Superheroes in the frame

By T.J. McNAMARA

It is a broad and entertaining exercise in graphics, sociology and nostalgia, aimed at the young for whom all images are equal but full of memories for all those who remember the middle of the 20th century. It is The Cartoon Show that occupies the upper floor of the City Gallery as its main holiday attraction.

By its nature it has lots of letterpress and would take hours of concentrated attention to appreciate it all. The rich material so cleverly displayed might well have been divided into several shows.

The nostalgia kicks in before you get in the door. There advertising meets art in an extraordinary neon sign that once memorably graced a Balmoral Rd motorbike shop. Its flashing tubes incorporate the little distortions of shape that in the language of cartoons and comics indicate speed and movement.

The sign was saved for posterity by Paul Hartigan, who elsewhere in the show uses neon tubes for his own artistic purposes, taking the advertising out and isolating the graphic elements into abstraction.

In a different way, Robert Macleod brilliantly transmutes cartoon characters into inventive, artistic painting.

This show is full of the graphic signs we recognise as conveying movement and character.

The granddaddy of the concept of considering these art was Roy Lichtenstein, who is represented by a marvellous lithograph from 1964. His Crak is a frame from a comic made into art by tightening the patterns and playing games with language. It is a still-life based not on a bowl of fruit but on the conventions of comics. It is fascinating to study in an art work the signs we accept with a glance in life.

The picture is a woman firing a gun. She wears a beret, a sign of the French Resistance in popular imagination. There is a stylised weapon and, even more stylised, a turbulent shape crossed by a red flash that indicates a shot being fired. This is emphasised by the inventive lettering "Crak!" to add noise.

That the woman is beautiful is suggested by her improbably elegant fingernails. The setting is indicated by the mixture of French and English in the speech bubble, "Now, mes petits ... pour La France!"

Speech bubbles are a convention that help to unify the show. McCahon is dragged in because he used speech bubbles in some early paintings.

More relevant to the tone of the show are paintings by Graham Kirk, who shows how the symbols and signs of comics have become part of the whole warp and weft of our life.

He paints Jervois Rd with great accuracy down to the dealer's name in the back window of cars in the street and the street sign that says Dedwood Tce. Into this comes Wonderwoman, whose unlikely breasts and uniform are an undeniable part of our visual world. This is social comment and the virtue of this exhibition is not so much art as entertaining sociology, although there are times when the two come together powerfully.

One of the most fascinating things in the show is a complete set of the engravings of The Rake's Progress by William Hogarth. It is a revelation of life in the 18th century and was the inspiration for a powerful opera by Stravinsky in the 20th. The moralising tale shows the decline of a wealthy young man into debauchery and misery.

The series is tucked away on the end wall of the Wellesley Wing and is full of exactly characterised images of the jockeys, fencing masters, musicians, gamblers and spongers that feed off the young man's wealth. The scene at the tavern where he drinks is horrifying; look for the detail of the stealing of his watch, the woman spitting tobacco and speculate on what the 18th-century stripper is going to do with a candle and a reflecting plate.

The quality of the drawing in this series is astonishing right to the end where the "hero" is shaved and naked in a madhouse. The whole cast of actors is exactly delineated and every scene full of atmosphere.

Drawing is the skill we marvel at throughout the show. So many artists in all the multitude of forms on display can draw so well. Look at the Daumiers which are also in the Wellesley Wing. In the 19th century he was one of the first cartoonists for the Paris newspapers. Day after day, week after week, year after year he produced drawings commenting on society and politics and his hand never faltered. His humanism extended to studies in expression. Look at the drawing of a couple staring at their child in a cradle. They are good people caricatured a little to make the drawing humorous, their admiration of what they have made is palpable. Sadly, the child hardly merits their worship.

The amazing drawing goes on and on. Frank P. Mahony, working for the Sydney Bulletin in 1901, drew in a simple cartoon a horse seen from above, a masterpiece of foreshortening.

Then there is the dramatic Dropping the Pilot by former Herald cartoonist Minhinnick, full of drama, wit and historical reference.

The room devoted to local underground comics shows the amazing graphic skills of such illustrators as Cornelius Stone and Martin Edmond, as good as anything from the US.

Comics have come a long way. Once they were forbidden fruit not to be brought to school on pain of strapping. Then their heroes, Superman, the Incredible Hulk and all, were transformed into television shows. Then they became valuable collectors' items, were subject to the fine savagery of parody in VIZ Comics and finally here, and elsewhere, landed in art galleries. Art at last?