| Art
Spiegelman has almost single-handedly brought comic books out
of the toy closet and onto the literature shelves. In 1992 he
won the Pulitzer Prize for his masterful Holocaust narrative
Maus — which portrayed Jews as mice and Nazis
as cats. Maus
II continued the remarkable story of his parents’
survival of the Nazi regime and their lives later in America.
His comics are best known for their shifting graphic styles,
their formal complexity, and controversial content. In his lecture
“Comix 101.1" Spiegelman takes his audience on a
chronological tour of the evolution of comics, all the while
explaining the value of this medium and why it should not be
ignored. He believes that in our post-literate culture the importance
of the comic is on the rise, for “comics echo the way
the brain works."
Having rejected his parents
aspirations for him to become a dentist, Art Spiegelman studied
cartooning in high school and began drawing professionally at
age 16. He went on to study art and philosophy at Harpur College
before becoming part of the underground comics movement. As
creative consultant for Topps Bubble Gum Co. from 1965-1987,
Spiegelman designed Wacky Packages, Garbage Pail Kids and other
novelty items, and taught history and aesthetics of comics at
the School for Visual Arts in New York from 1979-1986. In 1980,
Spiegelman founded RAW, the acclaimed avant-garde comics
magazine, with his wife, Françoise Mouly. They've more
recently co-edited Little
Lit, a series of three comics anthologies for children
published by HarperCollins ("Comics-They're not just for
Grown-ups Anymore") and Big
Fat Little Lit, which includes the three comics in one volume.
In 1997 Spiegelman created a picture book for young children
called Open
Me… I’m A Dog with the same publisher.
His work has been published in many periodicals, including The
New Yorker, where he was a staff artist and writer
from 1993-2003. A collection of his New Yorker work is
soon to be published by Pantheon, who also published his illustrated
version of the 1928 lost classic, The
Wild Party, by Joseph Moncure March.
In 2004 he completed a
two-year cycle of broadsheet-sized color comics pages, In
the Shadow of No Towers, first published in a number of
European newspapers and magazines including Die Zeit
and The London Review of Books. A book version of these
highly political works was published by Pantheon in the United
States, appeared on many national bestseller lists, and was
selected by The New York Times Book Review as one of
the 100 Notable Books of 2004.
A new edition of Art Spiegelman's
1978 anthology, Breakdowns,
will be published in fall 2008; it will include an autobiographical
comix-format introduction almost as long as the book itself,
entitled Portrait
of the Artist as a Young %@&*!. Also in the fall
of 2008 a new children’s book will be published with Toon
Books, called Jack
and the Box. Additionally, in preparation is a book with
a DVD about the making of Maus, entitled Meta Maus.
In 2008, McSweeney’s quarterly (issue
27) will publish a 72-sketchbook by Art Spiegelman, entitled
“Auto Phobia.” A major exhibition of his work was
arranged by Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, as part
of the "15 Masters of 20th Century Comics" exhibit
(November 2005). In 2005, Art Spiegelman was made a Chevalier
de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France and named
one of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People.
He was named to the Art Director’s Club Hall of Fame in
2006.
•••
“Spiegelman has
become one of The New Yorker’s most sensational
artists, in recent years drawing illustrations for covers that
are meant not just to be plainly understood but also to reach
up and tattoo your eyeballs with images once unimaginable in
the magazine of old moneyed taste ... From his Holocaust saga
in which Jewish mice are exterminated by Nazi cats, to the The
New Yorker covers guaranteed to offend, to a wild party
that ends in murder: Art Spiegelman’s cartoons don’t
fool around.”
— Los Angeles
Times |
