Illustrator and Illustrator II

Edited by Fred Burke

Illustrator - limited edition of 200 Illustrator II - US hardback

"I'm setting up a project with Steve Niles for a big art book of my stuff, a large format art book... It will be available in a couple of years."

Clive Barker Comes To Comics

By [ ], Comic Buyer's Guide, 19 May 1989

...other comments

Diane Keating: "Here we are presented with the characters and scenes of Clive's books, movies and plays in the way they were conceived: Pinhead's robes are not the papal cassock we are used to, but rather a more ragtag, punkish, and arguably more practical butcher's apron surcingled with barbed wire. He is graced with sloe eyes and bulldog jaws; he clenches his fists and his cohorts glare out at you just as implacably. A skeleton goes jogging. Fish fly. Someone seeking gnosis from a phallic oracle gets it in the form of ejaculate. Big eyes and grins remniniscent of the work of Maurice Sendak hit us between the eyes in a similar way.
"This book is not for the casual fanboy or girl who saw the movies or the dilletante who likes Clive because it's fashionable right now. Like much of Clive's fiction, this is definitely a, 'be careful what you ask for, you may get it' proposition. Yes, Cabal, Pinhead, Calhoun Mooney and Suzanna, Raul, the Iad Uroboros are here, in their original form, but not the way you expected them to be, and they lay side-by-side with Barkerian characters that are unquestionably such, but who appear nowhere else but here and the viewer is left to extrapolate as to what their stylings and natures are."

Clive Barker, Illustrator

By Diane Keating, Coenobium, No 4, 1991

Steve Bissette: "This tome is dedicated to only one facet of Clive's work, his artwork. Bear in mind throughout the relation his drawings and paintings have with his other works: here are doodles and sketches for stories and films, the seeds that are nurtured and transmuted into other forms...
"The application of reason to mold the raw impulses and imaginings of the unconscious into single, coherent statements, is to be applauded. That this discipline is evident in Barker's playful sketches, just as it is in his more carefully crafted and refined imaginative works - be they drawings, paintings, stories, novels, plays or films - is telling indeed. This is not to say that Clive is a master artist like Hokusai or Blake, or that he is as innovative a graphic artist as he is a writer, for his artwork is not in and of itself innovative. But this book will show you how assured and skillful he can be, and how important his artwork is in the context of his great work, his oeuvre, and how his abilities as an artist widen his abilities to communicate."

Introduction to Clive Barker, Illustrator

By Stephen R. Bissette, Clive Barker, Illustrator, 1990

Illustrator II - advert

Fred Burke: "Evolution. It is the thematic heart of Clive Barker's fiction - and perhaps the key component of his artistic journey, as well. Three years ago, he opened his cluttered portfolios to delving hands for the first time, and the result was Clive Barker, Illustrator, a look at the always interesting and multifaceted sketches and illustrations of a stylist equally at home in prose or film, his artwork more a key to decoding his various narratives than anything else.
"But all that has evolved - precipitously. Like Raul taking the nunciate in The Great And Secret Show, the changes wrought in Barker's art life have opened new doors, created new vistas for exploration. Illustrator brought Barker's visual images to a wide audience for the first time, and in March of 1993, the art world sat up and took notice. In the spring of 1993, the exhibition Clive Barker: Paintings and Drawings 1973 - 1993 packed the Bess Cutler Gallery in New York's Soho for eight weeks, establishing both an astonished new audience and astonishing new prices for the suddenly in demand 'fine' artist.
"And so this book, too, has evolved. The conversations in our first volume can be seen as 'Barker Art 101,' an introductory course. In the current book, we go deeper - exploring the evolution of one artist's life, work, thoughts - and viewing the perceived differences between the 'popular' and 'fine' art worlds. When we named the first volume, for instance, we had no idea that 'illustrator' was a perjorative to some. In adapting our title, we sought to keep continuity with the past, while moving forward into the strange new realm of art critics, museum curators and gallery owners."

Illustrator II

By Fred Burke, Illustrator II: The Art of Clive Barker, 1993

Ed Martinez: "This book is a sequel to Clive Barker Illustrator and is a wonderful companion to that first book...
"To my mind most of the images are somewhat erotic, sometimes horrific, but always intriguing. Many of these seem to be nothing more than a quick idea caught on paper, others demand closer examination and study... This book as well as Illustrator will give its owner years of enjoyment for each time you take it from the shelf the contents will seem new and you will see something in its pages you did not see before, or at least not in the way you remember it, from the last time. That to me shows something deeper than just a simple volume of images; something is at work here, something that cannot be contained within the covers of a book."

Illustrator II : The Art Of Clive Barker

By Ed Martinez, Coenobium, No 11, 1993


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