CSotD: Adding just a soupçan of humor …
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PC & Pixel with a cartoon that doesn't try to do more than create a smile, and does it well.
This demonstrates a point, which is that you don't always need to think up a punchline. To start with, neither character is necessary for this gag. It would work in an empty gallery.
But the use of the character and his obvious uninvolvement in the falling of the soup can combines with the equally unexpressive security guard who is just happening upon the scene to create a much funnier cartoon than simply a fallen soup can.
There is strong potential for a "What's all this then?" encounter, but that cartoon would have been much less effective. Any dialogue, any interaction, would ruin the gag.
This is an excellent example of what I'll call "Bunny's Principle," referring to my interview with Lockhorns' creator Bunny Hoest, who talked about how, though the Lockhorns is a single panel, readers impute plot and action to it, imagining whole dialogues that never appear in the comic itself.
Just capture the right moment, and let the reader supply the rest of the action.
I cannot tell you how many really good three-panel gags I see every day, but reject for CSOTD because there was a fourth panel that ruined the joke by having characters react to the punchline.
Jack Benny could hype a punchline by simply turning to the audience. George Burns could do it by pausing his cigar halfway to his mouth. Benny and Burns worked in a medium with continuous action, however, so they had to do something. Even so, they recognized the value of shutting up.
That final panel is like the gymnast's dismount that is perfect in the air but is then ruined by a buddity-bump-bump stumble on the landing.
If the cartoon is perfect in the air, don't draw the damn landing.
Shut up and let the readers laugh.
Speaking of Andy Warhol …
Drew Friedman posts all sorts of wonderful ephemera on his Facebook page. Yesterday, he offered this:
I was being a snob the other day, dumping on people for liking "American Idol" and "Dancing with the Stars," and it occurred to me then — and is reinforced now — that there is a way of appealing to large groups of people in a way that experts need to recognize as valid.
The best example is not Warhol, who still needs to be seen in person. A number of years ago, the Musee Beaux Arts in Montreal featured a pop art exhibit, and one of the most impressive and impression-changing revelations was the sheer size of Mao.
I'm not a fan of gigantism in art and once wrote a funny but not-appreciated piece about over-sized campus art.
But there are pieces that deserve, and need, to be big — besides Mao, Dali's "Columbus Discovering America" and Gustave Caillebotte's "Paris Street, Rainy Day", for example, are nice pics in reproduction but breathtaking in person. And most people never will see them that way.
On the other hand, there are pieces like Warhol's soup cans and Brillo boxes where — even in person — maybe you've got to be more of an aficianado and the average person says, "Whaa?"
Or maybe the average person is right, that a celebration of design is not what "art" should be.
But there are designs people do like, and it's interesting to see the opposite response from the cognoscenti when the public embraces a piece.
I'm not thinking of the much-parodied "Nighthawks," because art lovers still love Nighthawks. Rather, there is something of a backlash against Robert Indiana's "Love," which was so warmly embraced by the public — including being ripped off about as often as a peeing Calvin — that there are experts who seem to have decided that, if people like it that much, it must not be art after all.
Anyway, the Warhol rejection letter is one of any number of similar examples of "What on earth were we thinking?" in which the stone that was rejected has become the foundation.
What I'd like is to see someone mount an exhibit of the stuff they DID acquire that also provokes them to ask, in retrospect, "What on earth were we thinking?"
I'd pay to see that.
Meanwhile, you can beef up your own art collection …
The Team Cul de Sac on-line auction of original art continues apace. Some of these are going to be steals, though Bill Watterson's Petey probably won't be one of them. It's over five grand as I post this.
Other pieces, however, remain at more modest levels. If you think you're more perceptive than those snobs at MOMA, step up and prove it!
Or just buy the book. Either way, you contribute to Parkinson's research.
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