Take a look at this white-swathed figure, poised between the claws of his foe, ready to strike. As, indeed, was the Tate.Ī similar battle through time is waged in “Samurai Jack: Battle Through Time.” This one, however, seems to have been carried out in earnest. It is entirely possible that the artist behind this work may have glanced at “ Water-Lilies, Reflection of a Weeping Willow” (1916–19), with its suggestions of wind-rustled lavender or “ Nymphéas” (1915), with its odd, downward-surging stillness, and its stately mauve, and said, “Well, I can take this and launch it, kicking and screaming (or possibly just sighing), into the 21st Century!” Thus we are treated to the spectacle of jacked-up colours, concrete, and toads that have been plucked from the peace of Monet’s lilies (he left the beasts unpainted, if indeed there were such brutes in his garden, preferring to depict beauty instead), and lurched forwards in time-though not quite our time these sorry croakers appear to have been shaped and shat on by the nineties. These creatures-bloated to cartoon proportion, accessorised with sunglasses, belts, studded bracelets, and grins bearing a single white brick of teeth-seem like punk-flavoured upstarts: the sort to come in and wreck a perfectly good art scene with naive notions of upheaval, corporate uprooting, and rebellion, while forgetting to produce any work worth talking about. But what of the battle? It may well be one of those wearisome skirmishes fought over artistic turf. To judge by the name of the piece, “Battletoads,” they are toads, and thus invite the possibility that they have sprung from one of the many lily pads in Monet’s flower garden, in Giverny. These hopping, tumbling belchers, falling from a bubblegum sky onto an unsuspecting city, remind me of Monet. Thus, I was in a state of heartened excitement when, returning home, I found myself confronted with this month’s collection of video game box art. It is this that draws out my respect for the game box artist: the need to scrape one’s talents through the crucible of business and commerce to tread lightly past the many eyes-sharpened for the slightest sign of dissent-that fill a billion boardrooms forcing the artist to adapt and produce a work of unbridled nattiness under the most spirit-sagging gloom. Indeed, the game box artist, if he is to be successful, must-like few others in the art world-have guile and sharp wits, the better to smuggle a work of true merit under the scowling radar of the marketing department. Would that such buoyancy persist in the world of video game box art, weighted and bent, as it is, under the aegis of corporate and commercial strategy. Nozzled, papery, patterned, and neatly plain: one must admire the determination, in the general populace, to remain natty in the face of global gloom. For me, this was the many eyes of others-peeping, as they were, above masks of all hue. Instead, stretch your legs, mask your face, and drag your eyes across that which falls into view. If you’re ever after a measure of the national mien, leave the newspapers and, God knows, the internet (on whose ether wafts nothing worth breathing). Put simply, he’s a man that needs no introduction.įriends, I write to you from the weary comfort of my armchair-one of the few things I managed to hold onto after the divorce-having spent the afternoon walking. If you are unaware of his prowess, rest assured he’s on a crusade to educate the unwashed. In between his time spent wandering the corridors of culture, Merriweather writes on a freelance basis for various publications, including Snitters and Nuneaton à la Carte. Each month, we invite élite art critic Braithwaite Merriweather to appraise the box art of the latest game releases.
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