Friday, February 22, 2008
Cartoons
This review of some books about cartoonists has everything but the life and fun of cartoons. It has an insider's viewpoint, where Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon comes to mind — the need to connect the dots of influence. That impulse originates in parsing art — the deep interest, once very common, in the influence of visual and literary artists on one another; essentially a scholarly impulse but desiccated in its pop culture manifestation.
The mix of talent, humor, energy, irreverence and the insulation of youth make cartoons seem peculiarly American. Cartoons are accessible and without pretension — although within the world of the cartoonists there are guild hierarchies as everywhere else.
A good cartoonist has energy and talent, humor and dedication. Like many American artists, cartoons had a powerful effect on me growing up. The great Mad cartoonists — Wally Wood, Don Martin, Dave Berg's satirical pieces, Jack Davis who left Mad and had a more varied career. Even though Mad was intended primarily as a satirical magazine, I realized later it was for me speaking to a nascent stirring of an aesthetic impulse. Mad never paid their artists well. It was like early rock 'n roll in that sense, with little power accrued to the artist. Harvey Kurtzman, the founder of Mad — he also went to the high school I later attended, Music and Art — left Mad after a dispute with the publisher and founded a number of less successful magazines — I think Cracked was one of them.
Cartoons are the folk art of urban society; they have had an enormous influence on the visual and literary arts.