James Kochalka is a prolific cartoonist. His daily diary comic, American Elf, only recently concluded after running for over a decade, on top of which he has produced a dozen graphic novels and children's books, contributed mini-comics to countless anthologies, and has now even developed and written a cartoon series. Oh, plus his band has nine albums.
Kochalka is a contradiction, his work characterized by both childlike wonder and a sometimes overwhelming sense of anxiety. His comics are honest and beautiful, with a graceful, fluid style, simple enough to keep pace with the continuous flow of imagination to which the artist refuses to apply a filter. But the flipside of youthfulness is immaturity, and Kochalka's strips put his personal flaws on full display, including his propensity for temper tantrums. It's odd that he can allow himself to be so controlled by his inner child and still have the awareness to observe and reflect on that fact.
The Cute Manifesto is a collection of cartoon essays about the nature of art and play, in uncommonly long (for Kochalka, anyway, whose daily strips adhere to a four panels maximum) and atypically academic exercise in comics theory, interspersed with a visual narrative not unlike the private observations found in his autobiographical strips. His point, which he later clarifies is only a free-thinking exercise, not an argument or definitive assertion of fact, is that making art is not about communicating concrete ideas, but using the artistic process to find a point of reference by which to simplify our experience into an understandable frame. He says art that communicates an already developed idea is just illustration.
It's an interesting notion, but I wonder how practical it is, like when some metaphysician explains how the concept of time is illusory. I will concede that this could be true on some level, but the illusion is useful in my day to day life, and the deeper understanding isn't. I don't give a shit if time is philosophically meaningless, just meet me at noon.
Among his other theses is the idea that craft inhibits art, that worrying about how well you draw prevents you from finding the emotional core you are trying to explore. Easy for him to say. Just because he's found a style that looks effortless doesn't mean he isn't the unconscious beneficiary of enormous natural talent.
I realize now that I make a lot of assumptions about Kochalka, about his mindset and his view of the world. He seems like a person who is motivated by instinct, to whom it never occurs to censor himself or present a facade. His unselfconsciousness can seem to border on autism, but the fact is that he recognizes this about himself and offers his own commentary, so it must, at some level, have been a decision. Somewhere along the line, for the sake of staying in touch with his creative genius, he had to have consciously accepted that he would never ask himself to grow out of his juvenility. He must have decided to indulge, or he wouldn't have the presence of mind to pull back the curtain.
I could be projecting my own rationalizations onto Kochalka. Maybe he's a normal man who's found a way to harness whimsy in a deliberate way that I'm misinterpreting. Maybe I'm making of him an avatar to embody the child inside all of us. For one thing, I can only make these pseudo-psychological diagnoses based on the output he freely offers into the world. I don't have access to his innermost thoughts, the secrets of his psyche. I can only interpret the art he chooses to present. But I suspect I'm at least partially right. I think I've got a pretty good sense of how his mind works. After all, I've read his diary.