Related Interest
Museum of Degenerates + Diaspora Boy
“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“GET ME THE FUCK OFF YOUR FOUL LIST!”
—Marty Peretzabout the bookabout
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.
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 of MAD comics 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.
The comic strips contained in Diaspora Boy are intricate fever dreams employing noir, horror, slapstick and science fiction to expose the outlandish hypocrisies at play in the American/Israeli relationship. Sometimes banned, often controversial and always hilarious, Valley’s work has helped to energize a generation exasperated by American complicity in an Israeli occupation now entering its fiftieth year.
This, the first full-scale anthology of Valley’s art, provides an essential retrospective of America and Israel at a turning point. With meticulously detailed line work and a richly satirical palette peppered with perseverating turtles, xenophobic Jedi knights, sputtering superheroes, mutating golems and zombie billionaires, Valley's comics unmask the hypocrisy and horror behind the headlines. This collection supplements the satires with historical background and contexts, insights into the creative process, selected reactions to the works, and behind-the-scenes tales of tensions over what was permissible for publication.
Brutally riotous and irreverent, the comics in this volume are a vital contribution to a centuries-old tradition of graphic protest and polemics.
PRAISE FOR 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
“The work is difficult, funny, powerful, mightily subversive, and a testament to the depth of his focus.”
—Hyperallergic
in the media
Related Interest
Related Interest
Museum of Degenerates + Diaspora Boy
“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“GET ME THE FUCK OFF YOUR FOUL LIST!”
—Marty Peretzabout the bookabout
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.
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 of MAD comics 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.
The comic strips contained in Diaspora Boy are intricate fever dreams employing noir, horror, slapstick and science fiction to expose the outlandish hypocrisies at play in the American/Israeli relationship. Sometimes banned, often controversial and always hilarious, Valley’s work has helped to energize a generation exasperated by American complicity in an Israeli occupation now entering its fiftieth year.
This, the first full-scale anthology of Valley’s art, provides an essential retrospective of America and Israel at a turning point. With meticulously detailed line work and a richly satirical palette peppered with perseverating turtles, xenophobic Jedi knights, sputtering superheroes, mutating golems and zombie billionaires, Valley's comics unmask the hypocrisy and horror behind the headlines. This collection supplements the satires with historical background and contexts, insights into the creative process, selected reactions to the works, and behind-the-scenes tales of tensions over what was permissible for publication.
Brutally riotous and irreverent, the comics in this volume are a vital contribution to a centuries-old tradition of graphic protest and polemics.
PRAISE FOR 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
“The work is difficult, funny, powerful, mightily subversive, and a testament to the depth of his focus.”
—Hyperallergic