“The 9th Art: Frames and Thought Bubbles” to open at Kennesaw State’s Zuckerman Museum of Art

Location: Don Russell Clayton Gallery
When: January 23 – May 9, 2021

The 9th Art: Frames and Thought Bubbles provides an encyclopedic overview of comic art, sharing examples of a wide variety of visual and narrative storytelling styles from panels in early newspapers to contemporary comic images. Original drawings and prints presented in this exhibition highlight the artistic skills of the master artists who defined the comic art form, as well as the contemporary artists who created some of the most famous and influential characters in our shared cultural experience. This special exhibition, curated by Geo Sipp, director of KSU’s School of Art and Design and professor of Art, will feature a selection of American and Franco/Belgian comic book art on loan from collections and individual artists.

The term “9th Art” acknowledges the reverence for which Franco-Belgian audiences regard comics in their culture. In France and Belgium, the term bande dessinée, which derives from the original description of the art form as drawn strips, analogous to the sequence of images in a film strip, have been given the honor of being referred to as the 9th art since the 1960s. French film critic Claude Beylie first used the term in an article he wrote for the magazine Lettres et Medecins in 1964. Expanding on German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s Lectures on Aesthetics, in which major art forms are ranked, comics and bande dessinée have followed film and television into the realm of Fine Art. As such, The ZMA is pleased to present this prominent and extensive selection of works at the Zuckerman Museum of Art that challenge the construct of traditional narrative storytelling.