Bill Watterson created "Calvin and Hobbes," the iconic comic strip featuring the perpetually six-year-old Calvin and his friend, a tiger named Hobbes. The daily strip focused on human relationships, art and popular culture, our place in the natural world, the importance of imagination and play, and the meaning of life. Produced between 1985 and 1995, the comic strip appeared in 2,400 newspapers worldwide at the height of its popularity.
Exploring Calvin and Hobbes is the first museum presentation of this body of work that raised the standard of craftsmanship for comic strips as a form of narrative art. Since the strip concluded, it has been described by critics as the “last great newspaper comic.”
The exhibition explores Watterson’s mastery of the comic strip art form through engaging characters, imaginative writing, and creative layouts. Assembled from more than three thousand original drawings by Watterson, the exhibition presents over one hundred illustrations for the daily strips, as well as the artist’s watercolors with innovative formats created for book publications. Also included are drawings by other cartoonists who inspired him, including Charles Schulz (Peanuts), George Herriman (Krazy Kat), and Berkeley Breathed (Bloom County). Two-time winner of the prestigious Reuben Award for Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year given by the National Cartoonists Society, Watterson’s work is in equal measures funny, beautifully drawn, expressive, and intelligent.
Six-year-old Calvin, named after the sixteenth-century theologian John Calvin, has a vivid imagination; an aversion to homework, chores, and girls; and a precocious penchant for discussing the meaning of life. Hobbes, named for the seventeenth-century British philosopher Thomas Hobbes, appears to most of the strips’ other characters as a stuffed animal; however, from Calvin’s perspective, he is a living, breathing, talking—sometimes even dangerous—friend in the form of a tiger who serves as a playmate, coconspirator, and, occasionally, voice of reason. The strip follows the two as they navigate the bumpy ride of life, with social commentary on the environment, media, art, pop culture, and much more. Readers share in their heart-to-heart conversations on topics from the mundane to the profound.
Exploring Calvin and Hobbes will delight fans of the strip that remains popular with readers of all ages, and introduce new audiences to comic strips as an art form. This exhibition was curated by Jenny E. Robb, head curator for the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum, and organized by The Ohio State University Libraries’ Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated exhibition catalogue featuring an extended conversation between Watterson and Robb.
About The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum
The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum, part of The Ohio State University Libraries, houses the world’s largest collection of materials related to cartoons and comics including original art, books, magazines, journals, comic books, archival materials, and newspaper comic strip pages and clippings.