Art Spiegelman: Conversations
Book Tracking
Sign up to add this book to your recommneded, reading, or planned reading list.
Book Covers
Multiple editions, click to view covers:
Recommended By
Book Details
Written by Joseph Witek.
Buy this on Amazon
($50.00)
Editorial Review (from Amazon.com)
When the graphic novel Maus: A Survivor's Tale won a Special Pulitzer Prize in 1992 for its vivid depiction of the Holocaust and its effects, critics and mainstream audiences recognized that a comic book was capable of exploring complex aesthetic, moral, and cultural themes. Maus's creator Art Spiegelman (b. 1948) became the most famous alternative cartoonist in America.
Art Spiegelman: Conversations reveals an artist who had long been working to establish comics as a serious art form. With his wife Françoise Mouly, he founded and edited RAW-the most in-fluential showcase for avant-garde comics in America-which published early work by such well-established cartoonists as Chris Ware, Kaz, and Gary Panter. Spiegelman's essays and lectures helped to establish that comics have a history and a canon.
This collection of interviews and profiles spans 1976-2006 and covers Spiegelman's career as an artist, critic, educator, and art historian. A previously unpublished interview conducted by the volume's editor discusses themes rarely touched upon in earlier profiles.
Joseph Witek is director of graduate studies and professor of English at Stetson University. He is the author of Comic Books as History: The Narrative Art of Jack Jackson, Art Spiegelman, and Harvey Pekar (University Press of Mississippi), and his work has appeared in many publications.
User Reviews (1) Login or create an account to write a review.
Dale Brayden thinks this book is Good.
Spiegelman was born in 1948 in Sweden to survivors of the holocaust. Family moved to U.S. in the early fifties, first to Pennsylvania, then to the Queens. Spiegelman had early interest and aptitude for comics and illustration. Began drawing comics at age 12, began illustrating for the sports page of a local newspaper at age 15. Went to a high school specializing in the arts, graduated at age 16. Went to university in Binghampton, left at age 20 following a psychotic episode. Went to work for Topps. Began doing underground comics in the early 60s. Very intellectual and analytical guy. Was fundamental in 're-conceptualizing' comics as an art form and literary form. Married at age 29. Wife Francoise Mouly published RAW magazine, now classics. Penguin re-printed in smaller format a few years later. Early 80s had a show at MOMA, won Pulitzer prize (I think - need to check), twice, won an award from Guggenheim foundation (I think - wow! it's as if I didn't actually just read this yesterday!). Went to work for the New Yorker. Several brilliant covers, several 'controversial' covers (meaning bigots, fundamentalists, and right-wingers got twisted about some of them). Left the New Yorker fairly recently because of political and attitudinal differences. Recently published 'In the Shadow of No Towers' about 9/11.
The book is a collection of interviews with Spiegelman from various publications from the 70s to near the present.