Showing posts with label International Journal of Comic Art. Show all posts
Showing posts with label International Journal of Comic Art. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
new International Journal of Comic Art is out!
Details to follow, but it's 643 pages for $15.00 - click on the right for more information.
Monday, November 12, 2007
Bush Leaguers redux
Actually, I knew this, because I bought a copy at OSU, but forgot to mention it. Luckily Dave Astor caught it. "New Catalog of Cartoons From 'Bush Leaguers' Exhibit", E&P Online November 12, 2007. This was the show at American University this summer - it was excellent. My review appears in the new issue of the International J of Comic Art which is wending its way through the postal system now.
Sunday, September 30, 2007
cIndy Center interview - Senior Editor David Astor at Editor and Publisher
Chris Shields interviewed "Senior Editor David Astor at Editor and Publisher" for his cIndy Center podcast and posted it on September 25th, 2007. Hopefully a transcription of this will eventually appear in the International Journal of Comic Art as part of our pioneers of comics scholarship series.
Chris writes:
The 100th episode of the cIndyCenter.com podcast! Huge milestone! Our friend David Astor talks with us about the field of contemporary cartoonists. His work at "Editor and Publisher", both the online version and the monthly magazine, keeps him very busy. He shares his insights into the Syndicated Comic industry. This is an amazing interview and one that I am sure you will enjoy. Listen to the interview with David Astor.
Chris writes:
The 100th episode of the cIndyCenter.com podcast! Huge milestone! Our friend David Astor talks with us about the field of contemporary cartoonists. His work at "Editor and Publisher", both the online version and the monthly magazine, keeps him very busy. He shares his insights into the Syndicated Comic industry. This is an amazing interview and one that I am sure you will enjoy. Listen to the interview with David Astor.
Saturday, September 15, 2007
Wish You Were There #4 - Telnaes and Moss exhibit reviews
These two are from the International Journal of Comic Art 4:1 (Spring 2002). I was still feeling my way with writing these.
Pens and Needles: The Editorial Cartoons of Ann Telnaes. Rosslyn, VA: The Newseum, October 26, 2001--March 3, 2002.
The Newseum is closing in 2002 to move to Washington, DC so the Telnaes show (entitled Pulitzer Prize 2001: Editorial Cartoonist Ann Telnaes in the exhibit) will be the last one for several years. Telnaes, the second woman to win the Pulitzer, has no home newspaper; instead she is under contract with Tribune Media Services. The small exhibit consisted of 16 cartoons, 11 of them originals. 5 were on the disputed 2000 presidential election, 2 on the separation of church and state, 1 on Elian Gonzales, 2 on China's human rights record and the last on OSHA's regulating the home workplace. Telnaes worked as an animator for Disney and Warner Bros., and now does a weekly strip as one of the 'Six Chix.' Her line is very distinctive, probably due to her animation work; one can immediately recognize her art. Telnaes draws in pencil, inks her work and then scans it into a computer to add color. She now produces both black and white and color versions of each cartoon; this show reveals the color detracts from the impact of the cartoon. While this was a pleasant little show, the public would benefit from a larger one showing a larger amount and demonstrating a wider range of her cartoons. The exhibit is online at http://www.newseum.org/telnaes/gallery/open_index.htm. If that site is taken down, many of the cartoons in the exhibit can be seen at http://cagle.slate.msn.com/news/telnaes/main.asp; Telnaes' own site at http://www.anntelnaes.com is under construction as of this writing.
Geoffrey Moss: A Pen as Mighty as a Sword. Rosslyn, VA: The Newseum, Fall 2001--March 3, 2002.
A very small exhibit of six pen and ink cartoons drawn after the terrorism of September 11 was tucked into a corner of the main exhibit hall. Moss, who calls his captionless cartoons "Mossprints" is syndicated by Creators. The six drawings were in the classic tradition of newspaper illustration, showing death as a gasmask-wearing skeleton and the Israel / Palestine issue as part of the larger problem. A larger exhibit with more information on Moss would be a pleasure; this show functioned as an appetizer.
Pens and Needles: The Editorial Cartoons of Ann Telnaes. Rosslyn, VA: The Newseum, October 26, 2001--March 3, 2002.
The Newseum is closing in 2002 to move to Washington, DC so the Telnaes show (entitled Pulitzer Prize 2001: Editorial Cartoonist Ann Telnaes in the exhibit) will be the last one for several years. Telnaes, the second woman to win the Pulitzer, has no home newspaper; instead she is under contract with Tribune Media Services. The small exhibit consisted of 16 cartoons, 11 of them originals. 5 were on the disputed 2000 presidential election, 2 on the separation of church and state, 1 on Elian Gonzales, 2 on China's human rights record and the last on OSHA's regulating the home workplace. Telnaes worked as an animator for Disney and Warner Bros., and now does a weekly strip as one of the 'Six Chix.' Her line is very distinctive, probably due to her animation work; one can immediately recognize her art. Telnaes draws in pencil, inks her work and then scans it into a computer to add color. She now produces both black and white and color versions of each cartoon; this show reveals the color detracts from the impact of the cartoon. While this was a pleasant little show, the public would benefit from a larger one showing a larger amount and demonstrating a wider range of her cartoons. The exhibit is online at http://www.newseum.org/telnaes/gallery/open_index.htm. If that site is taken down, many of the cartoons in the exhibit can be seen at http://cagle.slate.msn.com/news/telnaes/main.asp; Telnaes' own site at http://www.anntelnaes.com is under construction as of this writing.
Geoffrey Moss: A Pen as Mighty as a Sword. Rosslyn, VA: The Newseum, Fall 2001--March 3, 2002.
A very small exhibit of six pen and ink cartoons drawn after the terrorism of September 11 was tucked into a corner of the main exhibit hall. Moss, who calls his captionless cartoons "Mossprints" is syndicated by Creators. The six drawings were in the classic tradition of newspaper illustration, showing death as a gasmask-wearing skeleton and the Israel / Palestine issue as part of the larger problem. A larger exhibit with more information on Moss would be a pleasure; this show functioned as an appetizer.
Wish You Were There #3 - A couple of book reviews
The following reviews are ones I wrote for the International Journal of Comic Art 3:1 (Spring 2001).
Raggedy Ann and More: Johnny Gruelle's Dolls and Merchandise. Patricia Hall. Gretna: Pelican Publishing Company, 2000. ISBN 1-56554-102-2. $35.
Cartoonists, children's books, and merchandise have been linked since the late nineteenth century. While Charles Schulz, Jim Davis, Berke Breathed, and especially Walt Disney are well known to the contemporary reader, Johnny Gruelle has largely been forgotten. Patricia Hall has been working to reintroduce Gruelle, and this book is the second in a planned trilogy. The first was a biography, Johnny Gruelle, Creator of Raggedy Ann and Andy (1993) and the third planned for spring 2001 will be a bibliography. Gruelle was an artist who moved easily between the worlds of comic strips, political cartoons, and children's books, eventually creating a family business that lasted until the 1960s.
Gruelle's life is recounted briefly by Hall, but readers interested in detail are referred to her previous book. This extremely well-illustrated book concentrates on the physical products derived from Gruelle's imagination. As a cartoonist for the New York Herald, Gruelle created the "Mr. Twee Deedle" comic strip which was merchandized as a doll by the newspaper immediately. While doing the comic strip, he also illustrated children's magazines and books. In 1915, he submitted a design for a patent on Raggedy Ann, a doll that was apparently partially based on characters from his comic strip.
The patent was granted and Gruelle began making his own dolls. Raggedy Ann was not based on a familiar character and initial sales were slow. Gruelle generated interest in the doll by contracting with publisher P. F. Volland for a children's book based on the doll. Other characters he developed, such as the duck Quacky Doodles, proved more popular and merchandising included a cartoon series. By late 1918, Gruelle had completed his book on Raggedy Ann and dolls were produced to be sold with it. The book and doll combination was a success and Gruelle continued producing merchandizable ideas until he died in 1938. His family took over the company and continued licensing Gruelle's characters until they sold the company to a book publisher.
Probably because of marketing concerns, the book is a curious mixture of a business history attractively designed as a full-color coffee table book that includes a price guide. Hall writes to appeal to historians as well as collectors of children's books, dolls, toys, and cartoons. Many sidebar pieces detail specific parts of Gruelle's business efforts, such as books, sheet music, and copyright infringements. Anyone interested in Gruelle, cartoon merchandising, book or doll collecting, or popular culture of the first half of the twentieth century should find something of interest in this book.
Evil Geniuses in a Nutshell. J. D. "Illiad" Frazer. Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly & Associates, 2000.
A collection of User Friendly, a free online comic strip, raises some interesting questions about the future of comic art. Frazer's strip is written for a specialized audience of advanced computer users and is published by a company specializing in computer manuals. The strip is done on a computer and lacks backgrounds in the simplified art style that Dilbert made acceptable. Illiad has stated that Breathed's Bloom County was an inspiration, but the humor of User Friendly is extremely dependent on knowledge of computers. A niche market product, reminiscent of earlier specialized work such as Jake's military cartoons, User Friendly is not syndicated, but it still appears in more than 150 college papers and several magazines. In the introduction to this second collection, Frazer said, "But today, with the Web, the distribution infrastructure the syndicates possess is becoming less valuable, and is no longer necessary." One of the strip's webpages claims, "The site, UserFriendly.org, attracts more than 2 million visits each month, including more than a half million unique visitors and 15 million page views ...and is now by far the largest web-based comic strip... Compared to more traditional syndicated comics, User Friendly the Comic Strip is catching up very quickly. For example, Dilbert, around since 1986, is syndicated in over 2,000 newspapers. UserFriendly.org boasts an audience equal to 42% of Dilbert’s online audience."
User Friendly can thus be seen as supporting part of McCloud's argument about the transition of comics to the web, but Frazer, O'Reilly, and McCloud decided to publish and charge for a paper version. The ability of both electronic and paper versions to succeed seems to bode well for the future of comic art. The strip and additional information about it can be seen at http://www.userfriendly.org/ and http://www.ufmedia.com.
Raggedy Ann and More: Johnny Gruelle's Dolls and Merchandise. Patricia Hall. Gretna: Pelican Publishing Company, 2000. ISBN 1-56554-102-2. $35.
Cartoonists, children's books, and merchandise have been linked since the late nineteenth century. While Charles Schulz, Jim Davis, Berke Breathed, and especially Walt Disney are well known to the contemporary reader, Johnny Gruelle has largely been forgotten. Patricia Hall has been working to reintroduce Gruelle, and this book is the second in a planned trilogy. The first was a biography, Johnny Gruelle, Creator of Raggedy Ann and Andy (1993) and the third planned for spring 2001 will be a bibliography. Gruelle was an artist who moved easily between the worlds of comic strips, political cartoons, and children's books, eventually creating a family business that lasted until the 1960s.
Gruelle's life is recounted briefly by Hall, but readers interested in detail are referred to her previous book. This extremely well-illustrated book concentrates on the physical products derived from Gruelle's imagination. As a cartoonist for the New York Herald, Gruelle created the "Mr. Twee Deedle" comic strip which was merchandized as a doll by the newspaper immediately. While doing the comic strip, he also illustrated children's magazines and books. In 1915, he submitted a design for a patent on Raggedy Ann, a doll that was apparently partially based on characters from his comic strip.
The patent was granted and Gruelle began making his own dolls. Raggedy Ann was not based on a familiar character and initial sales were slow. Gruelle generated interest in the doll by contracting with publisher P. F. Volland for a children's book based on the doll. Other characters he developed, such as the duck Quacky Doodles, proved more popular and merchandising included a cartoon series. By late 1918, Gruelle had completed his book on Raggedy Ann and dolls were produced to be sold with it. The book and doll combination was a success and Gruelle continued producing merchandizable ideas until he died in 1938. His family took over the company and continued licensing Gruelle's characters until they sold the company to a book publisher.
Probably because of marketing concerns, the book is a curious mixture of a business history attractively designed as a full-color coffee table book that includes a price guide. Hall writes to appeal to historians as well as collectors of children's books, dolls, toys, and cartoons. Many sidebar pieces detail specific parts of Gruelle's business efforts, such as books, sheet music, and copyright infringements. Anyone interested in Gruelle, cartoon merchandising, book or doll collecting, or popular culture of the first half of the twentieth century should find something of interest in this book.
Evil Geniuses in a Nutshell. J. D. "Illiad" Frazer. Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly & Associates, 2000.
A collection of User Friendly, a free online comic strip, raises some interesting questions about the future of comic art. Frazer's strip is written for a specialized audience of advanced computer users and is published by a company specializing in computer manuals. The strip is done on a computer and lacks backgrounds in the simplified art style that Dilbert made acceptable. Illiad has stated that Breathed's Bloom County was an inspiration, but the humor of User Friendly is extremely dependent on knowledge of computers. A niche market product, reminiscent of earlier specialized work such as Jake's military cartoons, User Friendly is not syndicated, but it still appears in more than 150 college papers and several magazines. In the introduction to this second collection, Frazer said, "But today, with the Web, the distribution infrastructure the syndicates possess is becoming less valuable, and is no longer necessary." One of the strip's webpages claims, "The site, UserFriendly.org, attracts more than 2 million visits each month, including more than a half million unique visitors and 15 million page views ...and is now by far the largest web-based comic strip... Compared to more traditional syndicated comics, User Friendly the Comic Strip is catching up very quickly. For example, Dilbert, around since 1986, is syndicated in over 2,000 newspapers. UserFriendly.org boasts an audience equal to 42% of Dilbert’s online audience."
User Friendly can thus be seen as supporting part of McCloud's argument about the transition of comics to the web, but Frazer, O'Reilly, and McCloud decided to publish and charge for a paper version. The ability of both electronic and paper versions to succeed seems to bode well for the future of comic art. The strip and additional information about it can be seen at http://www.userfriendly.org/ and http://www.ufmedia.com.
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Miguel Covarrubias portraits on display this fall.
The great Mexican caricaturist has material - "portraits of and by" - borrowed from the National Portrait Gallery in the exhibit "Mexican Treasures of the Smithsonian" in the underground Ripley Center from September 4 - November 11.
Last year's exhibit of his work was well worth seeing. Here's the review I wrote for the International Journal of Comic Art 8:2:
Miguel Covarrubias: Mexican Genius in the United States. Washington, DC: Cultural Institute of Mexico, May 3-July 7, 2006.
Covarrubias, while little remembered today, was a giant in magazine illustration and caricature from the 1920s though the 1940s. According to the promotional material for the exhibit, he illustrated for Vanity Fair, Vogue, The New Yorker, Fortune, Life and Time while also illustrating over twenty books. Surprisingly, he also did pioneering cultural anthropology research when he visited Bali with his wife in the 1930s.
This exhibit also consists of two smaller shows. On the ground level of the building, an aging mansion, sketches and studies from the Universidad de las Américas were displayed in a set of unadorned side galleries off the lobby. The fifty-two sketches appeared to be studies for more complete work. They were mostly on cheap newsprint paper, and the identity of the subject was frequently lost except for the famous like Marlene Dietrich, D.H. Lawrence, Joe Louis, Walt Disney, and Benny Goodman. The sketches showed Covarrubias working with a quick, forceful stroke, and "Unknown Character" in the first room demonstrated that Edward Sorel must have been familiar with his work. In the final room of the galleries, two or three films were supposed to be showing, but none were. The press release listed two films by José G. Benítez Wall, A Mexican in New York (1997) and Miguel Covarrubias 1904-1957 (1996) and the wall text listed a third, A Master Artist's Trade (1997).
Returning to the lobby, the visitor (of which I was the only one) could examine exhibit cases with published versions of some of his book and magazine work. Books he illustrated included non-fiction and non-cartoon works such as The Aztecs: People of the Sun. He wrote and illustrated Mexico South: The Isthmus of Tehuantepec (Knopf 1967) and drew striking maps and Olmec heads for it. In Fine Art Color Prints (Chicago: Peoples Book Club, 1945), Covarrubias contributed a very well done and very complex "Map of America" showing the distribution of natural resources. The exhibit cases also included Vanity Fair from June 1933 showing one of his series of Impossible Interviews -- "#18 Herr Adolf Hitler and Huey S. 'Hooey' Long versus Josef Stalin and Benito Mussolini." These Impossible Interviews were a major component of the second part of the exhibit, which was up four flights of red, fraying but thickly carpeted stairs, lined by mural scenes painted by Cueva del Rio from 1934-1941.
The fourth floor held the exhibit Miguel Covarrubias: Caricaturista, curated in 2004 by Kathryne B. Tovo for Humanities Texas with the University of Texas' Ransom Humanities Research Center. It was not readily apparent if the original show consisted of all reproductions, but the traveling version did. Given the quality of Covarrubias' artwork, the use of reproductions was a considerable disappointment, especially since the Ransom Center appears to have had access to the original works. In spite of that, this exhibit was a good representation of the breadth of his career, and was very well-labeled with biographical information on his subjects including scientists and explorers like William Beebe and Richard E. Byrd.
The label for the Impossible Interview in Vanity Fair of December 1931 succinctly explained the series rationale:
This regular feature paired two people who could not meet in real life in an imaginary conversation. Featuring such ill-matched celebrity pairs as a birth control advocate with the mother of quintuplets, a speakeasy hostess with the president of the Women's Christian Temperance Union, or a sultry Marlene Dietrich with moralist Senator Smith Brookhart, each interview offered rich potential for comic conversation and visual contrasts -- with the less respectable figure often achieving a slight edge.
Sorel's debt to Covarrubias can again be seen in his recent similar series for the Atlantic Monthly collected as First Encounters: A Book of Memorable Meetings (Knopf, 1994). The time is overdue for a collection of these original Interviews.
These rooms were filled interesting illustrations. Two especially worth noting were a skillful parody of Rockwell Kent that Covarrubias did in Kent's style in 1932, and an illustration of Walt Disney in Noah's Ark with all of his characters, done for Vogue in 1937. The Disney caricature was the finished version of the sketch seen on the first floor, and the failure to display the two side-by-side highlighted a disappointment of this exhibit. Overall, the show should have been better, but for those with little knowledge of Covarrubias' long and varied career, it was an adequate introduction to his work.
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
International Journal of Comic Art's biggest issue ever available now
Here's 4 scans of the table of contents of the new Spring vol 9, #1, 755-page, $30/2 issues academic journal. This issue concentrates on Kibyoshi manga and Australian cartooning, but also has articles on Eisner, Africa, Ghost in the Shell anime, Belgian comics, Indonesian Comics, Lalo Alcaraz's La Cucaracha, a queer reading of the X-Men and a really excellent exhibit reviews section. Click on the images for a readable version.
How can you go wrong? Order today.
An individual subscription for one year (two issues) is US$30; institutions, $40.
Back Issues are available at same rates.
Payment must be made by check or international money order in U.S. dollars
payable to John A. Lent/IJOCA.
Subscriptions should be sent to
John A. Lent,
669 Ferne Blvd.,
Drexel Hill, PA 19026
USA.
How can you go wrong? Order today.
An individual subscription for one year (two issues) is US$30; institutions, $40.
Back Issues are available at same rates.
Payment must be made by check or international money order in U.S. dollars
payable to John A. Lent/IJOCA.
Subscriptions should be sent to
John A. Lent,
669 Ferne Blvd.,
Drexel Hill, PA 19026
USA.
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
INTERPLANETARY JOURNAL OF COMIC ART repost
April 5, 2007 – INTERPLANETARY JOURNAL OF COMIC ART: A Festschrift in Honor of John Lent is now available.
Editor's note - The first issue of the new InterPlanetary Journal of Comic Art (or IPJOCA as we call it around the virtual office) is now available. We are proud to invite you to the 43rd indispensable academic organ published by JOHN LENT MULTIMEDIA ENTERPRISES. All are personally hand-edited by our founder and publisher JOHN LENT, and we remind you that any suggestions of forced labor or involuntary servitude were completely dismissed in Temple University grad students v. JOHN LENT FAMILY CONGLOMERATE. This issue is slightly late, and we apologize for that. Editor JOHN LENT was traveling widely with stops on Pluto, Venus, Charon, Deimos and Phobos, Antarctica, Cyprus, Monte Carlo and the French Riviera, interviewing aging cartoonists and presenting learned discourses on the history of comic art. LENT's presentation on Pluto, "Which came first? The planet or the dog?" was particularly well-received and will appear in a future issue of IPJOCA. IPJOCA is a proud successor to the Colonial Journal of Comic Art, the Union Journal of Comic Art, the Confederate Journal of Comic Art, and the Imperial Journal of Comic Art, as well as the continuing flagship International Journal of Comic Art.
Actually, IPJOCA is a work of satire and parody, published on the occasion of John's seventieth birthday in 2006, give or take a few months. Since 1960, John has published, taught, and lectured widely on comic art, and since 1999 has been the publisher and editor-in-chief of the academic International Journal of Comic Art. In March of this year, John served on the Pulitzer Prize Nominating Juries in Journalism. John has published over 70 books and 800 articles on comic art, mass communication and Asian studies.
John's colleagues in the comic world have come together to create a tribute book, and to present it to him on April 6th at the Popular Culture Association meeting in Boston. The fully-illustrated book features a front cover by cartoonist Nick Thorkelson, and a back cover by Ralph Steadman as well as 100 pages of witty articles.
To order your copy for $10, go to http://www.lulu.com/content/679026; to subscribe to the International Journal of Comic Art, go to
http://www.ijoca.com and follow the instructions.
Table of Contents
Lent Knows – cover by Nick Thorkelson
Seqart Scholarship across the United Planets: A Brief Survey - Josty Ketew (Randy Duncan)
ICAF Times – comic strip by Roger Sabin & C. Hill
"Domus inferna Sancti Guthlaci": A Rediscovery of the twelfth-century narrative of "The Saint and the Money Pit" - K. A. Laity
ICAF Round-table: 'The Contribution of John Lent' - Rogerius Sabinis
Give It Up For Lent! – cartoons by E.C. Lockett, from ideas by Sabin & Rhode
The Exegesis of John Lent's Exegesis: A Postmodest Explalicinalysis of John Lent's Comicological Scholarship - Dr. Solomon Davidoff
Cartooning on Venus: A Problematic Field - Michael Rhode
Cheroots of the Gods: Ancient Contact with Talking Animals from the Stars - Er'q Vondan Iken (Steve Thompson)
Letters - Fusami Ogi
From the X-JOCA Family Archives - K.A. Laity
Men's Comics are from Mars, Women's Comics are from Venus: A Visual Exploration - M.O.D.O.C.A. (Barbara Postema)
A Dozen True Facts about Fredric Wertham That I Will Only Reveal For John Lent - Bart Beaty
Japanese Comic Art History's Mystery Bearded Figure - Ronarudo Suchuwaato (Ron Stewart)
Battle of the Titans: The Great National Geographic - New Yorker Cartoon Rivalry - Cathy Hunter and Michael Rhode
Out of this World (…and back again…) – autobiographical comix by Craig Fischer
Animated Yoga - Cathy Hunter
News - Fantagraphics Books Searches for Saints - Ana Merino
Obituaries - Therian Blackenshort, Theban political cartoonist - Mark C. Rogers
Faded Star Column - Rad Signal by Weary'in Ellis -Michael Rhode
Book Reviews
Leonardo da Vinci, The da Vinci Codex - Trina Robbins
Purty Pitchers All In A Row: A Review of The Interplanetary Comic Art Bibliographies of JOHN LENT Comprehensive Companion Series - Dr. Solomon Davidoff
Martianorum Mangorum Universalis Historia - Marcus Titus Pellitterius (Marco Pellitteri)
Exhibition and Media Reviews
The McDuck Collection: World's Greatest Collection of Rarities, Duckburg Museum - Michael Rhode
Disney Planet Amusement Facility, the dwarf planet formerly known as Pluto, Sol system - Gene Kannenberg, Jr.
Corrections - Leonard Rifas
Anticipatory Errata - Charles Hatfield
Comic Art Bibliography - New Resources in the Field - Michael Rhode
So Who is JOHN LENT really? - Xu Ying
Contributors' Self-Serving Biographic Blurbs
The Serious Art of Laughter – back cover by Ralph Steadman
Monday, March 05, 2007
Wish You Were There #2 - IS Art: The Art of Insight Studios
From the International Journal of Comic Art 3-2, we present another WISH YOU WERE THERE, starring Frank Cho, Mark Wheatly, Marc Hempel and a defunct comic store. Is Insight Studios still functioning I wonder?
IS Art: The Art of Insight Studios. Washington, DC: Illumination Arts Gallery of Georgetown / Beyond Comics II, May 12--June 30, 2001.
IS Art displayed original art of Insight Studios, founded in 1978 by Mark Wheatley, and artistically now consisting of him, Marc Hempel and Frank Cho. The exhibit is based on the book of the same title (by Allan Gross, Baltimore: Insight Studios Group, 2001. ISBN 1-89317-11-X; $29.95) which includes a history of Insight; the title of both is undoubtedly a play on words reflecting the general perception of comic art as a lowbrow form. There was a checklist for the show, but no explanatory exhibit text except for captions; presumably the book was intended to fulfill the viewer's possible desire for further information. Due to his syndicated comic strip, Liberty Meadows, and his penchant for drawing beautiful women, Cho is undoubtedly the main attraction of the Studio. In this show, held in an unused upper floor of a comic book store, very few of Cho's strips were displayed. However, instead he was mostly represented by his fanzine work on E.R. Burroughs' Tarzan and Mars series. Hempel included many of his early 1980s paintings of women, cover paintings from his 1990 DC Comics series Breathtaker, and cartoons from his self-published comic book Tug & Buster. His current work, of increasingly-stylized caricatures in ink and watercolor, harkened back to art of the 1920s and 1930s. The twenty-year span of Hempel's career exhibited here provided an interesting view of his artistic evolution. Wheatley has frequently worked on material derived from pulps and magazine illustration. His gouaches for IS's publication of Talbot Mundy's Jimgrim and the Devil at Ludd, clearly having evolved from his comic book work, displayed a strong sense of color and composition. The exhibit, although obviously not done by art gallery professionals (artwork not used in the show was still leaning in piles under a window), was an enjoyable look at a trio of local creators.
IS Art: The Art of Insight Studios. Washington, DC: Illumination Arts Gallery of Georgetown / Beyond Comics II, May 12--June 30, 2001.
IS Art displayed original art of Insight Studios, founded in 1978 by Mark Wheatley, and artistically now consisting of him, Marc Hempel and Frank Cho. The exhibit is based on the book of the same title (by Allan Gross, Baltimore: Insight Studios Group, 2001. ISBN 1-89317-11-X; $29.95) which includes a history of Insight; the title of both is undoubtedly a play on words reflecting the general perception of comic art as a lowbrow form. There was a checklist for the show, but no explanatory exhibit text except for captions; presumably the book was intended to fulfill the viewer's possible desire for further information. Due to his syndicated comic strip, Liberty Meadows, and his penchant for drawing beautiful women, Cho is undoubtedly the main attraction of the Studio. In this show, held in an unused upper floor of a comic book store, very few of Cho's strips were displayed. However, instead he was mostly represented by his fanzine work on E.R. Burroughs' Tarzan and Mars series. Hempel included many of his early 1980s paintings of women, cover paintings from his 1990 DC Comics series Breathtaker, and cartoons from his self-published comic book Tug & Buster. His current work, of increasingly-stylized caricatures in ink and watercolor, harkened back to art of the 1920s and 1930s. The twenty-year span of Hempel's career exhibited here provided an interesting view of his artistic evolution. Wheatley has frequently worked on material derived from pulps and magazine illustration. His gouaches for IS's publication of Talbot Mundy's Jimgrim and the Devil at Ludd, clearly having evolved from his comic book work, displayed a strong sense of color and composition. The exhibit, although obviously not done by art gallery professionals (artwork not used in the show was still leaning in piles under a window), was an enjoyable look at a trio of local creators.
Sunday, March 04, 2007
Wish You Were There #1 - Comics exhibit reviews 2000-2001
The following are reviews for DC exhibits from 2000-2001. They were originally published in the International Journal of Comic Art 3:1.
Blondie Gets Married! Comic Strip Drawings by Chic Young. Harry Katz and Sara Duke. Washington, DC: Library of Congress, June 22-September 16, 2000.
Herblock's History: Political Cartoons from the Crash to the Millennium. Harry Katz, Sara Duke, and Lucia Rather. Washington, DC: Library of Congress, October 17, 2000--February 17, 2001.
Al Hirschfeld, Beyond Broadway. David Leopold. Washington, DC: Library of Congress, November 9, 2000--March 31, 2001.
At the turn of the millennium, Harry Katz and Sara Duke continued to make the Library of Congress one of the premier spaces for the display of comic art. These three exhibits examined different aspects of comic art: comic strips, political cartoons, and caricature.
Blondie, beginning in 1930, has evolved with the comic strip. Early strips were large and had continuity, but by the 1972 strip in the show, the size had shrunk and Young made it a gag strip. The exhibit of 27 strips out of a donation of 150 had minimal labeling and was divided into typical tropes: naps, courtship, wedding, family, mailman, food, work, love, homemaking, and baths. Young used a delicate line in the 1930s, typical of some cartoonists of the era, that is a pleasure to see in the original. His 1931--1933 courtship and marriage strips were wildly popular during the Depression and Young's artwork conveys now a vivid sense of the time. In the 1938 Sunday dream strip, "We'll be back in a few hours," Young was playfully surrealistic while still drawing the pretty girls he was known for. While an exhibit devoted to original art, not commentary or history, needs few labels, an explanation of the blue penciling seen on many strips over the regular graphite pencil would be helpful; the blue was used to indicate where mechanical tones and shading needed to be added by the syndicate. "All quiet on the Bumstead's front!" from 1945 contained clear marginal instructions about the shading, and showed an interesting piece of comic history now that computers handle all such details. A good brochure was distributed at the show with articles by Duke and Young's daughter, and an electronic version of the exhibit can be seen at http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/swann/blondie/.
Herbert "Herblock" Block has cartooned through nine decades, won three Pulitzer Prizes, and coined the word "McCarthyism." This exhibit was drawn from 119 cartoons that he gave to the Library. The show was mounted in a grand space on either side of the Jefferson Building's great hall on red, white, and blue panels. It was divided into roughly chronological sections except for overarching ones like "Herblock's Presidents." Herblock's masterly use of pencil, ink and crayon can be seen throughout the show, although correction overlays become more common and his latest work resembled collages. Seeing the evolution of Herblock's style and subjects over 70 years was fascinating. Although the exhibit was excellently done and displayed the breadth of his career, Block's work can be fairly easily seen in other media. He has published many collections of his work, and this exhibit has a short catalogue produced by the Library. One clever idea made this show especially interesting. The Library solicited caricatures of "Herblock by Other Cartoonists" and displayed them at the end of each panel. Fifteen colleagues like Mike Peters, Ann Telnaes, Jules Feiffer, Signe Wilkinson, and Mike Luckovich produced pointed, but obviously respectful, drawings of Block, frequently with his bete noire Richard Nixon. Katz, Duke, and Rather deserve credit for a truly fine exhibit.
The exhibit on Hirschfeld is somewhat problematic because it was designed to be. When faced with a career even longer than Herblock's, guest curator and Hirschfeld archivist David Leopold chose to focus not on Hirschfeld's well-known pen-and-ink entertainment caricatures, but rather on his other artistic pursuits. Exhibiting 24 pieces, many donated to the Library by the artist, Leopold produced a wide-ranging survey of works in all media, especially including some early art. The result was an interesting and ambitious show, but not a complete success since Hirschfeld's best work is his caricatures. Leopold included obscure material like drawings of North Africa from 1926 -- material that was reminiscent of magazine illustration of the time. Other early work like a 1923 gouache advertisement for Woman to Woman magazine recalled Szyk's work in miniatures, and his 1931 lithograph Art and Industry owed much to Daumier. Hirschfeld's color caricatures, usually for magazine covers like "Walter Lippman" for American Mercury in the 1940s, show that he could have continued doing similar work and had a full career. Recently, printing advances have made it possible for him to use color for caricatures and one from the New York Times in 2000 is in the show. The exhibit, accompanied by a well-done brochure, was an interesting example of Hirschfeld's lesser abilities, but not a major view of his career.
Politics in Black and White: Local, State, and National Cartoons and Caricatures. Dan Voss and Ellen Vartanoff. Rockville, MD: Montgomery College VCT Department Gallery, October 10--November 10, 2000.
This small exhibit was aimed at students in the College's graphic arts department. According to Voss, the "idea was to be topical and to bring in a little bit more local connection than you would expect." With eight artists (Joe Azar, Chip Beck, Steve Brodner, Chris Curtis, Kevin "Kal" Kallaugher, Marcia Klioze-Hughes, and Lucinda Levine) and 55 pieces in the exhibit, students and other visitors saw a wide range of comic art. The only label in the exhibit was a short introductory panel with brief biographical information. Azar (a conservative political cartoonist for the Legal Times and the Washington Times), Kal, and Curtis (cartoonist for the Gazette chain of local newspapers) all produce standard "modern" political cartoons; while competent, no cartoon displayed was particularly memorable. Caricaturists were well represented. Levine's work looked like that of unrelated David Levine. Klioze-Hughes' color work caricatured historical figures like George Washington. Beck's pieces were unfortunately reminiscent of the cartoonists working in chalk in shopping malls. Brodner works for national publications like the New Yorker, Time, and Newsweek and his distinctive style was well represented. "We hope to bring [the students] the real thing," Voss stated, and the exhibit succeeded in being an engaging look at the styles and ability of a small range of working professional cartoonists.
Cartoons and Campaigns. Arlington, VA: The Newseum, October 7--November 12, 2000.
Pens and Needles: The Editorial Cartoons of Joel Pett. Arlington, VA: The Newseum, November 10, 2000--January 7, 2001.
"Yes, Virginia, There Is A Santa Claus." Arlington, VA: The Newseum, December, 2000.
Cartoons and Campaigns added political cartoons to Every Four Years, an exhibit on press coverage of the Presidential campaign. The cartoons, a mixture of originals and reproductions, totaled approximately 40 pieces of art. Included in the show were originals by Luckovich (who still uses tone shading), Breen, Conrad, Wilkinson, Horsey, Borgman, Peters, and reproductions by Marlette, Toles, Handelsman, Chip Beck, Morin, Higgins, Kal, Pett, Gorrell, Gerner, Telnaes, Bok, Benson, Herblock, and Szep. The show presented a snapshot of election cartoons, and was enjoyable in a casual sense, but did not add anything significant to the study of comic art.
Pins and Needles was a significantly better exhibit in terms of learning. Ten original cartoons with commentary by Pett were displayed, unfortunately in a hallway leading to a movie theater. Seven reproductions from the twenty cartoons that Pett submitted to win the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning were also included. Pett's commentary on his process of cartooning included exhibiting three drafts and the final cartoon. This was a minor, but interesting show.
"Yes, Virginia..." is the Newseum's annual show of Thomas Nast's Harper's Weekly engravings of Santa Claus. The exhibit included artwork from 1863, 1865, 1866, 1871, 1879, 1884, and 1885 and showed how Nast's artwork and concept of Santa progressed through a twenty-year period. According to Nast, by 1884 Santa was answering telephone requests. Since Santa Claus is so deeply embedded in American culture, an annual show devoted to the cartoonist who created him helps keep Nast's work alive.
The Art of John Cederquist: Reality of Illusion. Washington, DC: National Museum of American Art's Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, March 31--August 20, 2000.
John Cederquist stretches the definition of comic art. He creates artistic wooden furniture. Cederquist is influenced by Popeye cartoons and he has copied two-dimensional furniture from the cartoons to produce three-dimensional pieces. Although this show, organized by the Oakland Museum of California, did not include any of his Popeye works among its thirteen pieces, the influence of cartoons could still be seen. "Tubular" (1990) appeared to be a bookcase made of shipping crates but had a Hokusai-style wave rolling out of the top. "Steamer Chest III" (1995) looked as though it was a coiled pipe, supported by stacked wood, with puffs of Crumb-like smoke emerging from each end of the pipe. Cederquist's titles were puns that helped define the piece -- words and pictures working together -- leading to the beginning of the definition of a cartoon. The exhibit provoked thought on what comic art really is.
Blondie Gets Married! Comic Strip Drawings by Chic Young. Harry Katz and Sara Duke. Washington, DC: Library of Congress, June 22-September 16, 2000.
Herblock's History: Political Cartoons from the Crash to the Millennium. Harry Katz, Sara Duke, and Lucia Rather. Washington, DC: Library of Congress, October 17, 2000--February 17, 2001.
Al Hirschfeld, Beyond Broadway. David Leopold. Washington, DC: Library of Congress, November 9, 2000--March 31, 2001.
At the turn of the millennium, Harry Katz and Sara Duke continued to make the Library of Congress one of the premier spaces for the display of comic art. These three exhibits examined different aspects of comic art: comic strips, political cartoons, and caricature.
Blondie, beginning in 1930, has evolved with the comic strip. Early strips were large and had continuity, but by the 1972 strip in the show, the size had shrunk and Young made it a gag strip. The exhibit of 27 strips out of a donation of 150 had minimal labeling and was divided into typical tropes: naps, courtship, wedding, family, mailman, food, work, love, homemaking, and baths. Young used a delicate line in the 1930s, typical of some cartoonists of the era, that is a pleasure to see in the original. His 1931--1933 courtship and marriage strips were wildly popular during the Depression and Young's artwork conveys now a vivid sense of the time. In the 1938 Sunday dream strip, "We'll be back in a few hours," Young was playfully surrealistic while still drawing the pretty girls he was known for. While an exhibit devoted to original art, not commentary or history, needs few labels, an explanation of the blue penciling seen on many strips over the regular graphite pencil would be helpful; the blue was used to indicate where mechanical tones and shading needed to be added by the syndicate. "All quiet on the Bumstead's front!" from 1945 contained clear marginal instructions about the shading, and showed an interesting piece of comic history now that computers handle all such details. A good brochure was distributed at the show with articles by Duke and Young's daughter, and an electronic version of the exhibit can be seen at http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/swann/blondie/.
Herbert "Herblock" Block has cartooned through nine decades, won three Pulitzer Prizes, and coined the word "McCarthyism." This exhibit was drawn from 119 cartoons that he gave to the Library. The show was mounted in a grand space on either side of the Jefferson Building's great hall on red, white, and blue panels. It was divided into roughly chronological sections except for overarching ones like "Herblock's Presidents." Herblock's masterly use of pencil, ink and crayon can be seen throughout the show, although correction overlays become more common and his latest work resembled collages. Seeing the evolution of Herblock's style and subjects over 70 years was fascinating. Although the exhibit was excellently done and displayed the breadth of his career, Block's work can be fairly easily seen in other media. He has published many collections of his work, and this exhibit has a short catalogue produced by the Library. One clever idea made this show especially interesting. The Library solicited caricatures of "Herblock by Other Cartoonists" and displayed them at the end of each panel. Fifteen colleagues like Mike Peters, Ann Telnaes, Jules Feiffer, Signe Wilkinson, and Mike Luckovich produced pointed, but obviously respectful, drawings of Block, frequently with his bete noire Richard Nixon. Katz, Duke, and Rather deserve credit for a truly fine exhibit.
The exhibit on Hirschfeld is somewhat problematic because it was designed to be. When faced with a career even longer than Herblock's, guest curator and Hirschfeld archivist David Leopold chose to focus not on Hirschfeld's well-known pen-and-ink entertainment caricatures, but rather on his other artistic pursuits. Exhibiting 24 pieces, many donated to the Library by the artist, Leopold produced a wide-ranging survey of works in all media, especially including some early art. The result was an interesting and ambitious show, but not a complete success since Hirschfeld's best work is his caricatures. Leopold included obscure material like drawings of North Africa from 1926 -- material that was reminiscent of magazine illustration of the time. Other early work like a 1923 gouache advertisement for Woman to Woman magazine recalled Szyk's work in miniatures, and his 1931 lithograph Art and Industry owed much to Daumier. Hirschfeld's color caricatures, usually for magazine covers like "Walter Lippman" for American Mercury in the 1940s, show that he could have continued doing similar work and had a full career. Recently, printing advances have made it possible for him to use color for caricatures and one from the New York Times in 2000 is in the show. The exhibit, accompanied by a well-done brochure, was an interesting example of Hirschfeld's lesser abilities, but not a major view of his career.Politics in Black and White: Local, State, and National Cartoons and Caricatures. Dan Voss and Ellen Vartanoff. Rockville, MD: Montgomery College VCT Department Gallery, October 10--November 10, 2000.
This small exhibit was aimed at students in the College's graphic arts department. According to Voss, the "idea was to be topical and to bring in a little bit more local connection than you would expect." With eight artists (Joe Azar, Chip Beck, Steve Brodner, Chris Curtis, Kevin "Kal" Kallaugher, Marcia Klioze-Hughes, and Lucinda Levine) and 55 pieces in the exhibit, students and other visitors saw a wide range of comic art. The only label in the exhibit was a short introductory panel with brief biographical information. Azar (a conservative political cartoonist for the Legal Times and the Washington Times), Kal, and Curtis (cartoonist for the Gazette chain of local newspapers) all produce standard "modern" political cartoons; while competent, no cartoon displayed was particularly memorable. Caricaturists were well represented. Levine's work looked like that of unrelated David Levine. Klioze-Hughes' color work caricatured historical figures like George Washington. Beck's pieces were unfortunately reminiscent of the cartoonists working in chalk in shopping malls. Brodner works for national publications like the New Yorker, Time, and Newsweek and his distinctive style was well represented. "We hope to bring [the students] the real thing," Voss stated, and the exhibit succeeded in being an engaging look at the styles and ability of a small range of working professional cartoonists.
Cartoons and Campaigns. Arlington, VA: The Newseum, October 7--November 12, 2000.
Pens and Needles: The Editorial Cartoons of Joel Pett. Arlington, VA: The Newseum, November 10, 2000--January 7, 2001.
"Yes, Virginia, There Is A Santa Claus." Arlington, VA: The Newseum, December, 2000.
Cartoons and Campaigns added political cartoons to Every Four Years, an exhibit on press coverage of the Presidential campaign. The cartoons, a mixture of originals and reproductions, totaled approximately 40 pieces of art. Included in the show were originals by Luckovich (who still uses tone shading), Breen, Conrad, Wilkinson, Horsey, Borgman, Peters, and reproductions by Marlette, Toles, Handelsman, Chip Beck, Morin, Higgins, Kal, Pett, Gorrell, Gerner, Telnaes, Bok, Benson, Herblock, and Szep. The show presented a snapshot of election cartoons, and was enjoyable in a casual sense, but did not add anything significant to the study of comic art.
Pins and Needles was a significantly better exhibit in terms of learning. Ten original cartoons with commentary by Pett were displayed, unfortunately in a hallway leading to a movie theater. Seven reproductions from the twenty cartoons that Pett submitted to win the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning were also included. Pett's commentary on his process of cartooning included exhibiting three drafts and the final cartoon. This was a minor, but interesting show.
"Yes, Virginia..." is the Newseum's annual show of Thomas Nast's Harper's Weekly engravings of Santa Claus. The exhibit included artwork from 1863, 1865, 1866, 1871, 1879, 1884, and 1885 and showed how Nast's artwork and concept of Santa progressed through a twenty-year period. According to Nast, by 1884 Santa was answering telephone requests. Since Santa Claus is so deeply embedded in American culture, an annual show devoted to the cartoonist who created him helps keep Nast's work alive.
The Art of John Cederquist: Reality of Illusion. Washington, DC: National Museum of American Art's Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, March 31--August 20, 2000.
John Cederquist stretches the definition of comic art. He creates artistic wooden furniture. Cederquist is influenced by Popeye cartoons and he has copied two-dimensional furniture from the cartoons to produce three-dimensional pieces. Although this show, organized by the Oakland Museum of California, did not include any of his Popeye works among its thirteen pieces, the influence of cartoons could still be seen. "Tubular" (1990) appeared to be a bookcase made of shipping crates but had a Hokusai-style wave rolling out of the top. "Steamer Chest III" (1995) looked as though it was a coiled pipe, supported by stacked wood, with puffs of Crumb-like smoke emerging from each end of the pipe. Cederquist's titles were puns that helped define the piece -- words and pictures working together -- leading to the beginning of the definition of a cartoon. The exhibit provoked thought on what comic art really is.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)