Darkness Visible

An exhibition of seven artists, Darkness Visible brought together a group of artists who all use narrative figurative drawing in a manner which challenges the conventions of "fine art." Many of these artists are principally known as illustrators, cartoonists, or animators and have been actively engaged in pushing the boundaries between visual art and popular expression throughout their careers.

Cartoons have increasingly become fertile ground for both artistic expression and critical debate, because they self-consciously flaunt the distinction between representation and formal expressionism. Cartoon drawing, at its best, has value both as pure drawing in the sense of the intrinsic beauty of its line and as a device to communicate something outside of itself.

Employing the popular art mode of cartoon drawing, these artists unfolded their dark visions and subjects through varying combinations of text, multiple or single frame images, and complex, highly personal, narrative drawing styles. Gary Panter, for example, achieved enormous success for his design of Pee-Wee's Playhouse; however, this installation marked the first time the original drawings for his seminal strip, Jimbo, were shown in New York. Mark Beyer and Charles Burns, who have also achieved cult status in the work of underground comic strips, presented sections of their macabre and disturbing narratives. Williams became known by taking a traditional fine art medium, painting on canvas, and using it in a degraded and deliberately unskilled manner. Suzan Pitt's contribution was an unfinished preview of a twenty-minute animated film, Joy Street, which expanded the emotional and formal restrictions of the medium of cartoons, just as Panter, Burns, and Beyer achieved a heightened level of emotional and psychological resonance previously unseen in the medium of the comic strip.

The exhibition was accompanied by an essay by writer/curator John Carlin and an artist symposium, moderated by Carlin and Philip Yenawine, Director of Education, Museum of Modern Art.