Photo: Archive.
In hardcover and with updated images, the new versions of the works of the Argentine artist Pablo Bernasconi have already arrived in bookstores, providing a new opportunity to learn about his production in a context marked by the use of platforms and advances in artificial intelligence, to enjoy temperately the publications of Reciprocal, Fearful, The real explanation y The Witcher, the Horrible and the Red Book of Spells.
After a very extensive review of the ten titles that Bernasconi, an Argentine illustrator with more than 20 years of experience, has published by Penguin Random House, in which he changed texts, fonts and updated some images paying great attention to detail, the books are now They are waiting for regular readers but also for those yet to be discovered.
Bernasconi (1973) initially dedicated himself to graphic design and has been drawing for many years. He has received numerous awards: he was finalist for the Hans Christian Andersen award (considered the Nobel Prize in literature for children) and has ten awards for excellence from the SND (Society of Newspaper Design). Her own books feature unforgettable characters who captivated childhoods and crossed borders to reach France, England, the United States, Germany, Brazil and also India, Korea and Spain.
However, its audience is not exclusively children. A while ago, in Bariloche, where he lives, exhibits works for adults and also participates in BADA, a fair with different artistic proposals that takes place on the Buenos Aires property of La Rural. But beyond this categorization, Bernasconi knows that to captivate a child you must first captivate the adult who hands him the book. “Let’s talk about a child, for example, who still does not know how to read. If he is accompanied by an adult, there must be a pleasant contagion from someone who is reading with pleasure to another. That is priceless,” explains Bernasconi in an interview with Télam.
Starting this month, families will be able to enjoy Bernasconi’s work in hardcover editions, a subject that the artist had pending. “When I travel, or at fairs in Bologna, I am surprised by the presence that album books have; regardless of whether they are good or bad – because there is everything – the hard cover gives them a hierarchy and places them in a temporality that for me is necessary,” explains the writer for whom it is important to “uphold the book as an object of beauty.”
“The hardcover is better preserved, holds up over time and is again more suitable as an object that carries beauty”emphasizes Bernasconi who, in this first part of the year, sees the titles materialized in this format Reciprocal, Fearful, The real explanation, The Witcher, the Horrible and the Red Book of Spells. The stories are diverse but they are all accompanied by his creative collages, attention to detail and his particular way of playing with colors.
The small changes made have to do, precisely, with the details. “For example in The Witcher, the Horrible and the Red Book of Spells the backgrounds, certain fonts and features of the characters have been changed,” says Bernasconi. There will also be changes in Infinity, which will be reissued in the second semester, will include QR codes with explanations. “They are details, but at the editing level they are very important. As time went by, we put them aside and this was the time to treasure them,” adds the illustrator.
Fearful tells the story of Nina, a little girl who must face the fear of having a monster under her bed. The story leads us to reflect on what fears are for and if it is possible to be brave all the time. In dialogue with Télam from Bariloche, Bernasconi claims to have not been a fearful child. “I grew up here and I had a relationship with nature with certain things that were quite dangerous. And the truth is that I don’t remember having fears that overshadowed my childhood,” the illustrator recalls and confesses: “The fears came as an adult.”
“Fearful It has to do with my daughter’s health at that time, which instilled in me a fear that I had to deal with together with her and from that came the book or I wrote this text,” says Bernasconi, whose daughter Nina (also the name of the protagonist of Fearful) was diagnosed at age three with childhood diabetes.
“Fear doesn’t have to do with spiders or the dark, it has to do with the fear that you won’t achieve something. A book like that, that includes something that has to do with transformation, I would have appreciated it. As a father, “I would have been grateful if I had had it.”reflects the author.
“For me, humor and poetry are a combination of wonderful elements that the human race has managed to perfect over time and generate a very effective way of connecting with current issues”
The relationship with children and childhood is a great source of inspiration for these Bernasconi books. The real explanation, a book in which crazy interpretations for different phenomena are narrated, arises from an “experiment” that the illustrator did with his son Franco when he was very little. “He was four years old and I started asking him why this or that came up. We sat down at night and I asked him, for example, how the sun works. I was very struck by the self-confidence with which he answered, without hesitating in any response. “Justifying everything, even things I didn’t know,” recalls the creator.
This narrative operation was expanded in his book. “I began to take note of how Franco constructed his answers. There I discovered a method that César Aira uses called ‘the flight forward’. Children use it to speak and justify, not lies, but truths. And they say whatever atrocities but it doesn’t matter, from there they move forward, they justify and you can’t say ‘No, actually I was wrong’. “You have to support it in a credible way,” explains Bernasconi.
His books are characterized by humor. This is something that comes naturally to the author. “It’s not on purpose. I speak that way and I tell exaggerated things. My way of relating to language is humor,” the writer says and expands: “For me, humor and poetry are a combination of wonderful elements that precisely “The human race managed to perfect it over time and generate a very effective way of connecting with current issues.”
Bernasconi’s work will be received in a context of digitalization and daily use of platforms because it is aimed at young people who spend a lot of time on screens and have different ways of consuming cultural products than previous generations. Despite the challenging scenario, Bernasconi is confident: “There are works that last. Time passes and yet there they are. They remain unbeatable. María Elena Walsh read to my daughter and I know that if she has children tomorrow, He is going to read his stories to him. So I, like any author, encourage that, a work that can be perpetuated. 20 years later I already have proof,” he points out.
When writing, Bernasconi does not dwell on these questions of transcendence and perpetuation. His commitment is to the reader: “Respect him, make him feel like an intelligent being. Do not evaluate him and do not be condescending,” explains the author.
Furthermore, he says: “I don’t ask myself such existential questions before covering a work because I’m afraid of them. I do everything so that the books are as expansive as possible. If I asked myself those questions beforehand, I would be frozen. I think that one would be crystallized in an expectation, in an excessive ambition and it is very difficult to write like that,” explains the writer.
Which of these are you missing to complete the collection? 📚
The books of @BernasconiPablo They are to read and reread, if you know them, tell us which one is your favorite.
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— Penguin Argentina (@penguinlibrosar) February 4, 2024
Regarding the insertion of his work in a context of expanded digitalization, with the recent popularization of artificial intelligence tools that produce images in record times, Bernasconi bets on the power of the book. “Paper seems to be becoming more and more obsolete. We see it in newspapers or magazines that are being digitized. However, the book has survived until now”explains and warns that “the battle is not with the digital book but with the insertion of the superfluous and all the platforms that propose something that is not constructive.”
In this scenario, the immediacy that characterizes technology could be an enemy of reading. “Technology is everything fast, fast, fast and it lasts three seconds. The challenge has to do with people’s willingness to go deeper into something and, if you want that, you are going to read a book. If you can’t go deeper, because More than a ten-second video, you won’t believe it… And well, all of humanity is going to have to complain about something that isn’t good,” observes the illustrator.
With the recent use of artificial intelligence tools by thousands of users, the debate about the risks and scope of artificial intelligence expanded to reach the artistic field. And soon, new productions appeared that used this tool, such as the movie Titanic with the aesthetics of David Lynch or a Van Gogh made of artificial intelligence with which you can talk.
Although it seems like a “great tool,” he points out that “it carries a certain danger of standardizing everything, making everything look the same.” “It is a very incipient tool but what I am sure of is that it will change the entire paradigm from now on of what we are used to consuming in terms of images. I don’t know how, but it will surely change illustration, books, the market, rights and work,” analyzes the graphic designer.
“If it is a way of approaching beauty, it is welcome,” says Bernasconi, who still clings to his style, colors and brush in hand.
2024-02-24 22:21:26
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