Click image to enlarge

Takashi Murakami (Japanese, born 1962):
PUKA PUKA, 1999
Screenprint, 26 3/8 x 19 inches
MSU purchase, funded by the Office of
the Vice President for Research and
Graduate Studies, 2002.13.1

Click image to enlarge

Julian Opie (British, born 1958):
Gary, Popstar, 1998-99
Screenprint, 24 x 21 inches
MSU purchase, funded by the Kathleen D. and Milton E. Muelder Endowment, 2002.10.2

A springing, resilient line, bright, flat colors, the use of shorthand communication devices, and a generally upbeat mood are often clues that cartoons, comics, animation or popular illustration have influenced an artist. This is true for the 27 contemporary artists included in the exhibition Art in the 'Toon Age, drawn primarily from the Kresge Art Museum's collection. Some of these artists are well known while others are just beginning to gain recognition.

For more than four decades 'toons and ads have inspired three distinct generations of artists, whose birth dates range from 1928 to 1975. Largely unaware of others working along similar lines, these artists working have been popping up in England and France, Italy and Japan, Austria and America.

The first generation of these artists emerged during the 1960s, influenced by drawing from the 1940s, animation from the 1950s, and commercial art styles. Though parallel in time with Pop art, they did not share Pop's interest in the content of these sources, nor in appropriating the imagery. The ironies of Pop art are lacking in this work, as is Pop's Minimalist dearth of emotionalism. This "senior" generation developed their styles in the 1960s and 1970s and includes Valerio Adami, Patrick Caulfield, John Clem Clarke, Steve Gianakos, Red Grooms, Michael Craig-Martin, Elizabeth Murray, Jim Nutt, Peter Saul, Roger Shimomura, and John Wesley. They were encouraged by the uses Pop art made of their beloved sources, but disinterested in the Pop idea of lifting cartoons or ads into their paintings untransformed. What interested them was the beauty of the drawing in 1940s and 1950s animation and commercial art, its seeming effortlessness, and the distillation process itself. They like to imply narratives, but leave them to the viewer to write.

The 1980s "junior" generation includes Roger Brown, Carroll Dunham, Floc'h, Jeff Koons, Micah Lexier, Takashi Murakami, Jim Nutt, Julian Opie, Yoshitomo Nara, and Sue Williams, who tend to create a more complex, multi-layered esthetic, but in a 'toon or anime style and spirit. Sometimes they deal with personal, political, or social issues, with gender and sexuality, death, violence, or war. Their narratives are never simple despite appearances and frequently quite elaborate. The debt they owe to the commercial graphic artist remains as great as that of the earlier generation.

The "freshman" generation of the 1990s includes Laylah Ali, John Chilver, Marcel Dzama, Inka Essenhigh, Arturo Herrera, and Monique Prieto. These artists explore the esthetic pleasures of painting without stressing comprehensible narratives. Only Ali has a political agenda explored through her Greenheads and Bluehead, cartoonishly-styled protagonists who enact deeply disturbing playlets on the vicissitudes of African American life.

The art in Art in the 'Toon Age ranges from satire and send up to the sublime.Though it may look beguilingly innocent, much of the work is formally and psychologically loaded, both with compositional conceits and fictive possibilities. Visual cliches are dignified through authoritative handling, and the familiar is elevated by being treated as abstracted compositional elements. These artists practice an informed conservatism chosen with full knowledge of the alternatives. They embrace radical new computer age processes and innovations while working within what appears to be a traditional idiom. All of these artists clearly love ads, comics, and packaging graphics. What they have done is to transform commercial art into the finest of fine art.

An adjunct exhibition, The Story of 'Toons, is a selection of historically relevant actual comic strips, original drawings for them, reprints, books of Manga, and graphic novels. Story of 'Toons provides an historical overview of comic and cartoon culture from Krazy Kat to Chris Ware; it is mainly drawn from Michigan State University Libraries renowned Russel B. Nye Popular Culture Collections. Many of these comics are the sources of inspiration for the artists featured in Art in the 'Toon Age.