A good year for pop art in museums. Pop Life, at Tate Modern, has clearly driven the majority of press, but smaller showings like Lichtenstein in Process at the Dixon in Memphis also further the study of the genre. The exhibition presents 65 studies, drawings and collages revealing Lichtenstein’s process and his earliest stages of inspiration. The Bee has a full review this week.

Lichtenstein in Process is on view through January 17, 2010.

Robert Crumb’s oeuvre is somewhat inescapable. In recent months, his busty ladies and other comic creations have found their way onto a series of product. However, despite the frequency with which Crumb’s work finds light of day in commercial venues, gallery showings are always something of a joy. They reveal process. They invigorate interest in the makings of his characters. And, above all, they work well to allow a single stop full scope look at Robert Crumb’s collective talent.

As part of the ICA’s Comica (the London International Comics Festival), Scream Gallery is presenting Robert Crumb Uncovered. The exhibition is curated by Brandon Coburn, who has brought together over 300 pages of Crumb’s work much of which has never been exhibited in London. The exhibition is full of iconic characters, sketches, and event greeting cards. Covering material from the 1960s to the early part of this decade, the show is comprehensive in scope even if not as large as previous Crumb retrospectives.

Running from Novmeber 12, 2009 to December 12, 2009 at Scream Gallery located at number 34 Bruton Street, London W1J.

Further examples from the exhibition after the jump.

100 old master drawings from the Art Gallery of Ontario are currently on view in Drawing Attention at the Dulwich Picture Gallery. Included are works from Renaissance Italy to 18th Century French and English watercolors, as well as masterpieces from Picasso and Matisse. It’s a lovely assemblage, on view through January 17, 2009.

Above is a detail of Thomas Gainsborough, Wooded Landscape with Herdsman and Cattle, 1775-1780.

More highlights from Drawing Attention after the jump.

Recently opened, Henry Darger and the Coloring Book packs nine examples of the artists work with mixed media and coloring books in a concise case exhibition. The collected material provides glimpse into Darger’s process, casting light on use of popular culture imagery adopted for his own unique purpose.

Henry Darger and the Coloring Book runs through September 13, 2010 at the American Folk Art Museum.

Further examples from the exhibition follow.

Compass in Hand runs until January 4, 2009 at MOMA.

Selections from the exhibition after the jump.

Kai Althoff, Untitled, 2004

John Wesley, U.S. Army Recruiting Poster, 1970

Richard Tuttle, Checker Board Series (1), 1968

A fascinating look at celebrated graphic designer Milton Glaser in action. Complemented by some sharp thinking on his part about process. (via Wooster Collective).

New York’s city wide celebration of Maurice Sendak gets fuller today with the opening of Where the Wild Things Are: Original Drawings by Maurice Sendak at the Morgan Library & Museum. The exhibit highlights Sendak’s creative process, moving through sample character sketches to full realized book pages. Material on display is on loan from Philadelphia’s Rosenbach Museum and Library (where I recently worked on a web project). On view until November 1, 2009.

My colleagues at HighSnobiety attended the opening of Futura’s  “Odyssey Two” Exhibition in Berlin earlier this week. A collection of large scale paintings and smaller sketched works, the show is a quick burst production – running to Sunday September 27, 2009.

“The show focuses on the dual themes of memory and the past, and the influence these have on an individual’s imagined world. Futura’s obsessions with space and hyperindustrial landscapes grew from his adolescence: a time when man first landed on the moon, and when the New York skyline soared with a mass of fresh skyscrapers. But the world in his pieces is entirely unique – a place that has developed in his mind over time, where remnants of earlier memories co-exist with imagined, abstract landscapes.Futura’s latest pieces show an artist comfortable in the world he has created, making accomplished works that use monochrome and occasional, frenetic bursts of outline to perfectly convey mood, atmosphere and situation, without the need for graphic symbols.”

Odyssey Two by Futura
Muenzstr. 19
Berlin

More images follow.

Daniel Burnham’s monumental Plan of Chicago (1909) was unprecedented in its size and scope. Given the date of production, one shouldn’t be surprised that a number of celebratory exhibitions have run course during the year. Among them, the Art Institute of Chicago’s Plan of Chicago brings to public eye the illustrations Burnham commissioned to give his plan visual pull. These images realize Burnham’s ideas, and in their time worked as a major selling point.

The museum’s exhibition runs until December 15, 2009, but full exploration of the plan, its drawings, and more are available via an online exhibition titled “Without Bounds or Limits.”

One of my favorite museums, The Morgan Library, opens its exhibition William Blake’s World: “A New Heaven Is Begun” this Friday. It marks the first Blake show at the Library in two decades, featuring over 100 works from the visionary artist. Included are water colors, drawings, and illuminated manuscripts. Not to be missed.

William Blake’s World runs until January 3, 2010.

Above (in duplicate) is Behemoth and Leviathan, ca. 1805 – 10.