Larry's Cartoon Vault: Cartoonists Look at Fine Art

                                             Cover by Richard Taylor

There’s a rich print history of comic art poking fun at the realm of fine art—a certain tension between high brow/low brow approaches to art and society

(This seemed especially true in the early half of the 20th century).

                                                       E.W. Kemble 1917

Cartoonists seemed to love to address the pretensions of gallery artists and the elitist social trappings of the fine art world.

                                                  Donald McKee

Interestingly, in the earliest days of American comic art, cartoonists often carried on parallel careers as fine artists.  Rudolph Dirks, creator of the Katzenjammer Kids, would often take a hiatus to devote time to painting. He even exhibited in the Amory Show of 1913. Others who straddle the fine art/ popular art fence included George Luks (one of  “The Eight” and cartoonist of the Yellow Kid), Walt Kuhn, Lyonel Feininger, Marjorie Organ, Boardman Robinson and John Sloan as well as other ‘Ash Can’ artists such as William Glackens and Everett Shinn.

But that was mostly before modernist trends set such as cubism and abstract art.

Here’s a selection from the Vault:

                                                    S. J. Perelman

Let's not forget artists and poverty

R.B.Fuller

Brewerton early 1900's

Judge cartoon from 1922

                                                          Modern art

R. B. Fuller again 1927

Frank Hanley from Judge 1927

                                                        Nate Collier 1927

                                                      From Ballyhoo 1933

Reprinted in Judge

                          John Sloan's critique on Cubism from the Masses

                         Jeffersom Machamer from Collier's magazine

                                                       W.M. Hendy 1936

                                               Harry Mace This Week 1949

                                                   J.W. Taylor circa 1950's

                                          From the Yale Record 1950's

                                                 Kovarsky from This Week

                                                            Tetsu

                                                 A. E. Beard  Punch 1952

                                                      William Sillince 1959
                                      And finally....

                                               Paul Reilly from Judge 1927