Lynda Barry on the "Naked Ladies" non-controversy

POWERS: Someone told me recently about Seattle -- and this ties into something that I'd read about you -- that the feminists are really militant in Seattle.
BARRY: [loud laughter] Women, take back the night!
POWERS: And read that --
BARRY: Kiss me! I dare ya'!
POWERS: -- when the Naked Ladies exhibition opened, there was some sort of controversy...
BARRY: There was no controversy! I swear on a stack -- I will lay on Bibles buck naked and swear before God that there was no controversy. But people expected there to be, so people just made it up. You want to know how little controversy there was? Naked Ladies got a positive review in Ms. and Screw. I thought there would be a controversy; I didn't know who was going to get me, the real conservative people or the separatist lesbians. But nobody said a word. I was sort of sad, myself. In interviews they always say, "I've heard it was quite controversial." The only people who gave me trouble was the artist-run bookstore -- the hip, artist-run bookstore in Seattle refused to carry it because they said it was sexist.
POWERS: think it was in a Boston Globe article that that was when you had your division with the fine arts community.
BARRY: Yeah. One of the things I noticed whenever I went to a bookstore was I was looking more and more at graphics, photography, and comics, and less and less at the fine arts section. In fact, when I looked at any kind of books of new art, modern art, my contemporaries, I had no idea of what they were doing. It was like the emperor's new clothes. It still is: I don't know what they're doing. I feel kind of bad about it. So I guess I just turned into a cartoonist by accident. I was furious at the fine arts community and at the artists who run that bookstore for saying that the work was sexist. I mean, Jesus God! Read it! They were the only people who gave me trouble -- the hippest people in the town.