Outcault/Stahler:
Editorial Cartoonists / A Century Apart
October 20 – December 30, 2012
Richard Aschenbrand, Curator
Editorial cartoons parody events and personalities. Artistic skill combined with sarcasm illustrate current events, celebrities, mores and society. Just as Jeff Stahler, a native of Bellefontaine, Ohio, is one of today’s masters of this art, Lancaster, Ohio native Richard F. Outcault reigned in the early 1900s. Stahler’s “Moderately Confused” characters comment on social, political, economic and environmental ills as did Outcault’s “Yellow Kid” and “Buster Brown.” Spanning over 100 years, many of the controversial issues lampooned by both illustrators remain the same. At the end of Buster Brown cartoon strips featured in the exhibition, Buster often promises to “behave better,” but he never does, and it seems neither does society.
SUPPLEMENTAL EXHIBITION CONTENT