MAGA Memes and Momala: Political Cartoonists Take on 2024 and More! Bruce Guthrie's event pics posted

My pictures from the "MAGA Memes and Momala: Political Cartoonists Take on 2024 and More!" event are finally posted!  The direct link is:

http://www.bguthriephotos.com/graphlib.nsf/keys/2024_10_21D1_MAGA_Memes

--

Bruce Guthrie
Photo obsessive
http://www.bguthriephotos.com

American University advertising Ralph Steadman exhibit on Metrobuses

by Bruce Guthrie

I didn't get a good image of it, but I was impressed that Katzen was advertising the Ralph Steadman exhibit on city buses.

 

 

I've also seen it showing up on the electronic advertising boards in Metro stations.

 

 

They're definitely promoting this show!

Bruce Guthrie
Photo obsessive
http://www.bguthriephotos.com

What, Me Worry? The Art and Humor of MAD Magazine exhibit explored by Bruce Guthrie

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.

George C. Scott as General George Patton

There are special sections dedicated to Spy Vs Spy, Al Jaffee's fold-ins, and Mort Drucker gets an entire room.  (The latter features a surprising number of originals from NoVa's David Apatoff and Nell Minow -- David was one of the advisors for the exhibit.)  The fold-in section has an interactive kiosk where you can select a MAD cover, see the unfolded fold-in, and then watch it fold-in.  

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/Alfred_E._Neuman )

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-and-video/exhibition-catalogues/mad-exhibition-magazine.html

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

https://www.nrm.org/2023/11/mad/

Norman Rockwell: Illustrating Humor

https://www.nrm.org/2023/11/norman-rockwell-illustrating-humor/

The Art of Norman Rockwell: Highlights from the Permanent Collection

https://www.nrm.org/2021/11/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/graphlib.nsf/keys/2024_06_27C1_Rockwell_MAD
http://www.bguthriephotos.com/graphlib.nsf/keys/2024_06_27C3_Rockwell_MAD3
http://www.bguthriephotos.com/graphlib.nsf/keys/2024_06_27C5_Rockwell_MAD5

Norman Rockwell: Illustrating Humor

http://www.bguthriephotos.com/graphlib.nsf/keys/2024_06_27B2_Rockwell_Illus

Or, if you have the patience to see all 910 (!) images shown on the same page, try:
http://www.bguthriephotos.com/graphlib.nsf/(Merge)?OpenAgent&merge=MA_Rockwell_2024_MAD&opt=event

 

Former local cartoonist David Hagen, who designed ComicsDC's logo

Frank Frazetta artwork

Peter Kuper artwork

Al Jaffee artwork

Al Jaffee caricature

Mort Drucker artwork for Saturday Night Fever

 

Barbara Brandon-Croft pictures (and Sarah Boxer and Big Planet Bethesda)

from last night at Loyalty Bookstore. My pictures are here and Bruce Guthrie's are here.

Meanwhile, last weekend Sarah Boxer signed her two Shakespeare parodies in Bethesda.

And Big Planet Comics in Bethesda has reopened to the public, 7 days a week.

John Gallagher's Politics and Prose talk on Max Meow

by Bruce Guthrie

I went to John Gallagher's talk on his children's graphic novel series Max Meow at Politics and Prose on Friday morning (Oct. 21). I'm not sure I had ever seen him do his thing before. 

When P+P does a kids event on a school day, the store clears the floor and busloads of school kids show up for the talk. The kids, in this case second graders, sit on the carpet and listen. There's no book signing event -- the school libraries already have the books.

I'm not a family guy and as an adult I experience being around small children as drowning in a bowl of Mexican jumping beans. I don't know if kids were hyperactive like this when I was growing up. I'm sure we must have been and you just don't notice it when you're one of the jumping beans.

Anyway, John held the kids in rapt attention while he stood at the drawing board and gave them a history of comic books that went back to cave paintings and hieroglyphics, then to DC's Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman (he commented that make superheroes were always in capes, women were in swimsuits), and Marvel's Lee and Ditko and Kirby, and then where his own character Max Meow came from and the role his son's dyslexia had in all of it. This was to second graders! And they got it and stayed well behaved.

I was impressed!  

See more photos at http://www.bguthriephotos.com/graphlib.nsf/keys/2022_10_21A1_Gallagher

Comics in National Building Museum's CANstruction competition

 by Bruce Guthrie

I spent much of Sunday at the National Building Museum watching the CANstruction event.

As the sponsoring group AIA | DC (the Washington Architectural Foundation) explains it:

Canstruction is a nationwide program that aims to raise awareness about hunger. In DC, Canstruction is organized by the Washington Architectural Foundation as a creative design-build competition that benefits the Capital Area Food Bank through donations of canned goods. Teams from architecture and design firms from Washington, DC use their skills to build sculptures out of cans of food. The nutritious shelf-stable food is donated to the CAFB for distribution to those in need after the event.

This year's theme was Children's Books and each structure highlighted a different book.

This year, there were 21 teams competing here in DC.  They've used all the normal state-of-the-art design tools to come up with their sculptures made of cans.  The structure with the fewest cans used 891 of them.   The most complicated used 5,942.  

The rules include that they can't start working with the cans until 12 noon and they have to be done by 6pm.  I spent 1-3/4 hours photographing before going to lunch, coming back an hour later to find that several teams had already finished.  Three teams were still working until 5:30 or so and one finished just before 6pm.  I left with the last team.

Two were directly influenced by comics -

  * Charles Schulz ("Peanuts" -- Snoopy on his doghouse with Woodstock on his chest

  * Joe Simon and Jack Kirby (Captain America's shield)

Your only chance to see these pieces, other than through my photos, is in person this Friday to Monday (the NBM is only open four days a week).  Then they're gone.  I suspect a few of them will collapse before the end of the show.  

If you've never been to the National Building Museum, it's well worth the trip.  The installation is located in the main hall of the museum building and it's free to see them.  Their regular exhibits are described on https://www.nbm.org/exhibitions/current/ .  I really liked the "Gun Violence Memorial Project" (also free) and "Animals, Collected" ones. The museum is next to the National Law Enforcement Memorial and is directly across from the entrance to one of the Judiciary Square stops.

I took too many photos (and have to come back and take more for the signs I missed) and had to divide them into four separate pages.  If you want to see all 750-ish of them, try this link:

http://www.bguthriephotos.com/graphlib.nsf/(Merge)?OpenAgent&merge=DC_Canstruction_211121&opt=event

The complete list (as they line up on the floor):

 * Andrea Beaty ("Rosie Revere, Engineer")
 * Ezra Jack Keats ("The Snowy Day")
 * Andrea Beaty ("Iggy Peck, Architect")
 * Frank Baum (the Emerald City from "The Wizard of Oz")
 * Sonica Ellis ("Kindness Rocks")
 * Ludwig Bemelmans ("Madeline")
 * E.B. White ("Charlotte's Web")
 * Alice Schertle ("Little Blue Truck")
 * Dr. Seuss ("Oh, the Places You'll Go!")
 * Eric Carle ("The Very Hungry Caterpillar")
 * Dr. Seuss ("The Lorax")
 * Marcus Pfister ("The Rainbow Fish")
 * Fairy Tale ("Jack and the Beanstalk")
 * Charles Schulz ("Peanuts" -- Snoopy on his doghouse with Woodstock on his chest}
 * Norman Bridwell ("Clifford the Big Red Dog")
 * American folktale ("The Little Engine That Could" )
 * Lewis Carroll (a Cheshire Cat from the "Alice in Wonderland" series)
 * Dr. Seuss ("The Cat In The Hat")
 * Joe Simon and Jack Kirby (Captain America's shield)
 * Shel Silverstein ("The Giving Tree")
 * Laura Numeroff ("If You Give a Mouse a Cookie")

RIP Allen Bellman

by Bruce Guthrie

Allen Bellman has died.  The 96-year-old worked on Golden Age comics in the 1940s like Captain America, The Human Torch, Jap Buster Johnson, At the time, he worked for Timely Comics.  Many of the characters were later relaunched by Marvel Comics in the 1960s.

I met him in 2016 when Mark Evanier talked to him for two panels at the San Diego Comic-Con.  Captain America was especially huge back then -- it was Cap's 75th anniversary -- and I couldn't even get into one of panels.  I'm sure he enjoyed the attention for something he had worked on 60+ years before.

Mark Evanier and Bellman

Drawing in Guthrie's sketchbook

Some other pictures....  The massive crowd waiting to get into the Captain America @ 75 panel -- the one I gave up trying to get in.   

 

 

His hand with Captain America ring and nail polish. 

 

 

And his wife Roz.

 

Bruce Guthrie on UVA's Oliphant exhibit

by Bruce Guthrie

I went down to Charlottesville this weekend to see the new Oliphant exhibit there.  While there, I met with Molly Schwartzburg who was co-curator of the exhibit that I had been sending emails to regarding photo policies and such.  We had a good chat!

This is the official exhibit description:

Oliphant: Unpacking the Archive
September 23, 2019 – May 30, 2020
Celebrating the recent acquisition of editorial cartoonist Patrick Oliphant’s voluminous archive

In 2018, Patrick and Susan Oliphant donated almost 7,000 drawings, watercolors, prints, sculptures, and sketchbooks to the UVA Library. Complementing the art is a wealth of archival material: correspondence, photographs, professional papers, scrapbooks, and recordings. This, the first exhibition to juxtapose the archive with Oliphant’s artwork, shows how and why Oliphant became the most widely syndicated, most influential political cartoonist in America, shaping the political consciousness of generations.

What happens when a great artist takes up the profession of political cartooning and deploys all the weapons in his considerable arsenal to send a message? Endowed with a skepticism of the status quo, a love of drawing, and little formal training, Oliphant began his career at eighteen as a copy boy in Adelaide, Australia. When he joined the Denver Post in 1964 he introduced a linear fluency and wit—a studied awareness of adversary traditions from Hogarth, Goya, and Daumier to David Low—as well as an expansive imagination and conceptual reach as yet unknown to American newspaper audiences.

Oliphant’s swift rise to prominence, including a Pulitzer Prize in 1967, was followed by five decades of sustained, uncompromising work. From Watergate to Bridgegate, from Duoshade to digital delivery, and from the ephemeral newspaper cartoon to the lasting medium of bronze, Oliphant’s work both embraces its immediate context and transcends the particulars of time, place, and medium to reify universal traits of human character.

Today is a moment of great change for political commentary and visual satire. As newspapers continue to fold or merge, and the number of staff editorial cartoonists drops from hundreds to dozens nationally, Oliphant’s archive will be essential for understanding the place of political cartoons in newsprint’s last decades of dominance, and inspiring paths forward in an era of turbulent uncertainty.

It's a wonderful exhibit, filled with bunches of his daily strips, his sculptures, etc. 

For me, the major disappointment was that most of the artwork were reproductions.  Apparently, the originals were hung for the first couple of months when it opened in September, but were then rotated out.  The signage was not changed to reflect this so I'm not entirely sure what was original and what wasn't.  That's not the way it's supposed to be in a research library.

But ignoring that, there is a lot to love about the exhibit:

• The sketchbooks -- so many sketchbooks! -- are wonderful.  There's even one (clearly a reproduction) that you can pick up and look through.  Pat drew everything! 
• There's a huge doodle picture on an easel that's just amazing.  Between classic drawings are phone numbers, addresses, and appointment reminders.
• The sculptures -- two of which are downstairs -- are great.  The National Portrait Gallery has copies of most of them too, but they all went off display when the presidential gallery was reorganized.
• There's a free poster and a fairly modest brochure.  Both feature a self-portrait that he did for San Diego Comic-Con back in 2009. That was the one that I sat next to his wife Susan during his talk while he drew obscene things on his writing tablet (Susan kept covering her eyes during the demo).
• The history lesson about growing up in Australia and coming here on assignment were interesting.  I always wondered why he was here.
• There was a display about Punk, the penguin character that visits most of his strips.  Punk has been around.... well, hell, almost forever.  It's his signature like Ralph Steadman's splatter.  And like at Steadman's Katzen exhibit, you'll find Punk on the walls in something like ten places throughout the building including on floor landings and in the elevator.  (Some Katzen folk got splatters added to their business cards.  I'm not sure that happened with Punk.)

They did a really nice job and it's well worth the trip.  Plus that library also has an interesting exhibit about the Declaration of Independence and offset printing. 

I of course did my normal photo obsessive thing -- so many photos! -- and they're up on http://www.bguthriephotos.com/graphlib.nsf/keys/2020_02_20B2_UVAL_Oliphant