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Comics versus Art
Bart Beaty
Gabriel Tremblay-Gaudette
Bart Beaty, Comics versus Art
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012, 288 pp. ISBN: 9781442643512
ISBN: 9781442612044 ISBN: 9781442696273
What is the status of contemporary comics? Most would agree that the current quality, diversity and visibility of comics is unprecedented within the history of the form, but it is not quite as clear whether the medium has gained any additional recognition in the public eye and in the art world. On the one hand, comics advocates like Scott McCloud describe the current situation with unbridled optimism. On the other hand, specialists active in the academic and institutional field take up a far more critical position, as in for example Thierry Groensteen’s book Un Objet Culturel Non Identifié (2006) which is primarily concerned with the setbacks and the barriers still prevalent in today’s acceptance of comics as an art form.
Bart Beaty’s most recent monograph Comics versus Art (University of Toronto Press, 2012) addresses this question through a series of examinations on topics pertaining to comics’ inscription into the art world paradigm. With the notable exception of his brilliant analysis of a painting by Lucy McKenzie which features a comics panel taken from Milo Manara’s iconic work Il gioco (1983, translated into English as Click!), Beaty does not delve into close readings in Comics vs. Art. Instead, his focus is centered on general topics such as the place of comics in museums, the legacy of the appropriation of comics aesthetics by Pop Art, the reification of comics as high-end toys (which could be more aptly described as “small mass-produced sculptures”), the economics of comics as collectables, and the “sanctification” of major comics artists such as Jack Kirby, George Herriman and Charles Schultz who are increasingly represented as struggling, depressed and/or misunderstood geniuses. As can be expected from Beaty, his book is well-researched. In chapter 7, “On Junk, Investments, and Junk Investments: The Evolution of Comic Book Collectables”, for example, we find a detailed overview of the raging (fan) debates surrounding the question of what sort of material constitutes the ideal material to make comic book bags out of (comic book bags are clear bags used to protect the ephemeral comic book from the wear and tear that accompanies the passage of time).
Beaty’s large scope of consideration, his macroscopic perspective, constitutes a productive approach to measuring the appreciation which comics enjoys within the larger realm of the “art world”, a
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concept which Beaty theorises with the help of Howard S. Becker. Beaty both asserts that the postmodern turn has diminished what was one a rigid separation between high-brow and low-brow art and observes that the distinction between elite and popular art still has some traction today. This leads to thoughtful insights – for example, Beaty cleverly points out that the visual aspect of comics is the main focus of the medium’s presence in museums and of its life as a collectible item (with the splash pages functioning as the blue chips of speculation on the market for original art) whereas the academic study of comics, which is mostly undertaken by departments of literary studies and cultural studies, tends to concentrate on the analysis of narratives and texts. An abundance of citations by 1950s New York intellectuals which criticise comics’ poor artistic value and craftsmanship and denigrate the medium for its association with uneducated readership are used by Beaty to underline how early critics of the medium unleashed their scorn from an outsider perspective that was not very well-attuned to the intrinsic aesthetic qualities of the comic book. An important section of chapter 2, “What If Comics Were Art? Defining a Comics Art World”, is devoted to an analysis of a number of definitions of comics so as to provide us with a better understanding of what these definitions mean (perform) and reveal in terms of comics’ position within the art hierarchy. Among others things, Beaty notices that non-medium specific definitions of comics tend to establish a direct historical link between comics on the one hand and traditions of sequential images in the realm of visual arts such as murals, bas-reliefs and tapestries on the other hand. The examination of definitions of comics in terms of their objectives pertaining to artistic validation rather than in terms of their formal operability and exactitude constitutes an interesting and revealing move on the part of Beaty, and he is correct in arguing that, for example, “McCloud’s [broad] definition tends to minimize the conception of comics as art” (p. 35) exactly because too wide and all-encompassing definitions of the medium diminish its specificity.
In his macroscopic mode Beaty also sheds light on certain aspects of the mythologizing process which some great cartoonist have undergone and the intricacies of which have too often been ignored by fans and scholars alike. Chapter Four, “Searching for Artists in the Entertainment Empire”, revisits some common (mis)conceptions surrounding Carl Banks, Jack Kirby and Charles Schultz in order to demonstrate how these artists, now considered “heroes of the comics world”, have continuously been viewed through a very narrow lens which effectively turned them into misunderstood geniuses. For me, the most thought-provoking observation delivered by Beaty lies in his analysis of the process which he calls “the anointment of the King of Comics” and in which he explains how Kirby’s work has come to be considered as visionary, exemplary and stemming from a uniquely creative subjectivity; in order to ‘crown the king’, biographical discourses about Kirby minimise the collaborative aspect of his career. Beaty drives this point home by reminding the reader of a seldom-mentioned part of Kirby’s professional trajectory: his switch-over from Marvel to DC Comics, where he was granted more artistic control over his work. This increase in artistic control resulted in disappointment from fans, however, and most of the series he was working on during this period ended up being cancelled due to declining readership. Although most of the critical discourse surrounding Kirby’s career tends to downplay the role of certain important collaborators, such as Stan Lee as a writer and Vince Cotella as an inker, in order to glorify him as the sole creative force behind his success, the DC period could serve as a counterargument to this line of thinking.
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Lichtenstein’s Tears: Ressentiment and Exclusion in the World of Pop Art”, and occasionally in the following chapters, Beaty follows the line of thinking of critics such as Michael Lobel and Cécile Whiting, who establish a gendered conception of the highbrow-lowbrow dichotomy — the masculine being linked to high-end, legitimised art and the feminine to consumerist popular cultural productions. Both the issues of fluctuating hierarchies in the art world and of sexual identity are highly complex, however, and a blunt superposition of the two polarities of these respective issues seems like a gross oversimplification. While this conceptual comparison is in the end only a minor idea raised by Beaty, it is still a contentious one.
In the opening pages of his book, Beaty expresses his goal of producing a “State of contemporary comics in the art world” (we should note that Beaty’s work never turns into a comics apologia), and by the end of his intellectual enterprise, he delivers on his promise. His assessment of comics’ current situation is not as defeatist as the one we find in Groensteen’s aforementioned monograph, but it is still lukewarm at best; as Beaty eloquently demonstrates through a wide range of case studies, some significant gains have been made on that front, but comics’ acceptance in the academic and institutional world generally still occurs on a partial and biased basis.
Gabriel Tremblay-Gaudette is a PhD student in semiotics at the Université du Québec à Montréal. His research focuses on iconotextuality, comic art, popular culture, hermeneutics and hypermedia art. E-mail address: gabrielgaudette@gmail.com
