Museum of Comics and Cartoon ArtMedia Release -- In celebration of the last weeks of the exhibition NeoIntegrity: Comics Edition, curator Keith Mayerson speaks with featured artists Gary Panter and Peter Saul about their relationship with both comics and fine art history. What have been some of their major influences, and why were they important to their work? What is their relationship to the marketplace, and to their public? Also, what are some of the ways that comics have been informed by fine art, and how have comics influenced fine art? How are these worlds part of one another, and how are they separate? How is the language of comics used in fine art to gain some of its content and power, and how have comics been influenced by art history to become even more dynamic as an art form?

Gary Panter is artist, cartoonist, designer, and musician. One of the first punk-rock cartoonists, he created iconic posters for important bands in the late 70's in LA, and still writes and draws his important narrative Jimbo, first as part of the LA scene, then famously as an important part of RAW magazine, and continues this and other great comic cosmologies today. His paintings and drawings have been exhibited all over the world and have influenced many, and in 2008, Gary was the subject of a one-man show at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum. He was also a featured artist in the touring exhibition, Masters of American Comics. His monograph has been published by PictureBox, other books include four graphic novels: Jimbo in Purgatory (Fantagraphics); Jimbo's Inferno (Fantagraphics); Cola Madness (Funny Garbage); Jimbo: Adventures in Paradise (Pantheon). Gary has won numerous awards, including three Emmy Awards for his production design on Pee-wee's Playhouse, as well as the 2000 Chrysler Award for Design Excellence.

Peter Saul is an artist who has enjoyed the admiration of artists, cartoonists, and many other devoted followers for decades and continues to be a major figure in the contemporary art conversation. Since his emergence in the 1960s as part of a group of figurative painters in Chicago called the "Hairy Who" that rejected the fine art establishment of New York to instead embrace the imagery of comics and also fine art history, Saul has created paintings and drawings that are intense to both look at and think about. Political in addition to being about art, these rebellious works still can provoke with their rich analysis of the human condition, but also be moving in their formal, painterly elements. He has influenced greatly the world of fine art, but equally is enamored by generations of comic's aficionados. Still dynamically working today, Saul has exhibited widely throughout the world, and recently was had a much celebrated retrospective of his work at the Orange County Museum of Art in California.

Keith Mayerson is an artist who has exhibited widely throughout the world. He is the Cartooning Coordinator and teaches comics at the School of Visual Arts and teaches fine art at New York University, Brooklyn College, and next semester will be a core critic at the Yale MFA painting program. Mayerson is curator of the current MoCCA exhibition NeoIntegrity: Comics Edition and is on MoCCA's Board of Trustees. He is the co-creator with Dennis Cooper of the graphic novel Horror Hospital Unplugged to be republished next year by Harper-Perennial.

Thursday, August 19, 7 PM
A Conversation with Gary Panter and Peter Saul, moderated by Keith Mayerson
Admission $5 | Free for MoCCA Members