Artsy Smartsy McFly

[Dan Nicholls]

So, I was giving a speech in (wait for it) Speech & Rhetoric class, and I decided to use that time to pitch comics as art, and webcomics in particular. Since I was expressly fudging our given topic (political persuasive), I pointed out places like this, where the inate philosophy and aesthetic character of many comics are discussed, and slapped on a nirfty title for it as an art movement (Neo-Pop--precisely because of the post-modern irony and fittingness of having a 'new-something' before that something is arguably over). I think, and said, that the basis for this movement is a more 'literal' art, in the sense which Flannery O'Connor described.

</preamble><crackerjacks>
So, here's the question. I absolutely believe that comic and cartoon-esque art (including Gimme Back My God! style photo manipulation) has taken such a rise that it is constituting in itself an art movement, but what falls under it?

I suggested everything from animation to stills to comics to non-comics in style to (true to its psuedo-Pop roots) t-shirts. But questions came up: What about graffitti? (which has started to flare in popularity among upper class white folk who hold art grant pursestrings) When is it just a comic? Given its permeation of different media, can there ever be a definitive 'show' of its great works?

And, thusly, methoughts you might like a crack at this idea in general, and the questions in particular. Now I'm going back to cramming for finals.

[McDuffies]

One of the most important parts of comics is time presented through space, that means that graphic naration doesn't actually have a default time flow, but it's mimicked by arangement of elements on paper/screen.
Thus animation can't be considered comic art: the principle is totally different. Animation is much more similar to film, in fact it can be considered part of film art (although that's debatable).
Everything else you mentioned, from T-shirts to grafitti, has as much in common with comics as, for instance, news-paper advertisement with literature.

Comics aroused as art medium long ago, at the beginning of 20 century. If someone still doubted comics as art based on Katzenjammer kids or Baster Brown, after appearance of Krazy Kat that was not an issue anymore.

I mean, of course it's issue, but only with people who know nothing about comics. Sure they're often still considered just a fun device, but isn't it the case with movies too? Isn't photography often considered just a mean to note and save reality, rather than an art mean? Isn't pop-music often considered to be not-worthy of the great heights of classical music?
I think it's no longer an issue of art itself, rather of conservative people who can't accept new things. Sadly, those people seem to rule the world but it shouldn't be our concern.
And I know someone will mention famout Theodor Stergen's saying that "90% of every art is crap".

[Dan Nicholls]

I sure wish the acceptance was that widespread, but while it's growing it's still largely denegrated in circles outside of the comics community. (Who correspondingly sing the praise of 'Cat's furball on NY Times'...)

The part about film I see, but every movement has had a corresponding influence on other mediums (esp. music and literature). I do like the distinction made, though, and will have to remember it. The thing with t-shirts is I think it's a viable extension of the Pop art 'common items' motif. But maybe I'm addicted to irony. Meh.

[JexKerome]

The Great Will Eisner defined comics as Sequential Art; that is, a story told by pictures in a sequential order. Thus, while t-shirts do not make the cut, both films and animation could be seen as extreme offshoots of Sequential Art, as they are, basically, still frames (on one case photographed, on the other drawn or rendered) shown sequentially at such speed that they give off the illusion of movement.

As for they belonging to "\pop culture, most definitely yes. Pop culture not only means culture for the masses, it also refers to those phenomenons that arise seemingly overnight to great popularity. T-shirts, caps, bumper stickers, all of those flooded the streets almost overnight. So did comics and motion pictures, both live and animated. Graffiti is an odd case: first the sole property of ghetto artists, it suddenly became popular and seen everywhere like shirts, movies, museums and videogames. So it was more like underground counter-culture suddenly making the jump to mainstream; THAT is also pop culture.

[Fullcircle]

I'm torn on animation qualifying as sequential art, because while it's technically true if you are going to include animation AND photo manipulation one could argue that 'live action' films are sequential art too. Photographs arranged and moved to create the illusion of action. So it depends.

I include animation under film, but that doesn't mean it doesn't need to be taken more seriously as an art form just like comics do and shake the 'just for kids' label. So they have that in common... what a tricky question...

~SR

[Yeahduff]

I think grafiti, in it's true form, is the only art form that's pure, according to.... god, which guy was it.... I believe Kaphrow. He had concerns about the comodification of art, the way it becomes dead in a gallery, how everything, if not shown in a gallery, is sponsored by some arm of the art establishment, even his own happenings and the public art displays of Christo. Graffiti, when not in the hands of privileged suburban kids looking desperately for something to make them relevent, is always alive, necessarily anti-establishment, essentially subversive, impossible to bring to the gallery and not likely to be sponsored by anyone. In a way, it follows Pollock's example (but then, what doesn't these days) of the existential mark making, the record of a ritual (in graffiti's case, the illegal tag), and even comes with one's own signature. Seeing it in a gallery is just sad, as it loses all of it's life and urgency: Any moron can tag a blank wall in a quiet room where they'll leave you alone. What's the point?

I don't think it shares much with comicking. It's done with ink on paper, has an assumed permanence, is certainly legal, and it's display is always formal: presented in a book or a website or newspaper page. While the idea of seeing comics in a gallery is quite strange, you're not going to see it tagged on a wall.

I agree with McDuff that it's certainly an artform of its own apart from animation and film, but it shares with those two in that it's widespread use as low pop culture has diminished its appearence to the general public, and even to the "cognotive elite" who appreciate fine art but find comics and cartoons to be stupid. The likes of Dan Clowes, Chris Ware and Art Speigelmann are rebuilding the artforms reputation a bit, but mostly amongst nerds like us. In reality, it's only other artists who we need to seek acceptance from. On average, a person will spend two seconds in front of a work in a museum or gallery. Art itself isn't all that respected. The average person on the street doesn't give much of a damn about art, so whether those neat drawings on the funny's page are art or not matter little to them. Basically we're just trying to find a seat at the outsiders' club with the rest of the eccentrics who spend so much of their lives making marks on various surfaces.

Incoherrent, yes, but a point or two may have been made....

[McDuffies]

I'm torn on animation qualifying as sequential art, because while it's technically true if you are going to include animation AND photo manipulation one could argue that 'live action' films are sequential art too. Photographs arranged and moved to create the illusion of action. So it depends.

To be precise, there is an illusion of action, but no illusion of time, cause images really change through time. Where with comics, time is non-existant too, it relays much more on reader's way of reading, thus comics may be drastically different each time you read them. (Well, films can be too, depending on how much you get into them, but not nearly as much)

[Christwriter]

If comics are anything in my opinion, they're Graphic Books. The drawings are good quality, but the real meat of any comic book is the story hidden between two pages. Otherwise it would be like one of those "Art by the Masters" books. I like Da Vinci and Monet, but neither of those artists kept anyone on the edge of their seats the way X-men or the Hulk did, or kept someone happily entertained like Calvin and Hobbes or Count Your Sheep.

On the other side of the coin, they don't qualify as text art forms (books) because they're not. They don't require the same amount of discriptive effort. Imagry in a novel takes several hours of blood sweat and tears to produce three to four paragraphs of text. Comic books take the same amount of Blood, sweat and tears, but it's the image, not the text, that requires an effort.

It is its own art form. Two traditional forms, stuck together.

Now...to vent a little bit about something that REALLY irritates me.

I find it odd that in this ultra PC socioty, we still look for "pure" art, and choose the products of low tech cultures or artwork done in rage. This makes several comparisons to the human mind that ought to make intellectuals go up in flames.

The human mind is built by the enviroment it exists in, and can no more imagine a reality above its own than it can stop thinking. Any form of art is an idea processed by the human mind, and the enviroment adds elements to it. I can no more imagine a reality without an active God than I could a reality without basic plant life, or color. Therefor, saying any product of a mind is greater than any other, based on content or enviroment, rather than on effort, ability or the spirit in which it was meant, is a very judgemental and racist comment to make because of the implications involved.


CW

[Yeahduff]

I find it odd that in this ultra PC socioty, we still look for "pure" art, and choose the products of low tech cultures or artwork done in rage. This makes several comparisons to the human mind that ought to make intellectuals go up in flames.

I don't know what this means. Are you saying that you're irritated by the classically Western, male-dominated idea of what art is? Or is it the feminists and Marxists who try to look outside this established ideal, almost militantly so in the more extreme cases, awarding merit to what would be considered crap by a white guy from Fifth Avenue? Or did you not mean either of those at all?

[[AlmightyPyro]]

One of the most important parts of comics is time presented through space, that means that graphic naration doesn't actually have a default time flow, but it's mimicked by arangement of elements on paper/screen.

We read part of a comic in English by Scott McCloud called "Understanding Comics" who made this exact point by basicly saying that normal cartoonist use time like comic artists use space. [ cartoons : time :: comics : space ] He wound up defining comics as "Juxtaposed pictoral and other images in deliberate sequence."

If you get the chance to read an excerpt or the whole thing of this Graphic novel, DO! It's very good and makes me feel good about being a comic artist myself!

B.T.W. If some one else has already made this point or refrenced to Scott Mcloud in this thread already I'm sorry, I didn't take the time to read every thing, after McDuffies I just skimmed through the rest to see if any one had said something about this cause I really wanted to. ^_^

[Christwriter]

I find it odd that in this ultra PC socioty, we still look for "pure" art, and choose the products of low tech cultures or artwork done in rage. This makes several comparisons to the human mind that ought to make intellectuals go up in flames.

I don't know what this means. Are you saying that you're irritated by the classically Western, male-dominated idea of what art is? Or is it the feminists and Marxists who try to look outside this established ideal, almost militantly so in the more extreme cases, awarding merit to what would be considered crap by a white guy from Fifth Avenue? Or did you not mean either of those at all?

I mean I am irritated by anything that awards artistic approval on the basis of something other than ability. Statements like "pure" art seem to say that artistic greatness should rest on something other than ability...like ones distance from displeasing elements of socioty, or someone who uses art to play on the "hot topics" of the day, and look down at someone like Thomas Kincade because all he paints are pictures of pretty houses. Or someone who writes a simple sci-fi story when everyone else is writing metaphores for socio-political dissatisfactions.

I am irritated by the view that art can be held to any standard other than ability and the umph factor. If the art speaks to you, it is art. If it does not, you go on to the next display. Art is art is art is art. politics and soical ideas should not play a part in the judgement of art.

CW

[Yeahduff]

Ah. Well, art's a really sticky thing. I view it in the same way I view religion (this might piss you off. I apologize.), in that it should be some way to figure out the world for yourself. Thomas Kincade may make really pretty houses set in really pretty foresty mountainy areas while the sun sets in a really prettily fashion behind it all, but it says little about life, and who Thomas Kincade is, and doesn't make you question anything. For me, art should challenge your way of thinking about things, make a new frame through which to see things. Art is not art is not art, because it's not. Art is fucking hard. My favorite cliche is "Everyone's a critic," because it's incredibly true. Human experience is largely a long series of taking things in and rejecting this in favor of what we find interesting. Thomas Kincade is like Garfield TM (to bring us back to the topic) in that it's static and dead and very nearly regressive in a cultural context. It shows nothing new or interesting, never challenges itself let alone an audience. Everyone decides for themselves (yes, often with the help of some mass of others) what's worthy and what's foul. You deride SpongeBob Squarepants and once took it as a given that others would too. You decided it was unworthy art, or not art at all. That's fine. I disagree, but that's where the discussion begins. Now, I think a large part of the art community is getting too rapped up in the subversive nature of the avant garde and not paying enough to the aesthetic side, but social concerns, at the very least personal concerns, should drive a work, with the aesthetic concerns, be it style or skill, should work to get the personal or social across. I completely agree that art is not the appropriate place to express the political. I wonder if there IS an appropriate place to express the political. But if we just judged art by who could draw the best, we'd be looking at a whole lot of pretty houses and being bored out of our wits. I need something with some feeling behind it, and neither Thomas Kincade, nor Garfield TM, nor Nickelback accomplish any real insight or humanity.

[McDuffies]

If comics are anything in my opinion, they're Graphic Books. The drawings are good quality, but the real meat of any comic book is the story hidden between two pages. Otherwise it would be like one of those "Art by the Masters" books. I like Da Vinci and Monet, but neither of those artists kept anyone on the edge of their seats the way X-men or the Hulk did, or kept someone happily entertained like Calvin and Hobbes or Count Your Sheep.

Eh, eh, when will people learn.
You don't unite narration and art just to advance any of them. If you unite them you don't either get naration+art. You get something more. That's all the point with comics.

(incidentally, with books of art, it's all a matter of what you're into. I never had a chance to see paintings of any of my favourite paintings in live, but I enjoy reading books and monographies. I'm able to stare at one image for a looong time)

[Psiogen]

Uh-oh. This thread has crossed the event horizon of postmodernism.

Basically we're just trying to find a seat at the outsiders' club with the rest of the eccentrics who spend so much of their lives making marks on various surfaces.

Personally, I'm happy to let the "art world" gradually dwindle into nothingness without me. Art doesn't have to be a tiny comfortable bubble of intellectuals set apart from the rest of society. It wasn't always this way, and it won't stay this way forever. But if you go into that bubble, you can rest assured that nothing you create is going to leave it.

[McDuffies]

Incidentally, in France, comic books got a status of literature genre last year.
There was a large discussion whether it is good for comics or not; Good thing is, it'll be easier to use usual distribution systems on comic books, plus all that thing with being accepted as art.
Bad thing is, comics are not actually the genre of prose and that's a fact.

[Yeahduff]

Uh-oh. This thread has crossed the event horizon of postmodernism.

Basically we're just trying to find a seat at the outsiders' club with the rest of the eccentrics who spend so much of their lives making marks on various surfaces.

Personally, I'm happy to let the "art world" gradually dwindle into nothingness without me. Art doesn't have to be a tiny comfortable bubble of intellectuals set apart from the rest of society. It wasn't always this way, and it won't stay this way forever. But if you go into that bubble, you can rest assured that nothing you create is going to leave it.

Nothing you could possibly create can be for everyone. If it is, then you've failed. So the question is, would you want to be admired by a large group of people who look at your stuff at face value, bring little insight and barely take it seriously to spend seconds on it if it were hanging in a gallery and forget about as soon as American Idol comes on, or would you rather impress a considerably smaller group of people who will think about your work, approach it from different angles, look deeply into it, talk about it with their friends, but won't really help pay your bills? This is actually a question I debate in my head all the time, as most of my family and the people in my neighborhood aren't intellectuals, but I have to say I'd rather work for the people who will appreciate my work. We're doing comics here, we're already in our own bubble. Sure, artists used to play ball with the general public, but some of the artists (the ones we still talk about today) decided they weren't going to insult their audience by mass-producing the same sludge. I'd rather not go back to the days where someone like Cezanne gets laughed out of the building for sixteen straight years. As artists, we shouldn't be afraid to make a demand or two of our audience. It doesn't mean we need to be impossibly obscure, we shouldn't spoon-feed to them, either. I want to be read by smart people. I'd love it if everyone in the world read my comic, but I'm not willing to go Family Circus to do it.

[Psiogen]

So the question is, would you want to be admired by a large group of people who look at your stuff at face value, bring little insight and barely take it seriously to spend seconds on it if it were hanging in a gallery and forget about as soon as American Idol comes on, or would you rather impress a considerably smaller group of people who will think about your work, approach it from different angles, look deeply into it, talk about it with their friends, but won't really help pay your bills?

There's no reason you can't have both. Why make it your goal to appeal only to those inside the bubble? It's quite possible to create art with both depth and mass appeal.

Of course, there are always gonna be people who just experience it as shallow entertainment...but maybe if we make more entertainment that isn't shallow, we can chip away at that group. We've got to at least try. The private-language-of-the-intellectuals schtick is nice, but it's going nowhere fast.

[Psiogen]

Why make it your goal to appeal only to those inside the bubble?

I guess I should clarify that--I don't mean to attack art that isn't interested in mass appeal, of course. I love the stuff in the 'bubble', myself!

I just think it's kinda defeatist to assume that you have to play solely to a small, intellectual audience. My personal interest lies with stuff that bridges that gap.

[Sortelli]

Personally, I'm happy to let the "art world" gradually dwindle into nothingness without me.

YERSH.

[Psiogen]

YERSH.

I AM STABBIGN U