Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Matt Wuerker

Quote by Matt Wuerker

“The virtuosity and visual humor of people like A.B. Frost, T.S. Sullivant, and [Thomas] Nast of course, have so much depth and innate humor that I couldn't really resist cross hatching. Later day cross-hatchers like Ron Cobb and Bill Plympton were also early influences. (from an interview in Attitude, 2002)”

Quote by Matt Wuerker

Create image

Author

Matt Wuerker

Browse famous quotes and profile details for Matt Wuerker. more

You May Also Like

“What pushed you to be political? I’ve always been interested in politics, but when I first got out of college I just wanted to have fun and do non-political work. What happened was the Bush vs Gore election and the Supreme Court [decision]. That was the event that really shocked me into starting to do political cartoons. It was just so outrageous at the time. Then 9/11 and the Iraq War. I prefer doing a mix of straightforward political cartoons and more cultural cartoons about trends and facial hair and things like that. Now I feel silly doing a strip about beards. Maybe things will calm down and I can go back to doing cartoons about facial hair. As time went on and politics became more and more dire, that’s what really sent me down that path. Also I started picking up more and more clients that are explicitly political, like dailykos and The Progressive Magazine and once in a while The Nation will run a cartoon. That pushed me in a more political direction as well. (Interview with Comicsbeat)”

PoliticsIraq War9 11CartoonsPolitical CartoonsBush V Gore
Author:Jen Sorensen
Create image

“Q: What do you think will be the future of your field? There’s too much pessimism about the future for political cartooning. I think the future’s very bright. You see more and more sites like Politico that aggressively deploy cartoons on the homepage. I think the media is becoming increasingly visual… and increasingly made to match our shrinking attention spans. The business model for cartooning is going through a rough transition now, but in the long run the thing we cartoonists do—-deliver simple-minded political messages in short easily digestible bites—-is the direction the media in general is heading. We’re living in a media landscape that seems to get more infantile and politically simple-minded all the time—-look at the huge popularity of Glenn Beck…and I saw someplace recently that Jon Stewart is now the most trusted man in America. The clowns seem to be taking over the circus. This may be bad for governance, but it can only be good news for cartoonists. The interesting part will be what the platforms are going to be, cell phones, iPads, the iChip in my forehead, whatever it is, I’m sure the combination of visual metaphor and incisive humor you find in good cartoons will adapt and evolve and really thrive in the future. (Interview with Washington City Paper)”

FutureVisual ArtCartoonsPolitical CartoonsCartooningJon StewartGlenn Beck
Author:Matt Wuerker
Create image

“A parallel comparison helps to capture the similarities between existentialism (especially Nietzsche's) and Daoism (especially Zhuangzi's). Both discover the practical pointlessness of universal or absolute meaning (purpose). Nietzsche, from his perspective as a disappointed Christian yearning for absolute, transcendent, dependence on God, experiences this awareness with existentialist angst, a sensation of looking off a cliff into a bottomless abyss. The angst is caused by the vertigo impulse, the fear we will jump or drop off our perch into that nothingness. Zhuangzi, from his Daoist sense of the constraint of conventional authority, does not think of any cliff as a reference point. If the abyss is bottomless, then there is no such thing as falling. The cliff and Zhuangzi are both floating free. Leaving the cliff and entering the abyss is weightlessness―free flight―not falling. From his relativistic perspective, the cliff is floating away. Zhuangzi's reaction is not "Oh no!" but "Whee!”

PhilosophyNihilismNietzscheZhuangzi
Book:A Daoist Theory of Chinese Thought: A Philosophical Interpretation
Create image

“It is rank, wealth, prominence, prestige, fame, and advantage that arouse the will. It is appearances, actions, sexual beauty, conceptual coherence, emotional energies, and intentions that entangle the mind. It is dislikes, desires, joy, anger, sorrow, and happiness that tie down Virtuosity. It is avoiding, approaching, taking, giving, understanding, and ability that block the Course. When these twenty-four items do not disrupt you, the mind is no longer pulled off center. Centered, it finds stillness. Still, it finds clarity. Once clear, it becomes empty, and once empty, it is able to “do nothing, and yet leave nothing undone.”

DaoismZhuangzi
Book:Zhuangzi: The Essential Writings: With Selections from Traditional Commentaries
Create image

“Tonight the thoughts were about how to end things, with a heavy emphasis on the how. The process of suicide isn't exactly easy. It takes preparation, scheduling, and a certain level-headedness to kill yourself. A person has to be ready for it. He has to make the necessary plans, take the necessary steps. And, most importantly, he has to not only feel like dying, but also like killing. And the two feelings couldn't be more different.”

PtsdKilling YourselfSuicide ThoughtsPtsd QuotesSuicide QuotesSuicide AttemptsSuicide NotesVeteran Suicide
Author:Michael Anthony
Create image