Gil Kane, in an essay by Gary Groth:
In the commonplace world, all new arts are trash. In Elizabethan times,
it was commonplace to say that Shakespeare’s theatre was trash. And
then it was the novel’s turn: the novel, they said, was trash. And then
the film came along. First it was the silent film, and the commonplace
was that it was trash — until the sound film emerged. Then the silent
film suddenly became an art, as the theatre and the novel had, and it
was the sound movie that was trash. Today, all film is becoming art.
What’s trash today, then? Comics, of course. But now that the newspaper
strip is ailing, the commonplace is that it may be art. Those comic book stories, though, they’re surely trash…
Funny but wrong. Illustrated novels, known as comic books in some circles, hit the big time with Maus 1 and 2 and haven’t looked back. I hate it when the overclass pretends to be the underclass.
Dunno. I think he’s got a point.
Ellen. The word you’re searching for is graphic novel. Not illustrated novel. “Maus” is a graphic novel. I only point this out because you seem fond of telling people they are wrong. He’s not wrong. He’s got an opinion, well expressed too.
The problem with this comic book people is that they only know their own thing. They’re worst than crafts people. It’s all about them. Never see the bigger picture even when they’re lost in it.
I think the concept is very valid, but the selection of comics as an example is about 40 years out of date.
Substitute viral video art on you-tube, or digitally printed “art” from CafeExpress that the artist never touches, or mashups like Girl Talk, or stencil graffiti, or blogs…
There is always lots of new forms of expression that the old guard will be only too happy to label as “trash”.