Cartoon America in Washington, D. C.
This story originally appeared in PW Comics Week on December 12, 2006 Sign up now!
by Peter Sanderson, PW Comics Week -- Publishers Weekly, 12/12/2006
The uniquely American art of the comic strip and the cartoon are on display through January 26 at the Library of Congress, in a major exhibition titled Cartoon America: Highlights from the Art Wood Collection of Cartoon and Caricature. In conjunction with the show, Abrams has recently published Cartoon America: Comic Art in the Library of Congress. Although many works on display in the current show also appear in the book, the Cartoon America book includes many more examples from throughout the library’s collections of comic and cartoon art, which is housed in the library's Prints and Photographs division.
The library has been collecting cartoon art since the early 19th century. However, the library’s considerable holdings were “more than doubled” by its recent acquisition of the Art Wood Collection of Cartoon and Caricature, according to Harry Katz, editor of the Abrams volume and former curator of the library’s Prints and Photographs collection. James Arthur Wood Jr. is a longtime editorial cartoonist who amassed what Librarian of Congress James H. Billington terms in the book’s introduction “the most comprehensive private collection of original historical American cartoon art known to exist.” To display this collection, Wood founded the National Gallery of Caricature and Cartoon Art in Washington, D. C., in 1995, but it failed to attract enough financial support and closed two years later. In 2000 the Library of Congress acquired the collection from Wood.
The Cartoon America exhibition is divided into six sections, the first of which arguably does not fall under the heading of “cartoon art” at all. This is the section primarily devoted to the golden age of illustration, including works by Dean Cornwell and James Montgomery Flagg, children’s illustrator Johnny Gruelle (Raggedy Ann and Andy) and pioneering women illustrator/cartoonists Nell Brinkley and Rose O’Neill.
The portion dubbed “The Ungentlemanly Art” showcases what the curators term “political illustrations” beginning with an example by the great 19th-century editorial cartoonist Thomas Nast. Also included are works by Rube Goldberg, Herblock, Bill Mauldin, Paul Conrad, Pat Oliphant and numerous pieces by Art Wood himself.
The “Caricatures” segment features the earliest artwork in the show: the 1743 “Characters and Caricatures” by the British artist Thomas Hogarth, including his recreations of caricatures by the still earlier artist: Leonardo da Vinci. In the Cartoon America catalogue, Katz credits both Leonardo and Hogarth as key figures in the evolution of cartooning as an artistic medium. Also represented in this section are theatrical cartoonist Al Hirschfeld, political and literary caricaturist David Levine and New Yorker illustrator Saul Steinberg.
Next comes the section on animation, which starts off with a copy of a drawing from Winsor McCay’s 1914 Gertie the Dinosaur, the first great example of character animation. Otherwise Wood’s collection focuses almost wholly on animation of the 1930s and early 1940s, including Max Fleischer’s Betty Boop and Popeye cartoons and artwork for Walt Disney’s Snow White, Fantasia, Dumbo and Bambi.
A large portion of the show is devoted to single-panel gag cartoons, including works by classic New Yorker cartoonists Peter Arno, George Price and James Thurber. The most impressive part of Cartoon America, however, is the large division devoted to comic strips. Here are works by the great pioneers of the form, including a 1907 Sunday strip by Richard Outcault, in which his two famous creations, the Yellow Kid and Buster Brown, meet, and a characteristically hallucinogenic Dream of the Rarebit Fiend by Winsor McCay. Early creators of comedy strips included in the show are Frederick Opper (Happy Hooligan), George McManus (Bringing Up Father), Chic Young (Blondie), and Cliff Sterrett (Polly and Her Pals). The exhibit showcases masters of the Golden Age of comic strips including Milton Caniff (Terry and the Pirates), Al Capp (Li’l Abner), Roy Crane (Wash Tubbs), Harold Gray (Little Orphan Annie), Chester Gould (Dick Tracy), George Herriman (Krazy Kat), Frank King (Gasoline Alley), Alex Raymond (Secret Agent X-9), and Elzie Segar (Thimble Starring Popeye). There is a superb Sunday Peanuts page by Charles M. Schulz, as well as examples of work by other cartoonists who followed in his wake, including Berke Breathed (Bloom County), Cathy Guisewite (Cathy), Johnny Hart (B. C.), and Lynn Johnston (For Better or for Worse). Even underground comix artist Bill Griffith turns up through a Zippy the Pinhead daily strip.
The Cartoon America book features Katz’s “A Brief History of American Cartooning,” in which he traces its evolution from European forebears (including Leonardo, Hogarth and Honoré Daumier) through early American political cartoonists (including Benjamin Franklin and Paul Revere) into the present day. A stellar lineup of writers contributed brief essays, including Jerry Robinson on the Yellow Kid, Art Spiegelman on Lyonel Feininger, Trina Robbins on Nell Brinkley and Rose O’Neill, Chris Ware on Gasoline Alley, Patrick McDonnell (Mutts) on Krazy Kat, John Canemaker on animation art, John Updike on James Thurber, R.O. Blechman on Saul Steinberg, plus commentaries by Roz Chast, David Levine, Lynn Johnston and Pat Oliphant.
Interestingly, apart from some 9/11 cartoons by Will Eisner, Kieron Dwyer and Alex Ross, and short essays by Paul Levitz and Bill Griffith, the book virtually ignores comic books, and there is no comic book artwork in the show. This is particularly ironic, since the Library of Congress has been sent copies of virtually every American comic book for copyright reasons. Katz observes in his afterword that the library needs to build a collection of original art for comic books and graphic novels.
The library is simultaneously displaying Enduring Outrage: Editorial Cartoons by Herblock, a selection of original artwork by the late Herbert Block. Perhaps the greatest American editorial cartoonist of his generation, Block had a career that spanned the last six decades of the 20th century, primarily at the Washington Post. In 2002 the Herb Block Foundation donated 14,000 of his finished cartoons and over 50,000 preparatory sketches to the Library of Congress. The current Herblock show will be on display until January 20.
