Comic Art in Museums

Contributions by Kenneth Baker, Jaqueline Berndt, Albert Boime, John Carlin, Benoit Crucifix, David Deitcher, Michael Dooley, Damian Duffy, M. C. Gaines, Paul Gravett, Diana Green, Karen Green, Doug Harvey, Charles Hatfield, M. Thomas Inge, Leslie Jones, Jonah Kinigstein, Denis Kitchen, John A. Lent, Dwayne McDuffie, Andrei Molotiu, Alvaro de Moya, Kim A. Munson, Cullen Murphy, Gary Panter, Trina Robbins, Rob Salkowitz, Antoine Sausverd, Art Spiegelman, Scott Timberg, Carol Tyler, Brian Walker, Alexi Worth, Joe Wos, and Craig Yoe

Through essays and interviews, Kim A. Munson’s anthology tells the story of the over-thirty-year history of the artists, art critics, collectors, curators, journalists, and academics who championed the serious study of comics, the trends and controversies that produced institutional interest in comics, and the wax and wane and then return of comic art in museums.

Audiences have enjoyed displays of comic art in museums as early as 1930. In the mid-1960s, after a period when most representational and commercial art was shunned, comic art began a gradual return to art museums as curators responded to the appropriation of comics characters and iconography by such famous pop artists as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. From the first-known exhibit to show comics in art historical context in 1942 to the evolution of manga exhibitions in Japan, this volume regards exhibitions both in the United States and internationally.

With over eighty images and thoughtful essays by Denis Kitchen, Brian Walker, Andrei Molotiu, Paul Gravett, Art Spiegelman, Trina Robbins, and Charles Hatfield, among others, this anthology shows how exhibitions expanded the public dialogue about comic art and our expectation of “good art”—displaying how dedicated artists, collectors, fans, and curators advanced comics from a frequently censored low-art medium to a respected art form celebrated worldwide.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
• Release date: Jul 23, 2020
• ISBN: 9781496828088

Book preview

Introduction

Kim A. Munson

In 2008, when I proposed writing my master’s thesis on comics and museums, the art history department at my university (San Francisco State University) had no idea that serious scholarship on comics existed. I had to bring in enough scholarship to convince my committee that it was a topic worth discussing. Thanks to the catalog for Masters of American Comics (2005), Comics and Culture: Analytical and Theoretical Approaches to Comics (2000), and the International Journal of Comic Art, I was able to make my case, beginning my exploration of how exhibitions and all the public commentary surrounding them have contributed to the growing respect for the comics art form. This book is the book I wish had been available to me in grad school; an introduction to the history and controversies that have shaped comics exhibitions, who the pioneers were, different ideas about comic art exhibits around the world, how the best practices for displaying comics have developed and why, and how artists and curators have found ways to display comics that break away from the framed pages on the wall format. To borrow a phrase from Theirry Groensteen, it’s the story of one way that comics have finally achieved cultural legitimization (2000).

I’m happy to say that in the eighteen years since Groensteen asked why comics were still struggling for cultural legitimacy, the state of both scholarship and serious interest by exhibiting institutions has grown tremendously. Comics had been long dismissed as an inferior medium, blamed for everything from childhood illiteracy to juvenile delinquency. The drawings comics were built upon were considered a low-class remnant of the production process even by most of the artists creating them, not worth saving, and surely not for display in the hallowed halls of the major art museums. Over the last twenty years the growing diversity in content and artistic innovation in graphic novels, comic books, and web comics combined with the popularity of films based on comics material have made comic art newly attractive to curators, museums, and university galleries. More artists identified with comics are getting big budget retrospectives, collecting institutions are mounting rich historical shows, and exhibits capitalizing on the popularity of all types of comics are popping up around the world (see exhibit photos, figures 2, 3, 4, and 5).

Figure 2. Installation view of The Art of Rube Goldberg at The Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco. 2018. Courtesy The Contemporary Jewish Museum; Photo: JKA Photography.

Figure 3. Exhibition view of George Herriman: Krazy Kat is Krazy Kat is Krazy Kat, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid. 2017. Photo by David Walker. Courtesy of Brian Walker.

Many of these shows are supported by high-end publications and thoughtful scholarship. The importance of exhibitions has been recognized in academic books by authors like Bart Beaty (Comics versus Art, 2012), David Carrier (The Aesthetics of Comics, 2000), Thierry Groensteen (Comics and Narration, 2013), Paul Gravett (Comics Art, 2013), and several others.¹ Fine arts magazines (such as Art in America, Art Forum, and ARTnews) and major news media have become increasingly interested in comics exhibits, assigning them to art critics that move past the typical Bam, Biff, Pow! Comics aren’t just for kids headlines to provide meaningful commentary about comics, comics artists, and the importance of popular culture. Analysis of exhibitions has also become a growing area within the art history discipline. Candidates for the gold standard in this genre include Mary Anne Staniszewski’s The Power of Display: A History of Exhibition Installations at the Museum of Modern Art (1998), a painstakingly researched exhibition history that analyzes museum policy as seen through the Museum of Modern Art’s (MOMA) exhibition programming and design from 1929 through the 1990s, and Thinking about Exhibitions (1999), a thoughtful compilation of essays on history, themes, and trends edited by Reesa Greenberg, Bruce W. Ferguson, and Sandy Nairne. The importance of exhibition catalogs is a thread that will be discussed throughout this book, and among the best is the slick, metal-covered catalog for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s groundbreaking show Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy (2008), which is essential for the study of cosplay and identity. In Curationism: How Curating Took Over the Art World and Everything Else (2014), David Balzer discusses the history of curation and the challenges faced in a range of projects from major biennials to small nonprofits. He also investigates curation as a cultural phenomenon, with the curated selection as a value added to everything from playlists and music festivals to artisanal cheeses and fashion lines.

This book itself is a curated selection of influential essays and reviews, combined in a social art history loosely influenced by authors like T. J. Clark and Albert Boime. Each entry is a bookmark in the story of how a specific group of exhibitions in fine arts museums and university galleries built on each other and helped expand the boundaries of acceptance of comic art in the art and museum world. As exhibitions based on pop culture, particularly comics, have become more common, it is through the public discussions found in reviews, catalogs, online communities, and academic essays that exhibition standards and a loose art historical canon of creators have been established. I have included a diverse range of voices; journalists, art critics, fans, international scholars, curators, and comics creators to reflect on how this active public discussion between fans, in the media, and in scholarship shapes our expectations of who is doing museum-quality art and how it should be seen.

Figure 4. Installation view of Dr. Strange Mirror Room with costume from film and art by Steve Ditko as seen in Marvel: Universe of Superheroes at the Museum of Popular Culture, Seattle. 2017. Used with permission. © 2019 Marvel.

Figure 5. Installation view of Mangasia: Wonderlands of Asian Comics at Le Lieu Unique, Nantes, France. 2018. (Left to right): Details from front cover of Yama to Umi (Mountain & Sea) by Okamoto Ippei, 1926; Take a ride on the spirit boat, inflatable sculpture by Aya Takano, © 2014 Aya Takano/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved; and Dragon Mural by Kim Jung-gi. Photo: © Nicolas Joubard. Courtesy of Le Lieu Unique and Barbican International Enterprises.

Where the public goes to see this work, however, is in a bit of a transition. Groundbreaking pioneers like the Museum of Cartoon Art (1974–2002) founded by Mort Walker and Kevin Eastman’s Words and Pictures Museum (1992–1999) are long gone. The current economy and gentrification in the urban centers of the United States have forced the closure of a few longtime independent institutions such as MOCCA in New York (2001–2012), the Toon-Seum in Pittsburgh (2007–2018), and Geppi’s Entertainment Museum in Baltimore (2006–2018). San Francisco’s Cartoon Art Museum has been forced to move four times due to rent increases and has relaunched a new location. Other specialty museums, like the Charles M. Schulz Museum (Santa Rosa, California), the Norman Rockwell Museum (Stockbridge, Massachusetts), the Walt Disney Family Museum (San Francisco), the Society of Illustrators (New York), and small collector museums like Tom Gamill’s Bushmiller Museum and Library (Altadena, California) continue to shine. Collecting institutions and archives like the Billy Ireland Cartoon Museum and Library (The Ohio State University), the Butler Library (Columbia University), the library at Michigan State University, the Library of Congress, and the Smithsonian are constantly acquiring new collections and mounting in-depth historical exhibitions. The Belgian Comic Strip Center (Brussels), la cité internationale de la bande dessinée et de l’image (Angoulême, France), the Cartoon Museum (London), the British Museum (London), the Ghibli Museum (Mitaka, Japan), and the Kyoto International Manga Museum (Kyoto, Japan) are just a few of the international museums and archives that have been showing incredible exhibits of comics. New institutions focused on comics and popular culture are on the horizon. The Museum of Popular Culture recently opened in Seattle, Washington. The newly announced San Diego Comic-Con Museum is mounting temporary shows in the former Hall of Champions in Balboa Park prior to an extensive remodel of the building and the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art is under construction in Los Angeles. I hope that this growing recognition of comics, animation, and manga will result in a visual feast for fans, curators, and scholars alike.

Although this book will look at many of the events that have made the viability of these new institutions possible, I cannot do justice to every worthy museum, archive, and gallery that displays comic art. In recognition of this, I have included a list of selected institutions, their locations, and web addresses. I encourage the reader to explore these organizations and discover the many ways they are expanding our understanding of comic art.

In this book, I am defining comic art as drawings and paintings that are usually the basis of a creative work like a comic strip, comic book, editorial or magazine cartoon, graphic novel, animated film, or web comic, including shows that experiment with using the gallery itself as a comic, such as Paul Gravett’s Hypercomics: The Shape of Comics to Come (reprinted in this book). Because of this focus, I have decided to put aside the string of exhibitions organized around the concept of fine art influenced by comics that followed the 1960s pop art movement, for example The Spirit of Comics (1969) at the University of Pennsylvania or Splat, Boom, Pow!: The Influence of Comics on Contemporary Art at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (2003, toured ICA Boston, Wexner Center).² These shows offer food for thought about class hierarchy, mirroring between genres in art and culture, the high-art/low-art dynamic, and the attempt to funnel collaborative arts like comics and animation into the fine art lone genius tradition. At the end of this string, the 2005 blockbuster Masters of American Comics at the Hammer and MOCA/LA signaled a new independence for comic art in museums. In its stated goal of establishing a formal canon of comics artists, the lone genius concept was central to the controversial curatorial decisions that led to fourteen white men and George Herriman being designated as masters, excluding comics by women and most people of color. The Masters show was a direct response to MOMA’s consequential 1990 exhibit High and Low: Modern Art and Popular Culture. In this book, I have included a separate section that contrasts these two influential shows and discusses their curatorial choices and the public response from different viewpoints.

This book is divided into thematic sections that explore different aspects of the history, trends, and controversies surrounding comic art exhibitions from 1930 to the present. Each section includes a short contextual introduction. The first section, Foundations: Comic Art in Museums, provides an overview of the evolution and challenges in comics exhibitions, why they are important, who the most influential artists were, and how comic art functions as an art object when framed on the gallery wall instead of in the pages of a book.

Pioneers: Comic Art Exhibitions, 1930–1967, explores influential but long-forgotten episodes in exhibition history such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s first acquisition of Disney animation art (New York, 1939), one of the earliest known exhibits to try to place comic art in art historical context that included examples from artistic ancestors like Mayan panels and Japanese scrolls (New York, 1942), the National Cartoonists Society’s (NCS) exhibit at the Met (New York, 1951), the first known exhibition to include an international comics conference I Exposicao Internacional de Historias em Quadrinhos (Brazil, 1951), and the groundbreaking Bande dessinée et figuration narrative exhibition organized in response to pop art and Roy Lichtenstein at the Musée des Arts Decoratifs (Paris, 1967).

The Renewed Focus on Comics as Art after 1970 investigates the rediscovery of original comic art by art museums and university galleries following the pop art craze, breakthrough exhibits, and new publications. Comic art gained more critical recognition, exhibitions became more formalized, and a loose canon of artists was established. This period also saw the rise of independent comics museums like the Museum of Cartoon Art (1974) and the Cartoon Art Museum (1988).

Expanding Views of Comic Art: Topics and Display considers how comics exhibitions moved into new territory once interest in the genre was reestablished, looking at underrepresented artists, experimenting with new display concepts, and celebrating previously taboo topics. The Western idea of displaying comics as art spread around the world, including to Japan and the Middle East.

Masters of High and Low: Exhibitions in Dialogue is a case study of how one group of artists and curators felt compelled to advocate for comic art in response to MOMA’s controversial show High and Low: Modern Art and Popular Culture (1990), ultimately organizing the blockbuster show Masters of American Comics at the Hammer and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles (2005).

Personal Statements: Artist Retrospectives in Fine Art Museums looks at contemporary shows focused on the work of individual comic artists, how display standards have evolved, how these shows effect the valuation of the artist’s work, and how exhibits increase the audience’s understanding of the artist’s work and creative process.

Notes

1. To my knowledge, there is not another book solely about comic art and exhibitions, although there are many exhibition catalogs that include contextual discussions related to their shows. Walter Herdeg and David Pascal’s 1972 book Comics: The Art of the Comic Strip contains a lot of analysis of comics as art and a bibliography of early shows (originally published in Graphis magazine). In recent books, Beaty talks about all aspects of comics as art, with a designated chapter on comics in museums. Groensteen ends his book with a chapter on comics as a branch of contemporary art which includes exhibits. Carrier’s book is one of the few by an art historian. He doesn’t write much about specific exhibits, but does talk about the problems of exhibition and categorization. Gravett is a prolific author and curator; in Comics Art he talks about the ways that different categories of comics work as art, and he dedicates a chapter to gallery comics, experimental shows using sequential drawings to navigate the viewer around the gallery.

2. One could argue that the well-known 1967 show Bande dessinée et figuration narrative in Paris was the forefather of this category, as the curators responded to pop art, particularly Lichtenstein, by photographically blowing up comics panels and displaying them like pop paintings. I would also include Homage to George Herriman, the 1997 show curated by Bill Berkson at San Francisco’s Campbell-Thiebaud Gallery that celebrated the influence of George Herriman’s Krazy Kat on Bay Area figurative artists like Joan Brown and Elmer Bischoff; The Comic Art Show, an exhibit organized by John Carlin and Sheena Wagstaff at the Whitney Downtown Gallery (1985) that looked at comic art and 1960s pop art as the foundations of the new wave of East Village pop art by artists like Keith Haring, Sheena Wagstaff’s 1987 show Comic Iconoclasm at the ICA, London, and Comic Abstraction: Image-Breaking, Image-Making at MOMA, New York (2007).

Figure 6. Denis Kitchen points out the fine points of Will Eisner’s technique at the Will Eisner Centennial Exhibition at the Society of Illustrators. 2017. Photo by Stacey Pollard Kitchen. Courtesy of the Society of Illustrators.

FOUNDATIONS: COMIC ART IN MUSEUMS

Artists and their creations are at the heart and soul of comic art exhibitions. Some artists, like Milton Caniff, Will Eisner, and Art Spiegelman, recognized the benefits of exhibits and advocated for them throughout their careers. Starting with his first known professional comics exhibit in 1948 (an NCS show in Nyack, New York, organized by Milton Caniff), Will Eisner was an enthusiastic participant in exhibitions; loaning work, speaking on panels, allowing reprints for promotions and catalogs, supporting scholarship, drawing catalog covers, and generally helping curators put on good shows.

Eisner’s estate, chiefly through its agent and curator, Denis Kitchen, has continued to keep Eisner’s work alive and connected to new audiences through exhibitions, most recently the Will Eisner Centennial Celebration: 1917–2017, curated by Kitchen at le Musée de la Bande Dessinée (Angoulême, France) and at the Society of Illustrators (New York), curated by Kitchen and John Lind (exhibit photo, figure 6).

Denis Kitchen, Eisner’s friend and publisher, has worked with museums for years as an artist, as an art agent loaning works to shows, and as a curator in his own right. His overview touches on many of the business and practical aspects of comic art exhibitions, as well as providing us with a first-person view of the rapid evolution of comics from early strips to today’s diverse range of award-winning graphic novels.

Another artist who recognized the potential in exhibitions for promotion, recognition, and education was Mort Walker, creator of the syndicated comic strips Beetle Bailey and Hi and Lois, and founder of the first museum dedicated to comics, the Museum of Cartoon Art (MCA) at the Mead Mansion in Greenwich, Connecticut (1974). In 2001, after several relocations, the MCA, then known as the International Museum of Cartoon Art, closed what would be its final location in Boca Raton, Florida, donating the entire Walker collection to the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum at The Ohio State University. Brian Walker, Mort’s son, wrote Substance and Shadow: The Art of the Cartoon (reprinted here) for the grand opening of the state-of-the-art Billy Ireland Cartoon Library at Sullivant Hall on the OSU campus (2013).

Figure 7. Mark Staff Brandl. 2008. Carried Away. Sequential Painting-Installation (Exhibition Comic). Enamel and acrylic on canvas and wall, 31 painted cards in comic rack. Dimensions circa 12 ft. × 10 ft., site specific. Image courtesy of the artist.

Brian Walker was a founder and former director of the Museum of Cartoon Art, where he worked from 1974 to 1992, continuing afterward to curate many important shows. Among his many projects, he cocurated the groundbreaking Masters of American Comics (2005–2006, tour: Los Angeles, Milwaukee, New York/Newark) and the recent George Herriman: Krazy Kat is Krazy Kat is Krazy Kat at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid (2017, exhibit photos: figures 3, 67). Since 1984, he has been part of the creative team that produces the comic strips Beetle Bailey and Hi and Lois. Here he brings his experienced curator’s eye and lifelong knowledge of cartooning to the task of explaining the value of seeing original comic art and the techniques, idioms, and methods of storytelling used in comics from 1843 to the present.

In 2006, around the time of the Masters show, the College Arts Association’s national conference (predominately serving art historians and studio art professors) included the panel From the Page to the Wall: From Graphic Novels to Gallery Comics, which focused on comics specifically created to be hung and displayed in galleries. The participants were artists C Hill and Mark Staff Brandl (figure 7), and art historians Joanna Roche and Andrei Molotiu. Their conference papers were published as a Symposium on Gallery Comics in the fall 2007 issue of the International Journal of Comic Art. Molotiu’s contribution, Permanent Ink: Comic Book and Comic Strip Originals as Aesthetic Object, explores the formal characteristics of comic art and the fragmentation caused by showing framed pages that were originally created for publication and separated from their indigenous context, wondering if this separation is ultimately an act of creativity or an act of violence. Specifically for this book, Molotiu wrote an update, using the techniques he established in Permanent Ink to analyze Jack Kirby’s Kamandi on view in 2016 exhibit Comic Book Appocalypse: the Graphic World of Jack Kirby (CSU Northridge), and IDW Artist’s Edition books, such as David Mazzucchelli’s and Frank Miller’s Daredevil: Born Again (2012).

Comic Art in Museums: An Overview

Denis Kitchen

© 2017 Denis Kitchen.

I’m of an age to remember when comic books were considered by polite society to be the very lowest of the low among reading options. While I was avidly devouring comics as a youth in the 1950s parents, educators, and institutions viewed the medium contemptuously when acknowledging its existence at all. Psychiatrist Fredric Wertham’s best-selling Seduction of the Innocent poured fuel on the fire, leading to a self-imposed emasculation of content in the mid-’50s. Comic strips, as part of the respectable fare of daily newspapers (and thus edited for a general audience), were granted more toleration, but, with a few exceptions, even newspaper comics were still generally dismissed as kid stuff. The original art created for comic books and papers was also held in low esteem, such low esteem—even by those in the field—that for decades the originals often were routinely tossed by publishers, syndicates, and even some of the artists.

Yet, only a generation or so after comics were widely reviled, I find myself regularly curating exhibits of original comic art for museums around the globe and contributing art from my personal collection to exhibits curated by others. The enormous chasm has been largely bridged between comic art’s once disreputable status and its growing cultural recognition. Some of us, with a certain wink, preferred the outlaw status, but champions of the hybrid art form now appreciate the broad public, intellectual, and institutional acceptance.

There were indisputable geniuses in comic art more than a century ago and in the years before the current era. But part of the new cultural acceptance comes from the steady intellectual and artistic growth of the still-young medium: the proliferation of graphic novels into the book market, the critical acclaim and prestigious national awards achieved by some, and their growing use and study in university classrooms. Today’s comics have broken out of distribution dead ends and juvenile ghettos to access older and more educated readers.

Contemporary graphic novels by and large demonstrate a greater graphic sophistication and depth that contrast with the often-crude draftsmanship (and stories) typical of many early efforts in the development of comic strips and comic books. Today’s ambitious comic artists may sometimes be too self-conscious or self-indulgent, but they have an acute awareness—call it an assumption—of being artists. Their forebears in comics too often worked as industry drones in sweatshop assembly lines where the mere idea of being an artist may have seemed laughable. Today’s comics creators also reflect a far more diverse ethnic and gender base than the white males who thoroughly dominated the field for the better part of a century.

Another element of the current cultural acceptance—to be frank—is based on financial considerations. Nothing impresses the fine art establishment, the general public, and the media more than eye-popping dollars when art is sold. Comic art, usually by recognized masters, has shown tremendous growth as an investment in a relatively short time span.

Only a tiny number of aficionados thought to seek original comic art prior to the 1970s. Fans from the early part of the twentieth century into the 1960s who admired a cartoonist’s work and who had the temerity to ask would often be the recipient of a free strip or page now possibly worth tens of thousands of dollars. Syndicates often rewarded ardent fans with complimentary original strips taken from office inventory. Such gifts were easily dispensed because no value was ascribed to the art at the time. There are countless horror stories about the careless manner of storage and lack of respect shown to original art by both syndicates and comic book publishers.

A friend of mine well known in the field once walked into the United Feature Syndicate offices in New York in the 1970s and noticed that a stack of Al Capp’s Li’l Abner Sundays was on the floor of a storage room. There were dirty footprints on the top drawing indicating that the pile had literally been used as a convenient footstool. Concluding quickly that the art was not held in high respect, my friend purchased the stack of Capp art from an employee for a song. Such transactions, not uncommon, may raise ethical questions in hindsight, but too often accumulations of strip and comic book art were simply tossed in the trash, even by cartoonists like Capp himself.

Al Capp, though an early champion of comics as an art form and, in 1975, one of the first cartoonists with a gallery exhibit, ironically did not seem to prize his own originals. It occurred to me that my work is being destroyed almost as soon as it is printed, he once said in an interview. One day it is being read; the next day someone’s wrapping fish in it. The American comic strip is as unique and as precious an art as jazz. I think it should be preserved. Capp of course was describing the newspaper reproductions of his art. His actual Li’l Abner originals, including Sundays ghosted for a decade by Frank Frazetta, were often treated cavalierly, sometimes left on the studio floor to be walked upon, or abandoned at the syndicate office to be pilfered by opportunists. Meanwhile, his high-priced gallery paintings and silk screens, being touted as the real thing, were effectively just framed, larger, and more brightly colored versions of the reproductions used by the public for wrapping fish.

As widely scattered comic book fans organized around fanzines and conventions in significant numbers in the late 1960s and early 1970s it became much easier for collectors during the pre-digital era to finally connect and have access to rare comic books and original art. Prices for each collectible category steadily climbed, but initially there was significantly more demand for the scarce comic books than for the unique original drawings. Even into the early 1980s desirable comic art, like classic E.C. covers or Frank Frazetta pages, could be had for no more than a couple of thousand dollars.

Heads turned in collector circles in 1986 when director Steven Spielberg (no less) paid $15,500 for Harvey Kurtzman’s cover to Mad No. 1 at auction. That sale smashed all prior records for comic art. In the ensuing three decades escalating prices have continued to set new records with regularity. Most observers seem confident that prices will continue to climb as growing numbers of well-heeled collectors join the bidding. Most recently, drawings by Frank Miller and Todd McFarlane have brought mid-six figures at Heritage Auctions. As I write this short essay Robert Crumb’s Fritz the Cat cover just surpassed $700,000, a probably momentary record for American comic art. In Europe a single page from Herge’s Tin Tin, when available, brings in excess of a million dollars. I’ve personally brokered sales of Will Eisner art in the low seven figures. The trend line is dramatic.

The escalating sales are not, by a large measure, Vincent Van Gogh or Jeff Koons numbers, but they are significant enough for prime comic art to rise out of the hobby ghetto it had long been mired in from the perspective of the fine art world. Simultaneously, whether in direct relation to dramatically growing values or simply its broader societal appreciation, museums worldwide are increasingly opening their doors to cartoonist retrospectives, broad comics histories, and group shows.

Museum curators typically have specialty graduate or PhD degrees and are experts in particular aspects of art history. A good deal of ongoing research and publishing of articles usually augments their credentials. I never anticipated early on that I’d eventually curate exhibits and I certainly never trained to be a curator. For that matter, I never trained to be a cartoonist, publisher, author, agent, or any other professional hat I’ve worn. But my unusual combination of skills and professional experience have qualified me to be invited in recent years to guest curate or cocurate a dozen or so comic art exhibits in America, Europe, and South America.

Figure 8. Catalog cover, Masters of American Comics (2005). Reprinted with permission of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

I attribute the curating opportunities in large part to the fact that traditional museum curators do not as yet have academic backgrounds with credentials that cover the popular arts like comics. That will presumably change. In the interim people like myself with expertise and organizational skills will fill the role. My writing, editing, and book packaging experience also help when there is a budget for an exhibit catalog (e.g., Underground Classics for Abrams, 2009; or Will Eisner: A Centennial Celebration for Kitchen Sink/Dark Horse, 2017).

I was very impressed with the catalog from Yale University Press accompanying Masters of American Comics, the groundbreaking exhibit that crossed the states in 2005 (figure 8). It reproduced the originals as they actually appeared, showing white-out, paste-overs, marginal notes, smudges, etc. (see Will Eisner splash page, figure 9 for an example), instead of the sanitized versions always shown in prior books and even earlier art museum catalogs about comics. That set the general approach John Lind and I used for Underground Classics (figure 10) and the current Eisner Centennial catalog, though we prefer text that is less academic in approach and more broadly accessible. The importance of a strong catalog must be stressed. Thousands of individuals may see an exhibit in person and enjoy the maximum experience, but years later all that is left long after the exhibit is over is the catalog and it must stand as the historic and educational tool.

Figure 9. Example of warts and all art reproduction. Will Eisner (1917–2005). The Spirit (Il Duce’s Locket). Pen-and-ink drawing for newspaper splash page, published May 25, 1947. Collection of Denis Kitchen, © Will Eisner Studios.

Figure 10. Catalog cover, Underground Classics (2009) by Denis Kitchen and James Danky. Reprinted with permission of the authors.

My primary motivation for pitching or agreeing to guest curate exhibits is to help keep alive and promote the legacy of important comic artists I admire, most notably thus far Will Eisner and Harvey Kurtzman. In each case I’ve sought to showcase their respective geniuses, to reflect their long, innovative, and varied careers, and, when possible, to show their influence on other creators. When an ample budget is provided, such as the Eisner Centennial exhibit at the Musée de la Bande Dessinée in Angoulême, France, on display for nearly ten months in 2017, the entire venue itself can be an artistic expression. The Eisner exhibit in France, involving Jean-Pierre Mercier and a team of dedicated artisans, presented a noir detective atmosphere in keeping with Eisner’s creation The Spirit: dramatic overhead and worm’s eye lighting, giant wooden dock crates (also acting as unconventional walls to display art), and stark shadows painted on the floors and walls, all reflecting recurrent visual themes in Eisner’s own pages. Custom music was even composed as a part of the total exhibit experience.

Artists like Harvey Kurtzman and Will Eisner, giants during their lifetimes, left large bodies of important work and influences that are myriad. Their names are literally attached to the most prestigious annual awards for excellence in comics. But with each passing year their contemporary audiences slowly pass away and newer generations have no firsthand memories of these creators. It’s critical that exhibits continue to display examples of their mastery so that younger fans, creators, and critics can see the work up close and stimulate ongoing discussions.

In curating theme shows around underground cartoonists, the generation immediately following Kurtzman, Eisner, and their colleagues, I’ve tried to stress the deep diversity of talent and content. In R. Crumb and the Underground, at the Kuntsmuseum in Lucerne, Switzerland, in 2013, the Crumb name headlined the show to draw crowds but it was important for cocurator James Danky and myself to show that Crumb was part of a larger art movement, not a singular figure working in a vacuum. We put the collective works in the context of a counterculture and antiwar movement in America, a convulsive period in which the freewheeling and creator-owned undergrounds separated themselves in every way from traditional newsstand comic books, a schism that permanently influenced the aesthetic direction and economics of the larger medium.

In organizing exhibits in general I try to tell a compelling story about a single artist’s career or movement, a somewhat ironic goal given that individual pages hanging on the museum’s walls are typically self-contained stories or part of larger stories. The most obvious way to organize comic art is by chronology, but I usually break a cartoonist’s oeuvre or a movement into logical thematic segments. I try to mix black-and-white originals (by far the most common) with choice watercolors or paintings for visual variety. I also try to coordinate timely expert panels, the showing of relevant documentaries, and reach out to regional and trade press, all to maximize attention and coverage.

It’s important to remember that comics, at their core, are a unique combination of words and pictures and so I make every effort to select pieces that demonstrate an artist’s strength in each cornerstone. A single page can sometimes be a story in itself but most often I find a sequence of consecutive pages that reveal self-contained mini-stories. I want to encapsulate an artist’s approach to storytelling, ideally via key segments from important work. These can range from as few as three pages to sometimes as many as ten or more. If a shorter sequence makes the same point as a longer one, I am likely to choose the shorter, or two shorter examples, knowing that many gallery viewers may not have the patience to read a longer sequence.

Showing artistic virtuosity is a much simpler task: impactful splash pages and dramatic solo interior pages should speak for themselves. There will always be quibbling about aesthetics, but this task is perhaps the easiest part of curating a comic art show. Typically, art-for-art’s-sake selections perform the function without necessarily displaying storytelling elements. But sometimes there is an ideal combination: beautifully designed pages that are wordless but still tell a story, or a portion of a story, with purely visual elements alone.

The key curating skill comes down to having the eye: the presumptive ability to identify and seek the very best surviving examples for a show, where available, from private collections, estates, and institutions. Sometimes, after establishing a wish list, one or more prospective lenders will not cooperate, regardless of assurances of security and adequate insurance, argued prestige, or the adding of distinction to provenance. This is where curators need thick skins. Fans, families, and critics are prone to second-guess final selections. Curating requires a striving to attain the ideal art selections and balance while accepting pragmatic alternatives when necessary. I’ve learned to be happy reaching for perfection while inevitably falling somewhat short.

At this point in time we have crossed a certain threshold. I am confident that the best examples from the rapidly expanding world of comic art will continue to be in demand for one-person exhibits, group shows, and theme shows yet to be imagined. I’m also confident that museums will gradually be employing in-house curators who bring or acquire the expertise to stage exhibits of comic art without untrained outsiders like myself, though I’d hope that expert consultants would always be welcome.

I’ve witnessed a tsunami of change from my comics-obsessed childhood to the present. Newspaper strips were once ascendant, attracting top talents and often-huge collective audiences. Newspaper cartoonists reigned as the royalty of the field for many decades. But, like their symbiotic newspapers, strips today, though still sometimes first rate, are in general retreat. Comic books, the once very lowly and distant cousins to the strips, have largely evolved into ambitious graphic novels across all genres and have become the medium’s current literary and artistic flag bearers. Their proliferation has been a sight to behold: so many comics and graphic novels are being produced that no individual can keep up. Like the larger art and literary realms from which comics initially sprang as a bastard child, a portion—a small portion—of the volume will be deserving of large or lasting recognition, including eventual participation in art exhibits.

Comic creators are increasingly pushing boundaries in print and in digital formats. The best of this art has moved from trashcans to auction houses. More comic artists can live above the poverty level, and more graphic works will compete alongside traditional literature. I anticipate further permutations in the art form and expect to still witness evolving societal appreciation of the old, the contemporary, and the yet-to-be-seen. Current aesthetic favorites may fade in the comics’ pantheon while new faces inevitably become stars and from time to time now-forgotten talents are rediscovered and celebrated. This is what culture and art have always reflected. The difference is that the onetime guttersnipe loitering in an alley behind the art museum has now gained admittance.

Substance and Shadow: The Art of the Cartoon

Brian Walker

Reprinted by permission from the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum exhibition catalog, 2013, pages 45–63. Revised 2017. © 2013 Brian Walker.

The word cartoon is derived from the Italian cartone which in the Middle Ages referred to drawings done on heavy paper as preliminary designs for paintings, stained glass, or tapestries. For fresco paintings, the drawings were transferred to the plaster surface by making pinpricks on the lines and patting soot through the holes. With tapestries, cartoons were placed directly beneath the loom as a guide. Few of these patterns survived and Raphael’s seven large cartoons for the tapestries in the Sistine Chapel (1515–1516) are masterpieces in their own right and hang in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

Cartoon, No. 1 published in Punch magazine on July 15, 1843, is widely considered to be the first modern use of the term (figure 11). Nine years after the Houses of Parliament in London were destroyed by fire in 1834, a competitive exhibition of preliminary design drawings (traditional cartoons) for the historical murals in the New Palace of Westminster was held as the construction concluded. Punch magazine, founded in 1841, satirized the competition by publishing its own submissions under the title Mr. Punch’s cartoons. The first of the series by John Leech, Cartoon, No. 1, contrasted the government’s lavish spending with the plight of its citizens. Accompanying the cartoon was the comment, The poor ask for bread and the philanthropy of the state accords an exhibition.

Eventually all of the drawings published in the magazine came to be known as Punch’s cartoons. The use of the term spread when American humor magazines modeled after Punch, including Puck (1877), Judge (1881), and Life (1883), featured cartoons in their pages.

Substance and Shadow refers to the dual meaning of Leech’s drawing but also describes the essence of cartoon art in general. Cartoons are substance and shadow, content and technique. Cartoonists are information providers who communicate their ideas graphically with bold lines and subtle shading.

Figure 11. John Leech (1817–1864). CARTOON, No 1: Substance and Shadow, Punch, July 1843. The Ohio State University, Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum.

A cartoon is a combination of words and pictures that can tell a story, share a thought, articulate an emotion, promote a point of view, or make people laugh. Cartoonists have mastered an almost limitless vocabulary of graphic expression to entertain and enlighten a mass audience. In spite of the popularity of cartoons, the creative process that cartoonists use to conceive and produce their art still remains a mystery to most of the general public.

The visual shorthand of cartoon communication has a long history. European artists first introduced speed lines and other special effects in cartoons during the nineteenth century. American newspaper cartoonists continued to add to this graphic language in the early years of the twentieth century. Rudolph Dirks pioneered visual devices such as motion lines, stars of pain, footprint trails, dotted eyesight lines, sweat beads, and dust clouds in The Katzenjammer Kids. Frederick Opper perfected the art of slapstick humor in Happy Hooligan, particularly the flop, as his characters were booted or tossed out of the panel frames, flipping head-over-heels in the air. Bud Fisher popularized many familiar graphic clichés in Mutt and Jeff—a log being sawed to denote sleep, a question-mark balloon over a character’s head and the dotted-line stare. In Krazy Kat, George Herriman made effective use of emoticons such as hearts, sweat drops, musical notes and, of course, his ultimate symbol, the brick. Cliff Sterrett invented his own symbols for Polly and Her Pals that included star-shaped sweat drops and amoeba-like clouds.

Figures 12 and 13. Mort Walker (1923–2018). Felt-tip pen illustrations from The Lexicon of Comicana, © 1980 Comicana, Inc. Images courtesy of the International Museum of Cartoon Art Collection, The Ohio State University, Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum.

In the early 1930s, Charles Rice, a humorist, attached names to certain cartoon devices, calling sweat drops plewds and dust clouds briffits. Rice’s article inspired Beetle Bailey creator Mort Walker to do some further research and, in 1964, he wrote a tongue-in-cheek article for the National Cartoonists Society newsletter titled, Let’s Get Down to Grawlixes, cataloging the symbols found in comic strips. This was expanded into a book, The Lexicon of Comicana, which was published in 1980 (figures 12 and 13). Many of the terms that Walker invented, including hites, agitrons, and indotherms, now crop up in articles and lectures about the art form and have been translated into other languages.

Cartoonists today still use the old graphic tricks of their predecessors. They have also invented new visual devices of their own. A combination of symbols (*&%$#@!) can provide a substitute for language that is inappropriate on the comic pages and is particularly useful in our politically correct world. Other unique concepts, like the footprints in Family Circus and the presidential icons in Doonesbury, are permanently linked to the feature that introduced them. In fact, cartoon shorthand is now so ubiquitous that many cartoonists satirize the technique itself.

In the days since Punch magazine exhibited John Leech’s Cartoon, No. 1, original cartoons have been displayed in galleries and museums around the world. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Musée du Louvre in Paris had important cartoon exhibitions in the 1960s, the Museum of Modern Art featured cartoons in the High and Low: Popular Art, Modern Culture show in 1990, and five museums showcased the groundbreaking Masters of American Comics exhibition in 2005 and 2006.

There have been numerous institutions devoted exclusively to cartoon art including the Museum of Cartoon Art, Words and Pictures Museum, and the Dick Tracy Museum. Among the museums currently open to the public are the Cartoon Art Museum in