. I played music for a long time as well, so it was always a balance between the two roots, and then eventually having to come down on one side, really.
C: Art vs. music: Do you find that your ability in one enhances the other?
DM: Yeah, they trade off of each other. It's nice not to have pressures of any kind to play music. I can just relax. It's like therapy. It keeps a good balance and yet, one is always present in the other. I only write music with images in mind, and I always work to music; I always have something playing in the background.
C: What kind of stuff are you listening to these days?
DM: Right across the board. All kinds of things. I'm a big jazz fan as a bassist, but from there, all over the place.
C: So you're a Jaco Pastorius fan?
DM: Oh, certainly. At the moment I have John Zorn playing quite a lot. I really like him. There's a band that has only done one album called Rage Against the Machine who I really, really like. It really is all sorts. My wife plays classical violin, so I like an awful lot of classical music as well.
C: Do you remember the first art piece that you sold?
DM: Sold? [laughs] I used to just give stuff away, because I couldn't stand to have it around the place too long. So, the first thing that sold would be well into actually doing things professionally. It would be Hellblazer covers and things like that.
C: Do you find that once you finish a piece, it's done and you jettison it from your mind and therefore your environment?
DM: Pretty much; certainly up until two or three years ago. It was a common pattern. The next piece, whether it was a cover or whatever it was going to be, was going to be the best thing ever and then the doing of it was either the painful struggle or it would go fine, and it would be fun, and then, at the end, I would end up with something that was miles short of being what it was supposed to be. That's life. Just in the last couple of years, a few have actually got pretty close and I kind of like them still, but only recently I've really started to like to keep things hanging around for a little bit.
C: Do you find yourself to be your own worst critic?
DM: I've no idea. I think I could write a very accurate critique, because I know exactly every stroke that's wrong with these things. I think it must be true for most people making a painting, writing, music, or whatever. There's a balance you like to strike. I mean, if somebody just comes up to me at a table and says, "How come your stuff is so bad?" I would leap to its defense. I mean, they're still my children. I'm allowed to tell them to shut up, but I sort of tense when other people do it. That's just self-defense. On my own, I know exactly what's wrong with the stuff and I'm more than happy to rip it to shreds, because I don't really see any point in trying to pretend that it's otherwise. I mean, there are a few things now I'm pretty pleased with and will defend, but the rest, for one reason or another, failed and better to just accept it and get on with it and try to put the things right, rather than have a fight about it.
C: Do you find the things you notice in some of your work that are right, you say, "I need to remember that because the next time I come into this, maybe I can incorporate it with some other things that were right," and come up with, ultimately, a perfect piece?
DM: Yes, what you end up doing is moving from a vocabulary that is not very well-developed and often quite borrowed from other people, and [with] a lot of tricks and mannerisms you pick up from other people (sometimes knowingly because you love something by somebody else and would just love to do that as well, and sometimes quite unknowingly), sometimes it just goes in and [it's not] until someone points it out that you realize what you've done. You move from that to developing a vocabulary of your own, and little things show up all the time; you're thinking, "I haven't seen that before and it says what I want to say," and it goes on file and becomes part of your vocabulary and then you look back and you've actually put quite a few sentences together on your own. That's quite a nice feeling.
C: The flip side of that is, how do you feel when you see other people's work and you say, "Man, that's mine. I do that." At this point, your style is fairly well-known, and I'm starting to see other artists doing Sandman cover rip-offs.
DM: I've seen a couple. Your response is two things. One is an immediate bristle, you think, "Leave me alone," and the other one is, "Christ, I did the same. I did exactly the same." I'm sure these people will develop and become their own artist as well. I certainly can't criticize, because I'm just as bad as everyone else.
C: The Sandman covers have made you pretty well-known. What drew you to doing them? Was it just that you wanted it be a part of the book?
DM: When I started doing them, it was really at a planning stage with Neil. I was at the meeting when he agreed to do the series, not knowing what on earth he was going to do, and kicking around ideas on how it was going to look. I thought he should look like Bono in a Clannad video. He had other ideas and various other people pitched in ideas. So the book really didn't have any kind of reputation or any kind of idea of what it was going to be. I enjoyed working with Neil and it was natural to do the covers. I was already doing the Hellblazer covers, but was sort of drawing to an end on that. I really liked doing a cover every month. It's a great place to try things out.
C: Do you think that the covers influenced the book, or at least the market's readiness to pick it up?
DM: I'm not sure what it did, as far as the comics market goes; that really has been a very unusual chain of events. I don't think that anybody really knows why it gathered momentum so well, other than the fact that it is a very well-written story and there was a lack of well-written stories around at the time and there still is. And Neil knows his audience quite well. He knows how to play to what people expect, and therefore always be one step ahead of the game, and all those things a good writer can do. I mean, my reaction from a lot of comic retailers was that they were too esoteric and they were always irritated by me changing the logo all the time.
Yet I think where the covers really sort of earn their keep was in crossing over to a market outside of comics. I think it was a lot easier for people to pick up the books, recognizing something that had more akin to a novel or a movie place or a video cover, rather than something that looked obviously like a comic. I think it broke down a lot of those reservations very quickly.
C: Was the Vertigo Tarot Card Deck something that you had always wanted to do or did it just sort of happen?
DM: Again, somebody just asked me to do it. One of the commissioning editors at DC and Neil had kicked ideas around involving the Tarot. Rachel Pollack, who had been writing some comics for DC, happened to be a well-established expert and had written lots of books on the Tarot long before ever doing any comics. So it just seemed like a good idea and then as soon as I had given it some thought I started reading about Tarot, because I was not an expert at all. These iconic images are just great to work with. There are always endless interpretations available and I was surprised that since there had been so many interpretations, and it had attracted so many major artists, that nobody had ever really done a modern deck. I was quite keen to do that and I still haven't left it alone. I'm working on another; maybe not a whole deck, maybe it'll just be a Major Arcana, but another version.
C: What can you tell me about your creative process? What goes into deciding which medium to use: photography over pen & ink; painting over three-dimensional pieces?
DM: It's a mix between just what I'm into at the time; I just go through phases of liking heavily three-dimensional stuff, photographs, fan-out work, computer generated stuff, or whatever, and then what the script demands. Some things just cannot be slotted into what I happen to be doing at the time and demand their own solutions. Most of it can, I just tend to go in phases. You'll get a bunch of Sandman covers and a bunch of CD covers and a bunch of book covers, a bit of this and a bit of that and they'll all have a similar feel to them, because that was just what I happened to be into at the time. Chances are, people will only see one of those things and it looks like I keep jumping around all the time. Actually, an awful lot of work gets done while I'm in the pen and ink stage. It gets dissipated out across a lot of different media.
C: If you had complete autonomy to do whatever you wanted, what would it be?
DM: It would be a film.
C: Is that ultimately the direction you want to go?
DM: Yeah. I am absolutely desperate to make a film... I would really want to make a short film first just to get my act together, as it were. There have been a couple of versions of Kafka's "The Trial," so it maybe wouldn't be "The Trial," but something along those lines. I'm such a huge Kafka fan. I'd love to do a comics version of "The Trial," or the first short story that I read and just loved was "Repent Harlequin," the Harlan Ellison story. I actually even started working on a version of that when I was at art school and had some ideas for that.
C: Finally, what can we look forward to next?
DM: Well, the collected Sandman book covers will be out beginning of next year and it's called Dust Covers... I have a book of short stories called Pictures That Tick and that should be around sometime next year.
C: Who's publishing it?
DM: Don't know yet, I mean it's such an odd book. It's a sort of odd collection of avant-garde short strips that just try and play with what exactly comics are; and because it's so odd, I feel kind of guilty trying to sell a publisher on it before finishing it. So I want to get done at my own pace, with no pressure, and then once it's all finished, I'll take it around and see if people want to commit to it, because it is an odd one, and there's no guarantee that it's going to sell much at all.