‘Another History of Art’ (review)

Written and Illustrated by Anita Kunz
Published by Fantagraphics

Here’s another one of those books where I find myself wondering to whom anyone thought it would appeal. Another History of Art by Anita Kunz is a Fantagraphics publication but has nothing to do with comics.

Well, almost nothing.

Specifically, Another History of Art is supposed to be a parody of coffee table art books of the type that used to fill the Bargain Book shelves at Waldenbooks in years gone by. Each left-hand page is a short biography of a classical artist and each right-hand page shows one of their works.

The supposed joke here, though, is that all of these historical biographies are bogus, rewritten to reflect that all of the great male artists of history were female.

Thomas Gainsborough becomes “Thomasina,” David Hockney is “Davinia,” etc., etc. The biographies themselves seem to be a mix of the actual male artist’s bio and completely made-up names, dates, and places. The back cover tells us this is a feminist book.

I fail to see how simply changing male names to female names and then tying those to often surreal, unrelated images makes this feminist.

Now, I know a little about classical art—not a lot but some!

In fact, I used to buy a lot of those coffee table art books with my employee discount! Still have a few. But quite a number of the real artists being parodied here are unknown even to me and thus anything said about their female counterpart goes over my head. The average reader is likely to know even less than I do and thus skip reading the unfunny bios altogether.

The art, now, that’s another story. Ostensibly parodying the styles of the legendary artists, it seems to me more to parody only their motifs for the most part. The Picasso is clearly meant to be a Picasso, the Warhol meant to be a Warhol…but the style pretty much always remains identifiable as that of Anita Kunz herself.

The images—even the cover, really, are NSFW. They’re filled with nudity, throughout. They’re also filled, somewhat randomly, with monkeys and people with great big eyes. A number of incongruous tattoos as well, some of Hanna-Barbera characters. Popeye, Olive Oyl, Mickey Mouse, Pluto (here oddly called Goofy), Tweety, and Bugs Bunny appear, and you’ll see Nancy and Sluggo and Betty and Veronica as you’ve never seen them before! If you’ve ever fantasized about Daisy Duck’s head on a tattooed human woman’s nude body, this is where you’ll find that image. And remember, none of this is dirty. This is “AHT!”

But why?

Again, the faux bios have nothing to do with the images outside of signaling what original artist is being parodied and as I said most of that went over my head. I had to look up a number of the originals for comparison and a few weren’t even found easily on the Web! Ms. Kunz is clearly an excellent artist but there’s really not a lot to dwell on here.

One can zip through the book pretty quickly and in spite of a few titters here and there, nothing sticks with you…well, except maybe that Daisy Duck image and that’s not really a good thing!