Book By Its Cover » Garo Manga, 1964-1973

Last night I went to the opening of a really cool exhibit at The Center for Book Arts of manga from the 1960’s and 70s. I wanted to share some images of the show for some of you who can’t make it out to see it. For the New Yorkers, I suggest checking it out.

From the website: “Garo Manga, 1964-1973 will be an exhibition focused around the renowned manga (Japanese comics) journal Garo during the period of its greatest aesthetic experimentation and political commitment. Garo is well-known amongst comic enthusiasts and historians of postwar Japanese culture both for its challenging of formal and thematic conventions within the field of comics as well as for its engagement with the main political issues of the day, from rightwing incursions into national education policy to Japanese involvement in the Vietnam War.”

The Center for Book Arts space isn’t huge, but they have filled and organized the show nicely with so many books. I’m not normally a manga fan, yet these are quite beautiful looking and I was really impressed. I mostly liked seeing the ones about real life personal situations. Some of covers of the books are so graphic and bold and others were quite painterly. The interior pages are all nicely aging into a pretty yellow-ed tint. I recognized two of the manga artists because of the recent re-printing of their work by Drawn & Quarterly, (along with the help of Adrian Tomine)- Yoshihiro Tatsumi (The Push Man and Other Stories, A Drifting Life, Abandon the Old in Tokyo, Good-Bye, and the brand new Black Blizzard etc.) and Seiichi Hayashi (Red Colored Elergy) I’m glad to have gotten to see them in their original bound form. To learn more about the show check out The Center for Book Arts site.