How Low Can You Go?

2020 ◽  
pp. 257-258
Author(s):  
John Carlin
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Modern Art ◽  
Pop Culture ◽  
Fine Art ◽  
Comic Art ◽  
Museum Of Contemporary Art

This chapter includes a 1990 review of MoMA’s High and Low: Modern Art, Popular Culture by cultural entrepreneur John Carlin, co-curator of The Comic Art Show (Whitney, 1983) and curator of Masters of American Comics (Hammer, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2005).  This chapter discusses the differences between fine art and pop culture,the importance of excluded topics like jazz, video, and film, and how pop culture is environmental. Carlin explains: “Pop culture is ugly, rude, sexist, racist and politically naive. Fine art is obscure, elitist, misogynist and has no politics. Obviously they were made for each other.”

Masters of High and Low: Exhibitions in Dialogue

2020 ◽  
pp. 211-214
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Modern Art ◽  
Art World ◽  
Public Dialogue ◽  
Art Spiegelman ◽  
Comic Art ◽  
Museum Of Contemporary Art

This is a brief interstitial introduction by art historian Kim A. Munson explaining the importance of and interaction between two blockbuster exhibitions featuring comics, High and Low: Modern Art, Popular Culture (MoMA, 1990) and Masters of American Comics (Hammer & Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2005). This chapter discusses The Comic Art Show (Whitney, 1983), Jonah Kinigstein’s satirical cartoons about the NY art world, and the critical and public dialogue surrounding both High and Low and Masters, which has shaped many of the comics exhibitions that followed. This chapter tracks the team of comics advocates that organized The Comic Art Show (John Carlin, Art Spiegelman, Brian Walker, and Ann Philbin), their reactions to High and Low and the production of Masters of American Comics in response.

An Uneasy Accord: LA Museums Open Their Walls to Comics as True Works of Art

2020 ◽  
pp. 264-270
Author(s):  
Scott Timberg
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Fine Art ◽  
Art Spiegelman ◽  
Los Angeles Times ◽  
Works Of Art ◽  
The Future ◽  
Comic Art ◽  
Museum Of Contemporary Art ◽  
Art School

This chapter contains an in-depth exploration of the issues surrounding comics and museums written by cultural journalist Scott Timberg for the Los Angeles Times in 2005 during the opening of the Masters of American Comics exhibition at the Hammer Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. This chapter includes interviews with Ann Philbin, Art Spiegelman, John Carlin, and Brian Walker about the organization of the show. This chapter discusses the valuation of comic art versus fine art, the disillusionment some cartoonists feel about art school and contemporary fine art, and opinions on the future of comic art shows from curators at other museums.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 3-10
Author(s):  
Kim A. Munson
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Modern Art ◽  
Fine Art ◽  
Art Exhibitions ◽  
Critical Dialogue ◽  
History Of ◽  
Comic Art

This introduction to the book Comic Art in Museums by art historian Kim A. Munson explores the history, controversies, and trends that have shaped comic art exhibitions, important publications, and key museums, galleries, and collecting institutions. Munson explains how the six sections of the book map out the history of influential shows of original comic art from newly rediscovered shows of the 1930’s to contemporary blockbusters like High and Low: Modern Art, Popular Culture and Masters of American Comics, as well as the critical dialogue surrounding these exhibitions. This introduction also contains a brief discussion on shows of fine art influenced by comics, such as Splat, Boom, Pow! The Influence of Comics on Contemporary Art. Includes exhibition photos: Marvel (Seattle), Krazy Kat (Madrid), Rube Goldberg (San Francisco), Mangasia (Nantes).

Comic Connoisseurs

2020 ◽  
pp. 215-219
Author(s):  
David Deitcher
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Modern Art ◽  
Fine Art ◽  
Comic Strips ◽  
Comic Art

This chapter includes a 1984 article by art historian David Deitcher criticizing The Comic Art Show (Whitney, 1983) and the show catalog edited by John Carlin and Sheena Wagstaff. Deitcher explains: “A recent exhibition devoted to the complex, often antagonistic relation between comic strips and modern art submitted the comics to a paradigm of excellence derived from a fine art tradition, thereby reinforcing rather than reducing the familiar distinction between high and popular culture.”

After Masters: Interview with Gary Panter

2020 ◽  
pp. 295-296
Author(s):  
Kim A. Munson
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Comic Art ◽  
Museum Of Contemporary Art

This chapter includes a brief commentary between art historian Kim A. Munson and artist Gary Panter about the legacy of the Masters of American Comics exhibition (2005, Hammer Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles) after the show’s ten-year anniversary passed in 2017. This chapter discusses roadblocks and benefits to doing comics shows, the difficulty of being a comics expert, valuation of comic art, kid-friendly shows, problems of the comics canon and categories.

High Way Robbery

2020 ◽  
pp. 243-255
Author(s):  
Michael Dooley
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Graphic Design ◽  
Modern Art ◽  
Pop Culture ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Art World ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Jeff Koons ◽  
High Road

This chapter includes a 1990 review of High and Low: Modern Art, Popular Culture by graphic design journalist Michael Dooley. His critique of the exhibit as seen in Los Angeles: “The show failed, and not simply by the standards of right- and left-wing axe-grinders. More importantly, and sadder still, it failed on its own terms. The show’s attendees never arrived at an interchange; instead, they were stuck on a one-way drive up the high road.” This chapter discusses specific works of art, comics, and advertising and contains an overview of the surrounding art world politics. Images: 2 exhibit photos (MoMA), 3 ads referencing pop culture.  This chapter also includes the essay “My Way along the High Way.” This is a 2017 essay by graphic design journalist Michael Dooley, written as an afterword to his 1990 article "High Way Robbery” about High and Low: Modern Art, Popular Culture and its legacy. This afterword discusses ongoing interaction between pop culture and fine art, specifically Jeff Koons, Ed Ruscha, R. Crumb, Harvey Kurtzman, Art Spiegelman, and the exhibition Masters of American Comics.

Application of Western Surrealistic in Design of Landscape Architecture

2012 ◽  
Vol 226-228 ◽  
pp. 2394-2397
Author(s):  
Dan Huo ◽  
Fan Yang
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Landscape Architecture ◽  
Modern Art ◽  
Architecture Design ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Modern Landscape ◽  
Unconscious Mind

Surrealism was the twentieth century’s longest lasting art movement in the arts. It explored the mysterious dream world of the unconscious mind. Surrealist works depict a familiar yet alien world of dreamlike serenity and nightmarish fantasy, and their legacy pervades much of contemporary art, literature, film and popular culture. As a representation of irrational aesthetics in the modern art trends, it is worthwhile to study the influence and construction of Surrealism in modern landscape architecture. This paper explores the modern landscape form under the influence of Surrealism Art by analyzing and investigating the intrinsic relationship between Surrealist Art and the modern landscape architecture. Besides that, this paper described the connection between surreal spirit and Chinese landscape architecture design term metaphor of “presence”.

Philanthropy and Plutocracy

October ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 162 ◽  
pp. 31-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Fraser ◽  
Eric Golo Stone
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Social Services ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Art World ◽  
Open Letter ◽  
Government Responsibility ◽  
Cultural Activism ◽  
Ongoing Effort ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Museum Of Contemporary Art

Two texts by Andrea Fraser are reprinted as part of October's ongoing effort to publish contemporary documents of cultural activism that aims to create spaces of progressive resistance to threats of authoritarianism. Written as a speech delivered at the Museum Ludwig Cologne in 2017, Fraser's “Trusteeship in the Age of Trump,” demonstrates how the privatization of social services and the arts through philanthropy is part of a larger withdrawal of government responsibility for the welfare of its citizens. Accompanying the lecture is an open letter, drafted Andreas Fraser and Eric Golo Stone in late 2016 and signed by dozens of art world figures, demanding the resignation of now Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin from the Board of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

Remasters of American Comics: Sequential Art as New Media in the Transformative Museum Context

2020 ◽  
pp. 275-288
Author(s):  
Damian Duffy
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
New Media ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Fine Art ◽  
Art Museum ◽  
Sequential Art ◽  
University Of Illinois ◽  
Racial Inclusion ◽  
Museum Of Contemporary Art ◽  
Contemporary Art Museum

This chapter includes a 2009 essay by multi-faceted University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign professor Damian Duffy highlighting the curatorial philosophies that avoid confronting the conceptual challenge of bringing the comics medium into the museum by attempting to fit comics, to one extent or another, into traditional fine art frameworks, including as examples the 2003 Contemporary Art Museum Houston exhibition Splat, Boom, Pow!, Masters of American Comics 2005, UCLA Hammer Museum and Museum of Contemporary Art, Comic Release! from Carnegie Mellon University, and his own curatorial work in partnership with John Jennings on the exhibitions Other Heroes: African American Comics Creators, Characters, and Archetypes. This chapter discusses new media, if we still need canons, comics versus fine art, comics as non-art, lone genius versus collaboration, display tactics, narrative, and racial inclusion.

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