Palais de Justice.

This autumn I made a journey to Belgium. Saw some of the wellknown sites from WW1. First I went to Brussels. There, at Palais de Justice I met this man.

Peter and I often went to Denmark.  Doing reportage about people and places.
Ususally we went there by train.
After being quite for half an hour, reading the paper, Peter looked out through the window, halted a while, thought a for a moment and said something he was quite sure of: "From here comes Harry Hjörne.." 
I caught the moment, it was ten o´clock. The year was 1986. We were both in the beginning of something.
Then we arrived at Helsingborg, took a ferry to Elsinore, where Hamlet once dwelled,  and from there on rail to Copenhagen. 

Cat on a Hot Tinroof

CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF

Three sketches from first row, at

Folkteatern in Gothenburg. 

Victoria Brattström as Maggie and

Ingvar Hirdvall as Big Daddy Pollitt.

Tuscola, Il.

is a goodforgiven town I visited some years ago. I stayed at a windy motel, 

met the Sheriff, sat by the road and made this aquarell. 

This once was a fertile, grassy praire, I was told, where indians dwelled. 

Mr Mayer lives over there. Or did in 1986. Besides being a farmer

he was keen on collecting old cars. 

Spoke of the corn, the market, and the weather. 

The land he looked out over was owned by a lady living in Germany.

Eventually I filled the car, went north, approaching Chicago.

I will probably never se Tuscola again.

Paris

Twice a year I went to the Fashion Week in Paris.

Being a fashion illustrator was something new to me.

The Editor asked me: do you manage drawing clothes.

Well, I said, I have never really tried.

Since art school, many years ago.

And so he sent me off to Paris. And I returned for almost

ten years. Autumn and spring Hautcouture and Pretaporter. 

I learned to know Paris. By foot. 

I often visited Restaurant des Beaux- Arst.

The food excellent.

Lot of guests.

Very smokey.

Busy.

I think it isn´t there longer.

Gone.

 

And so one day I passed Robert Altman, sitting outside the Louvre,

direting Sophia Loren and Julia Roberts in a movie titled

Pret-a-Porter. Sophia Loren acted, but Julia Roberts was not to be seen.

Sorry so.

 

Suzanne Brögger was at the Book Fair this year. 

Prinsen av Mogadonien is her latest book. What made me start reading 

Brögger is a book titled Tone. That book made Peter and me going to Copenhagen doing some small talk. Home at the Bröggers. About the importance of knowing how to tell a story. And do it.

Suzanne Brögger is doing it constantly.

Huntingtons Gallery Pasadena

Once upon a time ...

I was a rather diligent blogger.

Pictures and writings.

No I think it is time to catch up again.

So let us start.

 

This interior painting I found in Huntingtons Gallery in Pasadena. 

I like pub och bar interiors.

 Perhaps because I myself  made 

so many of them while hitchiking around in the seventies. 

Tipsy people are mostly friendly people and they

often offered me a pint if I made a portrait, or sketched 

the interior of the pub. 

Drinking, smoking and sketching, not bad.

Take a look of the butcher? to the right. Feeding? the

five, six cats.  He is the star of the scen.

And the lit up yellow floor is the stage. Light from sun to gas.

Early american painting. By whom, I am ignorant.

Wish I was there and then.

With my pencil and pad.

Händer och fötter

 

Intervjutecknande 

kunde  bli påfrestande ibland. Intervjuraren ville veta så mycket, tiden går och jag är  klar med teckningen. Jag ägnade mig då åt att teckna skorna. Kanske ett öra. Ett finger eller en hand. Skor tycker jag är svårt att teckna. Händer också. Därför blir det ett foto denna gång.

Det var Torgny Lindgren som intervjuades.

 

Jag besöker ofta Operan, 

Stadsteatern, Folkteatern och Atalante, spännande scener här i Göteborg. 

Mannen ovan driver sin lilla teater i Dharamsala, Indien. 

Med ett stränginstrument och små trådar får han dockorna på scenen 

att agera till entoniga rytmer. Föreställningen är kort och dansant. 

På samma sätt som jag rörs av spelet på scener i Göteborg, 

med vridscener, orkesterdiken och videoprojektioner kunde jag leva med i 

det intrikata spelet mellan dom två dockornas agerande på trälådan.

Förundrad blev jag inte, bara konstaterade.

  My friend in Gibraltar.

Evert och Astri  

Hittat under en tapet. 

I ett hus i Arjeplog.

Är man Tintinintresserad 

och är i Bryssel skall man ta sig ut till Louvain-la-Neuve.

Det tar någon halvtimma med bil och när man kört några varv runt byn, 

hittat en parkeringsplats, så välkomnar denna fina byggnad och entré. Musée Hergé.

För en tecknare är det en gruva att vandra runt i. 

Skisser och original till många av albumen. 

Modeller och Tintinhistoria. 

Det är Hergés värld där inne.

http://www.museeherge.com
  

My friends.

This monkey lives on the Cliff of Gibraltar. 

I met him or her while visiting the beautiful lighthouse just down the steep hill.

We came to know eachother ... shaking hands, had a nice chat,

in spite of having that suspicious look. 

Hope he or she is still alive and have a nice time down there. 

And I like that expectant attitude.

Kenneth was a friend of mine. 

 

He was four years my senior, and we learned to know each other when we both started our education at an art school here in Gothenburg; to become commercial artists. That was in 1962 and we had a prosperous time here in Sweden. I learned drinking Valpolicella and vodka. I learned smoking John Silver, no filter, and finally, I learned reading books! The first two books I bought were the pocket book versions of Mice and Men and Grapes of Wrath. Why Steinbeck? I was recommended by the men behind the desk. And that was a good tip. I read the books through bought a bookshelf and bought another book, read it through and so I had started an interest, career in reading. And I realized there was another world outside Uddevalla. And many books to be read.  

    Kenneth? He was a constant reader. Every time he had a minut over, a short rest for the model and waiting the aquarell to dry, he picked up a book from his pocket, leaned over it, got quite, and so was reading. When he was not reading he tried convince me and Robert the importance of listening to jazz. Bix Beiderbeck Louis Armstrong Eddie Condon and as far as Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, we were forced to chew this history through. One day we told him we had heard the Beatles! and we liked it! I had bought the record!! Kenneth got mad, broke that EP into pieces. And put the crumbles in the letter box. Must have been She Loves You, Yeah Yeah. And then he hands over an LP he told us was the best recording ever made by.... someone before Charlie Parker. 

      Kenneth played clarinet in a group named, I think, Dixie Six.

      Among the books Kenneth, now called Haspen, picked up from his pocket was Ulysses, by James Joyce. A thick worn out copy. He read the pages over and over, it is 800 pages to go through. And he loudly gave us extracts from different chapters. And if we did not find his judgement, the text is fantastic! he gave us lessons in litterature. Day after day... and so om my way home from school I passed the bookstore and ordered one copy of Odysseus, the swedish title of the book. You had to order it, there were not many copies in circulation by the time. I started reading it. in some way living with it. If I got stuck I got on with a little help from my friend. I was hooked. I realized I had to visit those places where it all took place, that June 1904. Took my bike and went off to Ireland and Dublin. Walked in the foosteps of Leopold Bloom and had a Guinness at Mulligans. My interest in Ireland was born and I later have visited the island many times. Ulysses is a very good book. 

      And now, these days we have got a new swedish version of the text. This time the book has its original title Ulysses and is translated by Erik Andersson, a friend I know from my years at the Gothenburg-Post. I have bought the book, and it is such a beautiful book; the cover with the white text on the mediteranian blue-green tone, similar to the first edition I think. Shakespeare and Company. Paris.

      So now ... I will have 800 pages pleasure ahead of me, and perhaps I get the idea of going to Dublin again. 35 years after my first visit.

      Kenneth, Haspen and then Fredrik? We were examined in 1966, and he started his career in the advertising field. He became Art Director, succesfully Copywriter, he commuted to New York for some years, working for Young and Rubicam at Madison Avenue. We bacame strangers, never heard of : lived two different ways of life. He came back to Gothenburg, started an agency, wrote som articles for the Gothenburg-Post, I illustrated. Adventures in the Advertisingfield was the line. Terminally he lived very alone. Got cancer. He called me an early morning, we spoke about old times, when he taught me to play a blues i Bflat on the piano, what had become of our schoolmates and so; said goodbye. Promised to see eachother next week, month year.. 

 

Haspen plays West End Blues

      And then he died. At the funeral some of his friends from Dixie Six orchestra got together, and while they were playing When the Saints ... I thoughtfully gazed at the black gorilla, a doll. resting tiredly among the colorfull flowers spread on the cold floor. Then followed a blues ... might have been in B flat.

  

For almost thirty years Gert, journalist and friend of mine, and I were assigned by Gothenburg-Post to visiting lighthouses around the world. Draw, photograph and publish the result the first day of the month. The lighthouse is some kind of logo for that paper. A very good one I find. 

A new lighthouse every month!

Understandably we became some sort of experts on locating lighthouses and finding ways to get out to these often far away islands, where the lighthouses mostly are to be found. We became experts on lighthouses generally. And many were those skippers navigating us over. They often eagerly gave us information about what had being going on out there around the rocks we were to be taken: shipwrecks, storms, drowning, lonelieness, hardship. I still can feel the smell of damp concrete while counting the steps toward the lantern.: 91, 92, 93 ....

Many of those places we visited are mentioned in the weather forecast on the radio. Daily. Important datas are given. So, when they, give you the wind direction from Utsira, I recall the day we were there, and I say to my sons.... 

Yes, I know what it is like out there. I have been there. 

Nowadays they think that is boring. 

We know ... you have been there....!!!

But gives me some sort of soft relief ...  there are many things to be seen. 

  And I have been to Utsira!

Ronald Searle

Bort gå dom. 
Away they go.

Ronald Searle fann jag tidigt.

På biblioteket i Uddevalla. 

Sedan dess har han funnits med. 

Nu är det sluttecknat för hans del. 

Sorgligt, men man kan inte leva oändligt.

Boken ovan fick jag av Bosse Karlsson.

. 

 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/04/arts/design/ronald-searle-british-cartoonist-dies-at-91.html?ref=obituaries