![]() ![]() Funny, and, oh, by the way, good comics storytelling: Cupcake, the Matthew Barney obsessive Epiphany née Tiffany Clydesdale, wacky performance artist Ivanhoe, a modern knight in search of artistic vengeance, and his squire, Turnbuckle. Thurber's book is a smart, articulate farce, increasingly farcical as you go on, a kind of Duck Soup (by the Marx Brothers, kids!) for Art School, ending in chaos. As a graduate of an MFA in Creative Writing Program, having read several critiques of those programs and having lived my own life there, I smiled in painful recognition. Easy targets for the general public, ugh. The faculty are themselves largely damaged, unsuccessful artists, ripping their students to shreds, viscously jealous of each other and any students who reveals any talent whosoever, pretentious and miserable theory heads. In many ways Thurber's critique of Art Schools is familiar, and unsurprising. Art School is about upper class AHHHT and not working class drawing and practicability (It's beneath us to talk about making money with art!!) and not something perceived as infantile, like comics, something necessarily quickly drawn and comparatively sketchy that is, compared to Rembrandt to Rauschenberg. Art School Confidential, by Daniel Clowes, some pieces by Jeffrey Brown, who since has taught at the very Chicago Art Institute School that seemed to damage his confidence and well-being. Otherwise, the marginalization of cartoonists in these elitist environments will continue unabated. Why is it so many comics artists are miserable in art school, which for many of them is the only way they can learn aspects of their craft? Oh, yes, there are also now comics schools, thank heavens. Part scathing condemnation, part irreverent appreciation, Thurber’s comics skewer the art world in a way only an art lover can. In the center of it all, Thurber’s twisted drawings and laugh-out-loud dialogue convey a complicated picture of an industry at the intersection of fantasy and reality. Can the Free Little Pigs destroy this blighted system? Will “The Group” continue its indirect assassination of promising young artists? Can artistic integrity exist in this world amid the capitalist co-opting, petty rivalries, otherworldly portals, heavenly interventions, and murders at sea?Īrt Comic is brimming with references and cameos, outsize personalities and shuddering nonsense-Robert Rauschenberg smashes a beer bottle, Francesca Woodman, a wineglass. Each artist is more ridiculous than the last, yet they are tested and transformed by the even more absurd machinations of Thurber’s fantastical art world. Follow Cupcake, the Matthew Barney obsessive Epiphany née Tiffany Clydesdale, the divinely inspired performance artist Ivanhoe, a modern knight in search of artistic vengeance, and his squire, Turnbuckle. From sycophantic fans to duplicitous gallerists, fatuous patrons to self-aggrandizing art stars, he lampoons each and every facet of the eminently ridiculous industry of truth and beauty. Matthew Thurber’s Art Comic is a blunt and hilarious assault on the swirling hot mess that is the art world. A raucous skewering of the art world as told by a master of absurdity ![]()
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