Artist Alex Graham’s “Clumsy” Culture Critique Receives Backlash

Alex Graham, a comic artist with 23.2k followers on Instagram, recently stepped in it big time. Notable for her work on her pandemic comic, Dog Biscuits, she’s also known for paintings, utilizing a relatively distinct almost surrealist wobble-style that invokes the bizarre in the service of the subtly grotesque. Nevertheless, this article is less to do with her funky-looking paintings or chicken-scratch comics, it’s more to do with the message behind one particular miniature comic gallery she posted to Instagram mid-May. It will be quite obvious what I mean, when you see it.

Now, when one goes out on a limb and provides a critique of the state of things, the folks who are existing among or around that state of things are allowed to critique your critique. Especially when yours was…like this. Mean-spirited, aggressive, and utterly out-of-touch, Graham has managed to alienate a significant portion of comic readers by putting words in their mouths, making huge assumptions as to the motivations behind their collective interests and accusing the “culture” to be that of fear. Unlike Graham’s presumptive audience to the work (comic readers), we can actually see a bit inside her head, since she’s so kindly provided us with subtext and…just plain text, so we don’t have to put words in her mouth: she put them there.

Our comic begins with the Bunny, a casual Joe Schmoe kind of guy who approaches a crowd of people clapping and affirming a pig creature, complete with flies buzzing around them, who holds trophies and is labeled on their shirt: “mediocre cartoonist.” The Bunny ponders this for a moment as a comic flutters to the ground at their feet and comments “Must be ground-breaking stuff!” (Request to Graham, please don’t use exclamations points when your character looks bored as hell, it’s confusing.) Bunny then, in their head, judges the comic harshly, complaining about pacing, story, dialogue, language choice, even the art style which is referred to as “Cal-Arts adjacent.” As our side character approaches, his only identifying factor is a shirt that displays “White Guilt.” Bunny decides to ask derisively, “You guys really enjoy this…shit?” White Guilt Man immediately reactively states an emphatic yes before confessing that he doesn’t enjoy it at all and that he’s not sure why they’re clapping while quivering as though in fear.

I do see where her mind was. Where she's coming from with this idea that one could see people getting cheered on for what one might believe to be "no other reason" than that they're some popular minority one could virtue signal for, but she's assuming A LOT by putting words in that side character's mouth. She's assuming that this guy is acting out of whatever the hell “white guilt” is supposed to be rather than just a genuine admiration for the accomplishments of someone who has created something despite a wealth of roadblocks that she can't even fathom. Her execution of this idea is sorely lacking as she seems completely unable to rationalize that sometimes art is subjective and there are a lot of people who are going to like things that are going to befuddle and confuse her. I’ve probably ranted about Rothko before, but I fucking hate Rothko. Why do people like him? I don’t know. He’s still got whole galleries just for him and nobody else!

After everyone (rightfully) berated her for her blatantly racist portrayal of POC (People of Color) cartoonists as no-talent, fly-ridden pigs who get their only validation and praise through what amounts to the Trumpian version of “DEI” forced upon an unwilling population, she put out a statement in which she claimed that there was a “dearth of good art and storytelling in the broader art culture at the moment.” The absolute balls on this woman, I swear to god. I’ve spoken in the past about the sort of people who think that they get to tell us what art is good or bad and where their hearts really are, but Graham really laid it down here pretty clearly despite her insisting that everyone took her in “bad faith.” There’s no other faith to take you in, sweetheart. The good faith interpretation allows you to sit at the table and dictate to us what we’re allowed to like based on what you think culture should look like. The other people who do this shit are people like The Cultural Tutor on Twitter who is literally linked to Alt-Right recruitment initiatives via algorithm manipulation tactics. It’s not a thing and you’re not that special.

Her reluctance to “name names” of the Cal Art-adjacent style artists was somewhat telling for most who witnessed her bungling attempt at critique. Ostensibly, she had taken all this time to write out this statement insisting that “nobody” should be “piled on” because of a cartoon no matter its subject but couldn’t come up with examples of the thing she was trying to critique? How are we supposed to attach this contextless criticism to anything tangible? Now, I wasn’t always of the mind that criticism of art is part of the art itself, but now that I’ve been in therapy for a while and I’ve come to understand art and its broader purpose in the world, I’ve changed that view point significantly. Take Piss Christ for example, an art piece that very well stands on its own but stands far taller for the amount of vitriol it inspired. Some art depends on that vitriol such as Dread Scott’s What is the Proper Way to Display a US Flag? which purposefully creates controversy in order to make the art itself. If this wasn’t what Graham was going for, why was there a little middle finger put up right at the end of her comic? Would this not suggest that conflict and controversy was the point? Would this not suggest that these were what we call in my family, “Fighting Words?” With all this in mind, and with her critique attempting (and failing) to be about “culture” itself, it floats aimlessly with a sort of narcissistic hubris, bumping into whatever target it can find. People who agree with her will nod and think about whatever POC they think were given undeserved praise while those who don’t agree will assume it’s about the last POC who won any award at all (hence those who attributed this to Lee Lai, an Australian artist with her debut comic Stone Fruit).

This would be the last sort-of intellectual thing that Graham attempted to say about the matter, this haughty statement that declined to apologize for her massive screw up and instead sought only to look down her nose at those throwing the tomatoes. As much as I think she was wrong, I can’t fault her too much for that since I’ve thumbed my nose at all my critics too. Difference between she and I, though, is that my art probably actively degrades whatever she thinks “culture” is—and looks good doing it. On May 22nd, Graham posted a link on her objectively hideous website (but at least it’s hers and not SocMed, kudos for that!) with a note in red: “Important update about the ongoing situation: Please Read” which contained a hyperlink to a naked middle-aged man with his legs spread toward the camera, exposing his (impressive) schlong and a nice clean booty hole. Wouldn’t mind me some of that hot old man, not gonna lie. Personally, I thought this was funny as all fuck and gave a very good, hearty chuckle about it. She might be a cunt, but I appreciate the methodology. Nevertheless, we all know Twitterites at this point and the reactions to this were predictable, calling the link “sexual harassment” and painting Graham as “pure evil.” Let’s just say, y’all got lucky it was a hot old man instead of goatse.

It took me a while to decide how I was going to write this up, and ultimately I decided to both write this and, appropriately, make a comic addressing Graham herself which will be coming out in the next couple days. I figured if I was going to do it, I might as well do it in her preferred medium and with a matching irreverent energy. Since Graham has been relatively quiet ever since dropping her nude, the backlash has died down significantly and it’s very likely she’ll face very few consequences for this absolutely baffling take and will prove very definitively that cancellation just…isn’t a thing. Now we begin the countdown to overt Right Wing Grifter…