Bent

by Dave Cooper

Bent collects Cooper’s finest, most revealing paintings, ink drawings, pencil sketches, and photographs from the past five years, many of which enjoy homes in the collections of influential collectors and some of Hollywood’s elite. In this monograph, Dave Cooper continues to obsess and fixate over his bizarre procession of milky figures as they crawl and wriggle into hidden meadows, jungles and cities. Everything in this world seems to be undulating and overripe―the multi-colored Jell-O vegetation, the billowing clouds, and the twitching, agitated women, whether thin like sinewy rubber, or fat and bursting with doughy flesh. The characters in Cooper’s work have been likened to a dog chasing its tail. Or maybe it’s as though they’re like someone on drugs who can stare at their own hand for 20 minutes; either way, these girls are hypnotized by wriggling around on the ground, twisting in on themselves, walking on their hands, squeezing and chewing one another. This fine art may sound hellish, but to the demons, hell must seem like heaven. So maybe Cooper’s landscapes are more like a weird kind of utopia where all those insane facial expressions and physical contortions are more an expression of elation or giddiness.

Genres: Comics, Erotica

80 pages, Hardcover

First published November 10, 2010

About the author

Dave Charles Cooper is a Canadian cartoonist, painter and animator.
Cooper was born in Nova Scotia in 1967 and grew up in Ottawa, where he still lives.
He began his career in underground comics in the early 90's . His most notable works are Weasel (2000, Fantagraphics), winner of an Ignatz Award and a Harvey Award in 2000, and Ripple (2003, Fantagraphics). A retrospective of his comic artwork took place in Angoulême and Paris in 2002.
In the 2000's Dave moved to painting and animation. His oil paintings have been shown at galleries and museums in Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Madrid. In animation, Cooper has developed the tv shows Pig Boat Banana Cricket for Nickelodeon, The Bagel and Becky Show for Teletoon/BBC and the short adult film the Absence of Teddy Table.

Reviews

[Natalie]

I really don’t know how to rate this.

You can tell this is a talented artist, but the subject matter (hills have eyes inspired nightmare lesbians) just isn’t my cup of tea.

[ems · Rating 1 out of 5]

a technical exercise: 'how can i make women's bodies as unappealing & nightmarish as possible?'

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some of Cooper's best work yet--complex, funny, and beautiful. He's really pushing and developing his technique, which is always a good thing to see an artist do.

[The Bibliopossum · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is definitely on my to-buy list if only for the lovingly rendered, cellulite-laden pillow ladies.
Toony aesthetics are my jam, and this is a good reference for my own kind of drawing.

[RND · Rating 3 out of 5]

Whether you like Cooper's style to begin with will determine how much you get from this collection of recent work. His signatures are still there: the animation influence, pillowy women, textures, overbites. My favorites are when he plays with perspective and diaphanous creatures within creatures.

[Guillermo Galvan · Rating 4 out of 5]

After a lifetime of desensitizing through all sorts of extreme entertainment, the feeling of being disturbed remains unsettling. Dave Cooper’s art collection in Bent (2010) published by Fantagraphics reminds me that all my sensibilities have not been singed.

Imagine Cooper boarded a metaphysical submarine, lowered into the black waters of his subconscious, and returned with visual evidence of this alien world. His illustrations depict an eco-system where bacteria-like creatures attempt to ape the human form and fail grotesquely. In this Freudian paradise, sexuality merges with the brink of a scream. Characters devour each other sexually and literally in a cytoplasm orgy. The budding puberty of a fading childhood becomes mangled within bodies aged with cellulite and blue veins.

Cooper’s artwork reminds me of neo-classical painters who obsessed over young bodies lying naked in shaded meadows, only ever suggesting the artist’s secret desires. Cooper follows in their tradition, but his mind has been oversaturated with modernity. His nymphs have elements of 1920’s cartoon characters and their faces are exploding with gigantic teeth so common in a toothpaste commercial, yet completely awful out of context.

Occasionally, parts of an urban landscape worm their way into his paintings. And like the strange inhabitants, the cars and buildings ooze and pulsate like transparent slugs. In one illustration, phallic missiles fire on a giant composed of sexualized child creatures while the city inhabitants run screaming.

Years ago, I saw an exhibition where a photographer showed gaudy portraits of child beauty pageant constants. Their stylists made them up to appear as women in their early 20’s. Cooper’s work inspires similar feelings and dangerous questions regarding culture and sexuality, continuously blurring the line between cute and pornographic.

[J. Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love this man's work! I wang one of these to hang in my art office. I'd love to know sizes and medium of some of these... I'm assuming oil paints, brush and ink, etc. Can you buy prints of his work?! Amazing use of color, shadow and brush strokes. I do miss his graphic novels though. Keep it up, Dave!

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't think of any other artist that can match Dave Cooper's technical and creative skill. He has been keeping with some of the same themes over the past few years, but his skills continue to develop. Can't wait for his next collection and very sad he isn't doing any more comics work. A resurrection of Eddy Table(sic?) would be an answer to my prayers.

[Barrett · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Dave Cooper's work. That is all.