MUSEUM OF DEGENERATES: Portraits of the American Grotesque, a body of work more like a corpse, a lych-gate for your mind

MUSEUM OF DEGENERATES: Portraits of the American Grotesque
ELI VALLEY
O/R Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$44.95 paperback, available now

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: Museum of Degenerates invites you to a delirious display of art by one of contemporary America’s most original and incendiary political cartoonists. Eli Valley’s extraordinary work is a scathing indictment of the entire American polity, with a particular focus on the issues of Israel and Judaism at a time when these have moved to the center of public debate and action.

In these pages, Valley tips a homburg to German expressionists such as George Grosz and Otto Dix who featured in “The Exhibition of Degenerate Art,” a 1937 Munich show that sought to ridicule the work of artists critical of Hitler’s fascist regime. In an aesthetic that is strikingly original, Valley also draws on early twentieth-century American Yiddish cartoons and the work of artists who created the helter-skelter exuberance of MAD comics in the 1950s.

Valley’s own art, accompanied here by extensive descriptions of its genesis and context, is a howl of protest against the political, cultural and media elites driving America into an authoritarian abyss. Here is anger, pure and hot, expressed in exquisite detail and, often, disturbingly funny.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: "Disturbingly funny" from the synopsis above is spot-on. This editorial artwork is disturbing. It can be funny. It disturbed me to find some of it funny. It was a funny kind of disturbing. I'm sure I can recombine those ideas in more apt ways, but I trust my point is made: Épater la bourgeoisie is the modus operandi of this artist. It feels...unsettling, "funny" or weird and certainly unnatural to laugh at the present moment rendered into highly stylized art.

Funny. Sick-making. A moldy shar-pei corpse with a hatespeech ikon in and on it. Somehow it's still funny. Sorta.

Like a zombie movie. Into the fire with you! These zombies don't want braaaiiinnns but roasted flesh.

On every axis I am appalled and offended...less by the artwork than the accuracy of the commentary. Bibi showed his luuuv to the bankster-in-chief by accepting some Gaza deal that kept the dollars flowing. Never mind how ridiculously ineffective it was at justice, or even fairness.

If the revolution needs a poster, let this be it.

I suspect most of y'all are thoroughly turned off by now, so I'll stop. The thing that Eli Valley does is the thing all editorial cartoonists strive to do: exaggerate the ghastly into absurdity. Shock the viewer into recognizing how demented and distorted the discourse he's skewering is. The text of the artist's thought processes and inspirations will make a reasonable person as mad...in all senses...as he is himself.

I'm positive offense is intended by Eli Valley; I'm positive offenseiveness is deployed with purpose, can't say "care" but intent and purpose make up for it. In times of horror, use the horror of the times to motivate the audience to make it stop.

This is not a test. The signal is repeating; the instructions are....

ADDAMS’ APPLE: The New York Cartoons of Charles Addams, making people laugh during Yule is a mitzvah

ADDAMS’ APPLE: The New York Cartoons of Charles Addams
CHARLED ADDAMS (Foreword by Sarah M. Henry; Preface by Lucy Sante)
Pomegranate
$29.95 hardcover, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: AMUSINGLY STRANGE and curiously compelling, Charles Addams' cartoons give a sly wink and a nod to scenes of everyday life in New York, Addams-style. His dark wit and deft hand lend themselves to subterranean themes of love and relationships, secrets and obsessions, subway stations and Lady Liberty. In Addams' Apple: The New York Cartoons of Charles Addams, we witness an artist inspired by the quirks of his fellow New Yorkers and the singular nature of their city-itself one of Addams' characters.

In her foreword, Sarah M. Henry (Museum of the City of New York) highlights Addams' offbeat insights into the institutions and mindsets that define the city's culture. Lucy Sante's preface explores Addams' unique place in American culture.

Addams' Apple presents more than 150 cartoons created by "Chas" Addams (American, 1912-1988) throughout his prolific career; some have never been published before. More of the artist's work can be seen in The Addams Family: An Evilution (Pomegranate, 2010).

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Do you need anything other than "one hundred fifty Charles Addams cartoons for thirty bucks" to send you to the buy link above? Maybe "hardcover edition" will light the fire. Lucy Sante wrote a bangin' preface? What more do you need to know? There is so much anyone from NYC will nod along to; some more timeless than others, but if you're my age absolutely every one of these glimpses into the soul/abyss of New York's biggest city is evocative, wryly amusing, and/or laugh-out-loud hilarious.

The gifting season is a great time to offer this aide-memoire to the fled, the settled, or the aspiring New Yorker. Anyone interested in Charles Addams and his art chops would love it, too. Aspiring artist? Ideal! Tyro comedian? Maybe a bit advanced, but I firmly believe aspirational gifts of perfect mastery in the chosen artform are genuinely helpful to the beginner. Enjoy these three images provided by Pomegranate:


If these stir no mirth in you, check for a pulse.