As someone who happily slaps Simpsons stamps on the few bills I still pay by mail, it made me proud to read that Roberta Smith, the formidable NY Times art critic, likes them, too. "Really," she asks, "are these not among the best American stamps ever?" Then, in true NYT art-critic fashion, she talks about "palette" and "tonal distinctions" and drops art-history names like crazy:
The Simpson palette has always seemed as radical and subversive as the show’s social commentary. It’s similar in artifice to the innovative color of artists like Andy Warhol, Bruce Nauman and Matthew Barney… Like Richard Serra sculptures, only smaller and a whole lot cheaper, the stamps prove the adage that scale has nothing to do with size…
Here's something else that feels subversive about Simpsons stamps:
This article appears in Jul 1-7, 2009.