Ernie Bushmiller: Master of Modern Art

Ernie Bushmiller's Nancy views some modern art

Ernie Bushmiller loved making fun of modern art in his Nancy & Sluggo comic strips, but it turns out he was a master at creating the very art he ridiculed.

When people talk about Bushmiller’s artistry they’re usually referring to things like his formal simplicity, the perfection of his line and the compellingly odd proportions in his cartoon universe. When they talk about surrealism and Ernie Bushmiller, it’s usually about the absurd goings-on, like all the times he broke the fourth wall and had his characters speak to him, the inexplicable geography and out-of-place factories, the martians and ghosts that pop up periodically, and of course the endless succession of entirely implausible sight gags.

But Bushmiller’s artistry also included literal surrealism, a flavor of modern art that provided fodder for jokes year after year. To make fun of it, though, he first had to create examples to sneer at. These galleries showcase those examples as art objects in themselves.

Bushmiller labored over the smallest details in his comic strips, and he brought to his putatively silly works of art, whether abstract paintings, surreal sculptures or art moderne buildings, the same focused brilliance that he applied to Nancy and Sluggo’s everyday universe.

Befuddling oddity

If you have a passing familiarity with Bushmiller, you know that everything he drew was in service to the gag, gags that he believed would appeal to an audience he viewed as middlebrow at best. In the case of the art works featured here, the gag most often was a variation on “a child of five could do that,” but he also commonly took digs at the oblivious snobbery of art lovers (like me, I suppose) and the befuddling oddity that was taken to be genius in the world of fine art.

But like everything else Ernie drew, the artistry of these little art works transcends even the most inane gag — for all the same reasons we love Bushmiller. His visual minimalism, formal discipline and absurdist aesthetic all together meant that despite himself he was making modern art, and doing it very creatively. That creativity exists independent of the gags it facilitated; these galleries are about Bushmiller’s artistic vision, not his sense of humor.

Note that the images below underwent light retouching, mostly straightening, some erasures and a few places where lines and borders were restored. Resolution is not great, as these are all enlargements of small comic strip elements, often from scans that folks have posted online (and sincere thanks to those folks). Publication dates are provided when available.