If you live near NYC, this is probably the best comics news you'll read all week:
Major Retrospective of Work by Underground Cartoonist Kim Deitch Opens at MoCCA on September 12
• Exhibition dates: September 9 – December 5, 2008
• Opening Reception: September 12, 2008, 6 – 9 pm
The Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art (MoCCA) is pleased to announce a major retrospective of work by underground cartoonist and graphic novelist Kim Deitch (b. 1944), opening September 9th and running through December 5th, 2008.
Kim Deitch: A Retrospective will display original comics pages and other work covering the artist's entire career to date, beginning with full-page comic strips drawn for the East Village Other in 1967 up to recent graphic novels including The Boulevard of Broken Dreams, Alias the Cat, Shadowland, and Deitch's Pictorama. The exhibit will also feature rarely seen work including elaborate preparatory drawings, hand-colored originals, lithographs and other prints.
Kim Deitch was born in Los Angeles in 1944, the eldest son of Oscar-wining animator Gene Deitch (Tom Terrific, Munro). Deitch studied at the Pratt Institute, traveled with the Norwegian Merchant Marines and worked at a mental institution before joining the burgeoning underground press in 1967. As an early contributor to the East Village Other and the editor of Gothic Blimp Works, Kim Deitch was among the first members of the underground comix scene that would explode with the 1968 publication of Robert Crumb's Zap #1. Forty years later, he stands alongside Crumb, Bill Griffith, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, and Art Spiegelman as one the most notable and consistently prolific artists to emerge from that milieu. In addition to his comic books and graphic novels, Deitch's work has appeared in such venues as RAW, Weirdo, Arcade, Details, the L.A. Weekly, McSweeney's, Nickelodeon Magazine, and The New Yorker.
"Kim Deitch's career spans the post-war history of avant-garde comics," said curator Bill Kartalopoulos. "And throughout it he brilliantly weaves vast intergenerational narratives that enfold a deep history of American popular entertainment, from the past to the present and into the fantastic outer reaches of his meta-fictional universe. Distinctions between fiction and reality blur in Deitch's work just as real madness bleeds into the visions and schemes of the artists, entertainers, and hustlers who populate his world. The result is a rich narrative tapestry as compelling and breathtaking as Deitch's densely layered, tightly woven, and intricately detailed
black and white comics pages."
Deitch's body of work stretches outward from comics to embrace a spectrum of visual-narrative modes, including extra-textual single images and illustrated prose modeled after Victorian illustrated fiction. His most recent book is Deitch's Pictorama, a collection of illustrated fiction produced in collaboration with brothers Seth and Simon Deitch. The exhibit will highlight Deitch's career-long experimentation with text/image modes.
MoCCA will publish an original poster and 1" button featuring Deitch's artwork in association with the exhibit. The Museum will also host a series of talks and events related to the exhibit. For more
information please visit: http://www.moccany.org
Please join us at MoCCA on September 12th to celebrate Kim Deitch; A Retrospective. The artist will be present and refreshments will be served!".
Event: Kim Deitch: Opening Reception
"Free and open to the public"
What: Opening
Host: Kim Deitch: A Retrospective
Start Time: Friday, September 12 at 6:00pm
End Time: Friday, September 12 at 9:00pm
Where: MoCCA: The Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art