Splat Boom Pow! The Influence
of Cartoons in Contemporary Art
Wexner Center Galleries
at The Belmont Building
330 West Spring Street
Columbus, Ohio
January 31-May 2, 2004
By MARY
PENN
Kenny Scharf Fun's
Inside 1983
oil on canvas, 90 x 108 inches
Courtesy Tony Shafrazi Gallery, New York
Icons, characters and
techniques from the world of cartoons provides a single lens through
which one can look at an otherwise pluralistic selection of artworks
in the Wexner Center's current exhibition, "Splat Boom Pow!,"
at the Belmont Building. In the early 1960's, the mass appeal of Pop
Art helped hasten its acceptance into the canon, and yet any show today
that focuses on Pop Art has to meet the challenge of being more than
just easy art for the masses. With this exhibition, curator Valerie
Cassel Oliver manages to create a kind of travelogue of where the popular
comic image in art has been since 1958, and where it's going now. The
influence of the comic on contemporary art is interpreted broadly, letting
in everything from superheros to uber-villains, invented characters
and television icons.
Not every turn on the road
seems equally important, but most directions are pretty interesting.
With over 70 works of art, the familiar signposts are there: Warhol,
Lichtenstein, Mel Ramos, Keith Haring, Raymond Pettibon, Elizabeth Murray
and Kenny Scharf. This work is what it is: as Warhol said, just look
at the surface. You don't really have to know or care much about Batman,
Captain Midnight, or The Flash to be riveted by Ramos' portraits of
these figures, built as they are with paint so thick it seems impossible,
the polar opposite of the flat printed page from which they were inspired.
Similarly, Murray's work from 2002, with its quirky, idiosyncratic shapes
is kinesthetically inviting; it's one of the most lively pieces in the
entire show. Scharf's "Fun Inside," (1983), offers a level
of wit not seen in the rest of the exhibition, with a goofy blue smiling
character, and a whole other world inside its big mouth. On the other
hand, works by Lichtenstein and Polke are less than stellar, seemingly
included as a token to the advance guard. In fact a majority of the
work in the exhibition was made during the past six years, with a few
from the early 1990's, just a handful from the 1980's, and even fewer
from the 1960's. And while it goes without saying that many more could
have been included (Rachel Feinstein, Carroll Dunham, and Inka Essenhigh
come to mind), there are just as many unexpected pleasures to be seen
here.
Renee Cox Lost
in Space (from the Rajé series) 1998
Cibachrome print, 48 x 60 inches
Strangely compelling are
Renee Cox's cibachrome prints, reminiscent as they are of a bad sci-fi
movie poster. Her directness is refreshing, as she counters the traditionally
white superhero with Rajé, a dark-skinned giant superheroine,
who stakes her claim by sitting on the Statue of Liberty's shoulder,
or kicking the ass of a white man wearing a suit. Also from a strange
otherworld is Liza Lou's seven-foot-tall "Business Barbie"
whose surface is entirely sheathed in tiny glass beads. She effectively
presents Barbie as the freak of nature that she truly is. Much of the
work in the exhibit is overtly political, from Kerry James Marshall's
"Another Great Migration," which chronicles in seven single
frames the destruction of a housing project, to Roger Shimomura's paintings
which comment on racist attitudes toward Asians. The strongest political
statement, though, comes from Laylah Ali, with her small, beautiful
and enigmatic gouache paintings. In these, repetitious round-headed
characters interact in strange and violent ways. Zippered lips, straight
jackets, eye and ski masks call to mind all manner of current issues,
and transcend mere illustration (not every work in the exhibit manages
this so well.)
Mel Ramos Captain
Midnight 1962
oil on canvas, 32 x 26 inches
Collection of Skot Ramos, San Francisco
Organizing the exhibit into
"Splat," "Boom" and "Pow" components must
have seemed like a good idea, but the designations seem arbitrary and
useless at best. For example, the sumptuous paintings by Ramos are part
of the "Splat" component-because he uses recognizable characters-even
though recognizable characters are found more or less throughout the
exhibit. Cox, on the other hand, belongs to the "Pow" segment,
because she's created a new character. ("Pow" is the largest
section in the exhibit, making it the most useless category.) Rajé
somehow seemed as familiar as any of the characters seen in "Splat",
and might have had an interesting conversation with Batman or Wonderwoman.
But the big curatorial blunder
happens when walls are given over to a short text inside a comic "balloon."
The problem is the backdrop: an oversized benday dot pattern covering
the entire wall. In several instances, the work hanging near the giant
dots had to compete with the wall, and lost.
Looking at the scope of the
exhibition, it seems obvious that while younger artists owe something
to those who came before, there are so many other places from which
these images and ideas are drawn: television, PlayStation video games,
animated movies. That said, it is surprising that the single video piece
is Dara Birnbaum's pointless montage of scenes from the 1970's Wonder
Woman television show. Jennifer Zackin does a much better job of transforming
our heroine with "Wonder Woman Cosmos." On a 118" diameter
platform set on the floor, plastic army men, cowboys and the like surround
a Wonder Woman figurine in the center, forming a giant, colorful and
complex mandala. This surprising reference to meditation is also present
in sculptures by both Yoshimoto Nara and Rachel Hecker.
Mary Penn is an artist
and writer living in Ann Arbor, Michigan
COVER March 19.
2004: Elizabeth Murray Cloud 9 2002
oil on canvas, 93 x 84 inches
Courtesy of PaceWildenstein Gallery, New York and Texas Gallery, Houston
