His first continuing character was Musical Mose, a black musician who tries to impersonate other races for gigs – but is always exposed. It was interesting to see the reversal of the usual situation whereby something which is very popular is nevertheless cancelled simply because someone on the top floor does not like it (and yes, I was thinking of Michael Grade when I typed that, but there are other examples). In this essay I want to look at some of the reasons for the lack of popularity and subsequent influence, which I think come from a few sources, particularly Herriman’s inimitable genius and the strangely indeterminate nature of much of the strip, which I think makes it a Modernist or even Postmodernist work worth serious consideration alongside the usual array of classic Modernist literature from the first half of the 20th Century.George Herriman was born on August 22nd 1880, in New Orleans, though his family moved to Los Angeles six years later. Krazy awakes, reads the poster, and tries a few tentative dance steps, but "finds his feet heavy and numerous." It’s also worth drawing out because arguably the most revered cartoonist in the history of the form was not white – black artists do tend to be marginalised at times, and we ought to react against this.Even more interesting, and certainly clearer, is ambiguity about sex: Krazy generally relates to and is related to by both Ignatz and Offissa Pupp as a female, but this is indeterminate. There are also other emotions in the strip, unusual in slapstick: the melancholy irony of Krazy yearning for a brick to the head and the different interpretations that the characters take from this. The character debuted in film in 1916. Gilbert Seldes (see later) says “it is our one work in the expressionistic mode” (“our” there means American, rather than the comics medium), and that Herriman displayed a “naïve sensibility rather like the douanier Rousseau.” I’m not entirely convinced by either claim – “expressionism” can be used for countless comics with just about as much justification, and I suspect the Rousseau comparison was an attempt to valorise the simplicity of comic strip drawing, since Seldes was claiming The layout of the strip was imaginative and original. Old Joe Stork drops a bundle on his way through, and Krazy opens it to discover a complete makeup kit and a pair of white cotton gloves. Advanced in 1976. The drawing style appears to be spontaneous and loose, with everything looking a little rough and scratchy, as if inked in a hurry: in fact Herriman deliberately exaggerated that look by scratching off inked parts.None of this really captures it, and I am making it sound as if it was an art project. But in practise there comes to be a tension between the two.
The strip also had a peerless collection of known fans.
It’s not brilliant but a neat experiment, playing with the Krazy Kat love triangle in quite a nifty way.After Captain Beefheart’s recent, tragic death, I wonder if there’s a comparison to be made between him and Herriman. There was a Krazy Kat ballet written in 1922 by John Alden Carpenter, with input from Herriman, who designed the costumes and rotating scenery. e.e. Various Artists This isn’t just a writer’s joking around – a failure to understand each other is basic to the brick-throwing centre of the whole strip, and Krazy says in one strip that “lenguage is, that we may mis-unda-stend each udda.”Herriman also played with the form – in one 1919 strip, Ignatz points out that “We’ve been in the paper all the time.” It’s probably not worth making too much of this – the form was new and in development, and many cartoonists were highly conscious of the boundaries of the medium, and featured such playfulness, perhaps first seen in painting in Magritte’s famous 1928 “Ceci n’est pas une pipe”. For the best experience please update your browser. Gilbert […][…] and art critics for more than 80 years. River Records That really is the bulk of the story, which ran until Herriman’s death in 1944.There are other characters, of course, among them: Kolin Kelly, a dog who makes bricks, so Ignatz is one of his best customers; Joe Stork, who delivers babies; Bum Bill Bee, “a pilgrim peregrinating the highway of dreams”; Don Kiyoti & Sancho Pansy; even Mari-Juana Pelona (there are plenty of references to the drug).The setting is fascinating: the landscape is derived from Monument Valley, made most famous later in the movies of John Ford (who was shown the valley by locals who Herriman also knew). ... Woodrow Wilson insisted on seeing every episode, and Adolph BoIm created a serious, if ill-fated, ballet with Krazy as the central figure. Mencken, Charlie Chaplin, W.C. Fields, Woodrow Wilson and Quentin Tarantino (Samuel Jackson reluctantly dons a Modernism is a tricky concept: it’s generally billed as a reaction to the end of the certainties and absolute truths of previous times, particularly religion and the Enlightenment. Artistic Director Kinny Gardner B.E.M., B.C.A.a., D.Arts (hon). of mixed race, so Herriman was officially “coloured”. No ‘she’. Other notable fans then and since include writers James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, T.S Eliot, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jack Kerouac and Umberto Eco, artists Willem de Kooning and Philip Guston, plus E.C. Yes, some artists and groups of artists issued manifestos, but this was not universal, and was far more rare among novelists and poets.Also, comics started alongside Modernism, so had no premodernist work against which to react. In fact it was funny – Herriman’s gags and excellent comic timing mostly seem to derive from vaudeville, from Jewish comedy of the time; and he was a vivid cartoonist, with bouncy figures packed with life and energy. Krazy interprets these attacks, because of race memory of some events in Ancient Egypt (where bricks were used as a delivery medium for love letters), as tokens of love.
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