40 Million Dollar Comics

American artist Roy Litchenstein is the first comic artist to have made the crossover into the "Art" market. 

Big time! 

     Litchenstein's work, especially his paintings, have shown a sustained upward trend since the 90s. 

     From his initial success with Big Painting #6, which sold for $60,000 in 1970, to his moderately priced 'VIIP!' comic, which sold for one million dollars in February 2007, to Sleeping Girl, which sold for a whopping $40 mil, Litchenstein successfully captured the intensity of emotions we've come to expect from comic strips. 

     But how did Litchenstein transfer his tongue-in-cheek humorous compositions from the Pop Art market to the fine art market? 

To answer this question, let's first examine his style. 

     Utilizing the Ben-Day dot process, Litchenstein's artwork bursts out at us with an effect, color and optical illusion that turns our heads toward that iconic 1950s and 60s Pulp comic. 

     Litchenstein WOW'd  us with his hallmark lines and dots composition......which, according to Lawrence Alloway (1983) "were generally interpreted as a putdown of gestural Abstract Expressionism (the disparity between Lichtenstein's neat technique and the hefty swipes of impasted paint)." ~Roy Lichtenstein. Modern Masters Series. 

     Whether the appeal to Lichenstein's artwork is his style, a nostalgic romp through the 1950s and 60s by successful Baby Boomers who can afford such prices, or something entirely different, can perhaps only be answered by asking a Lichenstein collector why they made the purchase. While some art collectors purchase work based solely on the suggestion of their investment advisors, some more conscientious investors purchase comics because it reminds them of when they were kids. 

     Roy Lichenstein's paintings not only appeal to investors, but they also appeal to the general public, who pay for museum exhibitions. Curators around the globe, know this, and have been exhibited Lichenstein's artwork along side those of Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Jr., and James Rosenquist. 

     I leave it to you, the reader, to look closely at Litchenstein's work; to determine, for yourself, what it is about these comics that would cause someone to shell out $40 million dollars just to serve as their faithful custodian.

     But before you answer this question, think back to your own childhood and ask yourself if there is a special comic you would love to have as your own; a comic character you always related to; an animated friend who greeted you on Saturday mornings; a comic in the Sunday funnies you couldn't wait to get your hands on...

     Imagine looking up from your desk or computer right now and seeing that friendly reminder of who you really are deep down inside; who you were as a kid; a reminder of what makes you laugh, what inspires you to relax, and what allows your mind to wander back to the playground of your youth. 

     Lichtenstein's comics might not personally inspire you, but undeniably, their presence inspires some investors. 

     What comics, you ask, will be BIG NEWS in the years to come?  

     I guess it all comes down to who inspired us in the 1970s, and then the 80s, and then the 90s...and so forth. Each generation has their own favorite comics, and each generation eventually finds the funds for FUN! 

Big Painting #6 (1965)

Sold for $60,000 in 1970

Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen Collection, Düsseldorf

(Exhibited with major works by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and Piet Mondrian, Jackson Pollock, Frank Stella, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Paul Klee, and Andy Warhol)

"The process of painting is the subject matter in Roy Lichtenstein's Big Painting No. 6. This painting refers to the popular conception of Abstract Expressionist works: their large size broad brushstrokes, drips. But Lichtenstein's painting is all neat and clean. Since the simplification refers to printed color reproductions, Lichtenstein paints in the benday dots of the mechanical process. The affective content of an action painting is replaced by a painted image that, paradoxically, resembles an industrial product."

 ~Peter Selz, The 1960s: Painting. Art in our Times: A Pictorial History 1890 - 1980.

VIIP!

Sold for $1 million

Hammer price £ 500,000  

€758,450, $985,300

Estimate £250,000 - £350,000

Sales date 02-08-2007

Auction house: Christie's

Kiss II

Sold for $6.05 million (£3.8m)

Auction house: Christie's

Purchased by representative of Tokyo's Fujii Gallery 

on behalf of an unidentified Japanese Industralist

Happy Tears

Sold for $7.1 million

Auction house: Christies

In the Car, 1 of 2 copies

Sold for $16.2 million

Auction house: 

(Larger version: Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art)

Exhibitions: Leo Castelli Gallery (Lichtenstein's 2nd Solo exhibit,  Sept. 28 - Oct. 24,1963)

Source: Girls' Romances #78 (September 1961)

Signal Publishing Corp.

Ohhh...Alright (1964)

Sold for $42.6 million (£26.7 million)

Hammer price 38 million

Sales date Nov 2010

Auction house: Christie's

Exhibitions: Las Vegas, Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art; London, Hayward Gallery; Madrid, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; New York, Gagosian Gallery

Original source: Secret Hearts #88, June 1963

Arleigh Publishing Corp (now part of D.C. Comics)

I Can See the Whole Room!...and There's Nobody in It! (1961)

Sold for $43 million, double its estimate

Sales date 2011

Auction house: Christie's

Original source: August 6, 1961

Steve Roper cartoon

"Although Litchenstein rendered the composition primarily in black and white he added some notes of colors, such as the field of monochrome color behind the figure. He applied additional color - the flesh tone in the figure's face and hand, and the blue of the pupil - in passages of regularized red and blue dots, respectively. Those dots, of course, make reference to the mechanically printed medium from which Lichtenstein had borrowed his imagery." 

~Michael Lobel "Technology Envisioned: Lichtenstein's Monocularity."

Sleeping Girl (1964)

Sold for $44.8 million

Sales date 05-09-2007

Auction house: Sotheby's - Contemporary art sale

Exhibitions: Pasadena Art Museum, Walker Art Center, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

A new record for the US Pop Art Icon

Source: Girls' Romances edition #105 (1964)

Published by DC National Comics

Tony Abruzzo

Source: 

Fine Art Comics

The Aesthetics of Curiosity

Sitting in Curious Contemplation

Shenn

In the Postmodern world, we associate fine art with beauty, function, cultural purpose and even technique. However, art is also a form of curiosity, which means that it is always in some form or fashion about how we see ourselves and others, how we see the world, how we imagine other worlds to be, and how we perceive the forces around us. It's about how we feel inside, what we wish to convey to others about ourselves, and what we discover in ourselves. 

Fine art displays information, but it can also take us on a journey of wonderment. It goes from something we're creating to something we've created to something someone else notices, to something that catches someone else's attention. There's a certain quality to it, a je ne sais quoi that attracts us to it; an idea it expresses or a thought or feeling that arises from within us the moment we see it. 

This particularity of fine art is what I call The Aesthetics of Curiosity, that certain something that prevails upon us, that coaxes us back for another look, that convinces us we saw something more than just lines and color. 

There is a coercive influence found in finer arts that lures us back. Our reason for returning? "It's complicated" or "it's new," both of these answers are given to clarify the many conflicting theories of what fine art is, and is not. 

Perhaps we shouldn't talk about what fine art is or is not. Whatever it is, fine art is part of a larger aspect of culture: our innate curiosity. 

We want to "see" for ourselves whether or not we like a piece of artwork. We want to know what other people think so we can compare that with what we first thought about the artwork. 

In a nutshell, we seek to understand art and we are as equally curious about what other people create or think art "is" as well as what we ourselves can make or what we think art "is". 

We push ourselves, copy others, make changes, and see if we can find something new, something to fuel our curiosity. 

Despite the qualities with which the fine arts have long since been associated, fine art is more about this element of curiosity than it is any other theory we have previously put forth. 

Some comic artists, comic aficionados, and collectors of comics claim that comics should be considered as part of the fine arts because comics fuel our imagination and curiosity for the world in the same way that fine art first captured the imagination and curiosity of our predecessors. What's new to us today, wasn't conceived of before; just as what was new for our predecessors, is now ancient history for us. 

The materials may change, the artist and audience changes, society's tastes change, the objects we copy or conceive of change... but the one thing that remains - constant - is our curiosity. Herein lies the finer arts, to which comics are undeniably associated. 

EXAMPLES OF FINE ART COMICS

Depicting Curiosity

Proportions of the Head

Da Vinci (c. 1488-9)

Design for a Flying Machine

Da Vinci (c. 1488)

Study of Concave Mirrors of Differing Curvatures

Da Vinci (c. 1492) 

Vitruvian Man

Da Vinci (c. 1490)

Visit Fine Art Comics

Fine Art Comics

Visit Fine Art Comics (the blog)

The Elder Sister, 1869

William-Adolphe Bouguereau

Fine Art Cartoons refers to the epitome of aesthetic expression reached in which images convey information that forms a narrative in the mind of the viewer. Fine art cartoons are differentiated from traditional comics, which are often juxtaposed by "the arrangement of pictures or images and words to narrate a story or dramatize an idea" (Will Eisner, Comics and Sequential Art, 1985) by their beauty and meaningfulness.

WIP 

© Shenn

The purity of fine art cartoons is achieved when both meaningfulness, i.e., conveyed in relevant historical, psychological, mythological, religious, or otherwise recognized human expressions; and the highest purity of a given medium are perceived as existing in close relation or in harmony with one another. Fine art cartoons can be philosophically equated to Rousseau's highest Noble Savage merging with the highest Eurocentric views of equality, advancement, and refinement.

Marie-Antoinette

© Shenn

In Martin Heidegger's wesen (essence) from The Origin of the Work of Art, we recognize the presence of fine art cartoons, found in the questions the origin of the work of art asks us with respect to the work's essential provenance, compounded by the common understanding that springs out from and through the composition, allowing the viewer of the art to know the artist by tracing back the purity or essence of the composition to its original meaning.

Epifania

Michaelangelo

This cartoon is drawn with black chalk on 26 sheets of paper and is over two metres high. The cartoon is a final preparatory drawing on the same scale as the finished painting or other work of art. The word, cartoon, is derived from the Italian word for a large piece of paper: cartone. This is one of only two surviving cartoons by Michelangelo. 

All art forms, be they painting, sculpture, pen and ink comics, eventually reach a higher form of aesthetic expression whereby two separate, but equally pure concepts, meet in a harmonious composition. This symbiotically expressed aesthetic, conveyed in a form of artwork, is recognized as both art existing in itself while simultaneously heightened by its mutual relationship to the work.

Portrait of Doña Isabel de Requesens (1500 - 1577)

Raphael

Derrida, The Truth in Painting, stated that Kant made a distinction between the Greek terms ergon, or "work," and parergon, or "outside the work." Fine art can be described as both ergon and parergon existing parallel or harmoniously close to one another. Derrida further explained that the integrity of the work (ergon) depended on the necessary secondariness of the outside (parergon) or the context, which further solidifies the definition of fine art in relation to its highest expression in works of art.

Probable Portrait of Raphael

Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino

While the relation of cartoons to fine art might be considered MAD, a concept historically silenced by, firstly the institution of law, which designated madness as a crime, and secondly the institution of medicine, that saw madness as an illness; cartoons can indeed be examined by their "systems of thought" (Michael Moucault, French theorist, 1926 - 1984) in that one must employ archaeology to investigate the structures and transgressions, i.e., "madness" within the composition of the structure against the revealing aspects of truth that the composition epitomizes.

Notably, one of the most intriguing aspects of cartoons is their entanglement with theory. Masterful cartoon artists, like masterful fine art artists, also integrate research methods and scientific knowledge into their artistic process to such a degree that it even seems to be developing into an independent form of fine art knowledge on its own. This blurring of the lines between art and theory is where cartoons find their entrée into the world of fine artistic expression.

Self-Portrait of Shenn

© Shenn

The spectrum of that which can be substantiated under the term fine art cartoons or comics is just now beginning to be explored. The site, Fine Art Comics, is dedicated to artistic research of the subject, which is, at present, very broad and not in the least homogeneous. It ranges from the simple integration of philosophical or scientific knowledge, to the establishment of artistic research as a form of institutionalized self-examination and scientification of artistic cartoon expression and practice. For this reason, it is advisable to consider information contained herein under the term "artistic research."

Seeing Comics

Starry Eyed

© Shenn

What do we see when we look at comics? 

• Do we see the face of the artist, speaking through the colorful composition of this comic? 
• Do we see the art or the artistry speaking directly to us? 
• Do we see our own adopted social identity - contemplative, playful, pensive - reflected back to us? 
• Do we see a mere affirmation that we're looking at what is - and, by association, that which we ourselves are - popular, hip, funky, cool, badass, obscure, or refined? 
• Or do we see nothing at all? Maybe we only look to comics in an attempt to close ourselves off from a world that we find threatening, strange, annoying, exhausting, or simply dull. 

Clearly, at different times, we see all of these things when we look at comics. When we place ourselves into the comic world, we isolate ourselves; and yet, we isolate ourselves within a world of culture, expression, and individual and social meanings. And, when we attempt to encounter the other through comics, we can't help but see our own identity reflected back: I am the kind of person who likes Dilbert or Snoopy or Shenn's Contemplative Comics. When we look at comics, we see (and find) private meanings. 

Perhaps what is of greater philosophical significance here is the fact that when we look at comics, we see so much more than just comics. We see the world - and ourselves - in a whole new way!

Comics as a Social Art

I Once Saw A Girl

© Shenn

Imagine what it would be like if you could actually depict everything you saw, heard, or thought of in a comic. What do I mean by that? Think of your experience with a particular comic, perhaps one you enjoyed as a kid or came across and appreciated as an adult. Think of that moment when something in the composition caught your eye and pulled you in. What would it be like to experience the world from the perspective of comics in that way? 

Windy Day

© Shenn

It would be absolutely delightful. Engaging....and fun! The selectivity of the senses is, in part, playfully conditioned by childhood. Everybody's imagination perks up at the site of a comic. Everybody's understanding of incongruent or ironic concepts are heightened by the innocence portrayed in comics. But our senses are not just conditioned by our childhood, they are also shaped by our social interactions and the deeper significance we, as adults, apply to the world. 

Can you just "tune" out comics, pretend that they're nothing more than child's play? I can, if I try, but ever since I began exploring the philosophy of humor, these aesthetic wonders have emerged time and time again teasing my intellectual curiosity. 

Curiosity

© Shenn

Comics are shiny, colorful, ever-changing and engaging things, they fill our minds with images designed by intelligent and highly trained people, grabbing our attention with their simplicity. Yet, most of us have learned to regard this aesthetic artform as nothing other than child's play, ignoring them in adulthood, and in some cases, entirely - even when they're staring us right in the face. 

My Brother

© Shenn

In what the 17-year old artist, Shenn, continually describes as a "work in progress", is what appears to be the embers of fine art. Comics that aesthetically distinguish themselves from the other comics in the practical philosophical function they serve, namely in their subtly expressed deeper significance. 

Neko-Chan

© Shenn

To explain this - and to extend this into our world, today - consider what you see when you look into this character's eyes. In what situations do we imagine ourselves when we contemplate his gaze? Is he contemplating the beauty of a sunny day or merely ruminating on what his next course of action should be? 

Edward Elric

© Shenn

We encounter ourselves in comics. We see ourselves in the simplicity of their lines, as characters and observers, both. We see the other side of us, the childhood innocence that stays with us throughout our many transitions in adult understanding; despite the complexities of adult thought, we continue to think of ourselves as our favorite comic characters. It only stands to reason that "comics" as an aesthetic artform are another way that our encounters are conditioned, that is, another way that both limits how we find ourselves, and which, at the same time, allows us to find ourselves. 

The Rise of Comics

Colored by the Sun

© Shenn

Comics are a potent symbol of change in the way we create and consume media, one which we're just now beginning to explore in terms of deeper philosophical significance. Comic artists, like 17-year old Shennendoah "Shenn" Hollsten, have been skillfully tackling the deep questions raised by society, with a refreshingly diverse and engaging range of aesthetic styles.

Vous êtes ici 

© Shenn

Brilliant and whimsical in turn, Shenn's creations entertain, instruct, and, above all, expand the imagination. Her work demonstrates the power of disciplined thought to shed light on one of the most widespread and historically fascinating aesthetic practices. 

Boy and His Dogs

© Shenn

Recently I had the privilege of interviewing Shenn for this article and found her insight into the deeper philosophical meaning of comics tantalizing. I realized how little attention this area of study has received, if any. When I began researching the topic of comics, I confirmed to myself that very little, in terms of scholarly work, had been shared on the subject. If fact if you didn't know any better, you'd think that there were only three countries that have ever produced comics: the United States, Japan, and Europe; despite the widespread influence caricaturization of people and concepts have on every society around the world. 

Star Gazer

© Shenn

It's not so much what Shenn says in her comics, it's how she depicts thoughtfulness, contemplation, and other highly sought after emotions and experiences - by not saying anything at all. 

Had Shenn not said that "You have to look deep down into my characters' eyes to hear what they're saying", I might not have had this revelation about the deeper significance of comics and the rise of this aesthetic in the world. 

Whenever a search is conducted on nearly any topic on the Internet, invariably a comic comes up. Depicting what, at first blush, seems like nothing other than a parody or joke about a subject, the fact that there's a comic thrown into the mix indicates the range of concepts comics can convey. What's really coming through the wires here is the world's fondness for iconic images - images skillfully depicted to represent something deeper, something more than that which they appear to be, something more than "just comics". 

Bed Head

© Shenn

As I skimmed through Shenn's gallery of images (both online and offline), I realized that there was something about her work which offers an almost philosophical meditation on the many thoughts embedded within the human mind, represented by simple lines, shapes and colors. The curvature of the lines... the intensity of the colors... the potency behind the subject's gaze... all contribute to a more sublime as well as contemporary comic-human interaction that sheds more light on the comic as well as on ourselves. 

Violette

© Shenn

Every morning growing up, I read the comics in the newspaper. When I was 10-years old, my grandmother took me to our local newspaper for a meeting with the Editor in order to show him a comic strip I had been drawing after school and on weekends. No doubt influenced by my grandparents' bomb shelter (built after WWII and actively maintained during the Cold War, i.e., my childhood), I had drawn a comic called The Bomb Family. Each character's body shape was fashioned out of a little bomb: a mom, a dad, a son, a daughter, a grandma, a grandpa, an aunt, an uncle, and loads of cousins making their way through the many adventures of living in a bomb shelter. 

According to the Editor that day, had Charles Schultz not just agreed to run a strip in their paper, my own career as a comic artist might have taken off at that very moment. While I was disappointed at the time, the experience obviously stayed with me, an effect of comics most people I speak with admit to sharing.  

I'm sure you can imagine how delightful it is for me to return back to the subject of comics from the deeper perspective of my own field of study (philosophy) in order to once again enjoy that which I so  immensely enjoyed and experimented with as a kid. 

School Girl

© Shenn

Leave it to my daughter, a 17-year old school girl to bring me back to one of my favorite subjects. A talented young artist who has undeniably developed certain aesthetic proclivities and understanding that is being translated into material from which philosophers across the globe might consider in terms of its deeper philosophical significance. 

Utilizing Humor to Redefine Tragedy

Life Is Beautiful (Italian: La vita è bella) is a 1997 Italian comedy-drama film directed by and starring Roberto Benigni. Benigni plays Guido Orefice, a Jewish Italian book shop owner, who must employ his fertile imagination to shield his son from the horrors of internment in a Nazi concentration camp

இڿڰۣ

Serious gestures are associated with serious concerns or even danger, whereas humorous gestures have long since served as indicators to others that there is no present danger. 

So, what is going on inside this man's mind when he pretends to speak German, and then publicly mocks his Nazi prison guards? Surely he recognizes the danger of his actions with respect to his predicament. 

Humorous behavior, particularly in the face of danger, is more complex than someone just cracking a few jokes at what might seem like inappropriate time. To understand why someone would do such a thing we have to first consider what is going on in their mind: the sensations, perceptions, memories, thoughts, dreams, motives, emotional feelings, and other subjective experiences they are having, which would lead them to behave in a manner considered ludicrous by most people's understanding of appropriate social behavior. 

Beautifully depicted in Roberto Benigni's film is a loving father who utilizes, at great risk to his own safety, humor as a tool to shield his son from the harsh realities of their situation. More concerned with his son's emotional well-being, he turns tragedy into a game, a façade that he defiantly defends, ultimately with his own life. 

Would it not have been better to just keep quiet, secretly whispering positive or otherwise humorous messages to his son without such elaborate and risky antics? Would his son have continued to believe him had he not physically reinforced the notion that they were indeed playing a game? Did he not act in a manner he considered necessary in order to keep up the charade? Did his absurd behavior not create a pleasant appearance for his son, which, in the end, freed his son from the devastating experiences associated with the lifelong anguish and torment that would have accompanied being held against one's will? 

Our brains react to external stimuli, but they react stronger to the internal dialogues constantly defining and reshaping our sensations and perceptions. Pitted against preconceived beliefs, we behave in ways that are not always understood from the outside looking in, but rather best explained from the inside looking out. 

Speaking from an all too personal experience, I can tell you that a myriad of complex thoughts and emotions occur that cause an individual to uphold a lighthearted façade in the face of tragedy. When I was diagnosed with cancer, it was the nature of my personal belief system; my hopes, dreams, fears, and in the end, my courage that kept me from sharing the bad news with my family, from destroying their peace of mind and emotional well-being. It was my love for them that gave me the strength to defend their emotional well-being, and in the process, while largely unknown to me at the time, what ultimately resulted in defending my own. 

Presuming the worst, I quickly and quietly worked to put my legal affairs in order. Then, I quit working, estimating how long we could survive on savings before the harsh realities of economic discord interrupted our otherwise happy, stable lifestyle. Next, we had a marvelous Christmas: a magical Christmas by which all future Christmas' would be considered. Afterwards, we took off on the adventure of a lifetime, traveling to over forty countries where we all learned more about the world and ourselves in the process. 

Taking tons of photos, hoping against hope that they, at their young age, would not forget me, I gave to my children, and myself in the process, something that a serious attitude could have never given us: the poignantly powerful memories associated with having fun! 

As a result, we all experienced living in a world where the theme was joyful abundance rather than the devastating feelings associated with loss. Instead, I gave them the most beautiful recess a kid could hope to have and that a parent could hope to give their child, believing all the while that the moment recess ended, the nightmare would begin. I knew I wouldn't be there to protect them from the heartache, so instead I gave them what I thought they would need to survive it: love, appreciation, respect, encouragement, and a healthy dose of good humor.

Then something strange happened: I didn't die. 

Instead, I woke up to a new reality; one where I had allowed myself to be funny, where I had taught my children to look at otherwise negative situations and see the good; to a world where we didn't concern ourselves with obstacles without first considering their solutions; to a world where a lighthearted perspective could magically turn stress into confidence, a sensation strengthened by the healthy distance we give ourselves from our problems. 

Placing myself in the man's shoes above, I could only hope to have behaved as nobly. I would have tried, perhaps, to be more careful, slightly less willing to take risks, but then again, I'm a mother. By nature, most mothers behave more conservatively with their children than do fathers. Also, a slightly more conservative story might not have been powerful enough to convey such a poignant message.

The message that we have a choice in how we respond to tragedy. The message that we never truly know what the future will bring. The message that we have a responsibility to ourselves and others to at least try to uphold our emotional well-being in the face of extreme difficulty as well as during those little moments of frustration when we could very easily complain instead of laugh. The message that destroying our sense of well-being will not allow us to make the personal adjustments that might ultimately prevent a bad situation from escalating into a worse situation. The message that humor might not save everyone, but it might indeed be as powerful as Benigni beautifully showed it to be in this film. 

If, in the end, a little more laughter is the only thing that separates us from feeling helpless, then in my opinion, laughter is an indispensable commodity, and those who help others to laugh, indispensable contributors to the emotional well-being of a vastly growing global society that is undeniably dependent upon one another for upholding the emotional well-being and happiness of everyone. 

Dedicated to my children