Confusing cartoons and comics should probably be expected. The first are supposed to be funny. But even though humor is synonymous with the word “comic”, the comics don’t have laughter as part of their mandate. In popular culture, they’re simply “a series of illustrations in sequence” with no requirement to be either funny or political. That partially explains why wry smiles could be found on a few faces last week at the Museum of Contemporary Art’s (MCA) recently opened Chicago Comics: 1960s to Now exhibition, but chuckles were a total no show.
The idea for a review of Chicago’s influence in the world of comic arts falls in line with one of the museum’s perennial objectives according to former MCA chief curator, Michael Darling. Using the tremendously successful David Bowie exhibit in 2015 and the wildly expansive Virgil Abloh show two years ago as examples, Darling explained that the museum is always interested in showcasing and promoting sister arts that may not fit the strict definition of contemporary art.
As a nexus that’s nurtured an impressive number and variety of comic artists, Chicago has been and remains a hub of comic art creativity. Several of the most noted in that community, including Chris Ware and Ivan Brunetti, assisted in the development of the MCA show and helped bring in Dan Nadel from the University of California Davis to act as guest curator.
Because the building blocks for the exhibition took form in January 2020, just before Covid blanketed the globe, Nadel refers to it as a pandemic project. That description notwithstanding, Chicago Comics: 1960s to Now is a captivating walk through the exhilarating imagination of 40 artists who bear their souls, shriek their anger, tell their truths, and express their humanity in pictures as well as words. In this exhibit, both have the power to set you on your heels.
The show starts off with the very well-known and the very little known sharing the same space. MCA, its curators and the guest artists who helped design and organize their own exhibits deftly downscaled the museum’s large rooms and achieved an intimacy of dimension that fosters a closeness with the material on display. Comfortable stools next to display cases are plentiful and encourage you to sit and absorb. They came in handy when trying to take in the scope of Jackie Ormes’s canon. Celebrated as the first Black woman cartoonist in the United States, she created smart, independent and spirited Black female characters who were as stylish as they were beautiful. Characters who emphatically contradicted the servile images of Blacks and Black life that were so common preceding the Civil Rights movement. Having begun her career in 1937, by the 50’s and 60’s her work and career had turned her into a celebrity. She was also a vocal critic of racial inequality. Emulating the cool resolve of her characters, the intense attention her activism garnered from the FBI did not deter her from her pursuits. Ormes is practically unknown today, unlike Chester Gould, whose comics of Dick Tracy blanket the wall adjoining the Ormes display. Created in 1931 and still red hot in the 60s, the tough police detective occupied a very different universe than Ormes’s Torchy Brown. Despite their differences, at their zenith both enjoyed fervent reader loyalty and intense mass appeal. Seeing them together in such close proximity through more than 50 years of hindsight colors how we measure our progress from the 60s to today.
A changing, more questioning society created fertile ground for the advent and success of underground comics. Chicago, along with San Francisco, LA and Detroit, was home to some of the art’s most prolific and acclaimed practitioners. Artists who, like Skip Williamson, saw themselves as “philosophical anarchists” and believed art and sedition go hand in hand. Their unfiltered scoffing of the status quo mocked what they saw as social and political hypocrisy during the 60’s and 70’s. Williamson, and contemporaries like Jay Lynch, who helped fundraise for the Chicago 7, were profane rebels and insurgents whose characters like Snappy Sammy Smoot routinely crossed the line of taste and deference on the topics of race as well as sex to express a growing pique with restrictive norms.
For many, this unconventional, wonderfully illuminating comics retrospective will keep turning up discoveries about how Chicago has and continues to contribute to a universe of graphic communication that seems to have healthy provocation embedded in its DNA.
Respected as a versatile artist today whose work can swing from scathing to idyllic whimsy, Ivan Brunetti seems as comfortable in the commercial world of New Yorker magazine covers as he is in satirizing our current reality and exposing mankind’s inherent baseness. Brunetti’s contribuions to the exhibit includes ample examples of both, illustrating how radically one artist can represent different aspects of his own psyche.
Considered one of the leading contemporary artists of our time, Kerry James Marshall debuted his glamorously sleek comic series Rythm Mastr at the 1999/2000 Carnegie International. An avid comic reader growing up in Los Angeles in the 50s and 60s, Marshall was filling a void much like Jackie Ormes did in her day by creating comics that depict compelling Black characters.
Perhaps one of the most unexpected finds featured characters that usually inhabit dark fantasy and horror. Emil Ferris came to prominence with her graphic novel My Favorite Things Are Monsters in 2017 and this exhibition showcases a stunningly handsome collection of her work. It is also the only part of the show that does not allow the taking of pictures. Most of the images chosen for this show don’t drip with the macabre. Despite being mildly unsettling and vaguely threatening, many of them are undeniably beautiful. Because they’re drawn with understanding and compassion, the most disconcerting thing about them is how relatable they are.
Marshall, Brunetti and Ferris help highlight how comfortable the comics are in today’s digitized age. Their stories and characters still have a way of connecting us to our core selves; finding avid, appreciative fans in the process. Chicago Comics: 1960s to Now shows how this flexible, adaptive art form is growing into the future.
Chicago Comics: 1960s to Now
Through October 3, 2021
Museum of Contemporary Art
220 East Chicago Ave.
Chicago, IL 60611
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