Is Alicia Masters a Good Sculptor? ; or ; Art In Mainstream Comics

I was also wondering how Alicia could possibly be describing the paintings on the tour in spite of being blind. She's talking about the forms and color planes in a Cezanne - what the hell? Even if she wasn't always blind, it's still pushing it. Blind sculptor, sure, okay. Blind docent? Not likely!

Bad taste seems to be endemic in the Marvel U. though - there is a very funny scene at the beginning of Beauty And The Beast (rub 1985 mini) in which Dr Doom goes into his ART ROOM in which he keeps his favourite art and his very favourite piece of all is a dreadful looking sculpture of a horse.

Now I was kind of half hoping this might be a "Hitler was a rubbish artist" thing but I doubt it. I wonder if there's a sub/conscious wish-fulfilment thing goin on on behalf of comics artists, a "this is what should be art" move.

anyway it is full of terrifically horrible art (in the strieber's house, in the psychologist's study) (though NOT old-skool trad rep)*: but they have a husband-and-wife denouement speech to one another in the whitney in front of pics by paula rego and we didn't remember the other one

*(the only one i can describe is like a de chirico street scene with a giant backlit wolf in the middle of it)

(communion is one of my favourite films ever, partly for this reason)

Isn't there a (youngish) villain in part of Alan Grant's run on Batman or Detective Comics who considers his crime sprees a form of conceptual art?

There's also a riff on this in EX MACHINA--an artist who has a really REALLY offensive conceptual painting up in the Brooklyn Museum that Mayor Hundred has to deal with somehow. (Which, on reflection, doesn't make that much sense: it may be a variation on the Chris Ofili controversy a few years ago, but Ofili's stuff is freaking beautiful--a lot of people who hated it in principle saw it in person and went "oh, NOW I get it.")

(haha mojo jojo christo!!)

There was a character like this in Dan Slott's Arkham Asylum: Living Hell. I can't remember his name, though. I think he was also into grafitti.

Kyle Rayner. Yeesh. Have you ever seen that totally Franklin Mint portrait he did of all the Green Lanterns all chummy. Fuck off. Hal Jordan will smite you!

Let's not forget Steve Rogers' stint as an ad artist & a COMIC BOOK ARTIST back in the early 80s. I vaguely remember some wacky dream sequence where he falls asleep @ the drafting table & finds himself caught up in a toothpaste ad he's drawing.

Actually, I'm thinking now that it was a villain from Ty Templeton's run on Batman Adventures. Templeton was getting away with all KINDS of stuff in those days--if I'm remembering correctly, there's an issue whose plot revolves around Batman never having watched "In the Realm of the Senses." No, seriously. "Mom? Can we rent that?"

Catwoman: So, Batman. Have you ever seen In The Realm Of The Senses? It's pretty hot.

Batman: Er, no. What's it about?

Catwoman: It's a Japanese film. Very sensual.

Batman: That sounds okay.

Catwoman: You want to see it? I'll rent it, you can come over. It'll be fun. I'll order some sushi.

Batman: Sure. Tomorrow night?

Catwoman: Yeah, that works for me.

Catwoman, thought balloon: Now I can finally learn Batman's secret identity!

also the fact that comix artists are trained in representational art doesn't neccessarily mean they prize it more highly than the other, just that they're better at doing it themselves!

(Plot alert - Colossus becomes pin-up artist (ho ho 'becomes') and starts selling to magazines specialising in mutant porn. Cue long discussion about whether this is okay or not. Finally there is a FITE as it turns out Mister Sinister is modelling for the sleazy mag under the name of Sven.)

I think what a lot of this comes down to is the simple fact that the art world, like any subculture or profession, has its own internal values and trends and lingo and so forth. If you don't keep abreast of that stuff and do the research, attempts to represent the subculture in fiction will inevitably come off as phoney to those in the know. So we're in kind of the same territory as when a physicist or somebody steps in to point out all the bad (or, more analogously, vague) science in comics. They may well be right, but ultimately one imagines that the creators of the book figure they can get away with vague, since for most of their readers, it doesn't have to be OTM to work as a plot point. I imagine it's more striking in this case because comics are themselves a visual medium - but as has been pointed out upthread, there's a huge world of difference between the cultures of graphic design, illustration, and contemporary "art."

Another problem, of course, is that even if you are tuned into art, if the plot calls for you to have Alicia Masters becoming famous as an artist, are you really up for the challenge of creating good art for her? If you were, wouldn't you be out there creating it yourself and getting gallery shows or whatever it is artists do? Safer to play to your strengths and render a very realistic horse sculpture.

Possibly more meta answer: in the superhero world, freaky conceptual shit has been devalued considerably by how freaky life itself has gotten. Many of the traditional themes to be explored by conceptual art (identity, life versus death, blah blah) have been rendered moot by time-travel, mind-control, and repeated resurrection. The people clamor for art that presents the world in clear, Platonic ideals - art that they can feel 65% confident won't turn into a monster while they're looking at it on the wall.

can't believe i posted itt without thinking to bring up j.j. caucus: joanie's estranged daughter, mike doonesbury's ex-wife, and, since early on, trudeau's parody of the "new york art world."

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-3crFiQEhhBA/UwsrYhFoiuI/AAAAAAAAPSs/YcJ-d-KQI9o/s1600/doonesbury+large.gif

in the later 80s she turned to large-scale custom pieces for wealthier clients, and her work turned more figurative, naturalistic and classical.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CMM57Z4WsAEPiEF.jpg

https://media.npr.org/assets/artslife/books/2010/10/doonesbury/db881129.jpg

it's a good question & definitely one that applies to movies as well. it goes for writing too--in movies where the protagonist is a writer the book they always write at the end is the story of the amazing events that we have just seen unfold on the screen! (i guess that makes it "representative" writing)

― s1ocki (slutsky), Sunday, March 6, 2005 3:31 PM (thirteen years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

slocki's post really foreshadows the ridiculous narrative device on the tv show Riverdale. presumably the Jughead character's narrative is from articles he's writing or a journal he's keeping, but it's nonsensical drivel that barely makes sense even when read over montages

Relevant to this thread, Douglas Wolk's "Marvel vs. Museum" posts at hilobrow.com --

http://hilobrow.com/tag/marvel-museum/