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Pulp Is Highbrow Now by Steve Starger
One morning, as Gregor Samsa awoke from anxious dreams, he discovered that while in bed he had been changed into… a comic book hero!
In a stunning conflation of high and low culture, Robert Crumb and Peter Kuper, two leading practitioners from two generations of so-called “alternative” or “underground” comic art, transformed Gregor Samsa, the hapless antihero of Franz Kafka’s novella The Metamorphosis, not into a human-size beetle, but, rather, a full-fledged cartoon character. Kuper adapted The Metamorphosis into comic book form in 2003; Crumb included The Metamorphosis as part of his illustrations for Introducing Kafka, a graphic history of Kafka’s life and writings, published by Kitchen Sink Press in 1994.
Once dismissed as worthless, vulgar— even dangerous—entertainment, comics, and pulp fiction have breached the walls of high culture, and this brazen incursion may never be turned back. Long gone are the days when kids hid under the bed covers, reading comic books and pulp fiction magazines like Thrilling Wonder Stories. The pulp magazines of yore vanished from the newsstands decades ago. Comic books, on the other hand, have survived and thrived, morphing from their trashy origins in newspaper comic strips and pulp fiction into “graphic novels,” a sobriquet much more appealing to academics and cultural tastemakers. Walk into any mega bookstore, and you will find shelves groaning with graphic novels and reprints of classic comic books. The new comic book artists and writers draw inspiration from fantasy masters like H. P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe, as well as historical figures such as Guy Fawkes (Alan Moore and David Lloyd’s V for Vendetta) and Jack the Ripper (Moore and Eddie Campbell’s From Hell). Sealing the deal, “alternative” cartoonist Art Spiegelman crashed the gates of traditional literature spectacularly in 1992, when he won a Pulitzer Prize Special Award for Maus, his epic graphic novel-cum-memoir of his father’s experiences as a Holocaust survivor. In a sly, if perverse, reference to the cartoons and “funny animal” comic books of Spiegelman’s youth, he drew the Nazis as cats and the Jews as mice.
Mainstream museums have taken due notice of comic art, as well. The work of Spiegelman, Crumb, and Kuper is included in the exhibit LitGraphic: The World of the Graphic Novel, on display at the Norman Rockwell Museum, in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, through May 26. The show also features work by Mad magazine creator Harvey Kurtzman, comic art avatar Will Eisner, Cerebus creator Dave Sim, and a host of other comic art masters. It may not be a huge leap to find comic art displayed in a museum named for America’s foremost illustrator; magazine illustration and comic art are cousins, even if some highbrow illustrators would rather ignore the connection. The New Britain Museum of American Art (NBMAA), located in central Connecticut, is perhaps a less likely venue to find an exhibit of work that was never designed to be elevated to the status of fine art. Nonetheless, the NBMAA has mounted a major exhibit (through December 2007) of pulp magazine cover art from the 1930s and 1940s, featuring images of such pulp heroes as the Shadow and Doc Savage, as well as art by science-fiction and fantasy masters Frank Paul and J. Allen St. John. The collection was a gift to the museum from Robert Lesser, a playwright, book author, and foremost collector of American pulp magazine cover art.
About twenty percent of the New Britain Museum’s permanent holdings comprise popular art ephemera, but Pulp Art: The Robert Lesser Collection vaults beyond a nod to historical American curiosities. The show is extensive, and curated with the same attention to research, historical context, and cataloguing as, say, an exhibit of Winslow Homer or Thomas Hart Benton. Original paintings, which were the models for pulp magazine covers, are displayed along with the actual magazines featuring those works on their covers. The paintings jump with remarkably vibrant colors, hardly dimmed by the passage of many decades. They were created for commercial purposes and thus not coated, allowing the colors to retain their brilliance, according to NBMAA Director Douglas Hyland. The fact that the subjects are scantily clad women in peril; visions of strange, futuristic worlds; and fedora-topped gumshoes fighting criminals with blazing .45s only adds to the delightful whiplash effect one feels while viewing these images in a traditional temple of fine art. “Lowbrow is very highbrow now,” Hyland says. “People love the colors, the situations, and the humor in cartoon, comic, and pulp art. There is no narration, for instance, in abstract expressionism.”
Stephanie Plunkett, chief curator at the Rockwell Museum, says that LitGraphic was a natural show for the museum to put together. A Rockwell exhibit of the art of Charles M. Schulz, creator of Peanuts, a few years ago was very successful, Plunkett says. “It was an exciting moment, because it recognized the importance of a comic contributor. Like Rockwell, Schulz reached iconic status in the culture.” “We are a museum of illustration art,” Plunkett continues. “Visual storytelling is the basis of what we do. We look at all facets of illustration. Pictures made for the masses have tremendous breadth. We saw that graphic novels, long-form comic books, were taking off in a big way. When we started looking at the possibility of doing a show about five years ago, there were just a few publishing houses. Most artists did self-publishing. Now, it’s remarkable to see that every major publisher has a graphic novel imprint. They’re used in schools and popular in libraries. They’re being looked at very differently.”
Steve Starger is the Connecticut regional reviews editor
for Art New England. He is the co-author of Wally’s
World: The Brilliant Life and Tragic Death of
Wally Wood, The World’s Second-Best Comic
Book Artist (Vanguard Productions, 2006).
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