Pictures First: A Journey through Øyvind Torseter’s Universe

Abstract

Pictures First:A Journey through Øyvind Torseter’s Universe Ingrid Urberg (bio) Since his debut in 1999, Øyvind Torseter has garnered a reputation as one of the most innovative and versatile illustrators in the rich field of Norwegian children’s literature. In addition to writing and illustrating seven books, Torseter has partnered with an impressive array of authors, including Jon Fosse, Tore Renberg and Bjørn Sortland, on over a dozen book projects, and his list of collaborators and awards continues to grow. While the array of techniques he employs and experiments with range from traditional line drawings to three-dimensional paper clippings, graphic effects, digital picture techniques and ink drawing collages, there is critical consensus that Torseter retains his own distinct style and voice. Nowhere is this clearer or more colorful than in his solo ventures, and a look at some of the stylistic and thematic threads that run throughout these books not only provides an introduction to Torseter’s often surrealistic universe, it also illuminates the ways in which he engages and challenges his readers to be creative, and opens the door to lively discussions about intended audiences. Elephant men, cat women, menacing octopuses, cowboys and superhero figures fill the pages of Torseter’s first solo work, Mister Random (2002), and many of these characters reappear in various forms in its unofficial sequels Detours (2007) and Connections (2013) as well as in Gravenstein (2009) and The Hole (2012). While some [End Page 129] members of this colorful menagerie, such as the leopard lady and Mr. Random, are humans in costumes or disguises, others, most notably the elephant man, appear to be human-animal hybrids or monsters, and can be viewed as both playful and unsettling. The diminutive book Gravenstein fittingly features a leopard girl and an elephant boy to match its petite physical format, and The Hole introduces a camel-faced man who reappears with the feline and elephantine figures in Connections. Masks, disguises and dressing-up are a central visual theme in Mister Random, and just as the leopard lady puts on a cowboy hat, and an octopus hides under a large elephant head, Torseter invites us to dress up and enter his surrealistic world in a playful and imaginative spirit. The inquisitive reader may ask what is real and what is imaginary? Does it matter? Where are we, and what is taking place? He further facilitates this creative play by keeping text to a minimum and maximizing the number of story lines. Many of Torseter’s solo works can be read as one narrative or as individual stories, and it isn’t clear, for example, in Mister Random, where the stories begin or where they end. With only very minimal text, this decision is left up to the audience. Gravenstein contains two distinct, yet interconnected story lines related to the rather esoteric topic of heirloom apples, and each tiny page frames just one scene. Detours, with its five titled but un-texted chapters, and Connections, which is divided into thirteen wordless vignettes, also encourage the viewer to experiment and play with order and meaning. While The Hole, the story of a man who tries to figure out the origins of a hole in his new apartment, A Handful of Oats (2005), about a cowboy who steals a sack of money, and Click (2004), the story of the panic that ensues when a young boy accidentally locks himself in his grandparents’ bathroom, have fairly linear plots, there is very little text, requiring audiences to engage with the illustrations throughout. Torseter has said that he does not sketch before drawing, and he never alters or erases his original drawings. Rather than discarding work that doesn’t seem to fit with what he is doing, he puts it aside for future projects and consideration (Madsen 2). In a 2011 interview in Nynorskopplæring, a Norwegian pedagogy publication, Torseter also revealed that when he works alone, “the picture (not text) always comes first” (Helgesen 13). While this method, in the opinions of most critics, is generally highly successful, it has led to some mixed reviews. Ola A. Hegdal, for example, finds Gravenstein to be problematic in its juxtaposition of text...