Eric Millikin is an American artist and activist based in Detroit, Michigan, and Richmond, Virginia. He is known for his pioneering work in artificial intelligence art, augmented and virtual reality art, conceptual art, Internet art, performance art, poetry, post-Internet art, video art, and webcomics. His work is often controversial, with political, romantic, occult, horror and black comedy themes. Together, Millikin and Casey Sorrow created and popularized the international animal rights holiday World Monkey Day.

Early life and education

Millikin is a descendent of Mary Eastey, who was executed for witchcraft during the Salem Witch Trials. He began drawing horror art by age one-and-a-half, and by second grade, he was making teachers profane birthday cards showing his school burning down. Millikin has been creating animated horror films using artificial intelligence animation since the 1980s, began posting art on the internet using CompuServe in the early 1980s, and began publishing on the World Wide Web in the early 1990s. Millikin attended art school at Michigan State University in their Honors College. He paid his way through school by working in the school's human anatomy lab as an embalmer and dissectionist of human cadavers. While at art school, Millikin was homeless and lived in a car. He earned a Master of Fine Arts at Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in 2021. Millikin teaches in the Department of Kinetic Imaging at Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts.

Notable artworks

Millikin's art often includes self-portraits as well as portraits of celebrities and political figures. His work often incorporates mixed media and found objects, such as packages of candy, paper currency, and spiders. Millikin's works range from those made almost completely of text (including calligraphy, typography, anagrams, ambigrams, free verse, and cut-up technique poetry) to those that are optical illusions or completely abstract.

Exhibitions and publications

Galleries and museums that have held exhibitions of Millikin's artwork include the Krannert Art Museum, The Laboratory of Art and Ideas at Belmar (now Museum of Contemporary Art Denver), San Francisco's Cartoon Art Museum, and Baltimore's Peale Museum. Millikin has had group exhibitions with Marilyn Manson and HR Giger. Millikin also distributes his artwork through college newspapers, in alternative newspapers such as the Metro Times, and in magazines like Wired. His work is also published in major daily newspapers like The Detroit News, Detroit Free Press, The Courier-Journal, The Des Moines Register, The Tennessean and USA Today.

Activism

Millikin is known for his political and social activism, with his artwork often tackling controversial issues. He has championed Barack Obama's Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, commonly referred to as "Obamacare". Millikin has also championed green energy, ridiculing the "Drill, Baby, Drill Brigade" of "oil producers, free-market zealots and global warming deniers." Millikin has also used his artwork to raise money for causes like helping Hurricane Katrina victims, fighting diseases like muscular dystrophy, and granting wishes to terminally ill children through the Make-A-Wish Foundation. He has also created posters campaigning to raise money for programs to improve adult literacy, auctioned artwork to support soup kitchen efforts to feed the hungry, and created artwork to help people in the city of Flint who had lead-contaminated water during the Flint water crisis.

Critical reaction

Millikin's artwork has won many awards from organizations including the Association of Alternative Newsmedia, Associated Press, Society of Professional Journalists, Investigative Reporters and Editors, National Association of Black Journalists, Online Journalism Awards, and the Society for News Design. His artwork critical of alleged lies by Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick was part of the portfolio that won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize in local reporting. The series resulted in Kilpatrick being sent to jail. The American Library Association's Booklist describes how Millikin's expressionistic visual style "crosses Edvard Munch with an incipient victim of high-school suicide" and The Hindu describes his work as "haunting images." Syndicated newspaper editorial cartoonist Ted Rall describes Millikin's work as "one of the most interesting webcomics around," and former editor of The Comics Journal Tom Spurgeon named Millikin's work as belonging in the inaugural class of a webcomics hall of fame. The Webcomics Examiner named Millikin's comics one of the best webcomics, calling Millikin's work "one of the sharpest political commentaries available." The webcomics blog ComixTalk named it one of the 100 Greatest Webcomics of all time, The Washington Post's readers named it one of the top 10 finalists for Best Webcomic of the Past Decade in 2010, and Polygon has cited Millikin's work as some of the "most influential webcomics of all time." Millikin's work has also been nominated for multiple Web Cartoonists' Choice Awards, including their top honor of "Outstanding Comic". Millikin has been a panelist and guest at webcomic conventions, including the inaugural New England Webcomics Weekend, the first convention organized by and focusing on webcomic creators. The Sunday Times described serializer as "high-art", and the Sydney Morning Herald considered them to be the avant-garde. Millikin's artwork is given by Scott McCloud as an example of using the web to create "an explosion of diverse genres and styles". Comic Book Resources describes Millikin's work as "mind-blowing" and has named it one of the "10 Greatest Innovations In Comics History." The Comics Journal has written that Millikin's comics "use the newspaper format for far more daring, entertainingly perverse work" than most comics and is "perfectly at home at a good alternative weekly or a great college paper." Millikin's projects have been published by Modern Tales and Webcomics Nation, where he was one of the all-time most popular artists. Millikin is one of the few, and first, webcomic creators successful enough to make a living as an artist. His artworks advocating for U.S. government loans as a solution to the automotive industry crisis of 2008–2009 was described as a "gutsy move" that "stretch[es] the limits of the medium" and CNN's Kyra Phillips described it as "in your face". Congressman John D. Dingell displayed it on the House floor urging passage of government loans to automakers and reiterated the central theme of the piece, saying "now is the time for us to 'Invest in America'." Millikin's work has also been praised by ESPN's Mike Tirico during a 2011 Monday Night Football half time show. However, not all criticism of Millikin's artwork has been positive. Since 2000, Millikin has been the target of protest campaigns organized by the Catholic League for what they call his "blasphemous treatment of Jesus". Catholic League spokesman Patrick Scully described Millikin's work as "offensive to Catholics and Christians. It completely ridicules the Catholic faith and is not funny." The Hartford Advocate has called Millikin a "borderline sociopath."