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Ben Novotny Owen Diss FINAL.pdf (25.71 MB)

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Cartoon Conceptualism: Periodical Comics and Modernism in the United States

Owen, Benedict Novotny
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1494086092509444

Abstract Details

2017, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, English.
Cartoons and modern art have been mutually defined by their engagement in representing and codifying experiences of modernity. Despite this, there has been little sustained work on the reciprocal connections between cartoons and modern art in the period prior to 1960. Cartoon Conceptualism traces these neglected connections, focusing on avant-garde art and cartoons produced in New York during the twentieth century, with an emphasis on how the discourses of modern art illuminate the conceptual nature of cartooning. Contrary to the idea of cartoons as straightforwardly communicative, my work demonstrates a way of looking at comic strips and periodical cartoons that emphasizes their hermetic density, and their reflexivity about that density—the ways that cartoons tend to explore their own processes of compression and repetition. Dada, Surrealism, and their inheritors are the most useful refractive lens by which to view cartoons because their conceptual strain of modernism emphasizes how treacherous representational pictures can be. Moreover, there are discontinuous points of direct formal exchange between conceptual artists and cartoonists, which I track through specific works in the 1910s, 1920s, 1940s, 1970s, and 1980s. My first chapter explains the conceptual nature of cartooning from the mid-nineteenth century on, and shows the importance of caricature and single-panel cartooning to the New York Dada artists. I then explore the significance of Rube Goldberg’s cartoons to Dada and Surrealism, and consider how Goldberg’s cartoons establish a way of reading industrial capitalism’s frustrations for contemplative pleasure. My second chapter focuses on George Herriman’s Krazy Kat and its innovative reworking of comics page layout, which amounts to a form of visual syncopation. Syncopated design aids in Herriman’s critique of fixed identity, making character and story contingent on shifting paths of reading. Moreover, it suggests a melancholic form for the comics page generally, in which the desired object is present but out of reach. My third chapter looks at the experimental work of two cartoonists at the newspaper P.M., Ad Reinhardt and Crockett Johnson, in terms of their fascination with the power of art to exert force in the world. Reinhardt’s educational comics picture the circumstances under which abstract painting might make demands of the viewer, while the minimalism of Johnson’s comic strip Barnaby produces a style that can account for the power of indexical representations—graphs, diagrams, maps—to re-shape life in an era of global economic crisis and war. My fourth chapter examines Ernie Bushmiller’s comic strip Nancy through its significance to two different New York avant-gardes. The repetitive and non-cumulative form of Nancy became a symbol for a discontinuous sense of personal identity, imagined as a queer freedom in the gallery art of Joe Brainard, and a source of existential dread in the periodical cartoons of Mark Newgarden. Nancy’s redundant storytelling leads to a re-engagement with the matter of objects, recreating the chance encounters of Surrealist objects within the context of what John Ashbery calls a “nice” avant-garde—art offered for creative play without obligation.
Jared Gardner (Advisor)
Elizabeth Hewitt (Committee Member)
Thomas Davis (Committee Member)
Ryan Friedman (Committee Member)
258 p.
Aesthetics; American History; American Literature; American Studies; Art History; Fine Arts; Literature; Mass Media
cartoon; graphic narrative; comics; art history; united states; avant-garde; conceptual art; newspaper comics; modernism; popular culture; aesthetics; George Herriman; Rube Goldberg; Ad Reinhardt; Crockett Johnson; Ernie Bushmiller; dada; Marcel Duchamp

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Owen, B. N. (2017). Cartoon Conceptualism: Periodical Comics and Modernism in the United States [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1494086092509444

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Owen, Benedict. Cartoon Conceptualism: Periodical Comics and Modernism in the United States . 2017. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1494086092509444.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Owen, Benedict. "Cartoon Conceptualism: Periodical Comics and Modernism in the United States ." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2017. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1494086092509444

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1494086092509444
189
© 2017, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.