The creative couple formed by Javier Olivares (Madrid, 1964) and Jorge Carrión (Tarragona, 1976) now functions as a single, perfectly oiled mind. They found in their interest in the world of literature and creation an almost complete harmony, which is already reflected in works such as Shakespeare and Cervantes (Nordica, 2018) and Warburg and the beach (Salamandra Graphic, 2021). In this accordion-format comic strip, a diptych which addressed the figures of Sylvia Beach and Aby Warburg, there was already, in a way, the germ of the following book: Samuel & Beckett (Salamandra Graphic, 2024), an exploration of the figure of the Irish playwright Samuel Beckett, known above all for Waiting for Godot (1952) but a much larger work, dominated by minimalism and a vital pessimism not devoid of humor.
In conversation with this newspaper, designer and screenwriter explain their interest in a character who still seems relevant to them today. “This seems to me to be an example, like those of James Joyce, Paul Celan, Juan Ramón Jiménez or Clarice Lispector, of the extent to which language and literature can be brought through risk,” explains Carrión. “It is an avant-garde model, that is to say working on the front line, under the hail of bullets from the enemy army, in the open, between the trenches. “I don’t understand art and storytelling without the idea of a laboratory and a game, but a game that you actually play in.”
Javier Olivares, for his part, recognizes Beckett’s influence on his career. “At the end of the 80s, I was fascinated by the character of Beckett. Read Pavésas, first love, Eleutheria… seven or eight pounds,” he said. “He left a certain mark on me, in a certain way I share his search for the essential and the minimum. I hadn’t read it since and coming back to it was like doing an autopsy of my work”, admits the illustrator. Carrión is aware of being a writer “more known than read”, but his work survives in that other authors, such as “JM Coetzee, one of his disciples”.Waiting for Godot It continues to be performed in theaters around the world, because it continues to challenge us, it continues to speak to us about the absurdity of our lives, about our own unfavorable conditions,” he adds.
In Beckett’s work, humor is also very important, as Olivares points out, which qualifies his supposed pessimism: “It’s a quantum optimism. He always spoke of that millimeter just before falling off the cliff, of that space in which we can still move forward. And his most famous phrase – and misinterpreted by coaches – stands out: “Fail again. Fail better.
After their two previous collaborations, this unofficial closing of the trilogy needed a change, according to Carrión. “I had the idea of doing, in parallel, a biography and an artistic retrospective. From this concept was born the structure of the project,” explains the author of Against Amazon (2019). “On the one hand,” he continues, “a documentary story which tells the life of a human being (his family, his loves, his crises, his accomplishments, his meetings with Joyce or Jung or Buster Keaton); and, on the other hand, the visual interpretation of his most representative works. The title was obvious, if one knew how to listen to the concept and the materials.
Complicate your life
From this idea, Carrión develops a scenario sui generis“more artistic than technical”. Regarding him, Olivares makes a storyboard which they then both discuss, until they have something more closed, from which the artist can work. “He decides on the resources, the color palette, he always does things correctly,” explains Carrión, “and I change the dialogues and texts in the final version. He brings a lot of story ideas and I also try to bringing graphic ideas. It’s a conversation in which egos don’t matter, the outcome matters, which makes it the best it can be. And it’s something that hasn’t been done before. Olivares explains that they tried to tell a lot of things only with the image. “It’s a very Beckettian book, very concise and essential. We took up Beckett’s idea of classification at the minimum, a territory in which I always liked to work: this place where, if. you put something extra, it stays, and if you take it away, that’s not the case,” explains the designer.
As is often the case with the Madrilenian, in this new comic he tried to do something he had never done before. “Complicating my life is a mark that I have carried since the 80s,” he admits. “I always moved like a sniper. I like to listen to each book and go where it wants to take me,” he says. However, Warburg and the beach And Samuel & Beckett They have many points in common, not only because of the presence of characters like Sylvia Beach or James Joyce, but also because Olivares found in him solutions close to the collage which he then continued to explore in the comic strip about Beckett.
The stable graphics company
Samuel & Beckett It is divided into two parts which interpose; Samuel He addresses the person and uses his own words and those of people who knew him, “practically everything is discussed,” say the authors. Beckett He takes care of the works, of his unique creative universe. To do this, Olivares made it clear that he could not attempt to summarize every work: “that would have been daring,” he said. “They were very different from each other, from theater to sound pieces, including letters and stories,” describes the cartoonist from anger (2020). “Jorge gave me a few keys to each, so I could interpret them. My first idea was to treat each one with a different technique, but I ruled out this option because it would have made the whole thing very complex,” he explains.
The illustrator thus found an original solution, consisting of creating the equivalent of a theater company, with two actors, two actresses and a few decorative elements, pieces which would serve to compose each image like a collage. “At the beginning of my career, I considered myself a director and I talked in terms of shots and cameras. But over the years, I tend to think of myself more as a theater director with very little money. And this is the key to the idea of creating a theater company with limited resources, which must represent all of Beckett’s works. In the manner of Peter Brook, who also limited theatrical paraphernalia and sought this kind of primordial nudity,” Olivares elaborates.
The double-page spreads featuring what the authors call “Graphic Stable Company” would be perfect conceptual posters for the works of Samuel Beckett: “the images are symbolic, they mean exactly what you see.” They are a gateway to the works, an invitation to read them. Certainly, the work of Olivares and Carrión invites you to immerse yourself in the life and work of some of the most original creators of the 20th century, but, far from the typical descriptive biographies, the book is also a comic strip entirely personal fact, with his own vision and an original approach: even if Carrión barely puts his own words on the pages, his thesis lies in his choices. The drawing of Olivares at the best moment of his career does the rest.
