Pushwagner, Hariton
Entry updated 13 June 2019. Tagged: Author.
Pseudonym of Norwegian artist and author of Graphic Novels Terje Brofoss (1940-2018), many of whose individual works – often in a Pop Art style executed with outsider intensity and obsessive attention to reiterated detail – express a Dystopian and Paranoid sense of urban life in the late twentieth century. His most significant narrative is Pushwagners Soft City (graph 2008; vt Soft City: The Lost Graphic Novel 2016) with Axel Jensen, a work which was created over several years. Jensen's telegraphic insertions seem to have been written around 1969, and Pushwagner's graphics, many of which are wordless, were probably laid down before about 1975. Soft City was then lost for many years. The story focuses on the dehumanized, commodified, Drug-controlled lives of city dwellers employed by Soft, Inc – "soft" being a term descriptive throughout of a world reduced to that which can be consumed – and who do not realize that they are living through their last day. Their boss, Mr Soft, is about to trigger the End of the World, though he and his co-owners will escape. Many individual pages from Soft City were reworked as individual serigraphs or paintings, and were exhibited widely. [JC]
Terje Brofoss
born Oslo, Norway: 2 May 1940
died Oslo, Norway: 24 April 2018
works
- Pushwagners Soft City (Oslo, Norway: No Comprendo Press, 2008) with Axel Jensen (uncredited) [graph: the lack of apostrophe in "Pushwagners" is correct: illus/pb/Hariton Pushwagner]
- Soft City: The Lost Graphic Novel (New York: New York Review Comics, 2016) [graph: vt of the above: illus/hb/Hariton Pushwagner]
about the author
- Peter Mejlænder. Pushwagner (Oslo, Norway: Magikon, 2008) [nonfiction: text in English: illus/hb/Hariton Pushwagner]
links
previous versions of this entry