The Unfunnies

I kept hearing myself say, "yes, yes, yes," as I read Roberta Smith's biting review of MoMA's exhibit "Comic Abstraction: Image-Breaking, Image-Making." I have major problems classifying cartoons as fine art. I love Ernie Bushmiller, Charles Schulz, and Takashi Murakami, but I consider their work to be merely something that amuses me. Smith seems to have more a problem with this particular exhibit than with comix=art. Here's Smith's take on the show:

...in the end the works here are mostly cute, neat and perfectly pleasant, implying a view of contemporary art as mildly titillating but basically toothless entertainment.... too much here operates in some kind of vacuum, far from the madding crowd of ambition, recent art history, life or a deep engagement with the primary vehicle of visual experience, which is form.