HOW DOES AN ARTIST KNOW WHEN HE'S IN DECLINE?

I thought I'd talk some more about the difference between an artist at the top of his game, and one who's in decline. Obviously everybody winds down with time, that's nothing to be ashamed of, but I thought if we could isolate what that decline consists of, we might be able to take some steps to slow it down in our own work.

In my opinion an artist at the peak of his form is more likely to be aware of how weird the world around us is. He'll do a gag about sleeping but for him the real gag is that we sleep at all, and how strange the idea of sleeping is. Think about it! For a third of every day we lie flat as a board under a cloth which might have obsessive patterns on it, all the time happily clutching a pillow or a teddy bear. That's truly funny...all the more so because it's real.

In the example above (click to enlarge), it seems like the artist is also mocking the idea of bedrooms. When you think about it, it is kind of funny that we set aside a whole room to sleep in, and that we decorate it so differently than we do the rest of the house. Catch the low, ignorantly-executed window, and the way Mutt looks bunched up on the extreme edge of the bed. Those red spots are hilarious, as are the fez and the gloves!

There's also something funny about the minimal staging: a pleasantly unconscious horizontal friend, a low ceiling, a dopey chair, a low window, another planet outside the window (the Moon), a bed covered with obsessive dots, and Jeff standing in the middle, unaware that he's become part of the weird, awkward composition. Sheer bliss! It's all so delightfully strange and uniquely realistic at the same time!



Now look at this (above) more modern example, presumably done by an artist in decline. Once again the gag is about sleeping, but there's no sign that the artist sees sleeping as an outrageous activity. The artist has made his piece with the act of sleeping, it's perfectly normal for him! How sad! And there are other missed opportunities! The fact that it all plays out in a yard, and what a yard is, might have been a kind of visual gag if it had been handled right.

Maybe the problems like this come about because the artist sees the writer as the star, and thinks of himself only as an illustrator at the writer's service. Big mistake! The comic strip is an artist's medium, and in an artist's medium the primary satisfaction should come from the art, not the writing.

CARTOONIST PHILOSOPHERS (AND WHAT A CHAIR IS FOR)

Billy Debeck put soooo much effort into this sheet music cover (above). It's as if the act of drawing was a sheer delight to him and he couldn't bring himself to stop.


A beautiful girl strokes an old man's beard (above) and he's in seventh heaven. Can any other graphic art portray happiness as well as cartoons can ?


I stole this (above) from John K's blog (original clippings from Marc Dekter). Milt Gross never seizes to amaze. The people are funny, the spaces are funny, and the character relationships are funny...but he doesn't stop there. When you enlarge this you'll see that the whole strip is a celebration of the simple fact that rooms and staircases exist. You can spend years cultivating an awareness of little things like that in a Tibetan monastery, or you can read Milt Gross for a nickel. Gross make us glad to be alive by celebrating the commonplace.


Haw! For Opper (above) everyone has a uniform including hobos, and when you wear the uniform of that profession or personality type then you act accordingly. We want to play roles and the uniform gives us an excuse.


Goldberg, like Gross, is capable of expressing profound loving relationships between people. Here (above) the wife threatens the husband with a rolling pin, but you get the feeling that the real reason he gives her what she wants is because he loves her. She's fat and plain-looking but he loves her anyway, and she loves him. Cartooning is an incredible medium. It can express the deepest emotions with just a few lines.


Bud Fisher (above) celebrates open space and, amazingly...the nature of chairs (!). Fisher made me realize what a chair is for. They're obviously for comfort but they're also for reflection, which we apparently have to do frequently. We sit and think about everything we just saw, then after a minute we pop up, ready to see new stuff. We walk around seeing more things, then we plop down and think about the new stuff we just saw. It goes on and on like that. Apparently the indoor world is so strange and unnatural that we have to spend part of every day talking ourselves into accepting it.


Here (above) Herriman's characters gather outside the mysterious wall. Cartoon characters can't bear to stand around randomly. When there's nothing to do they organize themselves into a group pattern. The closely-knit clump of creatures walks from place to place, occasionally releasing one of their own to perform a real-world task. When the task is done the lone creature returns to the clump.



Here's (above) a couple of Herrimans stolen from Mark Kausler's site. According to Herriman we love to sit in containers and put everything, including ourselves, on top of mounds. How would we know that if it weren't for cartoons?