Comics are one of the most effective forms of art.
The most important part of all art is communication. It's often overlooked in favour of “meaning” but without the ability to effectively communicate that meaning, the meaning becomes meaningless. Concepts and manifestos are utterly inadequate because they usually become detached from the art and even if they don't most still require a four year degree and volumes of reading to be able to properly decipher. If the meaning is not inherent and in some way relatable it may as well not be there and the art fails. Comics typically overcome these issues because of their inherent advantages. Does this make them “good art”? Of course not, that depends entirely on the individual work, but when they ARE good they can be exceptional.

Modernism was an early 20th century umbrella movement that encompassed a lot of change in the art world but mainly it's characterised by the move away from traditional representation art (mainly 2d visual art and sculpture), towards abstraction, non-representation, a rejection of the “old”, incorporating different media, and non-European “primitivism” (yes it was racist but they were trying to be inclusive). It signalled a move toward conceptualism where the art had no connection to the real world and the art itself wasn't important, only the concept it was trying to express. Modernism was very much geared towards specific meanings that were more and more impenetrable and indecipherable to ordinary people. In a way Modernism is the art of the art-aristocracy: it is not for common people.

The reaction to it in the late 20th century was Post-Modernism. Post-Modernism typically rejects specific, inherent meaning in favour of creating a dialogue with the audience. The art takes into account that every viewer will bring along a different cultural experience so that meaning is fluid and based on context (within limits; it wasn't infinite). It was also very accepting of different forms: unlike Modernism, Post-Modernism doesn't reject the old but collects, reinterprets it and incorporates it, so modernist works could be sucked into it and re-used as part of it, as could old representational art, commercial art, and art from different cultures around the world without the stigma of “primitivism”. This was art for the common person.

However, Post-Modernism still had the same issues with communication: if meaning is fluid and based on the viewer then there's a danger it won't connect at all or have any more meaning than a regular object and in that case there was no point in producing the art in the first place. Unfortunately modernism had more than enough old holdouts (among artists, critics, patrons, lecturers, collectors…), who persisted in preaching obscurity of specific meaning so that a part of Post-Modernist art has always been plagued by people with cryptic and ridiculous manifestos… But then we have comics.

Comics as a from are an amazing duet between written and visual communication. Unlike performance pieces like dance, plays, or movies and TV they can deliver highly complex stories and information by the action of only a single person and that information can persist and be easily transmitted down through the decades, and even centuries and millennia entirely their own without any further human intervention! As art pieces, comics have always been extremely effective at communicating meaning, more than any other from. Should we consider comics “Fine art” and comic creators as “Fine artists”? I would argue that we should, whether fine art was the intent of the creator or not, and conversely, artists who create work which fails to make a meaningful connection to the viewer should not be considered fine artists. Both they and their work should be ignored or relegated to the incestuous collector and art grant comity community to wither in obscurity.

Culture is enriched when it can be understood, when it welcomes people to take part in it, and when it persists and grows. Comics are a major part of that.



~Ozoneocean Friday rant



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