Learning from comics: in the 40-plus years since Pop art first brought the comic-strip idiom into galleries, three generations of artists have found inspiration in the medium. A current exhibition suggests a few reasons why - Report From Houston - Critical Essay

Art in America, Oct, 2003 by Frances Colpitt

With her first major exhibition, "Splat Boom Pow!: The Influence of Cartoons in Contemporary Art," curator Valerie Cassel has scored a knockout. Originating at the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston, this wide-ranging, multigenerational show includes 78 works by 40 artists. Full of fun and energy, it is not, as the title might suggest, just another examination of the longevity of Pop, but is motivated by a smart, subversive thesis. The exhibition, as Cassel explains in her catalogue essay, "focuses on artists who use the legibility of existing iconography to enter into the debate of social change. Splat Boom Pow!'s premise is that the system of visual language enabled by the idiom of comics has provided artists with not only a permission to speak, but a means to do so." (1) Only about half of the artists included are white, and a majority make art with potent or poignant political content.

Cassel assumed the position of associate curator at the Contemporary Arts Museum less titan three years ago. Formerly director of the visiting artists program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, she is admittedly influenced by Chicago's tradition of comics-inspired art, as seen in the work of the Imagists and the Hairy Who. Of those artists, however, only the late Roger Brown is included in this exhibition. His Sarajevo, The Serbian Way (1993), depicting the aftermath of a street battle with bloodied corpses strewn on the sidewalks below tall apartment buildings, reinforces the exhibition's pervasively urban sensibility. In a similar vein, Another Great Migration (2002) by Kerry James Marshall utilizes the format of comic-strip panels, in ink on paper, to examine contentious issues involving Chicago's dilapidated housing projects. The figures in Marshall's drawings communicate in cartoon-speech bubbles, making use of language the way many works in the show do. Cassel's interest in language and communication--she majored in communications at the University of Texas before receiving a master's degree in art history at Howard University--provided another foundation for the exhibition.

Thematic group shows typically engender complaints about who's included and who isn't, and "Splat Boom Pow!" is no exception. Although John Wesley is mentioned in Cassel's catalogue essay, his absence from the show is remarkable, especially since his paintings of comic-book characters spoof social or sexual mores. Equally arguable is the inclusion of Chicago Outsider artist Henry Darger, whose elaborate watercolor narratives involving frisky hordes of young girls are compelling but hardly socially aware. Cassel's curatorial approach was somewhat unorthodox since, as she explained to me, she began by choosing the younger artists first. Rather than tracking a historical lineage from the past to the present, consultations with her contemporaries about their influences led her backward to artists of earlier generations. Laylah All, for example, stressed the importance of Ida Applebroog's early work. Cassel included Applebroog's Face It. Chaos Is Useless (1980), depicting the interaction of a mother and daughter arranged in comic-strip format, and five of Ali's horizontal gouache paintings populated by repetitions of her signature bubble-headed figures.

Andy Warhol is represented, of course, but not by Superman or Dick Tracy of 1960. Instead, Cassel chose his 10-panel Myths (t981), which includes characters and caricatures such as hunt Jemima, Dracula, Santa Claus, Superman and Warhol himself. Two paintings by Roy Lichtenstein are also featured, but the godfather of "Splat Boom Pow!" is Peter Saul. Saul's stridently political paintings, often considered tangential to mainstream Pop art, provide a cogent introduction to the use of cartoon imagery as a form of critique. Americans vs. Japanese (1964) depicts helmeted cartoon ducks representing American aggression by wielding baseball bats and tossing gas canisters. An American flag, shot full of holes where the stars should be, waves in front of a blue setting sun in the background. Saul's bilious colors, snaking black lines and bulbous forms contribute to the painting's forceful tension. Approaching race relations from a different viewpoint, Roger Shimomura's three paintings feature caricatures of Japanese men, with yellow skin, buck teeth and "squinty eyes," based on American cartoons of the 1940s. In Jap's a Jap #2 and Frat Rats (both 2000), the men mingle with collegiate crowds, characters reminiscent of Archie and Veronica comics. Using flat, saturated acrylic, Shimomura achieves sheer perfection in his graphic painting style, with invisible brushwork and minute attention to steady-handed detail. Suggesting parallels between the arts of painting and cartooning, Jap's" a Jap #6 (2000) represents the act of depiction (Diego Velazquez's Las Meninas comes to mind) with an artist whose head is Japanese and whose body, complete with middy blouse, belongs to Donald Duck. Holding a palette, he is shown at work on a portrait of his Uncle Scrooge McDuck playing the bagpipes. A generation younger than Saul and Shimomura, Chicago fashion designer Cat Chow is represented in the exhibition by a large, floor-length kimono constructed entirely of lenticular trading cards. Featuring a jumpsuit-clad female Power Ranger, which alternates with an image of the same girl in street clothes when viewed from another angle, the cards are linked together like chain mail, with small brass rings.