Funnies get their due in huge art exhibition

Leaving Snoopy behind, visitors are confronted with Spiegelman’s grim “Maus” strips that portray Jews as mice and Nazis as cats during the Holocaust. The strips won the artist a Pulitzer Prize in 1992, not long after his work was included in the controversial “High and Low” exhibition at New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

More recently, Spiegelman gained acclaim for his “Trade Towers” strips, which mourned the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Also well represented is Crumb, whose “Zap Comix,” “Fritz the Cat” and other works are credited with helping bring underground comic strips to mainstream attention.

One artist who stands out for not being included is Garry Trudeau. Organizers acknowledge that leaving out the highly political “Doonesbury” creator has generated some controversy of its own.

The idea, Walker says, was to include in the second half of the exhibition contemporary artists whose work is believed to have pushed the boundaries of the art form the farthest. Those like Trudeau, who work in the mainstream medium of newspapers, were not believed to have done that, he said.

Then he quickly adds: “I don’t totally agree with that. I think there are newspaper comic artists like Garry Trudeau who have done some things that had never been done before, and who are very influential.”

But now that the comics are finally getting the respect they deserve, he says, perhaps there will be more exhibitions that will include other artists.

“One of the things that we’ve said repeatedly is that hopefully this is the beginning of a whole new wave,” Walker says.

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