INFORMATION FOR
Sunday Comics: The Creative Page celebrates the endless artistic possibility of the single broadsheet by juxtaposing a selection of early to mid-20th century Sunday comics reproduced from the Rare Book and Manuscript Library collection at Columbia University, with the work of seven contemporary artists: Bodie Chewning, Maëlle Doliveux, Charles Fetherolf, Geoff Grogan, Gideon Kendall, Benjamin W. Morse, and R. Sikoryak.
This exhibition will be on view in the Court Gallery, Ben Shahn Center for the Visual Arts at William Paterson University in Wayne, NJ from February 10 through March 20, 2025. Gallery hours are Monday through Thursday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., and on Saturday, April 5 and Saturday, April 26, from 10:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Admission is free. A panel discussion moderated by curator Claudia Goldstein with exhibiting artists Charles Fetherolf, Geoff Grogan, Gideon Kendall, R. Sikoryak, and Columbia University Libraries Curator for Comics and Cartoons Karen Green will be held Tuesday, March 11, from 6:00 to 7:00 p.m., preceded by an opening reception from 5:00 to 6:00 p.m. in the South Gallery, Ben Shahn Center for the Visual Arts.
Sunday comics were borne out of the battle for newspaper supremacy between Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World and William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal at the very end of the 19th century. Almost immediately, comics began appearing in these and other newspapers across the country, in eight-page Sunday supplements filled with color that would, as one advertisement put it, “make the kaleidoscope pale with envy.”[1]
As a new medium for short-form narrative, there were no hard and fast rules within the space of the single Sunday comics page, which was often a thrilling space for artistic exploration of narrative, text/image relationships, and composition. The work of artists who defined this era are on view, including Percy Crosby, Rose O’Neill, Harold Knerr, Bud Fisher, and Winsor McCay. Deceptively simple in design, the earliest Sunday comics employed an entire newspaper page to convey short but visually complex stories. By the mid-20th century, full- and half-page Sunday comics encompassed a vast array of subjects, including long-form stories like Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant, complete with castles, battles, and sweeping vistas. Like so many of the artists in this show, Alex Raymond equated the page with the story, turning his drawings on their head in “Upside-Down World.”
Contemporary artists simultaneously pay homage to the early greats and offer original takes on the format, employing a vast array of techniques and media, from watercolor and cut paper to silkscreen and collage. Their bold aesthetic, narrative, and compositional choices continue to push the boundaries of the single illustrated page. Artist Geoff Grogan presents five works which channel the broadsheet with references ranging from the explicit to the abstract: “It was the grand stories and glorious images of Foster and Raymond in Prince Valiant and Flash Gordon, coupled with the visual poetry of Herriman’s Krazy Kat that cemented my faith in the Sunday page as a medium on par with painting, illustration, and graphic design. My explorations within the Sunday page are represented by work from two publications, separated by a decade or so. While they differ greatly in style and purpose, they are united in my approach to the Sunday comics page as an integrated field, a kind of painting, as much as or more so than story, while at the same time still delighting in the interaction of text and image, thought and intuition, sequence and randomness, the rational and irrational.”
Crogan continues, “In the case of the collages, narrative arises only out of a series of random associations, more like Dada poetry than traditional comics. There are no panel borders, and no discernible order to the images or text. The viewer is encouraged to let their eye wander across the canvas, resting where it will before moving on. For my part, I take joy in the play of figure and ground, flatness and illusion, the sound of words gently colliding like drunken astronauts in space. There’s a loose story, and I leave it to the viewer to make sense of it, if they wish to. I hope they get a laugh or two while they’re at it.”
Maëlle Doliveux’s cut-paper construction Little Nemo In Between Slumberland pays homage to Winsor McCay's 1925 comic Little Nemo in Slumberland, reproduced for the exhibition. This strip was inspired by the author's difficulty falling asleep as a child, as well as McCay's innovations with panel layouts and interactivity. It received a Gold Medal in cartooning from the Society of Illustrators in 2015. A second work, Four Fables, was the first-ever cut paper comics project that the artist undertook. It is a nine-page silent comic done for a Seven Stories Press anthology published in 2014 featuring four of Jean de la Fontaine's Fables: The Fox, the Monkey and the Animals, The Fox and the Stork, The Heron-The Girl, and The Lion in Love. The main characters overlap from one story to the next, so they connect in the style of a La Ronde narrative.
The University Galleries will present a live reading of graphic novels, gag cartoons, and comics called Carousel on Tuesday, February 25 from 6:00 to 7:00 p.m. in Room 20, Ben Shahn Center for the Visual Arts. Hosted by exhibiting cartoonist R. Sikoryak, and featuring Charles Fetherolf and Gideon Kendall, Carousel started in New York City in 1997 and has since traveled around the United States and Canada, presenting over 250 creators.
Sunday Comics dovetails with curricular offerings in the Department of Art in the Spring 2025 semester, including The Art of Comics (ARTH3420/5420), Dynamic Figure Drawing (ARTS2890), and courses in storyboarding and animation.
The exhibition is one of three presented concurrently by the University Galleries. Before, After: Reflections on the Armenian Genocide is on extended view from February 10 through May 1, 2025 in the South Gallery and East Gallery, Ben Shahn Center for the Visual Arts. This exhibition of recent work by contemporary Armenian and Armenian American artists traces generations of resiliency through the common threads of loss and survival. The exhibition examines connections passed down through blood, migration, and history, from genocide to diaspora to belonging. Artists John Avakian, Anush Babajanyan, Silvina Der-Meguerditchian, Vahagn Ghukasyan, Jackie Kazarian, Diana Markosian, Talin Megherian, Marsha Nouritza Odabashian, Ara Oshagan and Levon Parian, Jessica Sperandio, Scout Tufankjian, and Mary Zakarian integrate artifact with abstraction, witness accounts with recreation, old materials reused, and new molds made.
Before, After is bookended by The Armenian Genocide: One Family’s Story, on view in Cheng Library through May 14, 2025. One Family’s Story traces the journey of Arek and Moses Zakarian from the turn of the 20th century during the Ottoman Empire through genocide, survival, migration, and reemergence in the United States. Visitors will engage with the family’s personal photos, memoirs, musical instruments, artifacts, and artwork which serve as a backdrop to the broader history of the Armenian Genocide. This exhibition and programming is a collaborative effort between the University Galleries, the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, and Cheng Library to increase universal awareness of the Armenian Genocide, and to inspire individual reflection on the concept of postmemory, or the relationship that each generation bears to the personal, collective, and cultural trauma of those who came before us.
A conference organized by the University Galleries and the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies on postmemory, documentation, and cultural resilience will take place on Monday, April 21 in Cheng Library, schedule forthcoming. Building on the foundation of fall programming which introduced audiences to what the Armenian Genocide was, this event will provide a platform to artists and individuals who have transformed traumatic histories to cultivate resilience, recovery, and genocide prevention amid ongoing conflict through documentation that includes photography, oral testimony, and family histories.
University Galleries programming is made possible with funds from the Passaic County Cultural and Heritage Council, a partner of the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.
The William Paterson University Galleries are wheelchair-accessible. Large-print educational materials are available. For additional information, please call the William Paterson University Galleries at 973-720-2654.
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[1] William Randolph Hearst quoted in Caniff, 13.
