“Modern Cartoonist: The Art of Daniel Clowes” includes a long case displaying original issues of Clowes’s seminal 90s comic Eightball. They’re under glass, of course. They’re also, and somewhat surprisingly, in clear plastic bags, like the kind that encase back issues in comic shops.
Clowes was born and grew up in Chicago, and he spent his early artistic career here as well, so the murals have a personal resonance. And it’s fun to try to identify both Clowes’s characters and Chicago landmarks in the images. But the exercise also—perhaps appropriately for a comics exhibit—feels a little flat. In part the problem is that, while they’re impressively big, the murals aren’t very interesting visually—Clowes’s bland, blocky style is even blander and blockier when blown up in monochrome cardboard. And in part the difficulty is conceptual. Clowes’s sentimental vision of Chicago is festooned with characters from his old comics—which inevitably presents those comics not as art, but as fandom collectibles. The murals come across as advertisements, designed to make you feel warm and fuzzy about Chicago, about Clowes, and about seeing an exhibit about Clowes in Chicago. It almost seems like you’ve stumbled into the gift shop rather than into the museum proper.
6/29-10/13, Museum of Contemporary Art, 220 E. Chicago, mcachicago.org, $12, Tuesdays free for Illinois residents.
