1. REVISITING THE COMIC ART SHOW
WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART, DOWNTOWN GALLERY, 1983
Presented by Kim Munson, PCA/ACA St. Louis, 2010

2. First art exhibition produced by a major
New York art museum to display comic art,
graffiti, pop art and the post-modern art of the
East Village art scene together as equal
works of art.
Co-curated by John Carlin (Masters of
American Comics, Imagining America) &
Sheena Wagstaff (Comics Iconoclasm,
currently Chief Curator at Tate Modern
London).
This show ultimately brought together the circle of
people that produced Masters of American
Comics in LA (2005). Spiegelman, Carlin, Brian
Walker & Anne Philbin, plus many artists.
Downtown gallery at Federal Hall (26 Wall Street), NY

3. The show concept was inspired by a class
Carlin was teaching as a grad student at
Yale called Popular Iconography and his
deep involvement in the new generation of
punk, pop and underground artists creating
a big stir in the East Village.
1960’s 1980’s
1980’s Art and Comix in Transition.

4. Spiegelman, who was working on Raw and just
beginning Maus, became Carlin’s mentor on this
project, introducing him to many collectors.
John Carlin: “Rick Marschall, Pete Maresca and
Bill Blackbeard, are the three people that
saved printed newspaper comics from oblivion
at a time when they were being thrown away
and no institution in America saw any value in
them. They preserved them. They bought the
bound volumes and kept them. Now they're all
in Ohio. If those three men hadn’t kept them,
they wouldn't exist. It's really kind of a heroic
story, it would be a great documentary. .”
(5/09)
Winsor McCay (1869-1934)
Little Sammy Sneeze, 1905 (Sunday)
Ink, crayon, wash on paper
Collection of Ray Moniz
The Comics Collectors

5. Comic Artists
Ernie Bushmiller Chester Gould Winsor McCay
Milton Caniff Harold Grey Richard Outcault
Al Capp Bill Griffith Gary Panter
R. Crumb Milt Gross Alex Raymond
Will Eisner George Herriman E.C. Segar
Lyonel Feininger Bill Holman Joe Shuster
H.C. Fisher Robert Kane Art Spiegelman
Rube Goldberg Walt Kelly Cliff Sterrett
Frank King Garry Trudeau
Harvey Kurtzman & Wally Wood
Stan Lee & Jack Kirby
Painters & Sculptors
Roger Brown Roy Lichtenstein Alexis Smith
Ronnie Cutrone Jim Nutt Saul Steinberg
Stuart Davis Claes Oldenburg Andy Warhol
Oyvind Fahlstrom Suzan Pitt John Wesley
John Fawcett Lee Quinones Karl Wirsum
Vernon Fisher Mel Ramos Ray Yoshida
Steve Gianakos Robert Rauschenberg Anonymous (2)
Keith Haring Ad Reinhardt
Jess David Salle
Jasper Johns Kenny Scharf
Richard Outcault. The Yellow Kid 1896
Art Spiegelman. Two-Fisted Painters, 1982
Plus additional works by Henry Chalfant, The Hairy Who & C. Comics Stuart Davis. Lucky Strike, 1924
Keith Haring. Untitled, 1981
Who was in the show.

6. Gary Panter (b. 1950). Jimbo, 1981
Suzan Pitt (b. 1943). Untitled, 1983 (Sculpture)
Jess (1923-2004). The Truth Shall be Thy Warrant, 1976
Ronnie Cutrone (b. 1948). The Price of Liberty is
Eternal Vigilance, 1982.
John Carlin: “I hung the show myself,
intuitively with no hierarchy, in a way meant
to give the viewer an intellectually and
emotionally moving experience.” (5/09)
A wall of drawings by R. Crumb (b. 1943),
Frank King (1883-1969), Cliff Sterrett (1883-1964) &
Art Spiegelman (b. 1948). The small sculpture in the
center is Untiltled, 1974 by Roger Brown (b. 1941).
All exhibition photos courtesy of the Frances Mulhall
Achilles Library at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Exhibition photos

7. George Herriman, Krazy Kat, June 11, 1936
Roy Lichtenstein (1923 - 1997). Bugs Bunny, 1958.
David Salle (b. 1952) Untitled. 1961.
Jphn Carlin: “The thing that motivated me was
this: here you are in the most media saturated
culture in human history, and you have this
form of expression, like comics, that's constantly
on the verge of being literally inaccessible.
Americans really don't preserve their own
culture. It's a real tragedy, because we have
this kind of fear of the things that we like. If we
like it and it's popular, then it can't be significant.”
(5/09)
George Herriman, Krazy Kat, June 11, 1936
Winsor McCay (1869-1934)
Little Sammy Sneeze, 1905 (Sunday)
Anonymous (American Hopi Indian) Mickey
Mouse doll. painted wood, c. 1950.
Anonymous (Alaskan Eskimo) Olive Oyl doll.
carved ivory. c. 1940.
Exhibition photos

8. Chester Gould (1900-1985),
Dick Tracy, 1957
John Wesley,(b. 1928).
Bumstead, in a Strait Jacket, 1975.
These two graphics served as invitations to the opening
reception and later dance party.
The opening became a media event, covered by the New
York Times, WABC TV, WNEW TV, the Village Voice,
Newsweek, Art in America & others.
There was also a week long animation festival.
Opening & Events - July 18, 1983.

9. “Cartoons and Comic Strips fall into the general
category of folk art. They entertain and poke fun,
tickle our funny bone, “Clearly, cartoon characters have transcended
and satirize, but they do not concern themselves with their identity as mass-produced disposables,
the broader formal or thematic dimensions of emerging as pictorial icons and psychological
reality that are the symbols .“
basis of more serious forms of art.” -David Keeps, Heavy Metal, 11/83
-Theodore Wolff, Christian Science Monitor,
9/27/83
“What the Comic Art Show
“The show is perhaps most successful in its attempt to
reveals is a strong impulse
make us see cartoons historically and critically in their
to valorize the comics by
hugely satisfying richness, to have us appreciate the
treating them according to
special kind of verbal/visual genius necessary to
a methodology derived from
create an enduring comic strip.“
mainstream art history.”
-Roberta Smith, Village Voice, 8/23/83
-David Deitcher,
Art in America, 2/84
“The Comic Art Show seemed to be trying to
hard to prove that comics are art.” “What a delight! The cartoon become artoon.”
-Jim Salicrup, quoted in Comics Journal 1/84 -Nicholas Moufarrege. FlashArt, 11/83
The critics have their say…

10. Carlin: “One thing I was always proud to say, was at the
time, and I haven’t checked this since, at the time it was the
only profitable exhibition that the Whitney had ever done.
It made a lot of money. Because I talked Keith Haring into
doing the very first commercially available T-shirt that he
ever did. He was afraid it was going to ruin his reputation.
He was afraid no one would take him seriously...The T-shirts
were probably only 10 bucks, but we might have sold, like,
10,000 T-shirts and 10,000 catalogs.
Somebody uptown at the Whitney got the idea that this
was a show that was so successful that they should've
brought it uptown and re-presented it. And it got me into a
lot of political mess, and basically,
there were some powerful people that just didn't want to
see that happen. Which I always thought was a shame. I
think it's great that the Whitney did this, but I think it
would've been more important, if they had really made it
part of their uptown main museum exhibition schedule.”
Catalog with 7 extensive essays printed by (5/09)
Fantagraphics in black & white on inexpensive
paper and sold for $2.95 (or $6.95 by mail).
A Success ! … but wait…