What actual painting is this scene based on?
I think it’s a famous one I can’t bring to mind.
But I can’t help thinking of Poussin’s A Dance to the Music of Time (banner to this post), which in turn I’m aware of mostly from its use in Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time.
The Poussin has four figures (they could be the Seasons, or in Powell’s treatment the Kindly Ones, i.e. Furies), facing outward; while this scene has five, facing inward. The Poussin dates from 1634-1636, while this other scene with its contorted nudes surely is showing an influence of Impressionism or later.
Later: okay, I have been informed. It’s La Danse by Henri Matisse with versions from 1909 and 1910.
Comics I Don't Understand 
Before I saw the Matisse reference you made, at first I thought of the Three Graces, who prance about nude or semi-clothed in all manner of artworks going back to Roman times, sometimes with accompanying cherubs and musicians.
https://www.dailyartmagazine.com/three-graces-paintings/
One of my favorite paintings, I always see it when I’m seeking out my all time favorite, Starry Night, at MOMA in NY.
Rather than get into a discussion of primitive modern art, I’d like to enlist some help in rescuing Macanudo from the monochromatic abuse that the Sunday strips have been suffering from Arcamax. As the link above and the image below show, some idiot is posting the Sunday images in gray scale. I would like to encourage anyone who reads comics at Arcamax to complain about this mistreatment; perhaps they will listen to more than just one voice.
@ Sheila – Thanks for confirming that there are people who appreciate Matisse and therefore justify the presence of those paintings in museums. I personally don’t care for either version (and would go so far as to say that they are just ugly), but it’s good to know that there are other opinions.
Here is the color version of that Macanudo panel exhibited in black&white by Kilby.
Yes, the color really does seem to add something, if you ask me.
@ Mitch – “…the color really does seem to add something…”
Especially since Macanudo is one of the very rare (daily) strips that is produced in color by the author (the only other one that I can think of at the moment is “Wallace the Brave“, but there may be a few others). Virtually all daily syndicated strips are submitted as monochrome line drawings, and the someone (usually a syndicate dweeb) uses a primitive tool (such as PC-Paint) to fill in colors for the online editions.
You could’ve just imagined the colors…
🙂
Breaking Cat News is colored by Georgia. When it first started newspaper syndication, they used a third-party coloring service. She took it back over so she could use her watercolors.
Here is an early one:
And a current strip:
According to Mr. Johnson, “Arlo and Janis” is now coloured by the artist.
I’ve mentioned before the Lee Enterprises standard Sunday comics lineup. Originally there were four pages of color strips, with a black and white insert with puzzles and such, with an ad on the back side. After a few weeks it changed so that the ad is on the fourth color page and one page of comics moved to the insert. So now there are Sunday strips in B&W. I don’t know if Lee decided that or the Post-Dispatch did.
@ Lost in A**2 – I’m sure that the information is correct, but I would be interested in where it came from, since Johnson’s blog has only been updated once in the last 11.5 months. In any case, the coloring in “Arlo & Janis” uses the “standard overlay” technique, as described by Watterson in his “10th Anniversary” book. This is fundamentally different from the watercolors used by “Breaking Cat News” and “Macanudo”. I’m pretty sure that “Wallace the Brave” also uses overlays, but the color complexity in that strip shows clear evidence of authorial dedication.
The information came from his blog, before he stopped updating it.
I keep hoping he’ll return to it.
Today in “Has this artist ever seen a baby”…
Not really anything to do with comics, but this past Sunday paper announced that Parade magazine will cease print production and go to completely online. A few pieces will be reproduced in the Sunday paper.
Brian: It would have something to do with comics, if Parade still had the Laugh Parade feature.
Yep. Good ol’ Howard Huge.