Drawing on ‘emotional honesty’ to understand human existence in new Chris Ware exhibition

A new retrospective of the work of iconic American graphic novelist Chris Ware has landed in Barcelona’s Contemporary Culture Centre (CCCB). 

With designs and creations stretching the full length of the exhibition space walls, visitors will be able to dive headfirst into the creative universes of one of the most celebrated cartoonists working today. 

‘Chris Ware. Drawing is Thinking’ reviews the work and reflections of an author whose work has the power to move so many people as they touch on themes of human existence in great depth. 

The exhibition presents a chronological journey through Ware’s work with original pieces, audiovisuals, objects, books, and sculptures on display now until November 9. 

The exhibition is an expanded adaptation of ‘Building Chris Ware’, curated by Benoît Peeters and Julien June Misserey, which was presented at the Angoulême International Comics Festival (France) in 2022 and which subsequently toured France, Switzerland, Italy, the Netherlands, and Germany. 

The CCCB is now hosting the end of the European leg of the tour and expanding its contents by providing, among others, new originals and objects from Chris Ware’s private collection.

‘Emotional honesty’

Ware told Catalan News at the opening of the exhibition on Thursday that he doesn’t aim his artwork at any particular type of audience, but rather, “you have to try to speak to everyone, and the only way you can speak to everyone is to first speak to yourself. What I look for in other people's artwork is a sense of their lived experience and an emotional honesty, so I try to cultivate that as much as I possibly can in my own stuff.”

The Nebraska-born illustrator aims to identify “a particular feeling” through his artwork and express it “in a somewhat accurate way.” When drawing, he is “constantly going back and rereading and rereading to see if I'm getting at a real feeling or not.”

The act of drawing itself is what attracted Ware to the medium for which he has become so renowned. “If you don't draw, you should,” he recommends to everybody, “because it's one thing that you can do where you find out something about how you feel inside. You can surprise yourself with that very particular line and way of making something on the page that comes back to you,” he points out. 

“But comics are a language of words and pictures and color and pattern and music and gesture and theater on paper that is unlike anything else,” Ware celebrates. “They're completely inert and dead as a corpse on the page until you breathe life into them by reading them.”

CCCB space 

The American says that the CCCB’s exhibition is different from the five previous versions of it that have been shown around the world before now.

“This one specifically they allowed me to design myself with input from the staff, which I greatly appreciated. They've been very kind and permissive and tolerable of my weird ideas, and I greatly appreciate it,” Ware says.

Specifically, Ware is a fan of the CCCB’s building design, as the exhibition spaces have no windows. “There's something sort of subterranean about comics because they happen in your mind, so I tried to put a little bit of that into the exhibit.”

Barcelona 

During his stay in the Catalan capital, the author says he has already found “the best comic shop I've ever been to,” and specifically highlighted the vast community of cartoonists and designers based here. 

“I can't believe all the cartoonists who are here, the bookstores, the most beautiful bookstores I've ever seen, the most amazing comic shop I've ever seen.” 

Ware had a recommendation for any fans of graphic novels and comics, particularly highlighting Fatbottom Books, located near the CCCB in the Raval neighborhood of Barcelona. “It's the best comic shop I've ever been to. The owner has impeccable taste, it's perfectly curated, completely unpretentious. I would say 70% of the stuff he had in there I had never seen before, and I tried very hard to stay up to whatever's going on in comics, and it was mind-blowing and wonderful.”

He also joked that his family “don’t expect me to sound happy” and were surprised at hearing his impressions of Barcelona. “My daughter said, ‘sounds like you should just move there, you sound happy, it's really strange.’”

Influence of political landscape

The illustrator also pointed out a contrast in his feelings since arriving in Barcelona and the current atmosphere in his native United States of America. “I feel like we're being sold a bill of goods in America, it's like we're living 25 years in the past. It's real civilization here, and I really love being here.”

Ware admits that the current political landscape of his home country has had an influence on his work. “I try to put it in there in a way that it mirrors the way it affects everyday life for everyday people,” he explains.

“I can't draw political cartoons, not only because I'm not very good at it, but also because they don't last very long, they have the shelf life of an avocado.”

Instead of depicting the likes of Donald Trump directly, “I try to get a sense of how, for lack of a better word, the political landscape is affecting internal life.”

“I can find myself all of a sudden starting to edit what I'm thinking, which is the very first worst sign, I think, of what is happening in America, and that frightens me because art has to have freedom.”