Tuesday

ART ALMIGHTY / LAST GASP

ART ALMIGHTY: A group exhibition presented by LAST GASP

Last Gasp is one of the largest and oldest publishers and purveyors of underground books and comics in the world, celebrating its 41^st year in business.

Over the years they have published, and in some cases brought to light, some of the most respected and talented artists working today, including such luminaries as R. Crumb, Justin Green, Bill Griffith, Mark Ryden, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, Frank Kozik, Todd Schorr, Winston Smith, Spain, and Robert Williams to name but a few.

As well as publishing, Last Gasp is a distributor of all sorts of weird ‘n’ wonderful subversive literature, graphic novels, tattoo and art books – supplying them to bookstores on six continents.

Last Gasp was founded in 1970 by Ron Turner. Last Gasp’s first publication, Slow Death Funnies #1 came out on the first Earth Day, April 15, 1970. Subsequent comics included the all-women’s comic It Ain’t Me Babe, and Skull Comics.

Ron Turner’s enthusiasm for underground comics, and in particular their autobiographical aspect, has been the driving force behind many groundbreaking publications.  Last Gasp published Justin Green’s highly acclaimed confessional Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary in 1972, a book that became an inspiration to many artists now working in the autobiographical style. “Art Spiegelman, who won the only Pulitzer Prize for cartooning, has said he would never have started to do the autobiographical story of his family (in the graphic novel Maus) unless Justin had done it first. And Robert Crumb said the same thing,” said Turner. Continue…