New Acquisitions: Henry Tuthill and the Art Guys

by Robert Boyd

I haven't done one of these in a while. But I got a couple of pieces of art worth celebrating recently. First was a Sunday page of the Bungle Family by Henry Tuthill. The Bungle Family was a strip that ran from 1918 through the 40s that is largely forgotten today. It's a shame that so few know about it--it's a devilishly funny strip, playing with the everyday hypocrisies of the Bungles and their friends in their lower middle class existence. If Gasoline Alley is a strip set in a similar milieu about a group of neighbors who, by and large, love each other, The Bungle Family is its opposite. That may be, I suppose, why people have a warm, nostalgic feeling about Gasoline Alley as opposed to The Bungle Family. That's a shame, because The Bungle Family is brilliant.


Henry Tuthill, The Bungle Family, pen & ink and watercolor on bristol paper, February 27, 1927

The beautiful thing is that Tuthill hand-colored this strip. Now as it appeared in the newspapers, the color was done via mechanical separations overlaid on a photostat of the black-and-white art. (I realize that for you younger readers, I just use a bunch of utterly archaic art terms here.) So that means he sent this page--which is huge, 24" x 29"--to his syndicate, who made a stat then sent it back to Tuthill, at which point he painted the original. Presumably he did this purely for his own pleasure, and he did it a lot--every week for six years.


Henry Tuthill, The Bungle Family detail, pen & ink and watercolor on bristol paper, February 27, 1927

His coloring is beautiful, too. I'm very pleased to be able to add this page to my small collection of Bungle family dailies.

On Saturday morning on October 8, there was a big yard sale/art sale at Skydive. It was a benefit for Sasha Dela to help with some serious doctor/insurance bills. One of the things for sale was this:


The Art Guys, Smiling Eyes (for Sasha Dela), googly eyes on paper, 2011

I bought it--it was a bargain, frankly. And for a great cause. The Art Guys have been using googly eyes in their work since at least 1998. I bought a googly-eye item from them last year, in fact. I don't know where Smiling Eyes fits into their googly-eye canon, but it is cheerful! (Unlike the disturbing googly-eye Lane Hagood paintings, The Diseased Writer.)

New Acquisitions: Brian Piana and Jim Woodring

Yesterday I went to the Winter Holiday Art Market and while there went ahead and bought a Brian Piana. He was selling pieces to benefit both Spacetaker (the sponsor of the event) and Skydive. I don't exactly understand what Spacetaker does--I mean, they do a lot of things, but I don't know what they see as their mission. As for Skydive, I don't exactly understand their mission either, but I love it anyway.


Brian Piana, RGB and Sometimes Y (captured June 27, 2010, 11:13 CST), acrylic on Arches paper, 2010

I asked Piana how sales were going. He had sold a few paintings by that time, and gratifyingly, two customers had mentioned my profile of Piana. So I may have had a small effect on actual art sales! Take that, Don Thompson!

I also recently won a Jim Woodring page in an auction. It's from Woodring's latest book, Weathercraft. Here's the cover.



The page I bought is page 24. The action takes place after Manhog has escaped (and dismembered) the Whim. The escape has left Manhog beaten and exhausted, hence this little bit of typically self-destructive slapstick on waking.


Jim Woodring, Weathercraft page 24, ink on bristol paper, 2010

These are two very different pieces, but both are very satisfying additions to the collection.

Recent Acquisitions from Several Artists

This is a "catch-up" post for a bunch of things I have gotten in the past few months (!) that I haven't written about. The big one is a page by Jaime Hernandez.



Jaime Hernandez, Bob Richardson page 2, ink on bristol board, 1995

This is not the most spectacular Jaime Hernandez page (which is probably why I could afford it). But it is an elegant example of his work. This is from a story called "Bob Richardson" which features two full pages of Maggie getting slapped in the face by everybody she has ever known, a dog with a telepathic link to Isabel, and a low-level traitor named Boyd (!).

Back on September 18, The Joanna had their "gala," in which I came dressed as Pan. They had an art raffle, which they set up the same way that Box 13 did theirs earlier in the summer. Because the raffle tickets were really cheap, I ended up winning three pieces of art.



Molly Gochman, Red Truck (from Lullabies), inkjet print mounted on aluminum, 2010



Emily Link, Prime Ordeal Ooze, watercolor, ink, graphite and glitter on paper, 2009



Jessica Ninci, untitled (detail), watercolor and ink on paper, 2010

I didn't know much about Molly Gochman, Emily Link and Jessica Ninci when I won these. Gochman is highly regarded enough to get big public commissions and to be featured in that massive Texas Artists Today book. Jessica Ninci is currently a student getting her BFA at UH, and she was part of a group show ar the Joanna earlier this year. And I've seen Emily Link's plush heads in various venues, including some that are up at Box 13 right now.

PictureBox is a really great small press art comics publisher, and like all small presses, they are chronically having to figure out how to pay for their projects, particularly those that are large and expensive. I can tell you from personal experience that the lag between the expenses on a publishing project and the revenue is a long time, and for a small press, that can spell bankruptcy. That's why so many small presses try to get grants for specific projects because it moves the revenue stream forward in time.

For a pair of books, PictureBox did something innovative to move that revenue stream forward. Two Fort Thunder alumni had books in the works, If 'n' Oof by Brian Chippendale and Powr Mastrs [sic] #3 by C.F. (the pen name of Chris Forgues). If 'n' Oof was an especially ambitious (and expensive) book to print--800 pages long. So they put out word that if you bought these books up front--way in advance of publication--you would get some free artwork by C.F. and Chippendale.



Brian Chippendale, Murderer, Coyote, Trickster, Fool, Hero, ink and marker on paper, 2010



Brian Chippendale, untitled, silkscreen (?) 119/130, 2010



C.F., untitled, silkscreen (?) (unnumbered), 2010

The grey areas in the C.F. silkscreen (if indeed that is what it is) are actually silver ink.

Yesterday I stopped by P.G. Gallery to see the latest exhibit, and I noticed there were still some Gabriela Trzebinski slats available from an earlier show. Since they were only $30, I went ahead and bout two.


Gabriela Trzebinski, American Thunder (from the Matatu Sticks Project), acrylic paint on recycled wood, 2010


Gabriela Trzebinski, Voice of the Ghetto (from the Matatu Sticks Project), acrylic paint on recycled wood, 2010

Now you might ask yourself why I got these. American Thunder I just liked because it made me think of Bob Segar and Dodge Ram Pick-ups. As for Voice of the Ghetto, people have often said to me, "Robert, even though you are whiter than Dick Gephardt and are a known fan of both The Decembrists and Belle and Sebastian, you are truly the voice of the ghetto."

Finally, I went to the opening last night at Box 13 and they had another raffle. This time, you didn't get to choose the art that you won. However, there were no rules against trading. That's how I ended up with this:


Maria Smits, untitled (?), ink and pastel on paper, 2010 (?)

Maria Smits is a Dutch artist who has somehow landed in Houston. She has a show opening November 19 at Lawndale. And I'm afraid my photo utterly failed to capture the extremely delicate pen and ink work in this piece.

New Acquisition: A "Nexus" Page by Steve Rude

A few weeks ago, I read in the Comics Reporter that Nexus cartoonist Steve Rude was in danger of losing his house to foreclosure. He was having kind of an eBay fire sale to stave off the sheriff (there is still stuff for sale there--check it out). I have been a fan for a long, long time, and even though Rude's art was not the kind I usually collect (specializing, as I do, in pre-1960s comic strips and more contemporary alternative and art comics), I figured this was a unique opportunity to get some and help out an artist I truly admire in his time of need.

Here's the piece, scanned in color (even though the art is black and white).


Steve Rude, Next Nexus issue 2, page 4, ink on bristol paper, 1989

Nexus was a comic written by Mike Baron and primarily drawn by Steve Rude. The two created the series together. It debuted in 1981 and I think I discovered it as a reader in 1982 or 83. It was a science fiction superhero series about a man in the far future who is beset by dreams that instruct him to kill mass murderers. The first murderer he kills is his own father, who had been governor of a Soviet planet and ordered its destruction when it looked like rebels might succeed in taking it over. In his guise as a cosmic avenger, the protagonist goes by the name Nexus. If he fails to heed the dreams, he starts to suffer physically some of the same injuries the victims of the murderers suffered. The series played a lot with notions of guilt, including Nexus's own.. It was clever, exciting space opera, beautifully drawn by Rude is a very clean, very old-fashioned style, one that was very much out-of-step with his peers. If I had to give it a name, I'd call it neoclassical. His elegance and simplicity recall neoclassical artists form the 18th/19th century, but even more, they recall Alex Toth and certain American magazine illustrators from the 30s to the 50s.

Here is a black and white scan of the same page.


Steve Rude, Next Nexus issue 2, page 4, ink on bristol paper, 1989

Recent Acquistion: Encomium 1-3 by Rabéa Ballin

Rabéa Ballin, Encomium 1-3, black prisma color, charcoal, white conte, Galkyd on handmade paper, 2010

I first saw Rabéa Ballin's work in a show at Joan Wich gallery. The pieces were all highly detailed depictions of African-American woman's hairstyles, usually involving complex braids. They were drawn on very big pages with black prisma pencil. The hair was shown with no reference to the human body, except for the curve of the skull from which the hair sprang. Drawn this way, they almost seemed abstract! I really liked them, but I thought the use of the black prisma pencil. This kind of pencil doesn't make a super-dark line, so the resulting drawings didn't have extremely high contrast between light and dark.

After Joan Wich died, the gallery was closed down and its artists were scattered to the winds. Ballin ended up at Linda Darke Gallery, where she was included in the recent group show dedicated to Louise Bourgeois. I saw Encomium 1-3 and was knocked out. Adding charcoal to her drawings gives them a darker, heavier presence. This is amplified by the brown handmade paper. There is a compromise involved in using charcoal. You can't get quite the precise detail you can with most pencils. But in this triptych, it works great. When I saw it, I instantly thought of a rainbow--a rainbow of braided hair. So I bit the bullet and bought it. I look forward to seeing much more work from Ballin, and I'm really proud to have this piece.

New Acquisition: The Great God Pan Is Dead by Gary Panter

Gary Panter has this really cool thing he does. He allows you to commission art from him for a highly reasonable cost!

Limited time offer 3.0. Customized drawing by GP for you. 6 x 8" ink-drawing on 3-ply Strathmore bristol. On the subject of your choice (within reasonably wide parameters of taste). You provide one-to-three keywords (see samples below) and the artist will free associate thereupon. The drawing will be signed to your name or initials.

He charges $225 for them. I had one made in 2004 and decided to celebrate a year of blogging with a new one. In 2004, I hadn't thought too hard about art values, but now that I have, this deal that Panter offers is very interesting to think about. Panter writes:

Often I am selling art objects for thousands of dollars and I hope to continue doing that; however I realize that a lot of the people who like my work don't have thousands of dollars with which to purchase fine art. So for a limited time, I am offering this reasonably-priced little drawing in case you do want a drawing by me for you.

So how does he price these drawings? If Gary Panter drawings were interchangeable commodities, the price would be no higher and no lower than the market price. If he priced them significantly lower than the market price (determined by auction), there would be an opportunity for arbitrage. A buyer could buy as many custom drawings from Panter as possible for the low price and then sell them for the market price (at a profit). Depending on how many drawings Panter could produce, the market price would gradually decline as the market was flooded with new 6x8" Panter drawings.

So Panter should definitely not price the drawings lower than the market price according to this logic. Can he price them higher? Yes. Because they are unique items, and because they are commissioned, the buyer is getting something she will want more than anyone else. They are more valuable to the person who commissioned them than to the market as a whole. So according to this logic, his price should be either the market price or the market price plus a premium.

But wait! Panter is primarily a painter. But his paintings, as he says above, go for many thousands of dollars. Many collectors don't have that kind of money now, but will later. (As people age, their earning power increases.) Panter may be engaging in a strategy of enticing beginning collectors, who have relatively little money to spend on art, into collecting his work. As one learns in marketing, the best predictor that someone will buy something from you is if they have done so before. (This is a far more powerful predictor than any demographic or psychographic measure.) So Panter is creating Panter collectors by offering inexpensive art in hopes that they will eventually buy more expensive art from him. By that logic, he should sell for less than the market price.

But that still leaves him open to arbitrage, which he doubly doesn't want--one because he doesn't want these drawings flooding the market and pushing the market price down, and two, he doesn't want the people buying these drawings to be mere speculators (as anyone engaging in arbitrage is), but rather collectors who may buy again in the future. So he creates a "poison pill" that might (might) make these drawings less valuable in the market--he personalizes them. The one I just got says:

GARY PANTER FOR ROBERT BOYD
THE GREAT GOD PAN IS DEAD.

So if you are buying Panter drawings on the open market, you probably don't want one that is personalized to Robert Boyd. Or, all other things being equal, you would prefer one that wasn't so personalized.

Given all these considerations, I suspect Panter is underpricing these drawings. But it would take more research than I am willing to do to find out for sure. In any case, I think this is a great program Panter is doing, and I would encourage other artists to do something similar.

Oh, and by the way, here is the piece I bought.



Ah, bliss.