What is art? It’s a question that loads everything we’ll be discussing in this space over the next five weeks or so. And, as with most questions with such a loaded pretence, it inevitably leads us to definitions. Definitions, by most practices, work through histories or precedences to scope out the variables and juxtapositions required to be precise about what it is one means. That nod to history—either acknowledgement of, or reaction to—is the first and most important factor in determining a definition for art that might serve a discussion of comics and their relationship to art (or Art).
To this definition, I bring the most recent incarnation of Hawkeye. Written by Matt Fraction and drawn by David Aja, Haweye takes up the character first put out there by Stan Lee in Tales of Suspense 57 in 1964. Hawkeye has most recently been spotted in the Avengers movie and a brief cameo appearance in Thor. The point here is not to show that Hawkeye has been around a while or is still relevant, but to establish that the subject itself is not new. That distinction is an important one since what defines something is often difference—think Stan Lee’s characters as different than DC’s characters or the early nineties turn marked by Todd McFarlane’s work on Spiderman and Spawn. That said, what needs to be resisted at all costs in a discussion about comics and art is a comparison to something we might refer to as institutional art — think pictures of the naked Madonna with child or giant waterlilies or pastiche or blurry colours or Art Speigleman (I know that mention will kill him, but when you have travelling gallery shows, that’s saying something). Instead, we must first confront the work on its own terms within its own context. To this extent, Hawkeye is art.
But what kind of art is it and how does it stand in relation to what we might call Art (intentional Speigleman pun there)? Aja references the history of comic art in a number of ways, but most relevant here are his allusions—primarily visual—to the work of Chris Ware. Ware has a characteristic style that alludes to his own sense of aesthetics— a set of principles that govern what he takes to be a worthwhile expression. He favours the intricate and the intimate; tends to treat the page as if it were a building or container for the representation of detached, dejected lives; focuses on expressive representations of the body with a slow, developing narrative, that emphasizes the minute spaces between motions. A few representative examples appear below.
Enter into this conversation Hawkeye. Aja captures Ware’s sense of the page, with its intersecting lines and narratives. The allusion is entirely clear to someone who has a knowledge of Ware’s work. The close-ups on the face, the slow-moving minutae of the body, the built-up page (in fact, the whole story in this issue takes place in Clint’s (Hawkeye’s) building.
This allusionary context is a marker for defining a developing, emerging, or established aesthetic. Ware’s style is being translated into another storyline through allusion both subtle and apparent—an institution, we’ll call it the Institution of Ware, is establishing itself. In fact, Aja may be playing on the pun of “cutting” the cords with a mentor, bringing the sometimes antagonistic relationship between practice and principle, hereditary and innovative into play. Seems simple enough: hang a picture by Aja from Hawkeye next to a page by Ware and boom, there you have it—Art and an aesthetic style to accompany it.
That said, there are conflicting analytical principles at play here. The first is that Chris Ware writes and draws his work entirely whereas Hawkeye is a collaborative effort. In other words, we need to ask what part of the comic is art exactly? Is it the the writing, the drawing, the colouring, the text? Each of these functions has a distinct personality behind it. Moreover, the drawings by Aja certainly allude to Ware’s work, but then so does the colour-scheme.
Note how Matt Hollingsworth mimics the style of these colour-schemes in Hawkeye, emphasizing the subtle variations in hue and tone, even the presence of red (see the early Hawkeye pages above and Clint’s red hat).
Is Aja guiding Hollingsworth and how does a collaborative effort stand in relation to a single-authored piece? Does Chris Eliopoulos not deserve credit for his fine lettering given the attention often given in aesthetics about typography and the designs for representing the word? In short, comics bring tough questions to bear on traditional concepts governing the definition of artistic practice and its accompanying aesthetic philosophies.
Fact is, the question of comics’ relation to art is a moot one. It’s already over before it began. We’ll never know what the relationship is because we don’t really need to. It’s a fruitless exercise at this point; the history of comics is established enough that comics can be discussed within their own context in relationship to nothing but themselves. To open up that discussion, connecting Hawkeye’s covers with the work of Jasper Johns for instance, only dilutes the conversation we might be having about comics.
Comics stand in relation to art like the internal combustion engine stands in relation to the steam engine: they may well be andecendants, but to think of them in this way does nothing to help us understand either. That comics are often a collaborative, usually repetitive, almost always recycled endeavour opens spaces for new conversations about the nature of the medium. These conversations must occur outside the already established aesthetic principles of artistic production in precisely the same way that a discussion of the steam engine must stand outside a discussion of an internal combustion engine. Comics are a multi-mediated and re-mediated form of practice and cultural production that can only be defined within its own contexts—a context that more than justifies its significance as the most relevant form of twenty-first century aesthetic practice—and that means it can’t be art or Art… or, mercifully, stand in relation to either.
Works Cited:
Fraction, Matt, David Aja, Javier Pulido. Hawkeye Volume 2: Little Hits (Marvel Now)
Ware, Chris. Building Stories