Comics Versus Art
by Bart Beaty
University of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing Division, 2012
Its tempting to split up a review of Beaty’s book, Comics Versus Art, into a series of examinations of its individual chapters. Many of Beaty’s arguments are so relevant to the discussion of comics and wider culture that they deserve their own posts. More devilishly, its equally seductive to make a laundry list of his most controversial claims, just to see if they could nudge the Lichtenstein conversation out of its current emotional stalemate.
Either approach would be easier to write than an evaluation of the whole: Comics Versus Art is an ambitious but uneven chronicling of the diverse historical frictions between the two fields, including but not limited to pop-art appropriation, comic’s belittlement as nostalgic/primitive ephemera, and cartoonists’ ready cooperation with ‘art world’ prejudices. Beaty is a firebrand and much-needed documentarian, and his book is an invaluable contribution to this discussion. Through an interweaving of many rewarding tangents, he often succeeds at elucidating, even correcting, accounts of art-comics friction through a fair examination of each case’s larger context, even if some of his dramatic conclusions are shakily reached or unearned. Comics Versus Art is far from a manifesto of why comics should or should not be art. Without being vehement or trite, the book is quite damning in its examination of the petty status games that occur at the border between these worlds.
Comics Versus Art is comprised of nine different “case-studies.” The first chapter is especially worth summarizing, as it examines several different definitions of comics, and how these definitions, particularly Scott McCloud’s, have exempted comics from art history. While most definitions of comics have been essentialist, (focusing on recurring characters, thought balloons, or moral narrativising as central components, depending on the theory,) McCloud’s formalist definition is open enough to abduct and rename other phenomenon as “comics,” while it rejects several examples widely accepted as comics, (Dennis the Menace, for example.) While McCloud’s proponents are happy to re-envision Trajan’s Column as a comic, (and couldn’t care less about Dennis the Menace, perhaps,) the rest of the art world remains indifferent; as a freak, isolated case of comics, the column’s new branding doesn’t have nearly the historical interest as it’s status as imperial propaganda. More importantly, ‘comics,’ ‘children’s books,’ and ‘artists’ books’ are only distinguished by their audiences. At this point, Beaty introduces an institutional definition of comics, borrowed from Arthur C. Danto, George Dickie and Howard Becker’s theories of an “artworld.” Loosely, comics are whatever the human members of the comics world (including but not limited to producers, critics and consumers,) deem to be called comics. This theory fails even more spectacularly in establishing borders with children’s and artist’s books, but that’s somewhat the point, and at least it’s honest about it: Becker writes that “‘art worlds typically have intimate and extensive relations with the worlds from which they try to distinguish themselves.’” Problematically, this theory has no way of pinpointing why or what about comics makes them a social nexus, (perhaps, by the centrality of recurring characters in comics, people really do gather around commercial franchises rather than their formal attributes.) Beaty does good work here in positing a parallel comicsworld, but the definition is tautological and directionless, and doesn’t quite address where this would overlap with an artworld anyhow. Moreover, Beaty doesn’t develop the comicsworld theory beyond this point, and only occasionally reintroduces it in further chapters. He also doesn’t cover any of the historical evolutions in the definition of ‘art,’ contextualize how Danto and co.’s definition interact with these, or how it can be expanded past a truism. This unbalance plagues most of the book, where Beaty uses a limited range of analytical approaches to draw his conclusions, and doesn’t apply these tools strictly enough to spawn ideas past his original biases.
Beaty misses the opportunity to develop the institutional theory with the next chapter, which details the gendered power dynamic underlying the Lichtenstein appropriation debate. This study could have benefited from a closer look at the sub-worlds at play: much of the art-world initially rejected pop-art for its association with low-brow cultural forms, and only gradually began to recognize Lichtenstein’s work as worthwhile. This in turn would have clarified Chapter 6, where Beaty erroneously concludes that Gary Panter’s featuring in Blab! and Juxtapoz magazines, and creation of a vinyl art toy, signals his acceptance by the art world at large. Panter’s luke-warm reviews by Artforum, one of which is included in the book, are slightly better than the New York Time’s treatment of another comics luminary decades earlier, Bernard Krigstein, who is instead framed by the book as an artworld failure.
Despite this, Beaty’s arguments have an commonsensical ring of truth, which he occasionally goes out of his way to justify. On Lichtenstein, Beaty frames the case study with discussion of Nietzschean ressentiment, defined as “a tendency to attribute one’s personal failures to external forces.” This is a little overkill, where simply using the word ‘resentment’ could have done the trick, as Nietzche’s philosophies are not mentioned elsewhere in the book. However, Beaty is on the right track:
When, for example, Clive Phillpot offhandedly dismisses the possibility that works of comics might be classified as artist’s books, the division between forms is presented as a self-evident commonplace barely requiring elaboration or argumentation. By contrast, the pent-up aggressive feelings towards the world of fine arts that characterizes many cartoonist’s ressentiment can become an all-consuming passion that threatens to poison their work with an easily diagnosed bitterness.
It is a breath of fresh air to have the emotional dynamic of the Lichtenstein debate not only included in its context, but considered the heart of the conflict itself. In this case, he also studies how, evidenced by critics of the time, comics and kitsch were increasingly cast as feminine, while pop-art’s appropriations ‘masculinized’ camp that had been enjoyed in earnest. “Pop art, therefore, was a threat because it absconded with the one element that comic book fans assumed would never be in question: the red-blooded American masculinity that informed war and romance comics alike with their rigid adherence to patriarchal gender norms.” It is gender critique, not institutional theory, that becomes the lifeblood of Comics Versus Art, and provides a continuing thread through the other case studies, something that will fly in the face of readers not prepared to understand how certain behaviors and attitudes are routinely cast as ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ throughout history. Beaty writes,
The validation of the comics form, which is an essential aspect of fannish epistemology, can take many paths. One of these paths would be the outright rejection of the conservative basis of much of modernist art history, with its conflation of masculinity, artistry, and genius, and the adoption and promotion of new aesthetic standards that would recognize the importance and vitality of feminized mass cultural forms. Another, far less revolutionary, route would be a capitulation to the dictates of modernist art history and the nomination of a select few cultural workers to the position of Artist or Author. In the wake of pop art, it was this latter approach that was most commonly, and effectively, utilized by comics fandom, as they worked to export the idea of the comics artist beyond the limitations of the comics world.
Beaty extends this to comics content, where the industry tends to reward subject matter that reinforces gender tropes, either those of hyper-masculine heroism, or the imagination of the isolated, tragic genius, what critic Nina Baym calls “a romanticization of the straight, white male subject as the object of societal scorn.” The most successful cartoonists play into the art-world’s existing stereotyping of cartoonists, and behaving like primitive, ( R. Crumb,) or pathetic, (Chris Ware,) versions of the Romanticized genius. Ware is treated as a synecdoche for the current status of contemporary comics, where his savvy use of draftsmanship, nostalgia, self deprecation, and an attitude that is “willfully ironic about the relationship between comics and art in a way that serves to mockingly reinforce, rather than challenge, existing power inequities,” make him the kind of artist that “if Chris Ware did not exist, the art world would have had to invent him.”
Comics emerges less as a victim of art than of its own, unintentional self-sabotaging, and its refusal to grow and celebrate itself on its own terms. Mainstream and alternative comics’ insecurities over their belittlement (better, feminization,) by both Romantic/conservative and contemporary art frameworks cause them to miserably ape ‘high art’ conventions, establishing canons and idolizing masculinized genius-creators. Even when the artist doesn’t paint himself according to the genius archetype, (Charles Schultz’s optimism and transparent mercantilism, for instance,) he can usually be reconstructed to fit it– while those outside the comics world tend to recognize Peanuts as a sweet, nostalgic, family franchise, fan-critics instead emphasize a tragic and masculinized reading. One great example lies in comparing Fantagraphic’s conneuseurist The Complete Peanuts, with their unsettling, somber jackets, to the fabulously popular Peanuts paperbacks from decades before, such as Happiness is a Warm Puppy.
While not revolutionary, Comics Versus Art’s greatest service is to document these dynamics, attitudes and interactions between comics and art, so that they can be read against each other, and found in one place. It’s greatest crimes are its most obvious omissions–like the development and role of comics museums, conventions and festivals, and the erasure of the Terry Zwigoff’s Crumb, (now included in the Criterion Collection,) in the biography of the artist. Most unforgivably, Beaty omits the history of ‘deskilling’ in the art world, how deskilling inspired the institutional theory Beaty employs, and how it is an unmissable component of the artworld and the comicsworlds’ mutual dismissals of each other. Compared to that, his zany, unsupported claim that McCloud has distanced the comics and art worlds, rather than bring them closer together, is amusing, and his haphazard braiding of information, where certain lines are suddenly dropped, only to be weaved back in, only mildly frustrating. Comics Versus Art was a gargantuan project for one scholar to undertake, its faults are expected along those lines, and the book is self-consciously a testament to the fact that there are too few critics working on such a crucial, cultural history. In any case, Comics Versus Art is a great groundwork for future discussion, and a fiery read.
Beaty agrees with my definition!
Christopher Reed’s amazing book “Art and Homosexuality” (which I think you would love Kailyn) also does a great job of talking about pop art’s gender connotations. In particular, Reed talks about how the antipathy towards pop art was fueled in large part by its relatively up front homosexuality, which was deployed explicitly in opposition to the hyper-masculine romanticism/individualism of ab-ex.
Re. the Lichtenstein discussion Bart Beaty doesn’t come from the comics point of view because he mentions opinions from both comics and art fields. My problem with his approach is that he failed to recognize the true crux of the problem: when he says that Clement Greenberg called pop Art Neo-Dada without developing the idea, he failed his discussion of the problem completely.
I haven’t read th ebook yet, though it’s currently staring at me across my desk. Re: ressentiment v. resentment, it seems to me that the second-last paragraph of the review demonstrates why ressentiment is the better term. The resentment here is constructed specifically in terms of a broad cultural understanding of comics as inferior to ‘art.’ That’s more specific than simply resentment, it seems to me.
Thank you for reading, everyone!
Noah– the book sounds great, I’ll look it up! Also, yes, there’s so much in line with the definitions Beaty proposes, and your approaches to definition, that I was really anxious to begin a discussion Comics Versus Art here.
Domingos, I agree that his discussion on Lichtenstein is very underdeveloped. I definitely went easy on him out of a silly joy with the polemical side of this… I don’t think this book has much of an audience outside of the ‘comicsworld,’ so even if Beaty isn’t of comics, I find his stance very welcome. But he messes up Greenberg, he definitely omits deskilling, both horrendous oversights, and not the only ones. He really picked and chose his research.
Thank you for recommending this book to me, Domingos!
Brandon– There is a difference between ressentiment and resentment, but I found the random incorporation of the idea in just that one, isolated part to be a little sophmoric. Especially when the book as a whole could have used more thorough researching from the art end.
Is that Trajan’s column argument presented that way in the book? If so, it seems dishonest – I don’t get the sense that anyone is arguing that Trajan’s column is just like Action Comics, but it’s reasonable to call it sequential art, right? Same goes for the Bayeux Tapestry; they both are undoubtedly important for their propagandistic natures, but they’re also important for their decision to depict a series of events sequentially over multiple “frames” (as opposed to just having a whole bunch going on in a single scene.) That’s not “re-envisioning” it as a comic as much as it is acknowledging it as a precursor to more modern forms of sequential storytelling.
McCloud’s argument (as I remember it) is very formalist. I think he basically calls things like the Bayeux Tapestry comics, without very much (if anything) in the way of caveats. But…maybe someone who has read McCloud more recently can correct me if I’m wrong.
And…for those of us ignorant of Greenberg, could you (Kailyn or Domingos) maybe expand on his relationship to Lichtenstein and what you feel Beaty got wrong?
Jacob and Noah– Beaty reads McCloud as reclassifying the Bayeux Tapestry, Cave paintings and etc. as comics, and tends to agree with scholars like Aaron Meskin, who writes, “Although comics are an interesting artistic category, the category of spatially juxtaposed pictorial narrative does not appear to be of much art-historical or art-critical interest.” Not to say that Beaty finds no interest– he did write an entire book on it– but I think that a sort of Platonic concept of comics, that resurfaces and disappears from time to time spontaneously in isolated cases, is a lot less interesting to Meskin and Beaty (and I,) than the study of established traditions of sequential art.
Moreover, I think these traditions do exist, but are somewhat overlooked in favor of more prestigious examples. As far as I know (I could be wrong,) there is little evidence that cave paintings are sequential, and there is much evidence that Egyptian murals, while often sequential, are NOT narrative. Similarly, it was physically impossible to read Trajan’s column, and its scenes of arrival, battle and tribute are used rhythmically more than historically… I think it functioned more as a statement than anything meant to be read sequentially.
Yet what about friezes, of which there was an established tradition in Greek culture, occasionally worked sequentially, and which definitely told stories in some cases? Or much more humbly, pottery? Or Ethiopian hunger cloths, (which I know next to nothing about)?
Noah and Domingos, I need to brush up a little bit on my Greenberg before I trot out anything here, but I’ll be back…
I find the discussion of gender in relation to comics and art fairly interesting, too…. I’d argue that you can see Lichtenstein as in part satirizing or undermining the reified gender of comics — but that you can also see him as kind of mourning the inaccessibility of, or his own exclusion from, that kind of reified gender. It’s an authentic other that he doesn’t believe in and mocks but also desires/idealizes. He does something similar at times with ab/ex, too — which you could argue groups ab/ex and comics together in a way that’s maybe amusing in that it would arguably irritate proponents of both….
Kailyn, what’s the difference between sequence and narrative to your mind? Narrative is pretty much just a sequence of events (narrated? Or presented?)– Some want to introduce causality into the equation (sequence connected by cause/effect)–but (as Seymour Chatman says) if we are presented with two events sequentially, we’ll automatically assume some relationship of cause/effect. Seems like a false distinction to me.
You’re welcome, Kailyn!
Noah: the point is not Greenberg. I was refering to this quote: “Greenberg, for instance, dismissed pop – or what he termed Neo-Dada – […]” (65). It’s the only part in the book in which Neo-Dadaism is mentioned. My problem with this is that Dadaism is crucial to discuss Lichtenstein. Any reference to skill in the Lichtenstein discussion is irrelevant (if I remember correctly Bart Beaty even quotes an art critic praising Lichtenstein’s skill which is obviously absurd; ditto every comics artist’s diatribes against Lichtenstein based on the latter’s lack of skill). Modern art during the 20th century is presented to us as a narrative. Duchamp’s ready-made is the foundational gesture that explains why Roy Lichtenstein is praised today as an important painter. Without acknowledging this every discussion of the man is futile. In the end what’s missing is the deskilling that Kailyn talks about.
Enjoyed the post, Kailyn. I was trying to write about this book awhile back but ended up with just a mess of notes and fragmented sentences that I couldn’t pull together.
I thought his chapter on “genius” was particular good, as he discussed how the comics world elevated the likes of Fletcher Hanks, Carl Barks, Jack Kirby, and Charles Schulz… (going into one of my fragments of review):
Each provides a different view on fans “elevating” the person from the kind of commercial craftsmen that they were seen as to a more lofty “great artist.” In each case this elevation has happened in a way that opposed them to commercial and entertainment structures: Hanks as outsider, Barks as hidden genius, Kirby as abused creator, and Schulz… The Schulz is one of the most interesting ones. Since Schulz was commercially successful to an absurd degree and maintained creative control of his work, his elevation involves the foreground of him as the depressive artist and Peanuts as a downbeat strip. This model is easily seen in those alternative comics artists who have most prominently referenced Schulz’s work (Seth, Brunetti, Ware). It’s an astute point on Beaty’s part, though one that many may find contentious. In fact, his implicit criticisms (I dont think I’m reading my own biases into the book, but that is possible) might anger a lot of fans as he problematizes the grand claims made for artists like Hanks, Barks, and Kirby, especiallly the over-the-top claims made for/of Kirby as “genius”.
… I also found the chapter on comics as collectibles an interesting history lesson though it felt too divorced from a discussion/comparison with the art world.
Derik, I wrote about the elevation of Schulz to genius too, way back when.
Oh…and thanks Domingos! That makes sense.
You’re welcome, Noah.
Since we’re talking about great insights by Bart Beaty that we have already done here’s what I wrote about Maus‘s page layouts: “Sometimes Spiegelman uses the old Dell children’s comics eight panel grid to depict scenes from the present and completely unpredictable page layouts (with diagrams or some panels blown up, for instance) when he’s depicting Vladek’s recollections. We can’t compare our daily routine in times of peace with the disruption of that same routine when a war is going on and we’re in the eye of the storm.”
That said I must finally add that I enjoyed the book a lot too.
Eric–
Thanks for the comment. Formulating a response has been a great mental occupier during a slow day at the wine shop I work…
I guess first off, Art History uses a much stricter (and I’d propose, rudimentary,) concept/definition of narrative than you’ll find in narratology, or even literature studies. My guess is that this is used to distinguish from other kinds of patterns, including decorative patterns, and religious ‘art’ that is less a story about something than that ACTUAL event, continuously happening on a more fundamental level. This can be mundane events (like in many Egyptian tomb murals, that detail day to day life, so as to ASSERT these behaviors in the afterlife, at least historians guess,) or important historical events, (like Trajan’s column, where a specific campaign stands for a sort of eternal domination by Trajan, that supercedes and extends beyond human comprehensibility (and reading.) ) The steps of the Passion, found at most Catholic churches, would be another example, and I’m surprised that McCloud ever doesn’t bring them up…
But I don’t want to evade the question about what I think is the difference between sequence and narrative. Honestly, I’m much more of a student than a scholar on this, although I spend enough time reading and thinking about this to hope I have some insight. I’m a lot less interested in a formal definition of narrative than I am in how narrative functions, how its applied, often accidentally, and how its stored. I’m a little more conservative than those that believe that all sequences are narratives, because I don’t think that most brains understand all sequences as narratives, without a little metaphorical work. But I wouldn’t go as far as Hayden White to think that a narrative is always a moral conflict. Its safe to say that I think that narrative is the structure, or the reflection of the structure, by which the mind understands things to be significant, which is in turn tangled up with the way the mind understands conflict. Narrative is a mental product, a use of sequence that codes for significance, or uses the sequentiality itself to ‘make’ significance.
thanks noah, i knew i’d read you making that point about Schulz somewhere else
Derik — Thank you for reading!
Reading your notes makes me wish I had lingered a bit on the chapter about genius a little longer in here. I really love where Beaty goes with it, and there must be correlate work in other fields that details how retroactive ‘heroism’ works. Maybe a topic for a future post, even if it was a study of other figures in comics….
I felt the same way about the comic collection chapter too. But it might not be as far away from the alternative comics coverage as Beaty makes it out to be. The Adam Baumgold gallery, which represents Ware and many major cartoonists (with hopefully good intentions,) is located right next to Sotheby’s, the Met, the Frick, and the Armory (where large art/antiques shows are held,) the bastion of art at its most conservative in New York City. Not only does Beaty neglect to mention that the artworld contains many subworlds, but that these worlds are geographically split up in New York. Adam Baumgold gallery is worlds away from the contemporary art scene in Chelsea, SoHo, or the Lower East Side (about 45 minutes by two or three subway trains, approximately,) or from the upstart, alternative gallery scenes in Brooklyn (even farther.) (Although, if you know NY, being an east coaster, I don’t mean to seem condescending, and hopefully this is good perspective for other readers off the East Coast.) In this way, I feel like Ware, Seth and Clowes are still conceptualized as collector’s items, and not as art pioneering, or even art. They are somewhat of the status of the spears in the Met, or the gilded decorative screens at the Armory. And not so far away from example of the original artwork of Fritz the Cat that Beaty lingers on…
“In this way, I feel like Ware, Seth and Clowes are still conceptualized as collector’s items, and not as art pioneering, or even art.”
An interesting perspective. I doubt if very many people outside comics would think of Ware et al. as pioneering artists. Actually not many even within the comics art world. Certainly not at HU.
But from a simple observation of the PR material/sales talk as well as actual transactions, I think the way in which the Adam Baumgold gallery sells Ware is close enough to that found with other forms of affordable art (<$10K). It's light years away from the way most other comics art is sold where the collectible aspect does come to the fore (as with baseball cards). What's your opinion of the other small American galleries with some connection to the comics scene - like the Carl Hammer Gallery in Chicago for Ware and the Jonathan Levine gallery.
I don’t know…Ware at least is a pretty big deal even within the art world, isn’t he? He was featured at the Whitney; that’s some cred, at least….
Nah, it’s more like what Howard Chaykin once said: “world’s tallest midget.” It’s reflected in the pricing of his art work as well.
An incisive and perceptive evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of Beaty’s book, and the overall comics/art world milieu; well done, Kailyn!
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Noah Berlatsky says:
Christopher Reed…talks about how the antipathy towards pop art was fueled in large part by its relatively up front homosexuality, which was deployed explicitly in opposition to the hyper-masculine romanticism/individualism of ab-ex.
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Makes sense; isn’t pop art the equivalent of camp, mocking and pointing out the absurdities of what the mainstream, straight society takes seriously?
Lichtenstein doesn’t pick quietly poetic, beautiful comic panels to paint; like the drag queens who idolize “drama queens,” it’s fevered melodrama — either stereotypically hyper-feminine or hyper-masculine — that he renders:
http://midcenturymodernlove.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/pop-art-11.jpg
http://www.pop-art-expert.com/image-files/roy-lichtenstein-drowning-girl.jpg
http://www.pop-art-expert.com/image-files/roy-lichtenstein-whaam.jpg
Why, what is widely considered the very first work of pop art, Richard Hamilton’s 1956 “Just What Is It That Makes Today’s Homes So Different, So Appealing?” ( http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/irvinem/cctp738/hamilton-home-appealing-2.jpg ) couldn’t possibly better exemplify this mockery of the hyper-feminine or hyper-masculine.
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McCloud’s argument (as I remember it) is very formalist. I think he basically calls things like the Bayeux Tapestry comics, without very much (if anything) in the way of caveats. But…maybe someone who has read McCloud more recently can correct me if I’m wrong.
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Who needs memory, when you’ve got Google? You remembered right; see http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/burt/middleagesonfilm/bayeux1.html . (Gad, get a load of all the exclamation points in the second McCloud panel!)
“But from a simple observation of the PR material/sales talk as well as actual transactions, I think the way in which the Adam Baumgold gallery sells Ware is close enough to that found with other forms of affordable art (<$10K). It’s light years away from the way most other comics art is sold where the collectible aspect does come to the fore (as with baseball cards).
What’s your opinion of the other small American galleries with some connection to the comics scene – like the Carl Hammer Gallery in Chicago for Ware and the Jonathan Levine gallery."
Suat — Sorry for the late reply, and thank you for reading! I wish I knew more about them, and its actually really shameful that I don't know Jonathan Levine better, because I kind of sort of worked at an offshoot of Anna Kustera's gallery on the same street. So I'd love to head back to the neighborhood, and get a better story on them for a future post.
You make a really good point about the price it's being shown at. I'm more reacting to the fact that Ware's art is being shown in an 'art world' that is so astronomically expensive already, and where value really has usurped 'art status.' Much of what is shown in the Upper East Side is only contentiously considered art, (although, the Whitney and the Frick are strictly art museums,) but this doesn't really matter as much as it is a high-status object that can be displayed. So rather than seeing Ware and co. make it into galleries that would signal "woah, they're hanging this like art," I feel like, up in the Upper East Side, its much more about "woah, this thing is expensive."
Also, does anyone find it weird that both Crumb and Ware were commissioned to do memorabilia (posters and such,) for two major group shows they were collected in? I mean, usually an artist or two are featured, but… commissioned?
Mike– Thank you for reading! The links look great, and I'll start poring through them post haste
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