Art Spiegelman has been around since the early days of underground comics where he shared publishing space with most of the classic underground cartoonists of the late sixties and early seventies, but even in his early work Art's focus was more exploratory and literary as he played with the presentation of space and thematic principles. While other artists were having fun making juvenile comix for dirty old men, Art was driven to legitimize comics as a recognized literary and artistic medium. It was a hard fought battle that didn't happen overnight. In 1980 he and Francoise Mouly published their own over-sized comics art magazine titled Raw where he began to serialize the now infamous Pulitzer Prize winning story of "Maus". Almost single handedly Art gained the attention that was needed of the bigger literary publishing world and forever changed the paradigm of the extent to what the term "comics" can mean.
Spiegelman made a number of limited prints based upon the inside artwork of his literary
comic masterpiece "Maus".
Raw Magazine #7, circa 1985. Every cover of this issue was actually physically ripped (upper right hand corner) as a humorous play on the theme.
Sketchbook drawing
From "Maus" circa 1986
Cover illustration for "Co-mix" a retrospective book of Spiegelman's work, circa 2013
A page taken from "Maus". Every page of this story is emotionally intense and thought provoking, especially while realizing this is a true account of Vladek Spiegelman's experience (Art's father) of being a Jew in Germany during World War II and his confinement to the Auschwitz concentration camp. The relationship Art shows between him and his father as he is writing the story adds an equally as compelling element. I have to say that it is a truly amazing piece of work.
No comments:
Post a Comment