Basil Wolverton show hanging in NYC until Aug 14

A new show of the art of Basil Wolverton is hanging in New York's Barbara Gladstone Gallery (515 West 24th Street, Chelsea; [phone]) until Aug 14. The New York Times has a nice potted history (with slideshow) of MAD Magazine's grossest and funniest illustrator to accompany the show.

The Wolverton material best suited to a general audience, though, may be his Bible illustrations, which he was doing in the 1950s and '60s, concurrently with his early Mad work. In 1941 he had become a member of a Protestant sect called the Radio Church of God, later the Worldwide Church of God. He was ordained as an elder in 1943, and as his contribution to the sect he illustrated some of its apocalyptically minded publications, as well as the biblical account of the earth's final days.

Several of his end-of-the-world pictures are in the show, and they're wild. Plagues descend on the sin-ridden human race. Bodies break out in disfiguring boils. Faces burn, shrivel and stretch into masks of fear. In this context even the ultra-bonkers cartoons Wolverton did in the 1960s and '70s for the post-underground Gjdrkzlxcbwq Comics and DC Comics make sense.

The van Gogh of the Gross-Out

Slideshow: The Michelangelo of Mad Magazine

(Thanks, Ben!)

[#1 posted by Rich Keller, July 23, 2009 12:42 PM]

It's a bummer for us that Wolverton never illusrated anything by Lovecraft.

[#2 posted by continuedfraction, July 23, 2009 4:31 PM]

Correction: The Radio Church of God (later Worldwide Church of God) was not Protestant; it was non-denominational. In the 90's, following leadership turnover, they changed beliefs and moved more in-line with American evangelicalism. But during Wolverton's time there, the beliefs were a strange combination of old testament Judaism and new-testament adventism. They eschewed traditional Christian observances, such as Chirstmas, Easter, etc, as Pagan, while observing Old Testament traditions, and a sunset-to-sunset Saturday Sabbath. At the same time they preached an immanent apocalypse followed by the militant and triumphant return of Christ. They also believed in the attainment of godhood by man.

[#3 posted by Anonymous, July 23, 2009 7:03 PM]

Mad died when the chucked out Harvey Kurtsman (sp?)

[#4 posted by Anonymous, July 25, 2009 12:06 PM]

@#2

A Christian who is not a Catholic or Eastern Orthodox... Sounds like a Protestant to me.