Peanutsexhibition: The pumpkin doesn’t speak

at The wrong time in the wrong place. Who does not know this? If you look to the other side, but discreetly, in order not to attract attention, and examine whether you can’t steal yet. Then one adds to the Inevitable. Like Snoopy in the pumpkin field, the night before Halloween.

Patrick Bahners

feuilleton correspondent in Cologne and is responsible for “Humanities”.

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The Sunday page of the “Peanuts” from 30. October 1977, is one of the latest of the about a hundred hand-drawn original, the exhibition of Charles M. Schulz in Somerset House on London’s river Thames, the banks can flaunt. By Claire Catterall curated retrospective is focused on the first half of the career of Schulz, who wrote the Strip exactly fifty years and was, from 1950 to 2000, and confirms this tacitly by the finding, the writer Timur Vermes recently in the “mirror” on the occasion of the conclusion of the in Germany by Carlsen threaded total output is not without sadness, said: In the later years of the “Peanuts to the left”, as Schulz for the daily strip instead of four, only three images are produced, or sometimes even a single, in the width drawn on the figures as if in a Holy conversation, sat next to each other, without a Rest of the plot would have unfolded.

It speaks to the art and mind of the administrator of the estate of Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa, California that you have accepted the London-based selection, instead of thinking, your world-famous brand to stay by an Insistence on the fiction of equal to can quality protect. Consistency of the Standards could have only been made by industrial production conditions will be ensured, and Schulz, the more than 2500 Newspapers declines around the world, his day’s work, refused to improve the division of labour his earning potential even further. Wizard, he is not employed, and only for the secondary exploitation in Comic books (in contrast to the annual or thematic collections of Strips in book form) he gave his characters in the hands of cartoonist colleagues.

Even the designs for promotional items Schulz retained, so that the in London, the accumulated Paraphernalia of pop culture fame, such as cups and T-Shirts are liked due to their timeless elegance. Among the works on loan from Santa Rosa tools of the artist and archival material, bekritzelte paper and white cardboard. You can see how economical he has worked: he Almost always signed.

abstraction fosters identification

Vermes makes the classical or, to use the in the classics introduced epoch-upgrade to precious metals, silver Phase too early: “in the mid-Seventies, the matter is pretty dull.” This is a matter of taste. The line goes in, this time in a looseness, which can Express both relaxation as well as anxiety, and thus, once again, a new variant of the Strip consistently defining mood of ambivalence.

It is enough to Schulz, then laconic shortcut to the incidental marking of mixed feelings, as on the Halloween page, 1977, in the picture, if Linus Snoopy revealed that after the arrival of the largest children’s friend, between heaven and earth, the task to will, glad tidings to spread, the two open Loops of the eyes of the dog. The pupils here are two small Blobs at the right end of the indicated contour lines. Snoopy listens and tries to look the other way. To him, the Situation is embarrassing, and he wants to have nothing to say, although Linus, the Enthusiast, but for an inclination of doubt in his audience, not the Organ. The facial code is addressed to us, the image is to small proscenium stage. Snoopy maintains a poker face, although he holds no cards in the paw and can only lose: A bad Conscience, he is, if he makes the prophet in the lurch, but also, if he encourages it in his children’s faith.