Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum Blog

2014 has already been downright saturated with great comics events across Columbus, Ohio, and especially right here on campus! Huge thanks to all of you who attended the Calvin & Hobbes and Richard Thompson Retrospective exhibit opening from far and wide, and the more recent Frank Santoro and Stephen R. Bissette workshops and lectures!

The academic year has just ended–congrats to those who graduated–but we’re only getting started with incredible comics events!

Join us and our enduring partners across the street at The Wexner Center for the Arts on Friday, May 16th from 6-9pm for the opening of three stunning comics exhibits:

Modern Cartoonist: The Art of Daniel Clowes
May 17th – August 3rd

Daniel Clowes is one of the most beloved and renowned comic book artists of our time, with nearly 50 publications to his credit. His acclaimed graphic novels—including Ghost World (1997), David Boring (1999), and Wilson (2010), among others—have been instrumental in establishing literary credibility for the genre. The exhibition presents original black ink and Zipatone drawings of pages from these works, as well as beautifully realized gouache paintings of the covers of Ghost World and other publications. Organized by the Oakland Museum of California and a recent hit at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, Modern Cartoonist: The Art of Daniel Clowes is the first museum survey of his work, bringing together over 90 pieces of original art and artifacts from the full range of his career.

Daniel Clowes was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1961, and lives and works in Oakland, California. He attended the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, graduating with a BFA degree in 1984. Clowes is the recipient of numerous awards, including several Harvey Awards, given for achievement in comic books, and he recently won the 2011 Pen Award for Graphic Literature.

Organized for the Oakland Museum of California by independent curator Susan Miller and René de Guzman, Senior Curator of Art, Oakland Museum of California. This presentation organized for the Wexner Center for the Arts by David Filipi, Director of Film/Video.

Eye of the Cartoonist: Daniel Clowes’s Selections from Comics History
May 17th – August 3rd

Take a look through cartoonist Daniel Clowes’s incredibly informed, sometimes surprising historical perspective. Ohio State’s Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum is the world’s largest repository of cartoon art. To complement his survey concurrently on view, we invited Clowes—who, like many cartoonists, is a great student of his field’s history—to collaborate with the museum’s curators in presenting an exhibition of work by past greats whom he admires or considers influences. In works such as the comic book anthology seriesEightball (1989–2004) and the graphic novel Wilson (2010), Clowes illustrates in a wide spectrum of styles that often incorporate, adapt, and comment on touchstones from comics history. Drawing from the museum’s collection, the work on view in this exhibition at the Wex illuminates Clowes’s range, encompassing Chester Gould’s hard-boiled detective strip Dick Tracy, the minimal elegance of Otto Soglow’s The Little King, the Art Nouveau–inspired fantasias of Winsor McCay’s Little Nemo in Slumberland, the action-adventure stories of Terry and the Pirates (created by Ohio State’s own Milton Caniff), and even the ever-popular Peanuts by Charles Schulz.

Organized by Wexner Center for the Arts. Special thanks to Jenny Robb, Caitlin McGurk, and the staff at Ohio State’s Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum for their generous assistance with this exhibition.\

Comic Future
May 17th – August 3rd

Featuring work by 15 contemporary artists who freely mix cubism, figurative painting, and gestural abstraction with the visual strategies of cartoons and comics, Comic Future presents conceptually adventurous and visually bold interpretations of our frequently absurd world. Appropriating subjects from mythology, advertising, print culture, and children’s television, these artists employ discordant approaches that twist representations of their immediate environment into skewed, often apocalyptic visions of the future.

The exhibition showcases works from the 1960s through 2013 through a wide range of artists and media—including career-spanning works on paper by Sigmar Polke, a comic-book collage by Walead Beshty, sculpture by Aaron Curry and Liz Craft, and a video by the always-provocative Paul McCarthy. The late Mike Kelley is represented by works from two series that bookend his influential career: an early grouping of doodle-like drawings and a selection of recent illuminated sculptures based on Superman’s home city of Kandor. Also on display are paintings by Arturo Herrera, Carroll Dunham, Lari Pittman, Dana Schutz, and Sue Williams that explore the uneasy boundary between abstraction and figuration.

Organized by Ballroom Marfa, Texas, and curated by its Executive Director Fairfax Dorn.

Support for Comic Future at the Wexner Center for the Arts provided by Mike and Paige Crane.

Presented at Ballroom Marfa with the support of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; the Brown Foundation, Inc., Houston; the Meyer Levy Charitable Foundation;Texas Commission on the Arts; Foundation for Contemporary Arts; and generous contributions by Ballroom Marfa members.

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…Thought that was all the Dan Clowes related news fit to print? Think again! Check out all of these great events we’re doing both with and without Dan during the span of his exhibit:

In Conversation: Daniel Clowes and Hillary Chute
Sat, May 17, 2014 7 PM
Mershon Auditorium

Join Daniel Clowes and comics scholar Hillary Chute for a lively conversation about Clowes’s career—which includes such comics and graphic novels as Ghost World (1997), The Death-Ray (2011), and Wilson (2010)—and his role as a curator of Eye of the Cartoonist, on view at the Wexner Center. Chute is a Neubauer Family Assistant Professor in the Department of English at the University of Chicago and author of Graphic Women: Life Narrative and Contemporary Comics (2010) and Outside the Box: Interviews with Contemporary Cartoonists (2014).

Clowes is the subject of Modern Cartoonist, a career-spanning survey, and a curator of Eye of the Cartoonist, an exhibition of his influences, both on view at the Wex May 17–August 3, 2014. Come before the talk and see them for free as part of Art Museum Day, a nationwide initiative of the Association of Art Museum Directors.

On Screen: Ghost World
Sat, May 17, 2014 2 PM
Wexner Film/Video Theater

Screening in conjunction with the survey of his work in our galleries (as well as an exhibition he’s curated) are these film adaptions of comics by Daniel Clowes. Clowes co-wrote the scripts for both films, which were directed by Terry Zwigoff. No stranger to cartoons and comics himself, Zwigoff is perhaps best known for his 1995 documentary Crumb, on legendary cartoonist R. Crumb, which made dozens of best-film-of-the-year lists.

Based on Daniel Clowes’s celebrated graphic novel and co-scripted by the cartoonist himself, this cult favorite follows mostly directionless best friends Enid (Thora Birch) and Rebecca (Scarlett Johansson) as they entertain themselves by ridiculing fellow misfits and navigate their evolving friendship. With Steve Buscemi and Illeana Douglas. (111 mins., 35mm)

On Screen: Art School Confidential
Thu, June 12, 2014 7 PM
Film/Video Theater

Screening in conjunction with the survey of his work in our galleries (as well as an exhibition he’s curated) are these film adaptions of comics by Daniel Clowes. Clowes co-wrote the scripts for both films, which were directed by Terry Zwigoff. No stranger to cartoons and comics himself, Zwigoff is perhaps best known for his 1995 documentary Crumb, on legendary cartoonist R. Crumb, which made dozens of best-film-of-the-year lists.

Based on a four-page story by Daniel Clowes, Art School Confidential follows an aspiring painter and new student (Max Minghella) who comes face-to-face with the professional and romantic jealousies that simmer just below the surface at his school. Meanwhile, a serial killer is on the loose, putting the community and school on edge. Also with John Malkovich, Anjelica Huston, Jim Broadbent, and Sophia Myles. (102 mins., 35mm)

Come early for a curators’ talk at 6 PM and learn more about the Clowes-related exhibitions on view at the Wex.

 

…Hope to see you at all of the above!