by Bruce Guthrie
I did an overnight visit to Stockbridge, Massachusetts to visit the new
"What, Me Worry? The Art and Humor of MAD Magazine" exhibit at the
Norman Rockwell Museum.
Stockbridge is about 370 miles -- 6+
hours and many, many tolls -- from downtown DC. For those who are
thinking that's a long way to drive for an exhibit, keep in mind that
this area of Massachusetts has lots of other sites to justify the trip.
In the immediate area of the museum, you have Chesterwood (sculptor
Daniel Chester French's house and studio), The Mount (Edith Wharton's
mansion), Arrowhead (Herman Melville's house), Alice's
Restaurant, and the Guthrie Center at Old Trinity Church ("but Alice
doesn't live in the restaurant, she lives in the church nearby the
restaurant, in the bell-tower, with her husband Ray and Fasha the dog").
On
the drive up, you'll pass lots of places like Hyde Park where you can
tour FDR's house, Eleanor Roosevelt's cabin (Val-Kill), and Frederick
Vanderbilt's mansion. (A ranger there once told me a fascinating story
of why FDR, who hated the Vanderbilts, decided to have the NPS acquire
it.) And you'll drive past Poughkeepsie which was about the only line
from the "French Connection" movie that I can't forget ("Ever picked
your feet in Poughkeepsie?").
Anyway, the exhibit...
It
features 150-ish pieces of original artwork from MAD magazine. These
span the entire history of the magazine so there are pages going back to
Superduperman (1953) and Woman Wonder (1954). Artists shown include a
who's who in cartooning -- Harvey Kurtzman, Don Martin, Dave Berg, Jack Davis, Frank
Frazetta, Kelly Freas, Sergio Aragones, Norman Mingo, Angelo Torres,
Wally Wood, Peter Kuper, Keith Knight, Tom Richmond, Sam Viviano, James
Warhola... Lots of original cover paintings (including the one done by
the non-human ape, J. Fred Muggs) are exhibited, as well as inside pages. The
intricate detail on some of those early inside pages is amazing -- you
need to examine the pages closely to appreciate them.
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| George C. Scott as General George Patton |
There are a few exhibit cases including one which contains letters MAD wrote to Norman Rockwell in 1964 asking him to do a cover for the magazine. (You have to appreciate the letter saying "we are enclosing some material on our little idiot boy.") The magazine offered him $1,000 to do a charcoal sketch, but Rockwell declined.
Another case has antecedents of the Alfred E. Neuman character. MAD, which started using the character in 1954, didn't create the character. It was used in print advertising as far back as 1894. Even the phrase "What, me worry?" was based on text appearing in previous ads. In 1965, a copyright case made it to the Supreme Court. The widow of Harry Spencer Stuff, who had copyrighted the image after using it in a 1914 cartoon, sued the magazine for the use of the image. The court, which back then cared about precedent, said the image was in wide use before Stuff's copyright and his copyright was therefore invalid. So the figure is apparently in the public domain. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
The
exhibit briefly mentions the size of the magazine. I had always heard
that the only reason it shifted to magazine size was to avoid conflicts
with the Comic Code Authority. An exhibit sign says "Harvey Kurtzman
was intent on recreating MAD as a magazine -- a shift that Bill Gaines
supported to keep his editor from defecting to Pageant, a monthly
journal, for higher pay."
When the museum does temporary
exhibits like these, it usually does a side exhibit showcasing some of
Rockwell's pieces that fit into the theme. The connected exhibit this
time is "Norman Rockwell: Illustrating Humor" which features about 20 of
his original paintings or studies (which are usually done full size, so
they're amazing on their own). 
In the separate "The Art of
Norman Rockwell: Highlights from the Permanent Collection" exhibit, the
museum includes a number of paintings which are critical to our current
appreciation of Rockwell including the original "Four Freedoms"
paintings, "The Problem We All Live With" (Ruby Bridges integrating the
New Orleans school), and "Murder in Mississippi" (the painting he did
after Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman were murdered
in Mississippi -- the 50th anniversary of that lynching was this June
21).
The 64-page catalog for the exhibit is done
to look like an issue of the magazine. Priced ("Our Price Cheap!
(-ish)") at $19.52 (the year the magazine started), it features lots of
essays by folks like Steve Brodner (exhibition co-curator), Dick
DeBartolo, David Apatoff, Peter Kuper, and Sam Viviano (lead advisor).
Like the magazine, it includes marginal drawings by Sergio Aragones and a
new MAD Fold-In by Johnny Sampson plus some of Al Jaffee's classic
ones. It has some pieces that are not in the exhibit. In other cases,
the catalog shows the final printed page with word balloons which aren't
always on the original pieces shown in the exhibit. It's a great
supplement, not a substitute, to the exhibit. You can order it online
at https://store.nrm.org/books-
Random observations about the audience... The loudest laughs were from a
large crowd watching a video of "Airplane" that was playing in one of
the galleries. I didn't see any non-white attendees when I was there. One woman complained to her companion about how few original Norman
Rockwell paintings were in the Norman Rockwell Museum, saying they had
to come back when there wasn't a traveling exhibit there. (The museum
ALWAYS has traveling exhibits.) Given the magazine having been around
for 70+ years, I saw folks rediscovering the art they grew up on and
studying the newer pieces that they had missed. Younger folks seemed a
little out of place but they probably don't know who Norman Rockwell is
either. 
The exhibit runs until October 27. The website
includes an offer to other museums to "Host this Exhibition!" so maybe
it will be appearing at other venues in the future.
Web sources:
Norman Rockwell Museum pages:
What, Me Worry? The Art and Humor of MAD Magazine
Norman Rockwell: Illustrating Humor
The Art of Norman Rockwell: Highlights from the Permanent Collection
I did my own obsessive thing of course, photographing pieces and signs. Most photos turned out. In some cases, I had trouble figuring out which wall text corresponded to which piece so there is a problem with duplication. I had to divide the main exhibit into three separate pages but I'll combine them later after I resolve the wall text. Plus there's another one for the "Norman Rockwell: Illustrating Humor" component. For now, these are my pages:
What, Me Worry? The Art and Humor of MAD Magazine
http://www.bguthriephotos.com/
http://www.bguthriephotos.com/
Norman Rockwell: Illustrating Humor
Or, if you have the patience to see all 910 (!) images shown on the same page, try:
http://www.bguthriephotos.com/
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| Former local cartoonist David Hagen, who designed ComicsDC's logo |
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| Frank Frazetta artwork |
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| Peter Kuper artwork |
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| Al Jaffee artwork |
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| Al Jaffee caricature |
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| Mort Drucker artwork for Saturday Night Fever |
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