Surrealist Themes in the Comic Book Art of Alejandro Jodorowsky
Please join religion and myth scholar Amy Slonaker for an illustrated lecture on the Surrealist themes in the comic book art of Alejandro Jodorowsky (1929- ). This lecture includes a discussion of the early comic strip art of Jodorowsky called The Panic Fables (Fabulas Panicas) which Jodorowksy drew by hand and which appeared on a weekly basis in Mexico City’s El Heraldo de Mexico from 1967-1973. Also discussed is Jodorowsky’s collaborative work with the comic artist legend Moebius and the Surrealist themes within their expansive comic vision,The Incal, which ran serially from 1981-1988. The Incal’s comic landscape is often noted as a receptacle for ideas from Jodorowsky’s unsuccessful attempt to produce a film version of Frank Herbert’s Dune but Slonaker suggests an alternative understanding of The Incal as a mystico-visionary text intended to directly transmit Jodorowsky’s own spiritual experience to the reader. Engaging theories about the imagination as an organ of perception, Slonaker’s discussion of Jodorowsky’s comic art explores themes from her dissertation research on comic books as mystical texts.
Bio:
Amy Slonaker is a PhD candidate at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara, California, where she pursues a degree in Mythological Studies with an emphasis in Depth Psychology. After a career in law, she now studies theories about mystical experience and how physical images, when engaged by the imagination, can catalyze experiences of self-transcendence … even in comic books.
Curated and Hosted by:
Dr. Amy Hale is an Atlanta based writer, curator and critic. She has a PhD in Folklore and Mythology from UCLA and has written about topics as diverse as psychogeography, occult performance art, Pagan religious tourism, color theory, and extremist politics in modern Paganism. She has written widely on artist and occultist Ithell Colquhoun, notably the biography Ithell Colquhoun: Genius of the Fern Loved Gully (Strange Attractor 2020) and is currently editing a selection of Colquhoun’s esoteric essays for Strange Attractor (2024) and an edition of Colquhoun’s erotic art and sex magic for Tate Publishing (December, 2023). She is the editor of Essays on Women in Western Esotericism: Beyond Seeresses and Sea Priestesses (Palgrave 2022) and has contributed essays for Tate, Ignota Press, Burlington Contemporary, Correspondences Journal, Camden Arts Centre, Art UK, Arusha Galleries, Heavenly Records and Spike Island, Bristol. She is currently a curator and host for the internationally loved Viktor Wynd’s Last Tuesday Society lecture series and is an Honorary Research Fellow with Falmouth University in Cornwall.
don’t worry if you miss it – we will send you a recording valid for two weeks the next day