Rooftop Talks: Snoopy, Woodstock, and the Universe

Charles M. Schulz

The relationship between humans and non-human beings—like our bond with pets—is a timeless experience, constantly enriched through mass culture. In many comics, this relationship unfolds in open-ended ways: dominant roles are exchanged, dissolved, or replaced by colorful universes where all species more or less coexist with equal rights.

The study of zoomorphic comics can offer interpretive tools that help us avoid metaphysical anthropocentrism and the illusion of a singular, exclusive human purpose. Focusing on the iconic Peanuts comic strip by Charles M. Schulz, I explore the conventional dynamic of humans and pets (Charlie and Sally Brown with Snoopy) and uncover a different narrative: the relationship between a dog and a small canary named Woodstock. Or more precisely, between a poetically-minded dog and a feathered, nervous companion who seems like he’s never quite earned his wings.

Their connection highlights the value of cross species communication. Snoopy and Woodstock’s coexistence becomes a miniature model of interspecies dialogue—Snoopy offers a reflective vantage point from his rooftop, while Woodstock brings nothing but his wings and the restless desire to find himself. In this series of “wandering sculptures,” humans take on the role of facilitators and coordinators of interspecies understanding.

Snoopy’s rooftop, a place for mental travel and nighttime dreaming, becomes an architectural prototype—one that inspires a series of sculptures. One could imagine that if Snoopy ever moved, he’d take his home with him like a nomadic creature, grounding his identity in that space. Like any true nomad, Snoopy never leaves his home behind. He carries it, rebuilds it, and transforms it. As a protective figure and mentor in Woodstock’s aspirations to fly, Snoopy encourages his friend’s identity development. Woodstock’s journey toward independence is symbolized by the creation of his own birdhouse (Woodstock’s Birdhouse, 2024).

Linus, another central Peanuts character, is often seen clutching his security blanket. His older sister Lucy—part neighborhood therapist, part real-estate guru—frequently tries to convince him to let it go. Her infamous psychiatric booth reappears again and again, with Linus as one of her regular “clients” (At Lucy’s Booth: Lose that Blanket, Linus, 2024).

In response, Woodstock—driven by a mix of stubbornness and creative obsession—sets up his own booth. While probably attracting fewer visitors, it’s perfectly suited to his species' scale and needs (Woodstock’s Help Advice, 2024). His growing independence also finds expression in a new public forum where he defends his freedom (Schroeder’s Auditorium and Linus Roof for Woodstock Venue, 2024).

This narrative continues through sculptural installations inspired by Snoopy’s home and Woodstock’s overnight stays on the roof (Snoopy Builds Woodstock’s Birdhouse, 2024, Snoopy Rebuilds, 2024). These dreamlike getaways don’t require perfect flight skills, though Snoopy’s attempts to teach Woodstock proper flying reflect his ongoing concern for his friend’s independence (Woodstock’s Landing Strip, 2024). Together, gazing at the stars from the rooftop, the two friends explore the possibilities of dreaming and reflection (Wind Makes My Ears Flap – Keep Looking Up, 2024).

Today, this reflective way of “dwelling” takes on new meaning. Since the debut of Peanuts in October 1950—and Heidegger’s speech a year later, Building, Dwelling, Thinking (Bauen, Wohnen, Denken)—the world has changed. In light of contemporary refugee and migration flows, we are invited to rethink what it means to dwell and to shelter, however temporarily.

The featured works focus on makeshift shelters that offer temporary refuge to non-human species—birds, dogs, and cats. Inspired by Snoopy’s house and typologies of “spiritual” housing, these triangular structures act like miniature settlements, offering stability, nourishment, and shelter. The open spaces within them create a kind of hospitality zone for every “wandering” being, while also embracing the ethics of emergency design and survival-focused architecture.

These constructions support the symbiotic relationship between Snoopy and Woodstock, offering refuge in a world marked by displacement. As sculptures, they reframe the history of sculpture itself, proposing new forms that adapt to their environments. Their components can be rearranged into different configurations, reflecting the constant shifts brought on by climate change. From the perspective of ecological ethics, this design philosophy serves as a reminder that our responsibility extends beyond protecting animals’ habitats—we must also adapt our own practices to ensure the survival of all living beings in their vulnerability.

The piece “The Blanket Left Behind” explores Snoopy’s autonomy and the possibility of relationships not grounded in absolute devotion—a scenario equally applicable to human characters like Linus. Like every mammal, Snoopy expresses a free consciousness. Charlie Brown’s dog might one day follow one of his own “wild dreams,” leaving his friend behind. Yet, this idea of “other plans” reflects a universal truth: all bonds eventually face departure. From Linus’s perspective, the abandoned blanket resting on Snoopy’s roof speaks to the journey into adulthood.

This sense of loss—the absence of both Snoopy and Linus—evokes a deep emotional response, heightened through the lens of interspecies connection. Through the narrative and aesthetic dimension of these “coexistence sculptures,” the world of Snoopy and Woodstock becomes a powerful symbol of communication, care, and the shared path we walk—one that remains ever-changing, yet grounded in its unique tenderness.

#WhyLookatAnimals @emstathens

#Peanuts #Snoopy #Woodstock #Sculpture #InterspeciesCommunication #domesticity #animals #EMST #SnoopyOnTheRoof #Shelter #Migrations #RooftopTalks #ArchitectureForAnimals #kostisvelonis #rethinkingcare #GavinSteingo #φροντιδα #care

photo #melitininikolaidi

Why Look at Animals?

A Case for the Rights of Non-Human Lives is a major group exhibition that centres on animal rights and animal well-being, highlighting the need to recognise and defend the lives of non-human animals in an anthropocentric world that marginalises, oppresses and brutalises them. The exhibition is inspired by the seminal text of the same name by John Berger, “Why Look at Animals?” (1980), which explores the animal-human relationship in modernity and how animals have become marginalised in human societies. With the participation of more than 60 artists from four continents and with over 200 works occupying all the floors of the Museum, Why Look at Animals? is the largest exhibition ever organized by EMΣT and the first major exhibition on non-human animal rights internationally.The exhibition and public programme organised around it aim to raise awareness of the conditions of non-human animal life today - from the agricultural industry, the science lab and the business of entertainment, to the state of wildlife and animals subsisting in urban environments - asserting the personhood of animals as sentient beings, with unique intelligences of their own. Why Look at Animals? highlights the fact that the myriad species that exist alongside us are an integral part of our biosphere and ecosystems, not products and automata, separate from and subordinate to us. With this project EMΣT puts ecological justice and the rights of non-human life at the heart of its programming for the months to come. If humanity wants to engage with climate justice, biodiversity and environmental protection, non-human animals form an integral part of the discussion.

Τhe exhibition features a guest curated project, Sonic Space, consisting of a selection of audio works created by artists and researchers in fields such as zoomusicology and eco-acoustics, curated by Joanna Zielińska.

Ang Siew Ching I Art Orienté Objet (Marion Laval-Jeantet & Benoît Mangin) I Sammy Baloji I Elisabetta Benassi I John Berger I Rossella Biscotti I Kasper Bosmans I Xavi Bou INabil Boutros I David Brooks I Cheng Xinhao I David Claerbout I Marcus Coates I Sue Coe I Simona Denicolai & Ivo Provoost I Mike Dibb & Chris Rawlence I Mark Dion I Radha D’Souza I Maarten Vanden Eynde I Jakup Ferri I Alexandros Georgiou I Igor Grubić I Gustafsson & Haapoja I Joseph Havel I Lynn Hershman Leeson I Annika Kahrs I Menelaos Karamaghiolis I Anne Marie Maes I Britta Marakatt-Labba I Nikos Markou I Angelos Merges I Wesley Meuris I Tiziana Pers I Paris Petridis I Janis Rafa I Rainio & Roberts I Marta Roberti I Mostafa Saifi Rahmouni I Lin May Saeed I Panos Sklavenitis I Sonic Space I Jonas Staal I Daniel Steegmann Mangrané I Oussama Tabti I Emma Talbot I Nikos Tranos I Maria Tsagkari I Dimitris Tsoumplekas I Euripides Vavouris I Kostis Velonis I Driant Zeneli

The exhibition is curated by Katerina Gregos, Artistic Director ΕΜΣΤ

Scepticism about the Enlightenment project

Ludwig XVI. mit Jakobinermütze

Noel Lemire, „Ludwig XVI. mit Jakobinermütze", 1792
LWL - Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte Münster / Sabine Ahlbrand-Dornseif

The Colors needed Counseling

Picture by Grant Snider,2011
Source:thoughtballoonhelium.blogspot.com/

Atomium : 21st Century Atomic Girls

Ted Benoit, a herald of the return of “clear line”, enjoys composing images that have a certain human presence. Creatively empowered by the expanded horizons of the “Atomium 1958-2008” collection, he has set the cult monument of Expo ´58 in a setting that is as futuristic as it is fascinating.

The creator of Ray Banana came to know the Atomium, through photographs, from 1958 and finally came to visit it in 1982. “It was one of the very first things that I saw on my first visit to Brussels. I even bought one or two of the souvenirs of the time, one of which was a spring-loaded thing, a little helicopter that circled the Atomium; the whole contraption had its own special round box covered in plaid.” Seeing the monument as it really was could only modify one’s perception of it. “Actually, it was great to go down through the tube-shaped struts on foot because, from the inside, it was more like something from Jules Verne than Sputnik.”

For the artist behind two magnificent Blake et Mortimer albums, the Atomium is not inextricably linked to Expo ´58. “Yes of course, and not because it has survived whereas the Expo has not, which gives it an entirely different significance. The Expo only existed in the present; the structure is also part of the past, much as is the remnant of the Statue of Liberty that Charlton Heston discovers emerging from the sands at the end of “Planet of the Apes.” That scene was one of the many starting-points of the “21st Century Atomic Girls”screenprint (along with, among others, an “anodyne” photo of two young girls visiting the Expo, the architectural form of one of the pavilions, and the statuary that was an integral part of the Expo ´58 site)". For the author of Vers la ligne claire, paying homage to the Atomium is not a difficult task, “because the dreams and illusions it symbolised are quite touching. Moreover, as the Atomium is a hollow structure, it chimes with the notion of space which itself is a very interesting concept to draw.”

It is often said that a good image cannot content itself with being merely seductive; it must recount a story or suggest its own unmistakeable melody. “That’s not something that I should explain” says Ted Benoit. “Here’s one approach: the title is a paraphrase of an old King Crimson song – I don’t like it that much, but I was very taken by the use of another track from that album in the film Le fils de l’homme by Alfonso Cuaron. What is conveyed in that film (one of the most fascinating films of recent times) strikes me as being very apt in understanding the years to come. The Atomium is the twentieth century; we are now in the twenty-first century. It helped us to understand the new era, that’s all. Why feature little girls? No idea. That’s its unmistakeable melody.”

Source:www.champaka.be

Charles Schulz’s self portrait

Charles Schulz’s self portrait :: scanned from The Peanuts Collection :: Little, Brown and Company :: 2010

Source: http://heyoscarwilde.tumblr.com

I Love the White Middle Class

Anton Kannemeyer, I Love the White Middle Class . . . , 2008, acrylic on canvas, 47 x 47”.

Astro Boy

I feel compelled to write about a horrific poster i saw today of an American film ‘Astro Boy’ based on the manga/anime of the same name. It’s happening a lot recently, with unnecessary and mostly offensive remakes (even the karate kid, inexplicably set in China), but I was particularly upset with Astro Boy because of its completely gratuitous westernisation.
Obviously Astro Boy was always a commercial product. In true Japanese fashion, a huge amount of money has been squeezed out of the series in terms of manga, anime series, film, merchandise, games, sponsorship etc., so its not that I’m whinging about the studios just trying to net cash; its the apparent need to take original (and more importantly commercially proved) ideas, and conform them to western/hollywood standards. What will kids delight in by seeing yet another ubiquitous pixar-style 3D feature with the same plot again?
I’m currently watching Dennou Coil, a recent anime series which is the current inspiration for a lot of AR industry projects. It reminded me of the quiet, bittersweet character of a lot of Japanese childrens tv/fiction and how unexpectedly fresh and touching the character development and storytelling is. Children don’t seem to care that much about cultural boundaries either; Disney is huge in Japan, and Japanese anime is big all around the world. Astro Boy was a lot of fun, but touched on a lot of issues (death, rejection, obsession, war) that are maybe considered too adult for the kids of today. I think they can handle it though, and in the right hands Astro Boy would be a great vehicle to present some new storytelling methods and visual styles to the mainstream feature format. The original manga was a big smash in the US too, so the move to ‘update’ the visuals and dumb down the storyline seem ill-motivated. As it is, I feel slightly robbed.

Keiichi Matsuda

Source :Keiichi Matsuda blog, January 18, 2010.

Where's the wind when it isn't blowing?

Political graphic novels from Albrecht Dürer to Art Spiegelman

The graphic novel is the most democratic of all art forms because everyone can "read" and understand it. It presupposes no knowledge of cultural history, familiarity with subject matter, compositional principles, and allegorical content. The comic links individual scenes into a pictorial "text," which does not necessarily say everything but whose interstices can be filled in associatively and by bringing in the person of the viewer to constitute a story. The democratic pictorial understanding innate to the comic, to sequential art, which – despite the name – is not necessarily "comic," encapsulates the pretensions of institutions concerned with communicating art and bridging the gap between art production and the public.

The exhibition assembles an international spectrum of politically motivated sequential art from the invention of printing to the present day. All the works have a decidedly political dimension and they are presented not chronologically but in terms of content. These thematic complexes allow cross-references and allusions beyond the given historical context. The architecture on the upper floor of the Kunstverein specially developed for this exhibition underpins this reference system. The display elements recall the spatial sequences of a comic. Each and every panel is a self-contained unit that nevertheless interchanges with other themes offering cross-links. On the ground floor, Keith Haring's graffiti provide a projection surface for classical presentation.

Ad Reinhardt, Martin Arnold, Gerd Arntz, Ferdinand Barlog, Berthold Bartosch, Harold Begbie / Francis Carruthers Gould, Steve Bell, Shirley Bogart, Stanley Brouwn, Jacques Callot, Clavé / Godard, Edmond Francois Calvo, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Sue Coe, M. Philip Copp, Stephen Croall, Robert Crumb, Jari Pekka Cuypers, Honoré Daumier, Lin Da-we, Dave Decat, James Dyrenforth / Max Kester, Walt Disney, Gustave Doré, Albrecht Dürer, Ekkes, Martin Gray, Masist Gül, Will Eisner, Max Ernst, Öyvind Fahlström, Jules Feiffer, Lyonel Feininger, Ari Folman, Jean-Claude Forest, Rube Goldberg, Francisco de Goya, Vernon Greene, Keith Haring, George Herriman, Hergé, Hans Holbein d. J., Paul Hogarth, William Hogarth, Laurence Hyde, Jörg Immendorff, Henri Gustave Jossot, Rolf Kauka, Reinhard Kleist, Joe Kubert, John Leech, Ján Mancuska, Stefan Marx, Frans Masereel, David Mazzucchelli, Winsor McCay, Scott McCloud, Carl Meffert, Alfred von Meysenbug, Jürgen Metz / Charly G. Schütz, Mike Mignola, Henry Moore, Keiji Nakazawa, Otto Neurath, Otto Nückel, Erich Ohser, Michael O' Donoghue, Dan O'Neill, Henrik Olesen, Karl Ewald Olszewski, George Orwell, Richard Felton Outcault, Giacomo Patri, Gladys Parker, Guy Peellaert / Pierre Bartier, Grayson Perry, Raymond Pettibon, Pablo Picasso, Fritz Raab, Alfred Rethel, Henry Ritter, Rius, Spain Rodriguez, Joe Sacco, Petr Sadecky, Marjane Satrapi, Gerald Scarfe, Gerhard Seyfried, Ben Shahn, Jim Shaw, Situationistische Internationale, Ernst Scheller, Manfred Schmid, Adolf Schrödter, William Siegel, Otto Soglow, Art Spiegelman, Robert and Philip Spence, Christoph Steinegger, Ernst Steingässer, Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen, Lou Tji-gui, Mathilde ter Heijne, Rodolphe Toepffer, Gary Trudeau, Wang Tschun-bsin / Yang Scha, Félix Vallotton, Lynd Ward, Klaus Wiese / Christian Ziewer, Adolphe Willette, Oscar Zarate etc.

Kunstverein Hamburg
December 19, 2009 - March 14, 2010
Source:www.kunstverein.de

Existential Peanuts

http://www.robertrini.com/index.html

Lutefisk Sushi Bento boxes

Source:www.transatlantis.net

What is a House with Eameses' Furniture ?

Suits and cocktail dresses, luxury objects, a big car in the suburbs with a swimming pool and of course a house with designed chairs by Charles and Ray Eames.

© Elliott G. Garbauskas
www.buttercupfestival.com