Arf Museum [Paperback]

Craig Yoe (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 17, 2006

150 years of great cartooning under one cover.

Arf Museum explores the unholy marriage of art and comics in a stunning array of rare masterpieces, guaranteed to make you "pop-eyed!" With 120 large-format and colorful pages, Arf is a treat for the senses, encompassing a rich treasure trove of images spanning the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. This iconoclastic tome showcases the gamut of artists, from celebrated innovators to forgotten geniuses.

Featured in this volume: Ten unpublished early 20th century paintings of "the Yellow Kid" by his creator, Richard Felton Outcault; Pablo Picasso's secret cartoon past is revealed; 1950s girlie cartoonist Reamer Keller's never-before-seen banned cartoons; the Gasoline Alley gang, Barney Google, Polly and Her Pals, The Addams Family, and Nancy take a trip to the art museum; "Kink Kong," a section spotlighting ape figures and damsels in distress, from World War I propaganda to the 1933 King Kong movie to "jungle" comic books of the 1940s to present day; contemporary art rebel Coop introduces a section of devilish cartoons by Art Young, the 1920's Commie cartoonist tried for treason; an examination of Rube Goldberg's foray into modern art via his drawings of modernist sculptures that playfully lambaste the beginnings of Modern Art; and a rare and hilarious Goldberg essay from the 1930s, titled "I Am Now A Modern Artist".

Arf Museum has all of this and more, including cartoons by Art Spiegelman, Patrick "Mutts" McDonnell, Ronald Searle, Dan DeCarlo, Gene Deitch, T.S. Sullivant, Maurice Henri and pin-up artist Gil Elvgren. Arf is edited by Craig Yoe, formerly the Creative Director and Vice-President/General Manager of the Muppets and a recipient of many awards, including the Gold Medal from the Society of Illustrators and the Eisner Award. Illustrated throughout in full color and black-and-white

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Having curated actual museum shows, cartoonist/designer Yoe turns to the print medium to exhibit little known cartoon art. Appropriately, the book opens with cartoons about fine art museums by Charles Addams, Chester Gould, Cliff Sterrett and others. Some of these works, like Frank King's, demonstrate links between cartooning and "high" art. Others, including an essay by Rube Goldberg, voice a populist disdain for modern art and art critics. In the wake of the King Kong remake, Yoe presents works pairing apes and women, running a gamut from horror to simple titillation, such as photos of Bettie Page with guys in literal monkey suits. A segment on tattooing includes an EC-style horror tale written, surprisingly, by Stan Lee. In the book's most extraordinary works, 19th-century cartoonist Charles Bennett transforms animals into humans through a succession of images that Yoe insightfully compares to CGI "morphing" effects. Other highlights are remarkable, previously unpublished color paintings by Richard Outcault of the Yellow Kid, American comics' first iconic character. The book concludes with an examination of Picasso's interest in the comics. Lavishly illustrated, this survey of the long history of pop art entertains with a succession of bold, unexpected images. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Yoe continues the exploration of "the unholy marriage of art and comics" that began in Modern Arf (2005). Among the cartoon artifacts he showcases here are 10 hitherto--unpublished early 1900s paintings of the Yellow Kid by newspaper-strip-pioneer Richard Felton Outcault, a selection of hell-themed pieces by socialist cartoonist Art Young, vintage girlie cartoons by forgotten magazine cartoonist Reamer Heller, ape-themed cartoons featuring King Kong and other simians, and wacky drawings of modernist sculpture as well as a snide assessment of modern art by Rube Goldberg. In the 22 pages preceding the title page, museumgoers Nancy and Sluggo, Gasoline Alley's Skeezix, Barney Google, and other comic-strip characters grapple with high culture. A selection of sequential drawings--comic strips, essentially--by Picasso leads into examples of cartoonists including Art Spiegelman lampooning cubism. The touring museum exhibition Masters of American Comics has recently drawn large crowds to see original art by Charles^B Schulz, R. Crumb, and other cartoonists, so consider Yoe's juxtapositioning of high and low another manifestation of the cultural zeitgeist. Gordon Flagg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 120 pages
• Publisher: Fantagraphics Books; 1 edition (July 17, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1560977329
• ISBN-13: 978-1560977322
• Product Dimensions: 12 x 8.9 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #954,660 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Vice magazine calls Craig Yoe the "Indiana Jones of comics historians." Publishers Weekly says he's the "archivist of the ridiculous and sublime" and calls his work "brilliant." The Onion calls him "the celebrated designer." The Library Journal, "a comics guru." BoingBoing hails him "a fine cartoonist and a comic book historian of the first water." Yoe was Creative Director/Vice President/General Manager of Jim Henson's Muppets, and a Creative Director at Nickelodeon and Disney. Craig has won an Eisner Award and the Gold Medal from the Society of Illustrators.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Tour Through Comics History With A Modern Twist, June 22, 2006

By 

David Burd (East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Arf Museum (Paperback)

Picking up where he left off in Modern Arf, Craig Yoe has once again assembled a surprising collection of material that pays off the tag line The Unholy Marriage of Art + Comics. And "surprising" is the right word for it, especially for a comics fan as jaded as me. I've been reading comics for more than 40 years and I've been an avid collector for nearly as long, so I thought I'd seen it all. Arf Museum surprises on nearly every page with comics I haven't seen before. Sometimes it's work by a cartoonist I don't know, such as the hellish scenarios of Art Young or the Darwinian evolutions of Charles Bennett. Other times it's work I haven't seen by cartoonists I know well. Who knew that Chester Gould did humor strips, or that Rube Goldberg was such a funny writer in addition to being a cartoonist, or that Mort Walker once met Roy Lichtenstein? I particularly liked the piece on Reamer Keller, a man whose work looks familiar but whose name I never knew. There's even a collection of never-before-published color paintings of the Yellow Kid, including the cover of the very first comic book. Talk about historical significance! Yoe balances this historical material with plenty of new work - including a funny four-page strip of his own - which puts everything in a contemporary context. In fact, Yoe keeps Arf up-to-the-minute with a blog that's updated on an almost daily basis. http://arflovers.com/

Two overall themes are present in this volume, tattoos and cubism. Cartoons about tattoos have been around a long time and they're even more relevant today. I guess there's nothing new under the sun. And it's fun to see how cartoonists of the time reacted to Picasso's revolutionary art, with plenty of gags involving both eyes on the same side of the nose. Then there's a whole section on Picasso, himself a cartoonist of no small ability, whose sketch of a nude woman passing gas is among his lesser-known works.

It's quite a feat to assemble 120 pages of great comic art I mostly haven't seen before. In fact, the only two pieces I know I've seen are the two I supplied myself. (Full disclosure: After reading Modern Arf I sent a fan letter to Craig Yoe and he invited me to submit a couple of pieces from my collection for inclusion in this volume. I'm proud to be part of it.)

I should also mention that this is a beautifully printed book, with tasteful spot-varnish on a nifty matte-finish cover stock. A collectible piece for a long-time collector like me. Highly recommended.

5.0 out of 5 stars Fine Arf!, January 7, 2010

By 

Tooned Up - See all my reviews

This review is from: Arf Museum (Paperback)

I disagree with the above reviewer who finds so little of value here. I actually enjoyed the Lichtenstein story, and everything else in this edition (the Yellow Kid paintings are beautiful!) As for the content beings sexist, etc. we must remember that much of this stuff is from many years ago - some is even over a century old - and we can't expect everything to conform to our present-day politically correct attitudes. If you can temper your reactions with the knowledge that they reflect a time, and not any kind of editorial statement from the publisher, you'll have no problem appreciating this wonderful volume.

4.0 out of 5 stars Really is like a museum exhibition, April 14, 2007

By 

W. Hohauser (NYC) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Arf Museum (Paperback)

Another collection of fascinating comic art although there a few entries that could be better designated as illustrations. Much like a group exhibition at a gallery or museum, some of the works on display are so interesting that it's frustrating that there aren't more examples for that artist. Unfortunately there's no bibliography to assist in further "research" although I'm sure that some of the artists represented here are so obscure that there are no other published examples available! Great coffee table book for friends to leaf through. It's slightly adult (nudity and men's magazine humor) so be warned. This and the previous volume are great gifts for a real comic fan.