Description
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 century Yiddish cartoon art, Weimar-era expressionist woodcuts, and the free-for-all lunacy of early MAD 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.
- Author appearances in New York and other major cities throughout the Northeast.
- Leverage the author's extensive social media following to promote the book. He has a following of 111.6K on Twitter.
- Pitch reviews and interviews to a wide array of publications including The New York Times, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, New York Magazine, The Los Angeles Times, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Boston Review, The Guardian, The London Review of Books, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, The Washington Post, The Baffler, The Nation, Literary Hub, Artforum, Hyperallergic, BOMB Magazine, The Comics Journal, and more.
- Pitch television, radio, and podcast interviews with On the Media, Fresh Air, Vox Conversations, Hyperallergic Podcast, The New Yorker Radio Hour, The Stacks, Vox's Longform, NPR's Here & Now, It's Been a Minute, and more.
About the Author
Eli Valley is a writer and artist whose work has appeared in a range of publications including The Nation, The Nib, The New Republic, The Village Voice, The Forward and Gawker.
Reviews
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
Book Information
ISBN 9781682193877
Author Eli Valley
Format Hardback
Page Count 200
Imprint OR Books
Publisher OR Books