Laura and Gary Dumm’s Another Dumm Art Show? is a
cartoonist’s take on that age-old futile question: What Is Art? But in
their version — vividly incarnated in Gary’s brightly colored
acrylic-on-canvas “Popeye vs. Van Gogh”— the question becomes:
What Is Fine Art?
The Dumms — he working with line, she with color — are a
comic-art duo best known for their work with American Splendor creator Harvey Pekar. But, as this exhibit shows, that’s just a small
part of their output.
Laura, whose color sense livens much of Gary’s comic-book work, also
explores color in her own recent paintings. Several pieces from 1985
— a stylized self-portrait, a painting of Andy Warhol that
reflects his use of repeated images of famous people portraiture and a
portrait of Alfred Hitchcock that incorporate stills from his films
— seem to be here to show her artistic evolution. But most of her
works are wildly colorful and geometrically detailed cat portraits. The
repeated patterns within each painting resemble quilts in the way they
build patterns out of patterns. For example, in one painting, a cat’s
jowls are rendered in peace signs and squiggly lines, his forehead in
herringbone and his ears with a matrix of pink hearts — all set
against a paisley backdrop. Her juxtaposition of color and pattern
doesn’t strive for illusion the way op art does, but it has a similar
eye-popping quality.
Most of Gary’s works here are from his comic-book art, beginning
with the original line art and a movie-prop print of the first
American Splendor comic. There’s also a 2007 Life of the
Dead comic that delights in ample zombie gore. But the most
engaging of Gary’s works are his graphic biographies. There are several
life stories of musicians that ran in Music Makers Rag, including 2008’s “Bishop Dready Manning,” and “Drink Small the Blues
Doctor” from 2007, for which he did both story and pictures. They’re
engaging, informative and oozing with respect for their subjects.
Gary and Laura’s pictures could hardly be more visually different
from each other: His have depth of perspective, and the organic quality
of his lines helps to create the personalities of his characters and
the mood of his scenes. Hers, on the other hand, are about as abstract
as representational work can be. The cats are two-dimensional, and the
pictures themselves are all about color and pattern. Nonetheless, each
is accompanied by a photo of an actual cat with biographical
information.
Those accompanying photos and cat bios point to what the Dumms’
respective works have in common: They are about something larger than
the image itself. In Gary’s case, it’s musicians and politics (a
cartoon marks the death of the U.S. middle class with a gigantic
memorial sculpture in China). In Laura’s case, it’s her concern for the
well-being of cats. Each of those cat photos is of a stray she rescued
and gave a home.
As for that nagging question about whether any of this is “fine”
art, our advice is not to worry about it. Just enjoy the pictures.
This article appears in Oct 21-27, 2009.
whatever your take on their art is, I appreciate it and enjoy it.
Check it out and decide for your self.
i think their work is fantastic !