Artists 'toon in

A recent boom in contemporary art is actually more of a bang! boom! as cartoon imagery explodes in new work seen in museums these days. Judging from how often characters from the comics pop up, artists have no problem staying 'tooned to their inner child to explore grown-up subjects.

When Pop artists Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol first used cartoon images like Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck to create fine art in the 1960s, it was shocking.

"Working with comics as imagery was implicitly an affront," says Lawrence Rinder, curator of contemporary art at New York's Whitney Museum of American Art. Now, the distinction between high and low is a non-issue. Borrowing from pop culture "is completely acceptable, a part of the normative language of artmaking," according to Mr. Rinder.

Which is not to say artists are dumbing down their ambitions. They tackle highbrow subjects like identity and morality with lowbrow tools like Snoopy or Spider-Man.

Making art from cartoon figures today "is like painting a Madonna in the Renaissance," says Mr. Rinder. With cultural literacy at a low ebb, a riff on Superman communicates more universally than Bible stories, mythology, or fairy tales. Archie and Veronica have become our Aries and Venus.

US artists whose work reflects cartoon influence include established artists like Elizabeth Murray, who paints exploded cartoonish shapes in Day-Glo colors. A younger generation includes Arturo Herrera, who fractures Disney fairy tales under an abstract overlay.

"It's hard to be a figurative artist today and not be influenced by comics and cartoons," says Laura Hoptman, curator of contemporary art for the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh."We keep going back to figures who embody basic attributes of human experience," says Bernard Welt, a professor at Corcoran College of Art and Design in Washington, D.C. "Artists today feel comfortable venerating Mickey Mouse or the Road Runner, indomitable figures who hit something archetypal."

The legacy of comics influences artists of "all generations," Rinder says, "and in the younger generation it's even more pronounced."

"You covet what you see," says Cindy Workman, a New York artist who uses Batman and the Lone Ranger in her work. "It's natural to reflect on things in the media, chew on it, and spit it out."

Artists use the potent graphic style of cartoons in various ways. Some transform existing cartoon imagery. Others employ the visual conventions, such as sequential narrative; symbolic color; dialogue balloons; flat, exaggerated forms; and the "pow! zap!" vocabulary.

"Some are just having a lot of fun," says Valerie Cassel, curator at Houston's Contemporary Arts Museum, "while others explore character as a novelist would."

Ms. Workman, whose art is on display at Lennon, Weinberg, a gallery in New York's SoHo, uses comic-strip imagery to investigate gender roles. She grew up reading superhero and romance comics, fascinated by the way men and women were depicted. "The Donna Reed mentality impacted me - the role-playing [that] one is expected to do and the reality," she says. Using ready-made images facilitates communication. "There's a history there - an instantaneous recognition."

In "Whap" (2003), Workman superimposes a "found" drawing of the Lone Ranger adjusting his mask over a photograph of a nude woman, with the word "Whap!" in red and a burst of yellow lines. She explains, "It's very bright and happy looking on the surface, but when you really look, the subject is intense."

Using comics "brings humor to things that are serious," she says, "and helps us get through them."

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