Reading War and Peace While Munching Candy

I realize in looking over my previous post that it may seem to contain an implicit contradiction. In referring to the difference between popular and serious art, am I disparaging the popular arts?

If so, then it would seem like a contradictory (or at least very odd) thing for an illustrator and cartoonist to do. After all, almost everyone classifies illustration and cartooning as popular arts; how can I belittle what I myself do?

The short answer is that, much as I’d like my cartoon stories to be more popular, I’m not sure they’re in the category of popular arts — I think that’s defined more by a sensibility and approach than it is by a particular medium. The long answer — well, that gets a little personal, but I suppose that’s what this blog is for. I don’t partake of much popular art myself (unless you count all the old revival and art-house films I go to — I suppose they were popular movies once upon a time). Cartooning, especially “comic strips” (a term I dislike but have become resigned to), are a major exception to my abstemiousness. I pay attention to cartoon strips past and present, from the late nineteenth century (and their eighteenth-century precursors) right up to this morning’s newspapers. But that’s not because I think cartoon strips are superior to, say, television or pop music or the circus. I probably focus more on cartooning simply because I’m a cartoonist — or did I become a cartoonist because I was focused on cartooning? Well, no matter.

In general, my attitude toward the popular arts is similar to my attitude towards chocolate: I like it a lot, and sometimes I even eat it, but I know that it’s candy. I don’t sneer at chocolate bars but I also don’t confuse them with real meals, much less with gourmet cooking. I’m not “against” television any more than I’m “against” chocolate or ice cream — but I tend to avoid them, and for much the same reason: my lack of self-control, and the resultant tendency to overindulge. If I bring home a half gallon of ice cream, I’m likely to eat a quart in one sitting, and gain three pounds in the process. (By the way, can somebody please explain to me how it’s possible to eat one pound of ice cream and gain three pounds?) Similarly, when I had a TV set, I’d turn it on to watch a specific show — but then never turn it off, or not until I was about to pass out in stupefaction.

In other words, my restricted diet for pop culture has more to do with liking it too much than too little. I cope with my lack of self-control the best I can: I know from experience that I don’t have the discipline to keep ice cream in my freezer, but I do have just enough discipline not to buy it in the first place. Similarly, if I had a TV I’d probably watch it a lot; but I’d rather spend that time creating things. (Tell me this: how much time do you think the people who create the TV shows spend watching TV? Creating anything — including popular culture — is a very time-consuming activity!)

Most cartoon strips historically fall into the category of popular art, but I don’t believe this is an inherent characteristic of the art form; it’s more like a self-perpetuating pattern. Imagine a country — let’s call it Carrotopia— which has the reputation of being friendly only to people with red hair. Anybody else gets sneered at in the streets — or, worse, ignored altogether. What kind of people do you suppose would move there? And what kind would move out? Obviously, over time, the reputation of Carrotopia as a country of, by, and for redheads would be reinforced, perhaps to the point that carmine filimentation seemed intrinsic to the place. But the prevalence of cherry-colored fuzz would, in fact, be the result of a self-perpetuating culture, not an inexorable attribute of the land itself.

Cartooning is like our mythical Carrotopia: it mostly attracts creators with a pop-culture sensibility — or who are limited by their natural talents to the realm of pop culture — simply because it has the reputation of being an appropriate venue only for such creators. “Serious” writers and artists usually avoid the medium. Who wants to be snubbed?

Note that I said usually; not always. There are and always have been a few exceptions — talented creators exploring cartooning as a serious artform — but unfortunately they tend to be barely visible specks of light in the general fog of interchangeable mass culture. Well, if you haven’t already pegged me as a hopeless snob and dismal pessimist, and decide to come back… I’ll probably have more to say about the nature of pop vs. serious art in the future. In fact, I’ve barely scratched the surface here. But that will have to wait; I’ve been drawing and writing all day, and need to get some exercise. I think I’ll take a walk to the local bookstore… and buy a chocolate ice-cream cone on the way back.

Current Sanstudio Development

I'm going to place brief notes here concerning the ongoing development of my graphic-arts site at Sanstudio.com, and perhaps of my other domains as well.

The site is currently entitled Cartoon Stories for Thoughtful People — but that's destined to become only one section of the site (I hope). It currently contains four graphic stories:

The Hurricane is by far my most popular story, based on the feedback I've received from both reviewers and readers.

Everybody who responded to it seemed to love it, except for one reader who criticized the story as being a philosophical endorsement of passivity or defeatism. I thanked him for his remarks, but didn't really respond beyond that; I certainly wasn't going to get into a discussion of Buddhist philosophy with him. I think he expected me to "defend" the story, and was disappointed when I declined. Although I love feedback, including the critical kind, I have a policy of never arguing with, or even discussing, readers' interpretations of the meaning of my work. Any meaning I wish to convey is in the story itself.

There are many reasons for this. One is that I believe that the best artists supply only incomplete meanings; only the lowest form of pop culture is presented in a neat, complete package. This is not an endorsement of willful obscurantism, which is a form of pretentiousness that I despise. But great works of art (in any medium) gain strength for each reader by being completed by that reader. Each reader (or perhaps I should say audience, since it applies equally to the non-literary arts) creates a unique work by filling in the holes with their own meanings, with the collaborative result holding special power for them. I don't want to preempt that process by displacing their interpretations with mine.

This isn't really an original idea of mine — it borrows heavily from John Dewey's ideas about "doing" and "undergoing" in the arts, where he emphasized the collaborative role of the audience; and frankly I don't even remember whether seeing this role (or the lack of it) as a key distinction between the popular and the great arts was his idea or mine. (I wouldn't be surprised if many people had made this point.) Regardless, the idea is simple enough: great art owes much of its power to the implicit creator/audience collaboration, while mass-consumption art is fully pre-cooked — so the audience doesn't have to do any work, which of course many people prefer. I suppose this whole distinction between "pop arts" and "high arts" must sound elitist to many people (although even such a lively advocate of the popular arts as Gilbert Seldes seems to have admitted the distinction, more or less); and it must sound outright ridiculous to post-modernists — but I'll let them go argue with Dewey on their own. (The fact that he died in 1952 shouldn't hamper the conversation, because to a true pomo the difference between dead and alive is presumably just a matter of looking at the same protoplasm from a different angle, after all.…)

My unwillingness to preempt my readers' collaborative interpretations also explains why the "About This Story" pages that are linked to each of my cartoon stories disappoint some readers, who expect a philosophical discussion there; those pages are sometimes lengthy, but all they contain are press reviews, ancillary materials about background and process, and so on. I'm always happy to describe my drawing, computer graphics, and other production processes if anyone's interested (usually they're not).

River Journey is the only story I've written in verse (light verse). One small comics newsletter in Britain (the dead-tree kind of newsletter that gets handed out at comics conventions) said that the verse seemed to be influenced by Ogden Nash and the drawing by Dr. Seuss. This didn't exactly bother me — it was a glowing review overall, I think the remark was meant as praise, and I certainly love the work of both people mentioned — but I find the resemblances rather slight. However, you can decide for yourself.

Psychology Can't Help is my least popular story, which isn't surprising since (unlike my other stories) it has no plot. A couple of reviewers liked it, more or less, and a few readers as well. It seems that the only people who connect strongly with this story are people who've had personal experiences with therapy that left them, shall we say, underwhelmed.

Radnor Wentworth's Theory of Friendship is a graphic story about the world's smartest computer programmer — or maybe he's the world's dumbest computer programmer, depending on how you look at it. But (unlike some "geek comics" I've seen) this isn't a story about coding; and it's not like Dilbert either — Radnor is a freelancer, and has so little contact with people that he couldn't even have those kinds of nasty office experiences.

The poor guy is struggling to figure out why he can't hold on to friends or pick up women — not that I've ever had that problem, you understand (cough). The story was meant to be the first in a series — Radnor Wentworth's Theories of Life — and now, by golly, it seems like that's on the verge of being true! More about that in a future post.