The Masters Series: Roz Chast. Tyson Skross, exhibit designer. New
York City: SVA Chelsea Gallery. November 17 – December 15, 2018.
http://www.sva.edu/events/events-exhibitions/the-masters-series-roz-chast
Roz Chast’s interconnected life and work are the subject of
the current exhibit at the School of Visual Art’s SVA Chelsea Gallery as the
“30th annual Masters Series Award and Exhibition.” Chast’s secure
place in the canon of cartooning makes her a fitting choice for this
anniversary honor. Jennifer Schuessler in her New York Times interview about the exhibit called Chast
“the poet laureate of urban neurosis,” and discussed her copious work for the New Yorker. I certainly remember reading
many one-panel cartoons by Chast in my parents’ copies of the magazine in the
1990s. As this exhibit makes clear, however, her work is much wider in scope
than just gag cartooning for one magazine.
The exhibit is designed to be fun. Rather than offering a comprehensive
linear trajectory of Chast’s work to date, it is arranged by theme in one large
room, subdivided, but offering multiple pathways through the material on
display. Visitors are invited to wander, due not only to the arrangement of the
material, but also because of the scarcity of wall text. What labels there are
do not generally attempt to explain or guide, but rather simply offer titles,
years, and materials. This is an exhibit designed to allow appreciation of
Chast’s work, rather than an exhibit designed to teach visitors about Chast.
As I walked through, I first encountered an area focused on Chast’s
newest book, Going into Town: A Love
Letter to New York. Dozens of pages from the book are framed on the walls
in tidy lines. The art itself, scaled to the size of the published book, is
also quite tidy; only a few of the originals had noticeable changes or
corrections overlaid on new paper. In addition to reproductions of life-sized
pedestrians on some of the walls, there was also a display of a full wall of
Chast’s New York cityscape here.
While I enjoyed the whole exhibit, there were some parts
that felt more meaningful to me than others. The two-dimensional work is hung
simply and at a convenient height for reading. Chast’s lines and watercolors
are extremely clean, and while the originals are vibrant, they tend to be
reproduced well in print, at basically the same scale at which they are
produced. Thus, it was her three-dimensional work which I found most exciting
to see in person, since her embroidery, her hooked rugs, and her painted
pysanky eggs do not have the same effect when reproduced in photographs. Through
her books, I can see Chast’s cartoons whenever I want to, but this may be the
only time to see her original fiber art or the handbag she discusses in Can’t We Talk about Something More Pleasant?
Emily Lauer
(This
review was written for the International Journal of Comic Art 20:2, but this
version appears on the IJOCA website on December 4,2018,
while the exhibit is still open for viewing.)
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