Cliff Sterrett's
Polly and Her Pals is probably second only to George Herriman's
Krazy Kat in using the comic strip form to create great modern art. The simplicity of the design and unspoken but forceful narrative of the example above demonstrates how creative a soul Sterrett was, and to think he turned out stuff like this on a daily basis for some forty odd years (okay, maybe not every individual strip was a masterpiece, but his batting average was pretty high). The key cahracter is not, as you might think Polly (herself a kind of pedestrian flapper/career girl common to strips with their roots in the 1920s), but rather her put-upon Paw, whose constant travails in dealing with an exasperatingly complex (or in some cases, exasperatingly simplistic) world inevitably led to the kind of explosive outburst that only made the situation worse.
Sterrett's genius was only partly in his characterizations and story-telling. He was also a master draftsman, whose images suggest a foundation for the more modernistic style adopted by comic strips and cartoons after World War II. But his impulse was not economic (as was true later, as strips shrunk in size, and cartoons became more expensice to produce); rather it appears to be a real affinity with the surrealistic movement unfolding in "serious" art circles at the time he was working. It's not too much of a stretch to see elements of Dali or Miro in Sterrett's panel compositions and layouts, and his flare for bringing inanimate items to life on the static page is every bit as striking as those inhabiting the canvases of the aforementioned artists. Check out the stairs, for example, in this strip (click on the image to blow it up):
I don't believe there's ever been a comprehensive collection of Sterrett's work available (as there are for such contemporaries as Herriman, Winsor McCay and E.C. Segar), which is a shame. Let's hope that someone rectifies that situation in the near future.
Cliff Sterrett's Polly and Her Pals is probably second only to George Herriman's Krazy Kat in using the comic strip form to create great modern art. The simplicity of the design and unspoken but forceful narrative of the example above demonstrates how creative a soul Sterrett was, and to think he turned out stuff like this on a daily basis for some forty odd years (okay, maybe not every individual strip was a masterpiece, but his batting average was pretty high). The key cahracter is not, as you might think Polly (herself a kind of pedestrian flapper/career girl common to strips with their roots in the 1920s), but rather her put-upon Paw, whose constant travails in dealing with an exasperatingly complex (or in some cases, exasperatingly simplistic) world inevitably led to the kind of explosive outburst that only made the situation worse.
Sterrett's genius was only partly in his characterizations and story-telling. He was also a master draftsman, whose images suggest a foundation for the more modernistic style adopted by comic strips and cartoons after World War II. But his impulse was not economic (as was true later, as strips shrunk in size, and cartoons became more expensice to produce); rather it appears to be a real affinity with the surrealistic movement unfolding in "serious" art circles at the time he was working. It's not too much of a stretch to see elements of Dali or Miro in Sterrett's panel compositions and layouts, and his flare for bringing inanimate items to life on the static page is every bit as striking as those inhabiting the canvases of the aforementioned artists. Check out the stairs, for example, in this strip (click on the image to blow it up):
I don't believe there's ever been a comprehensive collection of Sterrett's work available (as there are for such contemporaries as Herriman, Winsor McCay and E.C. Segar), which is a shame. Let's hope that someone rectifies that situation in the near future.
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