reviewed by Carli Spina
Kim Munson. Beautiful Monsters: The Art of Emil Ferris. New York: Society of Illustrators’ Museum of Illustration. August 3-October 19, 2024. https://societyillustrators.org/event/beautifulmonsters/
To coincide with this year’s publication of Emil Ferris’ My Favorite Thing is Monsters: Book Two, the Society of Illustrators’ Museum of Illustration devoted its main floor and lower level gallery spaces to an exhibition of her work curated by Kim Munson. Munson has ample experience in this arena, having edited the Eisner Award-nominated anthology Comic Art in Museums, curated the museum exhibit Women in Comics, and served as a 2022 Eisner Award judge. Clearly, Munson curated this exhibit with care to ensure that it adds to visitors’ understanding of Ferris and her work. The pieces selected illustrated many aspects of Ferris’ work in My Favorite Thing is Monsters including her character design work, her influences, and the monster magazine covers which feature in both volumes. Pieces from her short work “The Bite That Changed My Life” from Our Favorite Thing Is My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, which was created for Free Comic Book Day in 2019 were also prominently featured in the exhibit.
Where the exhibit
exceled most was in placing Ferris’ work in context. This began as visitors
entered the first room of the exhibit where the first case and interpretative
text focus on Ferris’ father’s work as a toy designer. His work as a designer
of iconic toys, including the Rock ‘Em, Sock ‘Em Robots, the light-up game
Simon, and the Mickey Mouse push button landline phone, where Mickey holds the
receiver, were highlighted as an important source of inspiration for Ferris’
work and particularly her repetition of shapes. The influence of toys carried into
the second room of the exhibit where an illustration of Granny Smith: Super Crime Fighter was paired with an actual doll
with an apple in place of the head, and a label explaining how Ferris grew up
creating her own toys from 10-cent items found in the Salvation Army bin.
Understanding how these childhood experiences carried into Ferris’ work adds a
deeper layer to her artwork and her text.
The exhibit also contextualized Ferris’ references to several classic paintings of Judith beheading Holofernes by bringing these pieces, and some initial drafts, together while listing the works Ferris references. Though this section of the exhibit would have benefited from including reproductions of the works referenced for comparison, it was nevertheless helpful in making explicit the connection between these classic works and Ferris’ art. In keeping with this connection to classic art, Ferris created a large-scale piece titled Scary Starry Night specifically for this exhibit. It is described on the accompanying label as a “tribute to Van Gogh’s 1889 painting The Starry Night” and the piece consists of a large, rectangular illustration that is very similar to the original painting, drawn in the style of Ferris’ artwork for this book with cross-hatching in ball-point pen. Eyes are featured in place of the stars found in the original work and a red set of eyes has been added to each of the black towers that rise in the left side of the piece in this adaptation. To the left of this work, a cutout figure of Van Gogh holding a palette and brushes was positioned as if he is in the midst of painting the larger work. This illustration continues Ferris’ practice of reworking classic art works and more modern popular illustrations in her own style and inhabited by her own characters. At the same time, it also served as an interactive element of the exhibit, given that the label specifically suggested that visitors take their picture with this piece and post it on social media. Such photo opportunities are becoming more common in museums, but this one contributed to the exhibit by serving both as a focal point for the eye upon entering the larger of the two rooms of the exhibit and as an original work specifically created for the exhibit.
While the majority of the works in the exhibit were illustrations from My Favorite Thing is Monsters, the exhibit would still have benefited from more detailed labels in places, particularly for those works that are not illustrations from one of the books. A good example of this was one of the few three-dimensional objects in the exhibit, a mask that appears to be a recreation of one found in an illustration. A recent interview with the author seems to confirm that this mask was created by Ferris’ mother when she was a child,[1] which an adjacent comic in the exhibit described. However, a label with more details about this would have been appreciated, especially given that greater context is given for her father’s creative career and his influence on Ferris. Given that her mother was also a professional artist,[2] this felt like a missed opportunity to offer a comparative look at her mother’s influence in her work.
This exhibit offered
a chance to experience Ferris’ work, often in a new context that added to
visitors’ understanding of her novels but could be appreciated by both fans of
her work and those who have not yet read it.
[1]
Vitali, Marc. 2024. “Eagerly Awaited Graphic Novel Embraces Chicago, Art and
Monsters — Both Real and Imaginary.” WTTW. June 4. https://news.wttw.com/2024/06/04/eagerly-awaited-graphic-novel-embraces-chicago-art-and-monsters-both-real-and-imaginary
[2]
Yood, James. 1991. “Eleanor Spiess-Ferris: Zaks Gallery.” Artforum International. Sept. 1: Reviews 139.
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