Borin Van Loon (born 1951 in East Anglia) is a British illustrator and comic book artist, best known for his illustrations for the '' Introducing...'' series of graphic books on complex subjects. He is an author, collagist, and surrealist painter, and has worked for a wide variety of clients in editorial, publishing and promotion. He has created an eclectic collage/cartoon mural on the subject of DNA and genetics for the Health Matters Gallery in London's

Science Museum A science museum is a museum devoted primarily to science. Older science museums tended to concentrate on static displays of objects related to natural history, paleontology, geology, industry and industrial machinery, etc. Modern trends in ...

. Van Loon published ''The

Bart Dickon Bart Dickon is a character created by artist and writer Borin Van Loon. Dickon, styled as 'The Ideologically-Sound Secret Agent', first appeared in comic strip form in the British publication 'Brain Damage' (later 'The Damage') in the late eighti ...

Omnibus'' of his hero's derring-do in 2005 comprising a surrealist collage graphic novel.

Roger Sabin Roger Sabin is an English writer about comics a medium used to express ideas with images, often combined with text or other visual information. It typically the form of a sequence of panels of images. Textual devices such as speech ba ...

, a writer about comics and lecturer at Central St. Martins in

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

, said of the Bart Dickon series: Van Loon's collage comic strip approach to storytelling relies almost solely upon found images, serendipity in research, and the use of a narrative to bind the images, speech and thought bubbles, and text boxes together. The roots of collage comic-strip can be found in the sound-collage experiments of

Ron Geesin Ronald Frederick Geesin (born 17 December 1943) is a Scottish musician, composer and writer known for his unusual creations and novel applications of sound, as well as for his collaborations with Pink Floyd and Roger Waters. Career Ron Geesin ...

, the animations of Monty Python (during the

Terry Gilliam Terrence Vance Gilliam (; born 22 November 1940) is an American-born British filmmaker, comedian, animator, actor and former member of the Monty Python comedy troupe. Gilliam has directed 13 feature films, including '' Time Bandits'' (1981), '' ...

era), the surrealist novels of

Max Ernst Max Ernst (2 April 1891 – 1 April 1976) was a German (naturalised American in 1948 and French in 1958) painter, sculptor, printmaker, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was a primary pioneer of the Dada movement and Surrealis ...

( Une Semaine de Bonté and 'La femme de 100 têtes), the agit-prop visuals of the

Situationists The Situationist International (SI) was an international organization of social revolutionaries made up of avant-garde artists, intellectuals, and political theorists. It was prominent in Europe from its formation in 1957 to its dissolution ...

, the psychedelic posters and graphics of Martin Sharp and the satires of Biff. Originally appearing as separate strips under the title 'A Severed Head' (a nod to the

Iris Murdoch Dame Jean Iris Murdoch ( ; 15 July 1919 – 8 February 1999) was an Irish and British novelist and philosopher. Murdoch is best known for her novels about good and evil, sexual relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious. Her ...

novel),

appeared in Brain Damage, Talking Turkey, Sun Zoom Spark and

The Chap ''The Chap'' is a British humorous men's lifestyle magazine published quarterly. It was founded in 1999 by Gustav Temple and Vic Darkwood, and is still edited by Temple. The magazine proposes that men everywhere return to a more gentlemanly wa ...

magazines. The author gathered a number of these comics, reworked and added new material to create a graphic novella. Van Loon illustrated ''Capitalism for Beginners'', ''Darwin for Beginners'', and ''DNA for Beginners'' (in eclectic documentary comic book format) for Writers and Readers in the early 1980s. He has since has illustrated more than a dozen entries in the '' Introducing...'' series, published by Icon Books in the UK, including four titles written by

Ziauddin Sardar Ziauddin Sardar ( ur, ضیاء الدین سردار; born 31 October 1951) is a British-Pakistani scholar, award-winning writer, cultural critic and public intellectual who specialises in Muslim thought, the future of Islam, futurology and s ...

. Van Loon has written, designed and illustrated two model-making books: ''DNA: The Marvellous Molecule'', which enables the reader to build a colour model of the ''double-helix'' structure discovered in 1953 by Francis Crick and

James D. Watson James Dewey Watson (born April 6, 1928) is an American molecular biologist, geneticist, and zoologist. In 1953, he co-authored with Francis Crick the academic paper proposing the double helix structure of the DNA molecule. Watson, Crick and ...

with Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin; and ''Geodesic Domes'', where the models celebrate the pioneering work of

Buckminster Fuller Richard Buckminster Fuller (; July 12, 1895 – July 1, 1983) was an American architect, systems theorist, writer, designer, inventor, philosopher, and futurist. He styled his name as R. Buckminster Fuller in his writings, publishing mo ...

. He also painted many oil studies and designed the diagrams for the ''Letts Pocket Guide To The Weather''. ''/blankpage'' was a collaborative project with sixteen other artists belonging to Freelance (which Borin chairs) created for Ip-Art 2004. It consisted of a book as an art object with pages in widely varying media, all put together by a bookbinder. ''/blankpage'' now has a permanent home in the Suffolk Record Office, Ipswich.

Bibliography

* ''DNA: The Marvellous Molecule'' (Parkwest Pubns), 1991, * ''Letts Pocket Guide to the Weather'' (written by Eleanor Lawrence, New Holland Publishers Ltd), 1993 * ''Geodesic Domes'' (Parkwest Pubns), 1994, * ''The

Omnibus'' (Severed Head Books), 2005,

'' ...For Beginners'' series ( Writers and Readers)

* ''Capitalism for Beginners'' (written by Robert Lekachman), 1981 * '' Darwin for Beginners'' (written by

Jonathan Miller Sir Jonathan Wolfe Miller CBE (21 July 1934 – 27 November 2019) was an English theatre and opera director, actor, author, television presenter, humourist and physician. After training in medicine and specialising in neurology in the late 1 ...

), 1982 * '' DNA for Beginners'' (written by Israel Rosenfield and Ed Ziff), 1983

'' Introducing...'' series ( Icon Books)

* '' Introducing Darwin'' (written by

), 1992 — re-issue of the 1982 Writers and Readers book, ''Darwin for Beginners'' * '' Introducing Genetics'' (written by Steve Jones), 1993 * ''Introducing Buddha'' (written by Jane Hope), 1994 * ''Introducing Sociology'' (written by Richard Osborne), 1996 * ''Introducing Cultural Studies'' (written by

), 1997 * ''Introducing Mathematics'' (written by

), 1999 * ''Introducing Science Studies'' (written by

), 1998 * ''Introducing Eastern Philosophy'' (written by Richard Osborne), 2000 * ''Introducing Media Studies'' (written by

), 2000 * ''Introducing Critical Theory'' (written by Stuart Sim), 2001 * ''Introducing Hinduism'' (written by Vinay Lal), 2001 * ''Introducing Psychotherapy'' (written by Nigel C. Benson), 2003 * ''Introducing Statistics'' (written by Eileen Magnello), 2009

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Van Loon, Borin British illustrators British comic strip cartoonists Living people 1951 births

Bibliography

'' ...For Beginners'' series ( Writers and Readers)

'' Introducing...'' series ( Icon Books)

See also

References

External links