Rebel Visions: The Underground Comix Revolution 1963-1972

At a time when a museum like the Guggenheim is reduced--as of this writing literally--to emptying the paintings from its walls to make "room" for a new exhibit of essentially next to nothing...a couple lying on the floor simulating a kiss and a few actors hired to ask long-suffering museum "viewers" annoyingly trite questions, such as "what is progress?" one begins to wonder what art historians of the future will think of late 20th century/early 21st century "art." What will become emblematic of our times when our times are long over? What will remain? Will nothing remain? I mean, you have to have something to see, right? "Rebel Visions" makes a strong case without so much as raising the issue that what might very well be considered the most important art of our age was that being produced in the underground comix movement of the late 60s/early 70s, and which still continues in various incarnations today. As fine art moved from distortion to abstraction to minimalism to conceptualism to what some might argue is little more than flim-flam chicanery cloaked in elitist pseudointellectual gobbledygook, the disdained creators of such work as filled the pages of Zap! and Young Lust and Raw, to mention just a few, might in the meantime actually have been producing the "real" fine art of our time. As the so-called "real" artists turned their back and raised their noses at mere "illustration," as they disdained the world of things in their canvases, and eventually disdained even the canvases themselves, as they "thought" up concepts instead of making images, and as they jockeyed for notoriety and government grants and invitations at all the swell parties, guys like R. Crumb, Robert Williams, S. Clay Wilson, Rick Griffin, and Art Spiegelman were drawing--yes, actually drawing--and the stuff they were drawing directly reflected and directly influenced the culture of late 20th century America. This shouldn't be all that surprising insofar as comic book elements made their way into the paintings of Warhol, Lichtenstein, and a whole bunch of other established fine art types. And before that you've got George Grosz and Max Beckmann. Take a look at their works and tell me you cant see them as akin to comic book panels. While the Julian Schnabels of the world party, the folks in the underground comix movement were actually doing the grunt work, walking the walk, and usually doing it without much appreciation and even less financial reward. Ach! Listen to me blabbering on about art history like EH Gombrich! I know nothing about it--what I know about art history couldn't fill an Idiot's Guide. What I do know is that I like blobs of paint thrown all over canvases as much as anyone; I swoon over string, nails, crushed cigarettes, dirt, poop, yesterday's lunch, and whatever else spray-painted over and glued onto billboards of plywood just as much as any art critic at the New York Times. I'll even nod appreciatively and chuckle knowingly along with the rest of th

I've seen several of these books and I think this is the best of the lot. I was very impressed with the total vision of the book.

If you don't know what a comix is, maybe you should go on e-bay and buy yourself a copy of ZAP. While you still can. For those who are familiar with underground comic books, Patrick Rosenkranz has provided an amazing amount of background information about the creators and the times that produced what could be viewed as the trashiest and/or the most significant cultural artifacts of the second half of the 20th Century. Unlike previous histories and articles that simply reprint the more or less shocking comic pages and regurgitate the same old information, misinformation and opinions about the hippies and their graphic art, Rebel Visions is based on Mr. Rosenkranz own interviews and correspondence with the first wave of underground comix creators. In lengthy footnoted quotes, the artist/writers are finally allowed to tell their own strange and wonderful stories. And by following the stories organized in yearly chapters, I cames to understand something of the birth, bloom and demise of a phenomena that never made the transition to mainstream product or the 1980s. Rebel Visions also presents a significant amount of previously unpublished art for the connoisseur as well as an exhaustive index for the scholar.A word of warning: these comic books are not, and never were, intended for children. Most of the comix displayed and discussed in Rebel Visions were all about breaking taboos, about freedom of expression in the face of a repressive mainstream culture and not about tittilation. That came later. If you're interested in cartoons, graphic art, the counter culture, art, politics, the sixties, propaganda, freedom and censorship, as well as the usual sex, drugs and war, check it out.