Like jazz and baseball, cartoons are an indelible, indigenous part of American culture. "Cartoon America" celebrates 250 years of American cartooning with an unprecedented selection of original art by the best, most accomplished creators in the history of comics illustration. Illustrations.

Traces the evolution of racial caricatures in American cartoons during the first half of the twentieth century

The Image of America traces the development of American history and culture through more than two centuries of caricature and cartoon. Through the acerbic eyes of both American and foreign artists it portrays our history in dramatic tone-building images. With the pathos, humor and the prejudices of his time each artist caricatures the personalities and events that form our culture. Paul Revere, William Charles, and James Gillray satirized the vents of the Revolution and the War of 1812. David Claypool Johnston earned the title of the "American Cruikshank" with his devastating caricatures of "King" Andrew Jackson and his administration, and Southern cartoonists vented their wrath on Abraham Lincoln as the Civil War raged. Artists readily identified or created symbols for each era as cartoons became a widely-distributed art of the people. America was first symbolized as a naïve Indian or the virginal Columbia. The American Eagle was employed to represent the country after it was adopted as the official emblem on the Great Seal. The most famous symbol of the United States, however, is Uncle Sam, best personified by James Montgomery Flagg during World War I. In each decade cartoonists demonstrate their ability to capture the essence of an age in a caricature--Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong, et al. The Image of America demonstrates the firm relationship between the events of history and contemporary art forms.--Jacket flap.

Animation has been part of television since the start of the medium but it has rarely received unbiased recognition from media scholars. More often, it has been ridiculed for supposedly poor technical quality, accused of trafficking in violence aimed at children, and neglected for indulging in vulgar behavior. These accusations are often made categorically, out of prejudice or ignorance, with little attempt to understand the importance of each program on its own terms. This book takes a serious look at the whole genre of television animation, from the early themes and practices through the evolution of the art to the present day. Examining the productions of individual studios and producers, the author establishes a means of understanding their work in new ways, at the same time discussing the ways in which the genre has often been unfairly marginalized by critics, and how, especially in recent years, producers have both challenged and embraced this "marginality" as a vital part of their work. By taking seriously something often thought to be frivolous, the book provides a framework for understanding the persistent presence of television animation in the American media--and how surprisingly influential it has been.

In Cartoon Vision Dan Bashara examines American animation alongside the modern design boom of the postwar era. Focusing especially on United Productions of America (UPA), a studio whose graphic, abstract style defined the postwar period, Bashara considers animation akin to a laboratory, exploring new models of vision and space alongside theorists and practitioners in other fields. The links—theoretical, historical, and aesthetic—between animators, architects, designers, artists, and filmmakers reveal a specific midcentury modernism that rigorously reimagined the senses. Cartoon Vision invokes the American Bauhaus legacy of László Moholy-Nagy and György Kepes and advocates for animation’s pivotal role in a utopian design project of retraining the public’s vision to better apprehend a rapidly changing modern world.

Discusses the distinctiveness of the cartoon form, as well as myriad other types of animation production, and examines animation's importance as a barometer of the social conditions in which it is made and which it reflects. [back cover].