A Dance with Nancy

Nancy Ritz is a comic book character invented by the American cartoonist Ernest Bushmiller (1905-1982). This eight-year-old girl first appeared in a newspaper strip in 1933 and soon became Mr. Bushmiller’s trademark – if not a creature bigger than its own creator! In the decades that followed, Nancy gained a life of its own, inspiring a host of citations, recreations and detournements by artists such as Andy Warhol, Joe Brainard and Art Spiegelman. The last name on this list now appears to be that of the Portuguese web-designer Filipe Matos, whose Nancy in USA projects a deep sense of artistic frustration that may be easily associated to the comic book milieu and other peripheral realms, but in fact constitutes the basis for any true sociology of art.

What makes something a work of art?

What makes someone an artist?

One more dance with Nancy and you’ll realize you know nothing…



Daniel Seabra Lopes, Sociologist or something,

September 2017