You'll thank me for this advice later. Trust me.
I saw the exhibit yesterday, and my mind is still reeling. Organized by two Los Angeles museums (it's in Milwaukee through Aug. 13), the show focuses on 15 influential comic artists.* You can debate the selection all you want (personally, I would've left Gary Panter off the list and replaced him with either Alex Toth or Steve Ditko, then probably swapped Lyonel Feininger with another strip artist, say Alex Raymond or Hal Foster) but there's no debating the beauty of the art on display. It's one thing to page through a collection of old comic strips or books, even if the size is suitable and the reproduction is choice. It's a whole different experience to stand in front of the large original art (and believe me, some of this stuff is massive) and be able to see every brush stroke, every line of ink, every blotch of corrective paint.
No photography was allowed inside (damn -- but I can see why) so my plan to bring you tons of art from the show was foiled. Instead, I'll just list a few highlights:
* Chester Gould's original DICK TRACY pages -- that bold, stark, black-and-white art bringing the grotesque, gruesome battle between good and evil to expressionistic life. TRACY is my favorite comic strip of all time, and the images on display -- many focusing on extreme weather, violence and Tracy's horrifying villains -- were something to see.
* All the original art for Will Eisner's classic SPIRIT story, "Gerhard Shnobble." Also, the original art for the notorious "Ellen gets spanked" SPIRIT section cover.
* Wally Wood's original art (in the Harvey Kurtzman section) for "3-DIMENSIONS!," including the last page (which, as a joke, is blank.) Plus, plenty of Kurtzman art, including all the pages of "Corpse on the Imjim" and the cover of FRONTLINE COMBAT #7, one of my favorite covers of all time.
* Plenty of Jack Kirby, both Golden Age and Marvel Age, plus his famed two-page spread from the first issue of KAMANDI. Boy, I'd like to see that hanging on my wall! (There was also a very nice spread from, of all places, DEVIL DINOSAUR.)
* Lots of great THIMBLE THEATER originals by E.C. Segar. And not only is the art beautiful, but the strips are a blast to read. Now I really can't wait until the first Fantagraphics POPEYE book hits the shelves this fall.
* Original copies of the strips Robert Crumb drew as a kid. This guy always had talent.
* Frank King's hand-colored originals for the massive, imaginative GASOLINE ALLEY Sunday pages. Drawn and Quarterly's collections of the daily strip, WALT & SKEEZIK, are breathtaking, but those Sunday pages are visual wonders.
* And, maybe the most poignant thing in the whole exhibit -- several original PEANUTS strips by Charles Schulz. (It's amazing how big the early strips were drawn -- no wonder he was frustrated by the shrinking size of the comics page.) As the notes point out, Schulz never used assistants, so when he grew old and his health began to decline, the shakiness in the art becomes apparent. Somehow, even though those later PEANUTS strips weren't among his best, seeing them up close makes you appreciate his talent and dedication all the more.
That's only scraping the surface of the exhibit. There are Chris Ware originals (his attention to detail boggles the mind), hand-colored KRAZY KATs and the original strips from the sequence in LITTLE NEMO where his bed grows legs and walks around the city. I can hardly believe the art for something that amazing (and old) actually exists. And yet, there it is, on a wall in Milwaukee.
But it's not going to be there forever. Check it out while you can.
* For the record, the 15 "masters" in the exhibit are Milton Caniff, R. Crumb, Will Eisner, Lyonel Feininger, Chester Gould, George Herriman, Frank King, Jack Kirby, Harvey Kurtzman, Winsor McCay, Gary Panter, Charles M. Schulz, E.C. Segar, Art Spiegelman and Chris Ware. If you want to debate the list, go here. They've been debating it for a long, long time.
6 comments:
Man, wish Milwaukee was closer to Oregon! I visited the SF Comics Art Museum a few times back in the '90s, really dug it. Something transporting about seeing the actual raw art for so many famous comics.
One thing I forgot to mention, Nik, is that the show's catalog is available via Amazon, and it has plenty of BIG reproductions of art. Worth a look!
Hey - I was there on the 13th too! Did you catch the Will Eisner documentary?
No, I had to make my trip earlier in the day. Did you see it? How was it?
I wrote my Graduation capstone on the WWII political war cartoons of Theodor Giesel, otherwises known to the world as Dr. Seuss.
Things like this interest me, and I wish I could see this, but alas, I must move to Japan. This week is full of packing and getting my stuff together.
Anyhoo...Thanks for the heads up!
I saw the show when it opened in LA, adn I couldn't agree more. Its easy, and necessary, to debate the inclusion of some artists and the exclusion of others. But the show is astonishing, and the opportunity to see all of this stuff in one place is wonderful. I appreciate Gould's work more than ever, the evolution (de-evolution?) of Schulz's line over time was indeed sobering, and the Herriman's!
Anyway, go see it if you can. I've moved to NJ in the interim, and am looking forward to seeing it again.
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