by Karrie Fransman
Published by Jonathan Cape ISBN 9780224099431
Paperback released 5 March 2015
Review by Marianna Madriz
![Death of the Artist](https://theaoi.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/RIMG0633-550.jpg)
The book opens up with a foreword/epitaph by the author herself: “This is the beginning but also the end”, she warns; and just like that Death of the Artist begins.
It’s a story told by Karrie Fransman about herself and four ‘friends’, who decide to retreat to the English countryside for a week of hedonism and drawing in an attempt to escape their thirties and regain their youth. A different character tells each of the five sections in the graphic novel, ultimately knotting the narrative together into one.
![RIMG0637-550](https://theaoi.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/RIMG0637-550.jpg)
Fransman calls herself a ‘comic fanatic’ (TEDx, 2014) and this is clearly seen in her new book, where she proves that graphic novels can be a playground for uncommon mediums; from vibrant watercolours to photography, from doodles on coffee-stained pages to digital illustrations. From the delicate to the rough, it’s all possible. Fransman successfully uses each drawing style to give a strong voice to the characters, and to help represent the crude and twisted nature of the story.
![Death of the Artist](https://theaoi.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/RIMG0638-550.jpg)
While Death of the Artist may not resonate visually with some readers, its themes will do: the desire to remain young and creative, the companionship of old college friends, the depiction of the ‘artist’ as a destructive being. It’s a fresh and dark tale that leads itself into a more than satisfactory finale (sadly an uncommon feature in many comics). I only feel that the format lets the book down slightly – the rectangular pages fit for a picture book don’t seem entirely right for a comic that very well deserves to be in portrait hardback-.
Death of the Artist will successfully please avid comic readers, as well as introducing new audiences to the medium. It’s certainly a memorable read, and I’m sure it will inspire many out there to grab a pencil (or a camera, or a brush, or a tablet) and start creating a visual world of their own.
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