On Saturday, Amy and I went to see the Museum of Contemporary Art's half of the Masters of American Comics exhibit running in LA through March. (MOCA is running comic book art from the latter half of the 20th Century; the Hammer Museum in Westwood is running comic strip art from the beginning of the 20th Century on.) The creators (all of them were writer-artists) displayed were Will Eisner, Jack Kirby, Harvey Kurtzman, Robert Crumb, Gary Panter, Art Spiegelman, and Chris Ware. The fact that I just typed those names from memory shows that I brought something to the exhibit that most of the attendees probably didn't.
I can only guess how someone not familiar with these creators would view the show and what it was communicating. I had already seen much of this work (particularly Eisner's and Kirby's) in printed form; to me, my favorite part of the exhibition was the rare chance to see original comics pages (some from the 40's!) taken out of private collectors' hands and put on display. For instance, there were three complete seven-page Spirit stories by Eisner displayed on the wall and in a showcase -- all from the mid-to-late forties, when he returned from the war full of ideas, grabbed a bunch of assistants, and took his already-impressive comics feature to a level of artistry that has seldom been equaled. One story on the wall, "Stop the Plot," casually pulled off tricks of storytelling (you see an outdoor snow-covered stairway and a huge snowball at the bottom; you immediately know that in the time it took you to move to this page, two characters have been struggling with each other and rolled down the staircase); light and shadow (in the snow, the details of a tenement stoop are shown by just a few select blobs of black and deft feathering); and even special effects (a face is grotesquely reflected in the crystal of an alarm clock -- just before the clock explodes) that most comics creators would sell their first-born to master.
Following the natural progression of the exhibition, one could follow some logical progression: Eisner's creative storytelling and pacing flowed into Kirby's clean-cut dynamicism and abstraction; that segued into Kurtzman's characature and manic energy in his '40's comic strips, his work on the early issues of MAD, his EC war and science fiction stories, and his collaboration on Playboy's LITTLE ANNIE FANNIE; Kurtzman obviously influenced Crumb, with his counter-culture wallowing in scatalogical territory never before seen in comics; that spirit was alive in Panter's raw, depressing social satires and Spiegelman's talky, artsy, New-York-Intellectual comics; and finally, the work of the youngest creator there, Ware, who combines insane draughtmanship, a sense of history, the downbeat realism of Crumb's and Spiegelman's work, and the smart-ass satire of Kurtzman into his dreamlike stream-of-culture creations.
The choice of works also highlighted connections between the artists. An Eisner Spirit story parodied various comic strips. One of Spiegelman's stories recounted his presentation to a class taught by Kurtzman that was all about Kurtzman's contribution to comics history. Several of Kurtzman's MAD satires of comic strips and books were displayed.
My major criticism of the show was that the descriptions of the work downplayed the creators' collaborators. One might understand the failure to mention Eisner's many assistants, but it made little sense to ignore not only scriptor Stan Lee's contributions to Kirby's Marvel work, but also the various inkers he worked with, who had such an influence on his work. And in regard to Kurtzman's work, pages were credited only to him when in fact he only did thumbnail layouts for them, and other artists such as Bill Elder or Wally Wood not only did the actual pencils and inks but even signed them.
Overall, it was a terrific Saturday afternoon. I'm looking forward to seeing the other half of the exhibit.
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