"Jack Davis: Legacy of Laughter" is now on the wall (and off the wall) at Ringling College. This exhibit showcases nearly 100 of Davis' cartoons.
Cartoon fans will enjoy this tasty bowl of eye candy. Cartoonists might feel a sting of professional jealousy. The man was good. Beyond good. Jack Davis was a cartoonist's cartoonist.
I knew that already. I've known that since I picked up Mad Magazine (Jan. '67) and saw Davis' "Hogans Heroes" parody. I expect to be impressed. Tim Jaeger says I will be. He curated this exhibition, and he should know. But impressing visitors isn't his only goal.
Jaeger is Ringling College's exhibitions director and chief curator of galleries, and that's part of his job. But he also teaches a couple of classes. Exhibition and Design Management is one of them. Organizing this show was a big lesson for his students in that class.
"We take a learn-by-doing approach," Jaeger explains. "How do you learn how to put an exhibition together? You put one together. That's the only way to do it - and the only way to teach it."
This show's illustrations are drawn from the Davis family collection. Jaeger drove to Atlanta to get them. But he didn't make the selections alone. 17 students from his class helped by looking at ton of photos he uploaded to Google Drive. His Sarasota students considered the online images and narrowed down the selections together. After that, Jaeger returned with exhibit's actual artworks. These include Davis' Mad Magazine covers, sports illustrations, commercial art, comics and comic strips. Most came from his peak period from the mid-1960s to the 1990s.
"This is our third Jack Davis exhibit," Jaeger says. "But we have a different organizing principle this time."
A student pulls Jaeger away before he can spell it out. While they talk, I check out the show on my own.
Davis' people immediately grab my eye. This human zoo is packed with his unusual specimens.
Alfred E. Neuman steals the time-traveling DeLorean on the cover of Mad Magazine. Doc Brown and Marty are stranded in 1985 trying to hitch a ride home in a parody of "Back to the Future."
Two Hollywood posers walk down the sidewalk. A slim starlet in sunglasses and an older man (who looks like a director, but probably isn't.) Their poodle seems embarrassed.
Walter Matthau grins on a poster for "Bad News Bears" Tatum O'Neal grins knowingly beside him. She looks like the brains of the operation.
Stan Laurel's carrying a 2x4 at a construction site. He accidently whacks Oliver Hardy in the head and sends him flying. Davis freeze-frames Hardy's pratfall in mid-air before he lands in a big puddle of wet concrete.
A hassled, overworked cartoonist is surrounded by agents, fans, artists pushing portfolios, mobsters with guns and bribes, and angry competitor cutting his phone lines.
Cartoonists, celebrities, stars, losers, quarterbacks, cops, creeps, bums. Davis' illustrated humans have one thing in common.
They've all got that Jack Davis magic motion. They're static drawings on paper, not animated cartoons. They're really standing still, yet somehow seem to move. That's the magic of Davis' art. Every single character appears ready to jump off the paper and chase me across the gallery. How does Davis do it? What's the secret of his magic? When Jaeger returns, I ask him.
"That's another big lesson in this show," he says. "It's actually the organizing principle."
"Jack Davis worked hard and he never gave up," says Jaeger.
That's it?
"That's it," he says. "It's the mentality of a professional athlete. Davis approached cartooning with that attitude."
Jaeger adds that Davis constantly pushed himself. He made drawing after drawing until he got it right. If Davis' first four drawings weren't good enough, he'd make five. Or as many as it took until he liked what he saw.
"People think Davis' secret was raw natural talent," says Jaeger. "His cartooning skills were amazing. He could draw like a basketball player dribbles. But he wasn't born with those skills. Davis had to work at it. We show his hard work."
According to Jaeger, that's why this exhibition is not focused on Davis' slick, polished, finished, camera-ready illustrations.
"We focus on Jack Davis' works in progress, not final art," he says. "It's all about his messy creative process - all the revisions and refinements steps leading up to the final image. That's a lesson for every student in the college."
Illustration evolution is what this show illustrates.
This time around, I see what I'd missed. Davis' preliminary concept drawings clearly outnumber the finished artworks. Many reveal the evolutionary sequence.
One tryptic is a black-and-white, bird's eye view of a busy restaurant. Three attempts, all framed together. I can't tell the difference at first. Then I see it.
The café's not so busy in Davis' first version. New diners appear in the second version. And he's tweaked the early arrivals. The smiling man holding the burger has just taken a bite out of it. On the third try, the place is packed. Smiling burger man has now grown a moustache.
Davis' roughs are sketchy but stiff. His second and third attempts are more fluid. The compositions get snappier with each revision. Until the characters come alive.
And that how he does it.
Davis creates his magic motion with a complicated spell. It combines dynamic composition that zips your eye around; a keen sense of how human bodies move; and a confident, fluid ink line. Getting those ingredients right is never easy.
"You can see how Davis kept refining the image," Jaeger says. "He was his own toughest critic. He also took input from art directors."
Jaeger points to Davis' concept art for the "Little Giants" movie poster. It's covered with a transparent, acetate sheet. The overlay's full of the art director's grease-penciled notes.
To Kids: Add a few Band Aids. Grunge it up a little (overall).
Remove hand. Add slingshot in pocket.
That's a sample. But the advice was good. If it made the art better, Davis was never too proud to take it. Or too lazy to try again.
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"Beginners get frustrated at the creative process," he says. "They've done drawing after drawing. Now they're looking at their fourth try - and they hate it. They say, 'I'm not an artist.' So, they just stop drawing. If they didn't stop, they would be artists. Jack Davis never quit. He didn't always get it right on the first try. Or the second or third. He just kept drawing and drawing until he got it right."
According to Jaeger, that's encouraging to art students in all disciplines. If the great Jack Davis had to struggle for perfection, there's hope for them too.
"That's why we focus on imperfection in this show," he says. "The perfect image only comes at the end of the process. You've got to get through a lot of imperfection to get there."
Runs through March 22 at RCAD Stulberg Gallery. 2700 N. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota; (941) 359-7563; ringling.edu/galleries.