Mishima - Blade Manifesto @ Le Mont en L'Air (Paris)

On the 25th November 1970 japanese writer Yukio Mishima (三島由紀夫 ) commited his ritualistic suicide. 50 years after, at the same day and month, our  RUBI collection released the book Mishima - Blade Manifesto by Portuguese artist Tiago Manuel. 

It's a graphic reading of Confessions of a Mask (1949), book that Mishima started writting also on the same day and month. This "Manifesto" was made by Tiago Manuel for an exhibition for Ciclo Mishima - Um Esboço do Nada, program dedicated to the write by Belém Cultural Center (CCB) in 2008 and after twelve long years finally it was published in book form - only a small except was published in #20 of Kuš! (Latvia) in 2015. 

The artist used scissors that shattered the original work, not to destroy it, but to honor it by making it bleed images. We hope this vision of Tiago Manuel will open an intellectual battle between "Comics" and conceptual drawing purists.

This edition includes also Visions of Mishima, a text written by curator António Mega Ferreira.

BUY @  our online shop and Quimby's (Chicago),  Modo (Italy), Just Indie Comics (Italy) and Le Mont en L'Air (Paris)

Four different drawing were printed in risograph at Desisto. One of these images will be a gift to you if you buy directly to Chili Com Carne, There is 25 copies of each, all signed and numbered by the artist.

FEEDBACK

His works reminds me of Roland Topor's works and has a touch of Polish film posters. - DJ Cat Goshie (by email)

...

Best Portuguese Books 2020 in Expresso newspaper

...

Tiago Manuel is a national treasure (...) - Gabriel Martins in Paul Gravett site

...

exciting, experimental recent release in Portugal, (...) Tiago Manuel's Mishima: Blade Manifesto is an evocative suite of transforming text-free images, one per spread (...). - Paul Gravett on FB

...

Ostensibly a “graphic adaptation” of Mishima’s Confessions Of A Mask rendered as a series of wordless mixed-media illustrations (each presented within the gorgeous open-bound book adjacent a blank page for maximum consideration value and, if we’re being brutally honest, impact), it would be a mistake at best, betrayal at worst, to think of Manuel’s “suite” as concerning itself overly much with the literal aspects of its subject — after all, if conveying such were his intention, he could have simply gone the “prestige graphic novel” route. Rather, it is the character and philosophy of the work that we are both welcomed to explore and confronted by herein, and while original exhibition curator Antonio Mega Ferreira’s “Visions Of Mishima” text piece serves to set the table, it is the artwork that is the main course, replete as it is with all the martial precision, poetic beauty, unrequited longing, and psychosexual pathology that informed both the narrative it takes it cues from and, of course (and much more crucially, in my view) its author. - Ryan C.'s Four Color Apocalypse

§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§

Tiago Manuel (1955; Viana do Castelo) did his artistic training with the masters Aníbal Alcino and Júlio Resende. His work has been presented in the country and abroad in institutions and reference galleries. He has received several awards. Since 2013, he has been responsible for the artistic direction and organization of temporary exhibitions dedicated to illustrating artists, a project by Rui Faria Viana for the Municipal Library of Viana do Castelo. He is the artistic director of BIG - Bienal de Ilustração de Guimarães, a cultural project of the Guimarães City Council, created in 2017 in co-authorship with Rui Bandeira Ramos.

As an illustrator, he published in the newspapers Público, Expresso, Jornal de Letras, Letras & Letras, O Diário and Postas de Pescada, in the magazines Colóquio/ Letras (Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation), Ler-Círculo de Leitores, Cão Celeste, Intervalo, Bestiário and Torpor and in the publishers Âmbar, ASA, Afrontamento, Media Vaca (Valencia), Bertrand, Abysmo. Since 2000, he has published 10 of his 25 heteronyms (19 books), four of them published by MMMNNNRRRG. 

Some solo exhibitions: Galeria Abysmo, Lisbon, 2014; “Mishima, Manifesto de Lâminas”, Centro Cultural de Belém, Lisbon, 2008; Galeria Spectrum Sotos, Zaragoza, 2008; Galeria Palmira Suso, Lisbon, 2007; Lugar do Desenho, Júlio Resende Foundation, Gondomar, 2002. Some group exhibitions: “Sem Consenso”, Museu do Neo-Realismo, Vila Franca de Xira, 2015; Annual Comic and Cartoon Art Competition, Society of Illustrators, New York, 2014; Arco, Casa da Cerca, Almada, 2008; Prémio Stuart, Lisbon, 2007, 2006, 2004; Salão Lisboa de Ilustração e Banda Desenhada (Bedeteca de Lisboa), 2004, 2002, 2001, 2000.

Latest works: 40 drawings for the website of the film Arabian Nights by Miguel Gomes, 2013/2014; poster for the film Gambozinos by João Nicolau, Quinzaine des Realizateurs, Cannes, 2013; poster for the film Ruínas by Manuel Mozos, IndieLisboa Festival, 2009; O sangue por um fio, poetry book by Sérgio Godinho, Assírio & Alvim, Lisbon, 2009.