July Heritage Auction Sorta Shaping Up! 3 3

[Rick2you2]

3 hours ago, tth2 said:

Where did you get the impression that I don't care for black and white line art?  Black and white line art can be great.  I just happen to think that none of the black and white line art used to create comics rises to that level.   

I also don't have any problem with the subject or form.  If some comic book art were rendered as well as a Norman Rockwell painting (or one of his B&W drawings), then perhaps it could be worthy of admission to a museum on its own merit, and not as part of a comic book art exhibit.  

My comments were not directed at your personal preferences. If you collect what we collect, it is a given you like black and white line art. As for Norman Rockwell’s paintings, the words that comes to my mind are treacly followed by mush. If it wasn’t glorified as the recollection of a past there never really was, I doubt it would be held in such high esteem even if his skill set is high (which it is, but not uniquely so).

Comic art is fundamentally different. First and foremost, sequential art is designed to tell, or help tell, a story. It would be more relatable to the general public if treated that way. We treat it as though we might as well take some stills from a movie.

[bluechip]

15 hours ago, tth2 said:

Comic book art will never get into a museum purely because of aesthetics.  It's just not good enough as pure art.  Comic art can't hold a candle to the skill and artistry found in art produced by completely anonymous artists for advertisements, book covers and magazine illustrations. 

If comic book art ever gets into museums, it will be because of the cultural significance of the medium, in which case it will be all about whether the art was published or not, and the significance of the art within the context of the medium.   

The first paragraph is all very subjective.   I see plenty of art in museums that I can say with strong conviction "doesn't hold a candle" to some of the best comic art.  And BTW much of the art pieces you see in museums were contracted pieces, portraits and other things, which the artist did to pay for lodging and food.   

As for whether comic art may find a place in museum because of the cultural significance of the medium I do not see how that conflates to an obsession in the future over what was a final published.   I would very happily obtain Kirby unpublished pieces for the Fantastic Four at the very steep discount your theory implies they would have to be priced at, compared, for example, to some published pieces on which Kirby's pencils were erased and replaced with Vince Colletta inks.  I would happily buy them secure in the knowledge they are much better and more significant in respect to their cultural significance, and far more likely to be something I'd enjoy seeing in a museum (and that maybe, over time, so would other people)

 

 

[Skizz]

It occurs to me that comparing a page of comics art to a piece of illustration art or advertising art is like comparing a clip from a movie (that hasn’t been sound edited or colour corrected or maybe even had the dialogue track added) to a finished music video or an advert.

Taken in that raw form, the clip will be inferior to the music video or advert. But when seen in the context of the full completed film, the clip can be far more (assuming the film itself is worthy).

And if the clip is a good representation of the overall theme of the film and works well as a unit of storytelling, that clip can even be classic work of art itself, much like the comic page.

 

Edited July 19, 2020 by Skizz

[Carlo M]

40 minutes ago, Skizz said:

It occurs to me that comparing a page of comics art to a piece of illustration art or advertising art is like comparing a clip from a movie (that hasn’t been sound edited or colour corrected or maybe even had the dialogue track added) to a finished music video or an advert.

Taken in that raw form, the clip will be inferior to the music video or advert. But when seen in the context of the full completed film, the clip can be far more (assuming the film itself is worthy).

And if the clip is a good representation of the overall theme of the film and works well as a unit of storytelling, that clip can even be classic work of art itself, much like the comic page.

 

You are definitely on to something there ....interesting comparison.  Can make you look at some interior pages under a new light. Still you need the context to appreciate them. 

[Taylor G]

The great art form of the 20th century was motion pictures.  Its great artists were people like Hitchcock and Ford.

Comic books are the poor cousin to this art form, but it shares the same visual language.

Viewed in this light, the best exemplars of this art form are the stories.

Too bad we're breaking them up and scattering them to oblivion. 

The idea that film clips will someday stand as exemplars of the motion picture art form?  Only someone immersed in this hobby would make such a claim. A film restorer like Robert Harris would find this claim laughable, if not offensive. 

Edited July 19, 2020 by Taylor G

[Rick2you2]

3 hours ago, Skizz said:

It occurs to me that comparing a page of comics art to a piece of illustration art or advertising art is like comparing a clip from a movie (that hasn’t been sound edited or colour corrected or maybe even had the dialogue track added) to a finished music video or an advert.

Taken in that raw form, the clip will be inferior to the music video or advert. But when seen in the context of the full completed film, the clip can be far more (assuming the film itself is worthy).

And if the clip is a good representation of the overall theme of the film and works well as a unit of storytelling, that clip can even be classic work of art itself, much like the comic page.

 

I certainly agree with what you are generally saying since you are following up on my above comment about comic art being sequential art, like movie clips. Let me add that, on the whole, I think this art has generally improved since the end of the Silver Age as panel pages have opened up and away from classic 6 panel layouts and scene illustrations to a more fluid story form (no, I am not tarring all artists with that brush). The old masters could be great illustrators, but were they also great story-tellers when forced to illustrate in a stiffer medium that didn’t encourage them to do so? And, why do we sometimes treat panel pages as containing a series of miniature splashes instead of an object that is recording movement? We glorify some fairly small differences in artistic styles rather than focusing on the bigger picture.

[Sharkey]

I just want to say thank you to all the people who contributed to this and threads like this - it's informative, insightful, and thought-provoking, and has lots of purdy pictures of cool art too! I always learn something from these sorts of threads, above and beyond the market and sales discussions. Kudos and appreciation to you all! 

[Rick2you2]

18 minutes ago, Taylor G said:

The great art form of the 20th century was motion pictures.  Its great artists were people like Hitchcock and Ford.

Comic books are the poor cousin to this art form, but it shares the same visual language.

Viewed in this light, the best exemplars of this art form are the stories.

Too bad we're breaking them up and scattering them to oblivion. 

The idea that film clips will someday stand as exemplars of the motion picture art form?  Only someone immersed in this hobby would make such a claim. A film restorer like Robert Harris would find this claim laughable, if not offensive. 

You mean like the scene in North by Northwest where the crop duster comes at Cary Grant? Ford is a bit tougher, but what about the famous fight scene in the Quiet Man between John Wayne and his brother-in-law, one of the greatest fight scenes of all time? So yes, film clips work, too. 
Movies are special, but I would not call comics a poor cousin. Unlike movies, the reader substantially controls the pace of the story based on his reading preferences. He can skip things he doesn’t like, or blow through them quickly, and reprioritize things he does like. Try that the next time you sit in front of the Titanic.

[grapeape]

2 minutes ago, Rick2you2 said:

You mean like the scene in North by Northwest where the crop duster comes at Cary Grant? Ford is a bit tougher, but what about the famous fight scene in the Quiet Man between John Wayne and his brother-in-law, one of the greatest fight scenes of all time? So yes, film clips work, too. 
Movies are special, but I would not call comics a poor cousin. Unlike movies, the reader substantially controls the pace of the story based on his reading preferences. He can skip things he doesn’t like, or blow through them quickly, and reprioritize things he does like. Try that the next time you sit in front of the Titanic.

Two of the best films ever!

The Quiet Man is a must watch at least once a year. This is a fun discussion.

 

[tth2]

5 hours ago, bluechip said:

I do not see how that conflates to an obsession in the future over what was a final published

It's not "in the future".  It's already the case.  An unpublished alternative version of the IH 181 cover, whether by Frazetta, Adams, Steranko, Kirby, BWS, Romita, Buscema, or whoever, will never be as highly prized by the comic OA market as the published Trimpe version.   

5 hours ago, bluechip said:

I would very happily obtain Kirby unpublished pieces for the Fantastic Four at the very steep discount your theory implies they would have to be priced at, compared, for example, to some published pieces on which Kirby's pencils were erased and replaced with Vince Colletta inks.  I would happily buy them secure in the knowledge they are much better and more significant in respect to their cultural significance, and far more likely to be something I'd enjoy seeing in a museum (and that maybe, over time, so would other people)

That's great, and you should absolutely do that.  As you say, you'll be getting art you like at a discount.  I used to say the same thing to all the slabbed collectors who complained about PLODs selling at big discounts to unrestored books--if they didn't mind buying restored books, then they should continue buying them and why were they complaining that the stigma of the different color label allowed them to buy restored books at cheaper prices? 

My post was not intended to tell people what to collect or to like.  It was simply my opinion on how comic OA is generally perceived.

[tth2]

5 hours ago, Skizz said:

It occurs to me that comparing a page of comics art to a piece of illustration art or advertising art is like comparing a clip from a movie (that hasn’t been sound edited or colour corrected or maybe even had the dialogue track added) to a finished music video or an advert.

Taken in that raw form, the clip will be inferior to the music video or advert. But when seen in the context of the full completed film, the clip can be far more (assuming the film itself is worthy).

And if the clip is a good representation of the overall theme of the film and works well as a unit of storytelling, that clip can even be classic work of art itself, much like the comic page.

That's a very good point, but I thought we were talking about published versus unpublished art.

So the better analogy would be if movie collectors collected the original negatives used to make the movie (I'm just making this up, I have no idea if such a thing exists), and people found negatives of footage that was cut during editing and never made it to the final screen version.  I would guess that similarly, the negatives from the cutting room floor footage would be less valuable than the negatives of the film that was used in the final screen version. 

(with obvious exceptions such as if the footage was cut because it showed Sophia Loren's top dropping off). 

[tth2]

1 hour ago, Taylor G said:

The idea that film clips will someday stand as exemplars of the motion picture art form?  Only someone immersed in this hobby would make such a claim. A film restorer like Robert Harris would find this claim laughable, if not offensive. 

Isn't that exactly what's happened in the animated film cel market?

[Taylor G]

 

1 hour ago, Rick2you2 said:

Movies are special, but I would not call comics a poor cousin

It took people like Truffaut and Goddard to get people to recognize that Hitchcock and Ford were not just putting out mass entertainment, but were actually creating great art.  I haven't seen much of a claim like that for comic art, certainly not at the same level of popular acceptance, in part because I think the people trying to make the claim are making the wrong claim. Instead of comparing Kirby (or Frazetta) with Degas or Van Gogh, a better comparison would be Will Eisner's work on the Spirit, where he was explicitly borrowing from the visual language of film noir.  There are plenty of other examples.  I'd like to see that argument made for comic art as an "art form."  

Let me try again with the motion picture analogy: Restoration of films consists of reconstructing it from fragments wherever they can find them.  If you look at the restored version of Cukor's A Star Is Born, for entire scenes they just use stills where all they have left of the original is the audio.

The aesthetic being promoted here is just to collect the best scenes, good enough.  Only in this hobby would anyone make such a claim.

If a film student were to say to a prof, "I haven't seen Citizen Kane but I've seen the scene where he walked in front of the mirror," he'd be advised to change his major to advertising.

Before someone says, We've still got the comics where the stories were printed, I assume people realize that comic restoration without the OA involves people like Mike Kelleher redrawing the art.

I'd just like more respect for keeping the stories intact, because in the end it's the only way this art form will be preserved for posterity. Some of it will be preserved in Dunbier's artists editions, but my understanding is that he's now run out of complete stories.  The recent Byrne and Cockrum AEs contain no complete stories because he couldn't find any. 

It was gratifying to see the Murphy Anderson Hawkman stories sold whole by his family, rather than breaking them up as most people would for $$$.  It was disappointing to see some people complain that the stories should have been broken up so they could get a page they can afford.  Maybe the family thought that preserving the art form was more important than satisfying someone's desire for a nostalgic memento.  Buy the comic book if that's what you want.  

[bluechip]

3 hours ago, tth2 said:

It's not "in the future".  It's already the case.  

That's great, and you should absolutely do that.  As you say, you'll be getting art you like at a discount.  I used to say the same thing to all the slabbed collectors who complained about PLODs selling at big discounts to unrestored books

I was talking about the future being different from the present.  Just as you were.  And your point was that comic OA would be in museums in the future, based largely it not entirely on its cultural significance.  And in such cases there is much value placed on artifacts which show the "process" which led to cultural icons' creation.   Dickens' scrawled out notes for "A Christmas Carol" are in a museum, despite being barely legible and with ink blots and sections changed and words crossed out, etc -- which makes it all the more interesting to museum goers and historians.  The original press proof for the book... not so much interest.  Same    

As for the comparison to restored books.   Nobody to my knowledge has ever claimed a restored book that appears near mint should be worth as much as, let alone more than, an unrestored near mint copy.   And neither book is a one of a kind item.  So there is no correlation whatsoever, except they both have the word "comic" in them and some people collect both.

 

Edited July 20, 2020 by bluechip

[tth2]

Completely missing my points, but okay.

[batman_fan]

Original art to this cover is coming up In the September HA auction.  May be some interest in it.

[exitmusicblue]

6 minutes ago, batman_fan said:

Original art to this cover is coming up In the September HA auction.  May be some interest in it.

Holy crappola, that's a grail...

[batman_fan]

1 minute ago, exitmusicblue said:

Holy crappola, that's a grail...

 

2 minutes ago, exitmusicblue said:

Holy crappola, that's a grail...

Seems like something that would end up in Jim Halperin's collection

[sfilosa]

I saw that and I have seen that comic issue goes for a lot. What is the relevance to that issue?

[exitmusicblue]

7 minutes ago, sfilosa said:

I saw that and I have seen that comic issue goes for a lot. What is the relevance to that issue?

Used as a Misfits album cover.  There are a good number of Harvey PCH classic covers; this is the top dawg.