An explosive exhibition of art by a celebrated cartoonist chronicling America's march toward right-wing authoritarianism.
Museum of Degeneratesinvites you to a delirious display of art by one of contemporary America's most original and incendiary political cartoonists. Eli Valley's extraordinary work is a scathing indictment of the entire American polity, with a particular focus on the issues of Israel and Judaism at a time when these have moved to the center of public debate and action.
In these pages, Valley tips a homburg to German expressionists such as George Grosz and Otto Dix who featured in "The Exhibition of Degenerate Art," a 1937 Munich show that sought to ridicule the work of artists critical of Hitler's fascist regime. In an aesthetic that is strikingly original, Valley also draws on early twentieth-century American Yiddish cartoons and the work of artists who created the helter-skelter exuberance ofMADcomics in the 1950s.
Valley's own art, accompanied here by extensive descriptions of its genesis and context, is a howl of protest against the political, cultural and media elites driving America into an authoritarian abyss. Here is anger, pure and hot, expressed in exquisite detail and, often, disturbingly funny.
“PRAISE FOR ELI VALLEY'S DIASPORA BOY "One of the most fascinating and darkly humorous books in living memory." --Los Angeles Review of Books "A gorgeous, enormous and important collection." --Haaretz "Explosively subversive." --Kirkus "His cartoons aren't only raucously funny. They constitute a searing indictment of the moral corruption of organized American Jewish life in our age." --Peter Beinart "With great humor, Eli Valley's comic-strips expertly debunk the benighted tribal propaganda that passes for mainstream Jewish thought. As he demonstrates in each of his strips, the struggle for Jewish emancipation is far from over." --Ben Katchor "The work is difficult, funny, powerful, mightily subversive, and a testament to the depth of his focus." --Hyperallergic "Anyone interested in ongoing debates in the Jewish community, and the political uses of humor, should check out his work, which is smart, talkative and heavily inked. ... Hilarious." --Kent Worcester, The Comics Journal”
“The Angriest Political Cartoonist in America.”
—New York Magazine
“The kind of political cartoons that get under your skin and stay there.”
—PRINT Magazine
“Sumptuous”
—Bookforum
"This brave cartoonist is a public hero."
—CounterPunch
"Museum of Degenerates invites you to a delirious display of art by one of contemporary America’s most original and incendiary political cartoonists. Eli Valley’s extraordinary work is a scathing indictment of the entire American polity, with a particular focus on the issues of Israel and Judaism at a time when these have moved to the center of public debate and action."
—The Daily Cartoonist
"Commitment and conviction saturate every illustration on every page . . . It is a funny, infuriating, astonishing, antagonizing, and alarming book that will win him few friends in the current moment but is exactly and precisely the kind of art that is needed to meet it."
—Comics Journal
PRAISE FOR ELI VALLEY'S DIASPORA BOY
“One of the most fascinating and darkly humorous books in living memory.”
—Los Angeles Review of Books
“Explosively subversive.”
—Kirkus
“His cartoons aren’t only raucously funny. They constitute a searing indictment of the moral corruption of organized American Jewish life in our age.”
—Peter Beinart
Eli Valleyis the author of the critically-acclaimedDiaspora Boy: Comics on Crisis in America and Israel. His work has appeared inJewish Currents,The New Republic,The Baffler,Gawker, andThe Chapo Guide to Revolution(Atria, 2018).
Museum of Degenerates is a lush showcase of Eli Valley's critically-acclaimed art capturing America in a state of ongoing cataclysm and making the provocative case that the entire political class has been complicit in the reactionary waves currently overwhelming the country. Unlike most political cartoons, Valley's art is a howl of rage against the political, cultural and media elites driving America into an authoritarian abyss. Inspired in equal measure by early 20th comics, Valley's distinctive style has energized the left and enraged the most worthy targets of our time. No single artist has captured our new era in all its horror and grotesquerie quite like Valley, whose comics have served as both mirror and lightning rod for a country in crisis. Museum of Degenerates highlights Valley's art, both black and white and full-color masterworks, from the past seven years of American strife. Including rare works and art appearing in print for the first time, the collection will be framed by notes on individual drawings as well as a lengthy introduction in which Valley explores his personal artistic vision in a time of unprecedented national crisis and links his work to earlier periods of antifascist art. Museum of Degenerates will feature some of the most indelible images from any artist working today, available in one place for the first time.
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