Neither abstraction nor the influence of comic strips and cartoons on fine art has lacked commentary. But even now, when humor pervades contemporary visual arts, the two are rarely contained within the same thought bubble.

“Comic Abstraction,” a curious exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, is a bubble meant to contain these unwieldy notions. It corrals 13 artists who harness comic strips, cartoons, and the look of animation to make abstract art. And not just abstract art but also art that functions as social or political commentary. This seems a worthy, though perhaps overly narrow, curatorial aim. Still, if “Comic Abstraction” is a curious exhibition, it is also one that rewards curiosity.

Inka Essenhigh’s “Cheerleaders and Sky” (1999) is one of the first pieces one encounters upon entering the show. Rendered in shiny enamel, a set of rubbery, biomorphic figures — the cheerleaders — tumble through a circular area of blue sky. It’s like something by a suburban Tiepolo on acid. Cute though it is, it hardly addresses — in the words of the wall text — “perplexing questions about war, global conflicts, the loss of innocence, and racial stereotyping.”

To stake such claims of seriousness for Takashi Murakami is, it seems to me, utterly misguided. “Milk” (1998), for instance, represents strands of white milk splashed across four huge, pink panels. The only questions it addresses are: Does this pink work with the sofa? And: How much does it cost? This is comic abstraction as empty décor.

Emptiness becomes something of a mini-theme here, and this seems appropriate, since abstract art has often been accused of being empty, without content. Based on a Brazilian comic book, Rivane Neuenschwander’s “The Return of Zé Carioca (1960)” (2004), frames 13 comic-strip pages, with the images and words excised. The result is a dry, and dryly humorous, abstract series of colored blocks with white speech bubbles.

Up against the ceiling float numerous Mylar balloons by Philippe Parreno. Called what they look like, “Speech Bubbles” (1997), these blank bubbles were originally created for protesters to, in Mr. Parreno’s words, “mark their own demand while still participating in the same image” — the image being the strike.

Continuing the mini-theme, Juan Muñoz’s “Waiting for Jerry” (1991) consists of an empty darkened room with a small, semicircular, cartoon-style mouse hole cut into one wall at the floor. A soundtrack of cartoon-type music and noises plays. The viewer is left to ponder the other reason why emptiness is appropriate as a mini-theme, and that is the vacuousness one courts when one lowballs an audience by working with cartoons for their own sake — merely, that is, to trigger the nostalgia certain cartoons evoke.

I couldn’t discern any reason to include either Polly Apfelbaum’s or Franz West’s pieces. A large circle of multicolored fabric lozenges, arranged on the ground like a psychedelic quilt, “Blossom” (2000), by Ms. Apfelbaum, is abstract but seems to have little to do with comic or animation. A wall text offers a thin justification: that “Blossom” was inspired by “The Powerpuff Girls,” a television cartoon.

“It doesn’t matter what the art looks like but how it’s used,” says Franz West in an interview, cloaking his installation in a haze of comedy. I’m a fan of Mr. West’s “Adaptives,” weirdly shaped papier-mâché and wood constructions intended for handling, yet I don’t understand what they have to do with comics, cartoons, or animation, except in the most metaphorical sense of slapstick. In the show, four have been placed outside a small room with a mirror on one wall and video instructing visitors to play with the sculptures.

Happily, those works that most nearly fit the criteria of the exhibition are also among the most satisfying. Four pieces by Ellen Gallagher, all in oil, pencil, and paper mounted on canvas, play off classic Minimalist grid-based abstractions. In “They Could Still Serve” (2001) — the title comes from one of Goya’s “Disasters of War” etchings — elegant brown tendrils studded with cartoonlike eyes play over a grid of lined writing paper.

The grids bend and bow in “Oh! Susanna” (1995) beneath undulating rows of popping eyes and big lips — racist stereotypes used in old cartoons. Of course, the title refers to a 19th-century folk song, which, the wall text explains, “originated as a slave lament about families torn apart.” Over time, the racial aspect of the song disappeared and, the artist explains, “a very specific loss became universal once race was removed.” Abstract art began as an attempt to universalize an aesthetic experience. By transforming the eyes and lips into an abstraction, perhaps Ms. Gallagher is attempting to universalize the specific experience of racism.

Gary Simmons’s blackboard paintings often deal with racial stereotyping, too. Of the two included in the show, “boom” (1996/2003), the more abstract, addresses violence and the pleasure often derived from it. On a large rectangular panel primed with blackboard paint, he has painted a cartoon explosion, all abstract lines and squiggles, in white, to mimic chalk. The associations with cartoon violence, school violence, and childhood pleasures are obvious and made all the more compelling by the simple beauty of the work.

Until June 11 (53 W. 53rd St., between Fifth and Sixth avenues, 212-708-9400).