Satrapi's art: simple yet powerful

ARTWALK

USUALLY, MARJANE SATRAPI is placed firmly on a bookshelf, which many believe is where she belongs. That's because her works take the form of comic books, bound and titled, many thousands of copies distributed though publishers and book shops for under $20. To me, Satrapi's story is not just about living as a child in her birthplace, Iran, or growing up an Iranian in Europe, but about the power of the image.

In her first book, Persepolis, Satrapi used thick strokes, cleverly clumsy outlines and quirkiness to build up a tonal quality to eloquently describe life in the mid-70s Iran for an inquisitive young girl. The mandatory head veils, the shift in morality and the blanket of repression all pulled over the impudent girl and her friends, till she was sent abroad for "her own good".

But both this and its sequel, Persepolis II, are powerful because of the artist's ability to use the comic form to create dramatic imagery.

Thick black veils, a twisted line for bafflement, and repetitive figures to mourn the distaste for diversity "" all these come forth from Satrapi's line drawings. What is easy to miss, but critical to her style here, is the simple, almost crude, naïve style she deploys. There is little "fine art" proposed and that is part of retrospectively telling this story of an innocent inside.

Incidentally, the recent release of her new book, Chicken with Plums, coincided with an ongoing exhibition of Rousseau, the great French painter, here in Washington DC, who has also been occasionally commented upon as the artist with little draftsmanship. Both offer us a rich narrative, and their possible art class grades are never the point.

Satrapi is inextricably bound up with art making, at several levels. Chicken with Plums is about her Uncle Nasser Ali Khan, a musician who stayed back in Iran, played the "tar" and confronted the dilemma of no longer being able to play when his instrument was broken, irreplaceably, in a domestic dispute.

Being able to create music is his lifeline and losing it is no less than cruel censorship. Satrapi rises above a biography and asks how deeply artists depend on the process of art-making.

The book runs like a film, with revealing flashbacks spiraling into a sad present. Once more, the story is plumped out through drawings, more sophisticated than ever, bursting at the seams with flair. The words in the book are often accessories, and remember, Satrapi is no illustrator of words. Her art takes centre-stage.

It wouldn't be wrong to call this the early Expressionism of comic books. Satrapi's technique nudges you to see things differently. She breaks rules to make sure you get a good chance to do that. She uses lines unconventionally.

A series of lines becomes the dilemma of identity, and the just one panel allows the '70s panic in Tehran to swoop upon you. The place of the political in her work "" exploration of identity, the experience of loss etc "" brings out a contemporaiety that was exemplified by the Whitney Biennale earlier this year.

As one of the most prominent artists of her genre, Satrapi ensures that her work is both pleasurable and demanding of a reader/viewer.

Like most good art today, it forces us to shed our given notion of what comprises art, to begin with. The doors to the magic cave open only when we've done that.