Art Comic

A raucous skewering of the art world as told by a master of absurdity

Matthew Thurber’s Art Comic is a blunt and hilarious assault on the swirling hot mess that is the art world. From sycophantic fans to duplicitous gallerists, fatuous patrons to self-aggrandizing art stars, he lampoons each and every facet of the eminently ridiculous industry of truth and beauty. Follow Cupcake, the Matthew Barney obsessive; Epiphany née Tiffany Clydesdale, the divinely inspired performance artist; Ivanhoe, a modern knight in search of artistic vengeance, and his squire, Turnbuckle. Each artist is more ridiculous than the last, yet they are tested and transformed by the even more absurd machinations of Thurber’s fantastical art world. Can the Free Little Pigs destroy this blighted system? Will “The Group” continue its indirect assassination of promising young artists? Can artistic integrity exist in this world amid the capitalist co-opting, petty rivalries, otherworldly portals, heavenly interventions, and murders at sea?

Art Comic is brimming with references and cameos, outsize personalities and shuddering nonsense—Robert Rauschenberg smashes a beer bottle, Francesca Woodman, a wineglass. In the center of it all, Thurber’s twisted drawings and laugh-out-loud dialogue convey a complicated picture of an industry at the intersection of fantasy and reality. Part scathing condemnation, part irreverent appreciation, Thurber’s comics skewer the art world in a way only an art lover can.

Matthew Thurber is an artist and musician living in Brooklyn. He is the author of the graphic novels 1-800-MICE(2011) and Infomaniacs (2013). Thurber was the recipient of a NYFA fellowship in fiction in 2010 for 1-800-MICE, which The Paris Review called “the Gravity’s Rainbow–Sherlock Holmes–Professor Sutwell–Inspector Clouseau–Silent Spring of comics.” Ambergris, his ongoing multimedia performance project, has performed its “Anti-Matter Cabaret” since 2003 at venues such as Issue Project Room, the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, and the Fumetto Festival in Switzerland. His full-length play Mining the Moon was produced at the Brick Theater in July 2014. His artwork has been shown in galleries such as Southfirst and Knowmoregames in New York and Weird Things in Toronto.