Are comics art?

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Went to a community meeting last night and talked with a student at the Center for Cartoon Studies. I told her I thought the school was wicked expensive, she said, "For an art school it really isn't." I blinked a couple times and said, "Art school? Oh, I'm sorry, I thought all you guys were drawing was cartoons."

Which makes me feel like a hypocrite. I love reading comics: they're fun, the good ones make me think, the great ones leave me feeling incredibly satisfied but I don't consider them to be ART. Just, like, stories with pictures.

What do you think?

― Vermont Girl (Vermont Girl), Friday, 21 April 2006 16:22 (nineteen years ago)

"stories with pictures" = you have to read "understanding comics" by scott Mccloud. Comics are an art because they communicate a story graphically, you can't seperate the story from the pictures, just like a movie script doesn't tell the same story without the visual dimension.

― -rainbow bum- (-rainbow bum-), Friday, 21 April 2006 16:33 (nineteen years ago)

they're totally art! movies are just "stories with pictures" too!

― s1ocki (slutsky), Friday, 21 April 2006 16:34 (nineteen years ago)

Books are just stories w/ words!

― David R. (popshots75`), Friday, 21 April 2006 16:34 (nineteen years ago)

Next thing you'll be telling me that Legally Blonde isn't Art!

― c(''c) (Leee), Friday, 21 April 2006 16:41 (nineteen years ago)

um, Andy Warhol to thread?

― Huk-L (Huk-L), Friday, 21 April 2006 16:44 (nineteen years ago)

Yes. Next question!

― Chuck_Tatum (Chuck_Tatum), Friday, 21 April 2006 16:45 (nineteen years ago)

Oooh, wait, let's do "What is art, anyway?"

― Suedey (John Cei Douglas), Friday, 21 April 2006 16:49 (nineteen years ago)

can I post the Liefeld Cap Titties now?

― Huk-L (Huk-L), Friday, 21 April 2006 16:49 (nineteen years ago)

Yes, yes you can.

― Suedey (John Cei Douglas), Friday, 21 April 2006 16:50 (nineteen years ago)

http://grotesqueanatomy.blogspot.com/

― Huk-L (Huk-L), Friday, 21 April 2006 16:51 (nineteen years ago)

Of course they're art. They're non-functional, and exist primarily for aesthetic reasons. Just because something's fun and lightweight doesn't make it not art; comedy films are art.

― chap who would dare to be a nerd, not a geek (chap), Friday, 21 April 2006 17:01 (nineteen years ago)

Apparently John Cusack at the end of Bullets over Broadway isn't Art, but everything else is.

― Chuck_Tatum (Chuck_Tatum), Friday, 21 April 2006 17:10 (nineteen years ago)

I thought John Cusack was art?

― Suedey (John Cei Douglas), Friday, 21 April 2006 17:13 (nineteen years ago)

No, he's just artsy.

(I think he ends the film by saying something like, "All I know is, I'm not an artist". It's meant to be a happy ending. The rest of the film is better.)

― Chuck_Tatum (Chuck_Tatum), Friday, 21 April 2006 17:15 (nineteen years ago)

You're thinking of JOAN Cusack.

xpost

― Huk-L (Huk-L), Friday, 21 April 2006 17:15 (nineteen years ago)

I like the ending of BOB.

― chap who would dare to be a nerd, not a geek (chap), Friday, 21 April 2006 17:19 (nineteen years ago)

Of course they are art. Most of them are lousy art, but that's not unique to comics. However, that is to use 'art' in its broad sense - so I'd also include books, TV, music and so on. In the 'art school' sense it's different - there they mean 'Fine Art', painting and sculpture and installations you'd find in a museum, that kind of thing. They do video art there, but they don't make movies and it's not where you study if that's your career aim. I think the relationship between 'art' (art school sense) and comics is similar to that.

Of course your phrasing is something else, dismissing the worth of what they are doing, which is another story entirely. The difference I am claiming is nothing to do with worth.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Friday, 21 April 2006 19:12 (nineteen years ago)

Martin OTM. The distinction is the medium and the individual work. Comics are as valid an art form as literally anything else. But any individual comic must be evaluated not only against others of its type, but compared to different art forms in order for an art-historical context to be created. It seems like the tricky question is the second point, when comics start getting compared to novels, movies, or paintings, that they begin to be dismissed. In addition the conflation of the medium with its most common representative (commercial super-hero books) adds to the confusion.

Also, the "take comics seriously as art" movement gets lost in these distinctions as well. And it's a relatively new idea, again art-historically speaking, so there again, sufficient context (and the "rules of the game", which contribute to context) has yet to be established.

Hope that didn't come out too muddled.

― Sparkle Motion's Rising Force, Friday, 21 April 2006 19:43 (nineteen years ago)

The more important qn is - what do we gain or lose (as readers, as critics) by caring whether comics are 'art' or not?

― Tom (Groke), Friday, 21 April 2006 22:40 (nineteen years ago)

Well, ultimately I imagine the goal is for the issue to be moot--that the "of course the medium is a valid art form" will be taken for granted, and that any works of quality will be recognized in and of themselves as contributions to a particular aspect of cultural output, to be examined with the same critical tools that one would apply to anything else.

― Sparkle Motion's Rising Force, Friday, 21 April 2006 23:28 (nineteen years ago)

― Jacques Kirbee, Saturday, 22 April 2006 04:23 (nineteen years ago)

I didn't mean to indicate that I care that much about this - for me the whole debate about what was or wasn't art was more or less tossed aside with Duchamp's readymades. How we situate comics in the wider world of arts doesn't strike me as much worth fighting about - but I do think there is value in treating comics as things worth doing well and criticising well. One of my aims in the '80s in the UK was to improve the quality of the critical discourse around comics in this country, which given its feeble state wasn't a particularly difficult thing. The only anglophone criticism of any worth was in TCJ, and that was from what I thought was a rather dated high art perspective, and I wanted to learn from them and try to do some different things too, to look at superhero comics with a critical eye and enthusiasm, not just to mock the low art end of this lowly art form. (I'm not making any big claims for my success in this - I do think my mag was the best (in this sense) that there had been in the UK, but that's saying very little.)

I think treating comics seriously in this way creates a climate more conducive to work that isn't simply hacking out stuff like everything else; it's another way to reward good work, with recognition; and it helps creators think about what they do in different ways - I believe good criticism can improve an art form.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Saturday, 22 April 2006 14:27 (nineteen years ago)

I'm a moron. I just ordered Understanding Comics.

― Vermont Girl (Vermont Girl), Monday, 24 April 2006 18:50 (nineteen years ago)

All art is better when it's not trying to be Art.

― Jordan (Jordan), Monday, 24 April 2006 19:16 (nineteen years ago)

What Jordan said.

― Matt Maxwell (Matt M.), Monday, 24 April 2006 20:50 (nineteen years ago)

Just popping in to give props to our regular anonymous artiste.

― Daniel_Rf (Daniel_Rf), Monday, 24 April 2006 21:34 (nineteen years ago)

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