I learn from an online essay at Harpweek (via Little Hokum Rag) that Vincent van Gogh loved magazine cartoons and illustrations. He cut them out and organized them into categories and copied them to learn how to draw -- and actually dreamed about becoming a commercial magazine artist. His collection included a number of works by Thomas Nast, the great American political cartoonist (see above), who published in Harper's Weekly.
The essay, by Albert Boime, links elements of van Gogh's style to to the techniques of commercial illustration in his day and suggests that van Gogh's attention to popular visual art may account in part for his own enduring popularity with a wide audience.
Boine also suggests that the unwillingness of academic art historians to study the influences of "low" art on "high" art distorts the understanding of all art. He writes:
"The curious exclusion or strategic avoidance of van Gogh's commercial art intentions is inseparable from the persistent valuing of his production within the context of mad artistic genius. In effect, van Gogh has been packaged and successfully marketed by the very forces that deny his own marketplace preoccupation. Thus comprehending van Gogh's original commitment to illustration and cartooning should help clarify the larger question of his perception of the artist's social role."
