Although
America’s great contribution to the arts has long been recognized
as Jazz music, and there’s never been a major American painter
there have been several major illustrators.
Some suggest that
it is incumbent on capitalism to dumb down art - to make it comprehensible to the masses, to keep the cost of production down
and most importantly to deny the masses the universal truths that
might inspire them to cast off their chains and toss the overlords
into the bottomless pit of hell. They point to television as an
example of this. The US has been in a depression for thirty years
but would guess from watching television.
Nevertheless starting in the present and going back in time there’s “Pop”
Art with Warhol and Liechtenstein, artist that removes the concept
of skill from the creative process. In the thirties there was Disney
and The Flieshman Bros. animators of radically different visions. And
in the years 1900 to 1920 there was Gardener McKay, best known for
Little Nemo in Slumberland and George Herriman known for “Krazy
Kat”
Herriman was a Midwesterner who came east and got his
start in Coney Island drawing billboards. He was surreal even before
the term was invented. The main characters are a “Kat” of
indeterminate sex who is in love with a mouse, “Ignatz” who
responds by throwing bricks at the Kat (Much in the style of a Zen
Master.) The third major character is “Offisa Pup” a none too
bright police dog who insists on preserving Kat’s virtue despite all
her desires to shed it.
Herriman was a favorite both of the French surrealists and even Pablo Picasso.
Kat speaks in a
Yiddish dialect and in addition all of them speak in a strange patois that borrows
from the then contemporary minstrel shows and even cowboy slang.
Quite often
no one knew what the strips were about. They were considered part of
the “Flapper” culture along with cigarettes and bootleg liquor.
Stylish collegians would meet in “Krazy Kat Klubs” to
imbibe such stimulants and other things on occasion.
In some regards it can
be compared to the R. Crumb comix in the late 20th
Century
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