Nice Art: Twenty Years of Conan Bumps by Kevin Frank

Conan O'Brien, by Conan O'Brien

For about two weeks now Conan O'Brien has been celebrating twenty years on the air, showing best-of clips from all three iterations of Conan's long-running late night franchise. Through next week on TeamCoco.com they are also hosting a slew of classic Conan clips, including a significant amount of material from his many years at NBC. As a huge Conan fan from almost the beginning, watching these clips again has been a genuine thrill; so many memories, so many feels, as the kids say.

One of the niftier things currently up is a full gallery of bumps (title cards) from the entire history of the show by artist and designer Kevin Frank. Over the course of the series, Frank designed hundreds of clever, funny, and even striking images that weave the peculiar Conan iconography into well-known pieces of art, historical images and pop culture memes before meme was a word.

Some of the best, of course, were Frank's use of popular and obscure comic imagery. Here are four of his killer comic inspired Conan designs:

I love the more obscure Chris Ware references, especially in the final image. If you weren't familiar with Ware's work, it would be just a cute little sequential drawing of Conan and guests; knowing Ware's work and styles adds a distinct punch to the image.

Frank created hundreds of these images, showing a chameleon like ability to seamlessly absorb and subvert dozens of different artists', photographers' and designers' styles. Many, many more Frank-designed bumps are online at TeamCoco.com/Conan20 through November 15. For more on Kevin Frank, visit http://kevinfrankpaintings.com

Opening Night at the Jack Kirby Pop-Up Museum [The Beat]

This article was originally published Monday on The Beat.

As Rand Hoppe, founder and Director of the Jack Kirby Museum told me tonight, "Jack Kirby hated the Lower East Side." Kirby would tell World War II stories and talk about the creation of his art all day, but when it came to the L.E.S., all he wanted to do was get the hell out. The Lower East Side of Manhattan was a very different place in Kirby's youth, and the neighborhood has had more than its share of ups and downs in the nigh-Century since the King was born. However, it is not irony, but Kirby-cosmic kismet that as part of the neighborhood's recent resurgence, her greatest son found a spotlight here. As part of the Kickstarter-funded Made In The Lower East Side's Storefront Transformer Project, the Jack Kirby Museum has been given a storefront "pop-up" gallery for this week only, dubbed Prototype: Alpha, the opening of which was Monday Night.

A pretty decent crowd of supporters, NYC comic professionals, and a few curious onlookers, braved the chilly autumn evening to attend the opening-night festivities at the gallery tucked into a storefront at the base of the Williamsburg Bridge. It's a tiny space, put together quickly but efficiently by the Kirby Museum's small band of organizers, specifically Hoppe and Museum secretary and digital guru Tom Kraft. As Kraft told me, everything Hoppe and Kraft and the other museum supporters do is entirely voluntary and largely out-of-pocket, a true labor of love.

To date, the non-profit Kirby Museum, which has been in constant development since 2005, has not had a physical space to exhibit. This temporary "pop-up" space is the Museum's chance to show what it can do, raise awareness for Kirby and the Museum, and to raise funds to someday find a permanent home. That is still some ways off, though. There are few permanent comic museums in the United States, and the costs of finding and setting up a permanent space are enormous. But if there is any significant American artist who deserves it, Kirby's the one. And it is evident that Hoppe, Kraft and crew are the ones to someday achieve this.

Funding is not the only hurdle to overcome, of course. The biggest is the availability of original art to display. It's no secret that one of the great tragedies of Kirby's career was the scattering and destruction of so many of his original pieces. What remains is in the hands of collectors spread across the world. But the folks at the Kirby Museum, at least in this pop-up exhibition, have come up with a pretty decent compromise. While the amount of physical art in the Museum's possession is small, their digital holdings are enormous - to date, they have full-color, full-page high definition scans of over three thousand Kirby pages, plus five thousand more scans of copies. For this exhibit, the museum has produced high quality prints of some key pieces in their archive.

If anyone might be disappointed in the concept of looking at a "copy," they need only look at the quality of work produced in IDW's extraordinary Artist Editions as an example of the work displayed this week. By going to prints, it allows the Museum to display important pieces at full-size with no loss in visual quality. Looking at the pieces on display this week, including some Fantastic Four pin-ups, about a dozen pages from Silver Age Marvel and a handful of DC material, if you didn't know they were prints you'd think they were the real thing. And as it is massively unlikely that you will ever be in the same room as original Kirby art, seeing these full-size prints, with the white-out and corrections and Kirby's extensive marginalia, is still pretty thrilling.

There is just a small handful of pieces on display, but there is also a pretty killer oversized print of trippy Kirby painting, some copies of pencils of the one story he did about his youth, and a small piece connecting Kirby to the Lower East Side, replete with census records and classic photos. The big windows to the street feature a glorious, massive Silver Surfer drawing, enticing you to come in.

Far from being a staid, dry exhibit, the Museum actually encourages hands-on exploration of Kirby's art. You can get as close as you want to the prints, and even flip some of them between the finished comic image, Kirby's full page art, and copies of his pencils. There are iPads presented to explore just a small fraction of the Museum's digital holdings. The potential for interactivity with this technology as we can see right now in museums across the world is immense.

Hoppe, who has very clearly made it his life's mission to spread the Gospel of Kirby, was very pleased by the success of Monday Night's inaugural turnout. There will also be a couple of fascinating talks given at the site later this week. A highlight looks to be "Ya’akov Kurtzberg – King of Comics," a lecture from Arlen Schumer. Schumer is known for his engaging and entertaining lectures, and if his enthusiasm Monday night was any indication, it looks like it will be a lot of fun. Also available are a small selection of Kirby books and t-shirts donated to the Museum for this event by Two Morrows, Fantagraphics, Arlen Schumer, and local NYC retailers Forbidden Planet and JHU Comic Books. (Perfunctory conflict notice, I worked for JHU for about six years until last week.)

As kind-of a full-scale mock-up of the possible, the exhibit is very effective. But tiny. Very tiny. Even taking your time, which you should do, it will take less than ten minutes to peruse the offerings. But that is all part of this exhibit's importance. This isn't the Museum but what the Museum could be. This is a What If in its purest form. What If there was a museum dedicated to one of American art's most important figures? What If we could celebrate his achievements and his seismic cultural contributions in an accessible, interactive way? What If The King had a Throne? This exhibit isn't a dream given form, but a dream given the notice it deserves. This is the first baby step in the mountain that will need to be climbed, but an important step nonetheless. And it is a good example of the work being done diligently by the Museum to archive Kirby's artistic legacy, and to spread the word on Kirby.

The Jack Kirby Museum's Prototype Alpha pop-up installation is at 178 Delancey Street in Manhattan through November 10th. Admission is free with a suggested donation of $2. For more on the Jack Kirby Museum and Research Center, visit http://kirbymuseum.org/ 

The Bayeux Tapestry: The 1000 Year Old Proto-Comic of the Norman Conquest

Narrative art has existed for dozens of centuries and early in Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud details several early narrative pictorial works, which tended to be histories or religious in nature. While there is no straight-line connection between these works and the modern conception of comics - which came from the centuries-old political cartoon and Randolphe Topffer's seismic innovations of sequential narrative art in the 1820s - one such work, The Bayeux Tapestry from circa 1077 CE, deserves wider attention as a stunning proto-comic hundreds of years ahead of its time.

Scene 38, "Here Duke William in a great fleet crossed the sea"

The two most remarkable things about The Bayeux Tapestry that jump out right away are its monumental nature and its level of preservation despite its age. An embroidered cloth of about 20 inches wide and 225 feet long, it has survived in relatively pristine condition despite the countless brutal wars and political upheavals that racked its home country of France for centuries. The other striking features about the Tapestry (which is not an actual tapestry) is the stunning artistry and craftsmanship of its production, and the extraordinary clarity of its sequential narrative.

L to R: Scene 44, brothers Odo, William I and Robert
Scene 32, "These people marvel at the star" (The Star is Haley's Comet)
Scene 55, The stunning moment during the Battle of Hastings where William shows he is still alive

Possibly designed by Scolland, a St. Augustine monk, commissioned by Odo, Earl of Kent, Bishop of Bayeux in the North of France, and de facto regent of England, the Bayeux Tapestry chronicles the recently completed Norman Conquest of England by Odo's half-brother, William the Conqueror. In the mid part of the first century of the new millennium, England and her new King, Harold II, found itself racked by Viking invasions in the North and designs on the throne from French forces in the south. William, The Duke of Normandy, had a tangential claim to the throne and invaded England in 1066, defeating Harold's forces and killing Harold in the Battle of Hastings that October. The Norman Conquest and the reign of William I and his successors resulted in the societal, political, judicial and linguistic transmogrification of England, forever changing the course of Western Civilization.

Scene 51, "Here Duke William speaks to his knights to prepare themselves manfully and wisely for the battle against the army of the English"

The Tapestry is a remarkable primary political and historical document. Reading left-to-right, without panels but told in one long continuous narrative with scenes separated by stylized fauna, the Tapestry features a detailed history of the events leading up to and through William I's conquest. (As it was produced in the middle of William's reign it is slightly propagandist in parts but surprisingly neutral for most of its narrative.) Featuring exquisitely detailed figure work and frequent captions in slightly Anglicized Latin (the tituli), the work is a remarkable documentary of medieval history, culture, and warfare. The artistry is breathtaking. The craftspeople who produced the Tapestry used rich colors and fine stitching of wool on linen, telling the main story down the middle of the Tapestry. The borders of the Tapestry feature smaller illustrations that sometimes compliment the main action of the center of the piece, sometimes just illustrative, but consistently remarkable.

Scene 53, The Battle of Hastings in all its violence; "Here English and French fell at the same time in battle."

It's hard not to see the parallels with the forms of narrative art that would come centuries later, mainly that which is closest to my heart, comics. Looking at the Tapestry, I am continuously struck by the level of detail and the power of the images. From the scale of the combatant armies, the violence of the battles, the detail in clothing and animals and armor, and even the small details like quiet meals on the eve of battle. It is a remarkable and stunning work of art, historically and aesthetically significant.  It uses the intuitive language of comics that would be developed centuries later to stand on its own as one of Western Civilization's most important works of art.

The entire Tapestry, via Wikimedia Commons
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The Bayeux Tapestry can be seen at the Musée de la Tapisserie de Bayeux, in Bayeux, France. Or, you can just look at it in many, many places on the internet. I highly recommend medievalists.net/2009/06/11/the-bayeux-tapestry/, which (like the Wikipedia article on the Tapestry) is an excellent overview with many links to online resources for further study.

An Embarrassment of Riches: El Anatsui and John Singer Sargent at the Brooklyn Museum

I found myself at the Brooklyn Museum tonight. I say "found myself" as I never really plan to visit the Museum, I usually just kind of show up if I'm near by and go in on a whim if it's still open. Even if there's nothing really new to look at my favorite pieces are always worth revisiting, and I really am a sucker for the Luce Center for American Art on the fifth floor. The Brooklyn Museum is a remarkable facility, but very often large chunks are usually closed off either for art installations or for the extensive renovations the museum has undergone in the past few years. It's worth it though, especially when you visit and are presented with remarkable exhibits you haven't seen before, which is what happened this evening.

Just a small bit of the massive Sargent Watercolor exhibit

After working my way to the fourth floor I went towards Judy Chicago's always visitable The Dinner Party, which has a fascinating new exhibit ringing it, Workt by Hand: Hidden Labor and Historical Quilts.¹ Then, through a set of doors and whoosh - a massive exhibit, an entire wing of the Museum, dedicated to one type of work from one prolific artist: John Singer Sargent Watercolors ² is a gargantuan exhibit of over 100 paintings from a titan of American art. In his life Sargent produced thousands of watercolors, but his legacy is largely held to be in his oil portraiture. The exhibition cogently makes the argument that not only was Singer's watercolors a vital and important part of his creative output but that he was undeniably an unparalleled master of the medium.

John Singer Sargent's Bedouins, 1906

The watercolors on display here are from two collections, one owned by the Brooklyn Museum and the other owned by the Museum of Fine Art in Boston, both purchased from the artist en masse at the beginning of the twentieth century. The paintings show a wide range of subject matter from the portraits that he is best known for to studies of architecture and nature that range from life-like detail to abstract impressionism. The broad range of subject matter and style show his mastery of the form. There is historical context for most of the works, showing the remarkable lengths Sargent would go to to produce his work, always painting from life, almost to the level of being a documentarian in his paintings of a quarry at work in Italy or of his remarkable studies of Bedouins in Syria.

Process junkies will have a field-day here. The Brooklyn and Boston Museums went to great lengths in producing this exhibit, doing (and presenting here) advanced research into the paintings including advanced microscopy, x-ray fluorescence, infrared imaging and a lot more. There are photographic comparisons for some pieces, mini-documentaries on Sargent's processes from the types of paints used to how he accomplished what he did, and even a video presentation of a full-on attempt at recreating one of his works, going into great detail all of the things that make his watercolors special. And these are special watercolors in their broad range of style and subject matter, and this exhibit is a special one indeed, containing dozens upon dozens of his watercolors and even some of his more well-known oil paintings for good measure.

So after spending a good 90 minutes with Sargent, I managed to tear myself away to go up to the fifth floor and quickly made my way towards the Cantor and Seaver Galleries which usually have some pretty excellent exhibits. I wasn't expecting to get my mind blown but I'm pretty sure that Gravity and Grace: Monumental Works by El Anatsui ³ left bits of my consciousness strewn across nearby Crown Heights and the Botanical Gardens.

Al Anatsui's Peak (as displayed at the Brooklyn Museum)

El Anatsui is a Ghanian/Nigerian artist and educator who exploded onto the international scene six years ago with his massive and complex, interpretive metalworks. Defying any national or racial or gender or frankly artistic label, Al Anatsui's astonishing sculptures utilize recycled and found objects, woven together into unique and malleable abstract pieces. From a distance his extraordinary tapestries appear to be multifaceted fabrics of shiny silvers and reds and gold. But walk up close and you will see that these monumental... somethings, are made of bottlecaps and tins and aluminum strips from cans and liquor bottles. Both El Anatsui's chosen medium and output are completely unique.

Monumental doesn't scratch the surface of what El Anatsui achieves and what is on display in this exhibit. The title piece, Gravity and Grace,⁴ is 12 feet high and nearly forty feet long - utilizing tens of thousands of strips of aluminum woven together with copper wire by dozens of workers over weeks into a building-sized blanket - flowing and undulating like a gossamer sheet on a wall. The more you consider his tapestries, the more detail you see and the more you realize how revolutionary this work is, how much it simply defies.

And beyond the huge blanket-like, painting-like, sculpure-like tapestries are his "sculptures" which are always tailored and tweaked by the artist to fit the space provided, or perhaps to become something different based on the artist's always changing vision. Peak, above, left me transfixed, stunned. Using woven tin lids, El Anatsui positioned the work as it's displayed at the Brooklyn Museum into an undulating, shifting series of waves, of tendrils, like something reaching out, dancing up, up, waving. That he created this using tin lids, salvaged, recycled, that the piece is never the same between locations and time, adds to its unique power.

Gli (Wall) by El Anatsui, 2010

Making metal seem like something it is not is the key to El Anatsui's genius. The only stiff, unchanging pieces on display are a series of massive, apparent papier-mache sculptures representing bags. The closer you get, and you see they are made from newspapers. And then you get closer and you see they weren't made from newspapers, but discarded newspaper printing plates, warped and woven to look like papier-mache. I guarantee you've never seen or experienced anything like El Anatsui's art. Each work is evocative and unique and powerful in their own ways. The first thing you see when you enter the exhibit is the piece above, Gli (Wall), a startlingly translucent and airy blanket hung from the museum's dome some three stories up. As you approach it, you see that it is strips of aluminum, rolled into circles and connected with copper wire to the circles around it, like a giant piece of chain-mail. It announces a bold new vision and a bold new type of art from a bracingly unique voice.

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Both the comprehensiveness of the Sargent retrospective and the sheer, seismic cultural importance of the El Anatsui exhibit represent sterling examples of The Brooklyn Museum's role as one of this great city's premier artistic institutions. I am going to pull out an old cliche here, for which I apologize, but you need to run, not walk to see these exhibits. (Hell, teleport if you need to.)

John Singer Sargent Watercolors is a presentation of the Brooklyn Museum and The Boston Museum of Fine Arts produced with the support of a ton of different foundations. It is on display at the Brooklyn Museum through July 28, and will be on display at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts October 13 through January 20. Gravity and Grace: Monumental Works by El Anatsui is originally a production of the Akron Art Museum, presented at the Brooklyn Museum with the support of grants from the Knight Foundation, the Broad Art Foundation, and Christie's. It is on display at the Brooklyn Museum through August 4. For more, go to brooklynmuseum.org