WARNING! Graphic Content

Political Cartoons, Comix and the Uncensored Artistic Mind

Mr. Fish

• Publisher: USC Annenberg Press
• Year: 2014
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• eBook ISBN:
  9781625174413
• Subtopic: American Government
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Have your IDs ready and your intolerance for incendiary pictures and controversial ideas checked at the door for it's time to step into the head of the unabashedly liberal, award-winning cartoonist and writer Dwayne Booth (aka "Mr. Fish"), where inflammatory ideas meet deep insights and something like inspiring woe, discouraging indifference and gleeful nihilism are born!
In this new book, WARNING! Graphic Content,Mr. Fish examines the past, present and future of art as commentary, deciphering its substructure and translating its unique alphabet into a wholly accessible vocabulary.
Through extensive interviews, numerous audio and video clips and nearly 400 provocative images, he demonstrates unequivocally how uncensored art and weaponized jokes from cartoonists, satirists and fine artists through history provide humanity with its most thorough and revealing self-portraits. Find out what is right and wrong with the profession of political cartooning. Discover the truth about why our visual language is so much more adept than our verbal language at explaining and understanding the existential stuff and nonsense that elates and burdens us every day.
Have you ever wondered: What's the difference between art and craft? Why are artists so poorly paid? If Yoko Ono sat silently in the middle of a crowded auditorium in her underpants and everybody was there to see it, would she make any sense whatsoever? What is a bogey ball and does it really need to be made out of real snot to be impactful?
Mr. Fish answers all these questions and more in this book! This is work that provokes thought and debate and great peels of laughter, but is not intended for the faint of heart.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Navigation Tip
• Dedication
• Acknowledgments
• Contents
• Introduction
• Act 1, Exposition—A Cartoon by Any Other Name
• Act 2, Rising Action—To See or Not to See
• Act 3, Climax—Ready . . . Aim . . . Draw!
• Act 4, Falling Action—Drawing Fire in the Theater of the Mind
• Act 5, Dénouement—Portrait of the Artist as a Portrait of an Artist Who is an Artist Because He’s Doing a Portrait of Himself Looking Like an Artist and That’s What an Artist Does if He Wants Everybody Else to Think He’s an Artist When They Look at Him and See Him Doing a Portrait of Himself Looking Like an Artist
• Epilogue: Now Let’s Meet the Panelists
• Appendices:
• About the Author