ART / CATHY CURTIS : To Lichtenstein and Back : Debates Over Commercialism, Values Are Wittily Drawn in ‘Calvin and Hobbes’

As a kid who grew up back East in a high-minded household that believed in one God and one newspaper--the New York Times--I never had a chance to read the funnies. (Eventoday, the good, gray NYT doesn’t print a single comic strip.)

Oh, I’d thumb furtively through comic books at stationery shops, but that wasn’t nearly the same as spending entire Sunday mornings belly-flopped on a swath of wall-to-wall carpet, in thrall to the never-ending adventures of old friends.

Nowadays, I eagerly turn to the comic pages, but those early years of deprivation left their mark. I never got interested in ongoing narratives about randy doctors or bickering elderly couples or dumb cavemen or that fellow in tights who flies over a city. I can’t even keep the denizens of Doonesbury straight.

The one strip that consistently makes me smile is Bill Watterson’s “Calvin and Hobbes,” a blend of free-ranging fantasy, wry commentary, wide-ranging subject matter, empathy with the human condition and nose-thumbing irreverence--not to mention great skill in rendering the emotional monsoons that blow across Calvin’s little face.

He is a feisty small Everyboy whose constant sidekick and confidant is a wise tiger named Hobbes. When Calvin’s parents are around, Hobbes shrinks into a small, silent stuffed toy. He doesn’t assume his full size or moral authority until the child is alone, plotting and fuming in his petulant vox populi way.

Hobbes is the namesake of the great 17th-Century English philosopher who espoused obedience to moral rules as a means to “peaceful, social and comfortable living” and who was also--handily enough--tutor to the future Charles II.

The original “Calvin,” of course, was the 16th-Century Protestant reformer John Calvin, a brilliant and persuasive man who ushered in the period of moral austerity known as Puritanism. The historical connections lurk just under the surface, in Calvin’s raging monologues, and Hobbes’ mild, ironic rejoinders.

Back in February after a nine-month leave, Watterson has been better than ever this year. Among his recent strips are several that tackle the juicy subject of the status of fine art in contemporary culture.

To be sure, writers for just about every U.S. magazine or newspaper that aspires to punditry have offered opinions about the clash between edgy contemporary art and community values, the effect of commercialism on fine art and rampant cultural illiteracy.

But it’s a good bet no other commentators addressing a broad public have been able to summarize these clashes so amusingly and in such a small space.

For the most part, Watterson doesn’t come down definitively on one side or the other of these issues, although he tends to be conservatively skeptical about the motives of contemporary artists. Nor does he get involved in the real nitty-gritty of artistic censorship issues, in the manner of editorial cartoonists.

What Watterson does best in all of his cartoons is what he does best here: Expose the inconsistent and perilous business of being human--in this case, the vulnerability that underlies artists’ iconoclastic facades.

“The hard part for us avant-garde postmodern artists is deciding whether or not to embrace commercialism,” Calvin muses in one strip.

“Do we allow our work to be hyped and exploited by a market that’s simply hungry for the next new thing? Do we participate in a system that turns high art into low art so it’s better suited for mass consumption?

“Of course, when an artist goes commercial, he makes a mockery of his status as an outsider and free thinker. He buys into the crass and shallow values art should transcend. He trades the integrity of his art for riches and fame.

“Oh, what the heck. I’ll do it.”

Hobbes rolls his eyes. “That wasn’t so hard.”

Actually, a real postmodern artist wouldn’t call himself avant-garde; that term is considered passe in a contemporary context. But Watterson may have felt his readers wouldn’t pick up on postmodern.

The postmodern crowd also understands that art has long since become hopelessly co-opted by marketplace values and that the only way to fight ‘em is to join ‘em--in an ironic way.

The famous distinction between “high” and “low” art also has become meaningless now that sophisticated artists frequently deal with subjects or styles borrowed from kitschy art, advertising, comics and other aspects of pop culture. What matters, of course, is the astute spin the artist gives to such raw material.

Still, a single artist has only so much power. An artist tends to be at the mercy of the gallery system and of the vagaries of collectors, both of which tend to favor splash over seriousness and a clearly identifiable style over the pursuit of shifting goals.

Calvin’s renegade voice probably speaks for many young artists who are sick of piecing together each month’s rent, who dream idly of finding some fail-proof scheme and “selling out” to the genuinely crass values of the sleazy end of the commercial art world.

One day, Calvin and Hobbes busy themselves with blobs of modeling clay. “Fine art is dead, Hobbes,” Calvin laments. “Nobody understands it. Nobody likes it. Nobody sees it. It’s irrelevant in today’s culture.

“If you want to influence people, popular art is the way to go. Mass-market commercial art is the future. Besides, it’s the only way to make serious money, and that’s what’s important about being an artist.”

“So what kind of sculpture are you making?” Hobbes asks.

“Please! It’s not ‘sculpture.’ It’s ‘collectible figurines.’ ”

Watterson has some fun here with the mania for ersatz “collectibles” that sprang up in the past few years-- a la Lladro figurines and anything produced by the Franklin Mint. He also skewers the Madison Avenue notion that an object can become freshly alluring simply by giving it a new name and also the eternal alliance of culture and commerce.

Lamenting the “death” of art in a consumer culture, Calvin nevertheless is quick to figure out how to cash in on it.

“This snowman doesn’t look especially avant-garde,” Hobbes observes of the traditional carrot-nosed, button-eyed creation the pair has just built.

“This is my new art movement, ‘neo-regionalism.’ ” Calvin replies. “I’m appealing to popular nostalgia for the simple values of rural America 50 years ago. I figure the public will eat this up and I’ll make a fortune.”

“So how is this avant-garde?” asks Hobbes, scratching his head.

“It’s secretly ironic,” Calvin whispers.

Watterson plays both sides of the fence in this strip. While the nostalgia boom has reached the heights of absurdity out there in consumerdom (just flip through those Christmas catalogues you’re about to toss), the notion that contemporary art is always far deeper than it appears on first sight has been abused by legions of simple-minded artists.

“On the one hand, it’s a good sign for us artists that, in this age of visual bombardment from all media, a simple drawing can provoke and shock viewers,” Calvin points out. “It confirms that images still have power.

“On the other hand, my teacher’s reactionary grading shows that our society is culturally illiterate and that many people can’t tell good art from a hole in the ground. This drawing I did obviously challenges the know-nothing complacency of those who prefer safe, predigested, bucolic genre scenes. My C- firmly establishes me on the cutting edge of the avant-garde.”

Hobbes looks dubious: “Don’t you have to wear silly clothes then?”

This is about as negative as Watterson gets about the plight of artists employing themes that have provoked outcries from the conservative groups. It’s hard to agree with Calvin’s arrogant assertion that his work must have value simply because it was given a C- by his tradition-minded grade-school teacher.

Still, Hobbes undercuts the situation with his usual dry wit: If Calvin claims such a forward-looking position in the art scene, he’ll be under pressure to cut a certain kind of figure in public life.

When Calvin exults in his new paint-by-the-numbers kit, Hobbes observes that he isn’t painting in the lines and isn’t using the colors that correspond to the numbers.

“If I did that, I’d get the picture they show on the box!” Calvin responds in horror.

“Ah,” sighs the mystified Hobbes.

Watterson knows that what separates artists from the rest of us is the stubborn will and free-ranging imagination that can turn even the least promising materials into a fresh vision no one else would have ever dreamed up.