Artenol_Fall_flipbook

of these images produces an ultimate meaning
beyond the expository meaning apprehended
in a step-by-step reading. Great comics derive
their most profound meanings from the dynamic
between the linear, propulsive, expository, typographical,
industrial, Apollonian order of sequence
and the compositional, reflective, global,
pre-modern, Dionysian experience of overall
composition. Comics-as-art are, in other words,
the product of the interaction between the structures
that underlie text and image.
Seen in this light, comics are everywhere in
MoMA’s collection. Artistic works of sequence
BAY WATCH
“Untitled,” by
Jan Dibbets
and Shunk-
Kender, 1971
Photos: Shunk-Kender ©
J.Paul Getty Trust. The Getty
Research Institute, Los
Angeles. (2014.R.20) Gift
of the Roy Lichtenstein
Foundation
in memory
of Harry
Shunk
and
Janos
Kender
held by the museum include many wonderful
pieces by Jennifer Bartlett. These include her
“Drawing and Painting” (1974), which in its
very title, speaks to a dual status. This installation,
consisting of 78 12x12-inch carefully arranged
and painted steel plates, performs a dual
sequence. Arranged in a triangular grid, the
piece articulates, step-by-step, the drawing of a
line in its left-to-right procession, while demonstrating
the variation and application of color
and tone in its vertical dimension.
Peter Halley’s brightly colored 1992-1994 “Cell”
prints, depict, in various permutations, the stages
of a mysterious box-like building or object overheating
and exploding, all flowing from a germinal
1992 iteration simply titled (of course) “Narrative.”
Sol Lewitt’s 37-foot-long colorful abstract
comic strip, “Wall Drawing #1144, Broken Bands
of Color in Four Directions” (2004), is currently
on permanent view on one wall in the entrance to
the museum’s film theater. The sequential linearity
of Lewitt’s piece ushers the museum visitor
from the composition-oriented space of the main
galleries to the expositional world of cinema in
the building’s lower level.
Does this sound like a bit much? Here is Lewitt
talking to Saul Ostrow in a 2003 interview
for BOMB magazine:
Serial systems and their permutations
function as a narrative that has to be understood.
People still see things as visual objects
without understanding what they are. They
don’t understand that the visual part may
be boring but it’s the narrative that’s interesting.
It can be read as a story, just as music
can be heard as form in time. The narrative
of serial art works more like music than like
literature. Words are another thing.
FALL 2015