With the Masters of American Comics exhibition ending this week in New York, Time‘s Richard Corliss asks an interesting question: Does Mad (or any other comics) need a museum?
Some quotes worth at least a thought or two before you answer the rhetorical question I posed in the headline above:
- “Sadly, comic book artists have long regarded themselves as second-class citizens in the world of storytelling,” says Frank Miller, of 300 and Dark Knight fame.
- “Comics, the jilted suitor of the high airs art world, come back as the savior of the book industry in the form of the graphic novel,” says artist Raymond Pettibone in the Masters exhibition catalog.
- “Comics are not necessarily trying to do what a Van Gogh on the wall was trying to do. They aren’t the same kind of direct expression. They have something more in common with architectural drawings and set design. They are picture writing that has to function with other drawings on the same page,” says Art Spiegleman to a group of museum curators in the early 1990s.
- “For fans of comics, the Museum of Art is as foreboding and scary a place as the Comics Convention is for lovers of art,” again from Pettibone.
Soldier through Corliss’ essay until the very end, and you’ll discover his obvious conclusion, one, I suspect, you’ll very much agree with…
February 5th, 2007 at 12:44 pm
I think a better question might be; Are museums appropriate for the display of comics? The active in-your-hands interactivity of a pamphlet or trade paperback is a big part of the immersive power of the medium for me, so I wouldn’t be inclined to gaze at original Jack Kirby art enshrined behind a velvet rope or in a glass case. Who wants intellectual distance from The New Gods or a Russ Heath spitfire?