Art Spiegelman: Comics and Politics
To people who loves comics should watch this video…
Art Spiegelman was born in Sweden, but his parents were Polish-Jewish refugees and ended up in New York. Art was a well known underground comic artists during the 60′s and 70′s. His most announced work is “Maus” and “Maus Part II” Which both are reflection of his personal life. In Maus, it was about his elder brother (Richieu) whom died before Art’s birth. He was sent to live with an aunt during WWII because she was living in a safer part of town. The aunt poisoned herself, her niece, her won daughter and Art’s brother Richieu. Maus Part II is dedicated to Art’s brother and as well as his own daughter. He won several awards for his work Maus and as well as the Pulitzer Prize Letters award in 1992.
Spiegelman is an influential comic artist that brings all sorts of politics into his artwork. He stated that “visual parts of the comics goes directly into the brain and bypass a lot of other information….Images have multi-valid meaning.. and cartoons have high definition images.” I usually don’t read a lot of comics, but I think now I should start after listening to Spigelman’s interview. Comics are similar to novels, expect comics sometimes express the opinions through images than using words that are hard to articulate to the audience. His comics are detailed and full of intriuguing images and information of his own life experience and thoughts. I strongly suggest checking Spiegelman out!!
Interview with Daily Cross Hatch:
http://thedailycrosshatch.com/2008/10/08/interview-art-spiegelman-pt-1-of-2/
Actually Maus (and Maus II) is a retelling of Arts fathers experiences during WWII. Both are fantastic reads that give you a genuine sense of what it was to be a Jew during WWII. On top of that, the layer of characterization that went into the designs (ie the Jews are mice, the Nazis are cats) becomes a brilliant choice when, in later scenes, the characters are no longer anthropomorphized animals, but are instead people wearing animal masks.
Your description of comics is a little off the mark though. Comics don’t sometimes express their ideas in images instead of words, quite the opposite actually. Comics is a medium that assumes a series of images that relate to one another in some manner, it’s the text that is sometimes used, sometimes not. Though in looking at Spiegelmans work I would guess that he believes the text to be as integral to the medium as images are.
Sitting down with Maus, or his newer work In the Shadow of No Towers, will give you a sense of what comics are truly capable of.
November 5, 2009 at 7:56 am
One more thing… you mention Spiegelman in relation to artists whose work is political. I’m certainly not going to contradict you on that categorization, but I think an important distinction to make is that his work is primarily about his life. Maus is his dads story, and In the Shadow of No Towers is his own. Both are capable of engaging an audience far beyond the sphere of Art Spiegelmans life, but that’s where they’re centered.
November 5, 2009 at 8:02 am