Those Ernst panels make me think of how the comic strip missed a real opportunity early in its genesis. By abandoning the path laid out by the likes of Ernst it chose the route of superheroes and a younger audience. I have nothing at all against superheroes, but to have tied a medium so closely to a single type of content is the equivalent of cinema being reduced simply to a role of churning out variations on the Western or animation to the depiction of cuddly rodents. Even the likes of Alan Moore and the Hernandez Brothers (who I admire greatly) are merely tinkering with a pre-existing paradigm, rather than blasting it wide open - which is as necessary now as it's ever been, if the medium is to fulfil its genuine artistic potential. One Maus does not a revolution make, after all.
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Originally Posted by MellySingsDoom
Art for me should move on a visceral or emotional level (which my examples do for me). All else is conjecture...
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I can't agree with this. It would ultimately deny a whole tradition of artists replicating their world as closely as technically possible.
Admittedly, illustrations such as these have been rendered largely pointless with the invention of photography, but it does show that art was for a time more concerned with issues of education than it was creative or emotional expression.
