Lecture (LEC)

• COLL (CASE) A&H Breadth of Inq

• Above class open to undergraduates only
• Above class meets with ARTH-A540
• COLL (CASE) A&H Breadth of Inquiry credit

In recent years, comics have gained a foothold in the museum and gallery world through the so-called genre of "art comics"-- comics made with a fine-art sensibility and responding to the concerns of contemporary art. This development can be seen as a counterpart to the rising literary profile of comics denoted by the term " graphic novel," marketing an attempt to place renewed emphasis on the graphic aspect of the art form's visual-verbal mixture. This course will study a wide variety of art comics, including the groundbreaking work published in Raw Magazine during the 1980s, the activity of artists' collectives from the Hairy Who in the 1960s to the Fort Thunder and Paper Rad groups in the 1990s and 2000s, and the contributions of individual artists such as Jess, Joe Brainard and Martin Vaughn-James. We will trace the rise of art comics back to Pop Art's use of comic-book imagery as well as to the counter-cultural underground comics on the 1960s. We will also look at earlier cross-fertilizations of the comics and fine-arts worlds, from early 20th century cartoonists such as Winsor McCay (little Nemo) and George Herriman (Krazy Kat) to New Yorker" artists such as William Steig and Saul Steinberg, and the transformative work of Harvey Kurtzman at Mad Magazine in the 1950s. Furthermore, we will investigate the curatorial challenges and opportunities presented by museum shows displaying original comic art.