Canciones of Federico García Lorca

Tak (Upside Down) transforms legendary Spanish writer Lorca’s lyric poetry into whimsical comics narratives. Echoing the rhythms of fairy tales and nursery rhymes, Tak’s sensitive line work and delicate pastel color palette create a coherent visual setting for Lorca’s alternately joyous and somber song-poems. Many of the originals are set in nature, such as “The Deceiving Mirror,” and Tak turns these pastorals into vignettes featuring a host of magical creatures, such as a melancholy tree man. The metaphorical aspects of Lorca’s love poems, such as “It’s True!” are rendered as fanciful journeys across colorful landscapes. While most of the images track closely with the hand-drawn text, in both English and Spanish, Tak occasionally inserts silent panels with sequences that bolster the narrative quality of his adaptations (such as a ship sailing into the horizon). The inclusion of Dalí-esque imagery (both a clock and an eye are found in a desert) signals Lorca’s love of that painter’s work. Tak’s adaptation picks up the playful spirit of Lorca’s poems to go beyond simply illustrating the text, creating a delightfully magical hybrid. (Aug.)