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Request PDF on ResearchGate| Spiegelman Studies Part 1 of 2: Maus| Art Spiegelman is one of the most-discussed creators in Comic Book Studies. His Pulitzer-winning work Maus (1980 and 1991) was. Maus I and II By Art Spiegelman 1986 edition. Published by Pantheon Books. Jigsaw Activity Context: Students must understand why the concentration camps were so dreadful, and why Art is struggles to write the graphic novel. Although there is the option of showing a.
Art Spiegelman Maus Deutsch Pdf Writer. NPR's Robert Siegel talks with author and illustrator Art Spiegelman about how his book Maus, the very antithesis of Nazi propaganda, was purged from Moscow stores because of a swastika on the cover.
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Art Spiegelman | ||
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Born | Itzhak Avraham ben Zeev Spiegelman[1] February 15, 1948 (age 71) Stockholm, Sweden | |
Nationality | American | |
Area(s) | Cartoonist, Editor | |
Notable works | ||
Spouse(s) | Françoise Mouly | |
Children |
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Art Spiegelman (/ˈspiːɡəlmən/; born Itzhak Avraham ben Zeev Spiegelman on February 15, 1948) is an American cartoonist, editor, and comics advocate best known for his graphic novelMaus. His work as co-editor on the comics magazines Arcade and Raw has been influential, and from 1992 he spent a decade as contributing artist for The New Yorker. He is married to designer and editor Françoise Mouly and is the father of writer Nadja Spiegelman.
Spiegelman began his career with the Topps bubblegum card company in the mid-1960s, which was his main financial support for two decades; there he co-created parodic series such as Wacky Packages in the 1960s and the Garbage Pail Kids in the 1980s. He gained prominence in the underground comix scene in the 1970s with short, experimental, and often autobiographical work. A selection of these strips appeared in the collection Breakdowns in 1977, after which Spiegelman turned focus to the book-length Maus, about his relationship with his father, a Holocaust survivor. The postmodern book depicts Germans as cats, Jews as mice, and ethnic Poles as pigs, and took 13 years to create until its completion in 1991. It won a special Pulitzer Prize in 1992 and has gained a reputation as a pivotal work, responsible for bringing scholarly attention to the comics medium.
Spiegelman and Mouly edited eleven issues of Raw from 1980 to 1991. The oversized comics and graphics magazine helped introduce talents who became prominent in alternative comics, such as Charles Burns, Chris Ware, and Ben Katchor, and introduced several foreign cartoonists to the English-speaking comics world. Beginning in the 1990s, the couple worked for The New Yorker, which Spiegelman left to work on In the Shadow of No Towers (2004), about his reaction to the September 11 attacks in New York in 2001.
Spiegelman advocates for greater comics literacy. As an editor, a teacher at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, and a lecturer, Spiegelman has promoted better understanding of comics and has mentored younger cartoonists.
![Minnie maus deutsch Minnie maus deutsch](/uploads/1/3/3/9/133911135/765188879.jpg)
- 2Life and career
- 4Style
- 6Legacy
- 7Bibliography
- 9References
Family history[edit]
Liquidation at the Sosnowiec Ghetto in occupied Poland during World War II; Spiegelman tells of his parents' survival in Maus.
Art Spiegelman's parents were Polish Jews Władysław (1906–1982) and Andzia (1912–1968) Spiegelman. His father was born Zeev Spiegelman, with the Hebrew name Zeev ben Avraham. Władysław was his Polish name, and Władek (or Vladek in Russified form) was a diminutive of this name. He was also known as Wilhelm under the German occupation, and upon immigration to the United States he took the name William. His mother was born Andzia Zylberberg, with the Hebrew name Hannah. She took the name Anna upon her immigration to the US. In Spiegelman's Maus, from which the couple are best known, Spiegelman used the spellings 'Vladek' and 'Anja', which he believed would be easier for Americans to pronounce.[3] The surname Spiegelman is German for 'mirror man'.[4]
In 1937, the Spiegelmans had one other son, Rysio (spelled 'Richieu' in Maus), who died before Art was born[1] at the age of five or six.[5] During the Holocaust, Spiegelman's parents sent Rysio to stay with an aunt with whom they believed he would be safe. In 1943, the aunt poisoned herself, along with Rysio and two other young family members in her care, so that the Nazis could not take them to the extermination camps. After the war, the Spiegelmans, unable to accept that Rysio was dead, searched orphanages all over Europe in the hope of finding him. Spiegelman talked of having a sort of sibling rivalry with his 'ghost brother'—he felt unable to compete with an 'ideal' brother who 'never threw tantrums or got in any kind of trouble'.[6] Of 85 Spiegelman relatives alive at the beginning of World War II, only 13 are known to have survived the Holocaust.[7]
Life and career[edit]
Early life[edit]
Spiegelman graduated from the High School of Art and Design in 1965.
Spiegelman was born Itzhak Avraham ben Zeev[1] in Stockholm, Sweden, on February 15, 1948. He immigrated with his parents to the US in 1951.[8] Upon immigration his name was registered as Arthur Isadore, but he later had his given name changed to Art.[1] Initially the family settled in Norristown, Pennsylvania, and then relocated to Rego Park in Queens, New York City, in 1957. He began cartooning in 1960[8] and imitated the style of his favorite comic books, such as Mad.[9] In the early 1960s, he contributed to early fanzines such as Smudge and Skip Williamson's Squire, and in 1962[10]—while at Russell Sage Junior High School, where he was an honors student—he produced the Mad-inspired fanzine Blasé. He was earning money from his drawing by the time he reached high school and sold artwork to the original Long Island Press and other outlets. His talent caught the eyes of United Features Syndicate, who offered him the chance to produce a syndicated comic strip. Dedicated to the idea of art as expression, he turned down this commercial opportunity.[9] He attended the High School of Art and Design in Manhattan beginning in 1963. He met Woody Gelman, the art director of Topps Chewing Gum Company, who encouraged Spiegelman to apply to Topps after graduating high school.[8] At 15 Spiegelman received payment for his work from a Rego Park newspaper.[11]
After he graduated in 1965, Spiegelman's parents urged him to pursue the financial security of a career such as dentistry, but he chose instead to enroll at Harpur College to study art and philosophy. While there, he got a freelance art job at Topps, which provided him with an income for the next two decades.[12]
After Spiegelman's release from Binghamton State Mental Hospital, his mother committed suicide.
Spiegelman attended Harpur College from 1965 until 1968, where he worked as staff cartoonist for the college newspaper and edited a college humor magazine.[13] After a summer internship when he was 18, Topps hired him for Gelman's Product Development Department[14] as a creative consultant making trading cards and related products in 1966, such as the Wacky Packages series of parodic trading cards begun in 1967.[15]
Spiegelman began selling self-published underground comix on street corners in 1966. He had cartoons published in underground publications such as the East Village Other and traveled to San Francisco for a few months in 1967, where the underground comix scene was just beginning to burgeon.[15]
In late winter 1968 Spiegelman suffered a brief but intense nervous breakdown,[16] which cut his university studies short.[15] He has said that at the time he was taking LSD with great frequency.[16] He spent a month in Binghamton State Mental Hospital, and shortly after he got out his mother committed suicide following the death of her only surviving brother.[17]
Underground comix (1971–1977)[edit]
In 1971, after several visits, Spiegelman moved to San Francisco[15] and became a part of the countercultural underground comix movement that had been developing there. Some of the comix he produced during this period include The Compleat Mr. Infinity (1970), a ten-page booklet of explicit comic strips, and The Viper Vicar of Vice, Villainy and Vickedness (1972),[18] a transgressive work in the vein of fellow underground cartoonist S. Clay Wilson.[19] Spiegelman's work also appeared in underground magazines such as Gothic Blimp Works, Bijou Funnies, Young Lust,[15]Real Pulp, and Bizarre Sex,[20] and were in a variety of styles and genres as Spiegelman sought his artistic voice.[19] He also did a number of cartoons for men's magazines such as Cavalier, The Dude, and Gent.[15]
In 1972, Justin Green asked Spiegelman to do a three-page strip for the first issue of Funny Aminals [sic].[21] He wanted to do one about racism, and at first considered a story[22] with African-Americans as mice and cats taking on the role of the Ku Klux Klan.[23] Instead, he turned to the Holocaust that his parents had survived. He titled the strip 'Maus' and depicted the Jews as mice persecuted by die Katzen, which were Nazis as cats. The narrator related the story to a mouse named 'Mickey'.[21] With this story Spiegelman felt he had found his voice.[11]
Seeing Green's revealingly autobiographical Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary while in-progress in 1971 inspired Spiegelman to produce 'Prisoner on the Hell Planet', an expressionistic work that dealt with his mother's suicide; it appeared in 1972 in Short Order Comix#1,[24] which he edited.[15] Spiegelman's work thereafter went through a phase of increasing formal experimentation;[25] the Apex Treasury of Underground Comics in 1974 quotes him: 'As an art form the comic strip is barely in its infancy. So am I. Maybe we'll grow up together.'[26] The often-reprinted[27] 'Ace Hole, Midget Detective' of 1974 was a Cubist-style nonlinear parody of hardboiled crime fiction full of non sequiturs.[28] 'A Day at the Circuits' of 1975 is a recursive single-page strip about alcoholism and depression in which the reader follows the character through multiple never-ending pathways.[29] 'Nervous Rex: The Malpractice Suite' of 1976 is made up of cut-out panels from the soap-opera comic strip Rex Morgan, M.D. refashioned in such a way as to defy coherence.[25]
In 1973 Spiegelman edited a pornographic and psychedelic book of quotations and dedicated it to his mother. Co-edited with Bob Schneider, it was called Whole Grains: A Book of Quotations.[30] In 1974–1975, he taught a studio cartooning class at the San Francisco Academy of Art.[18]
By the mid-1970s, the underground comix movement was encountering a slowdown. To give cartoonists a safe berth, Spiegelman co-edited the anthology Arcade with Bill Griffith, in 1975 and 1976. Arcade was printed by The Print Mint and lasted seven issues, five of which had covers by Robert Crumb. It stood out from similar publications by having an editorial plan, in which Spiegelman and Griffith attempt to show how comics connect to the broader realms of artistic and literary culture. Spiegelman's own work in Arcade tended to be short and concerned with formal experimentation.[31]Arcade also introduced art from ages past, as well as contemporary literary pieces by writers such as William S. Burroughs and Charles Bukowski.[32] In 1975, Spiegelman moved back to New York City,[33] which put most of the editorial work for Arcade on the shoulders of Griffith and his cartoonist wife, Diane Noomin. This, combined with distribution problems and retailer indifference, led to the magazine's 1976 demise. For a time, Spiegelman swore he would never edit another magazine.[34]
Françoise Mouly, an architectural student on a hiatus from her studies at the Beaux-Arts in Paris, arrived in New York in 1974. While looking for comics from which to practice reading English, she came across Arcade. Avant-garde filmmaker friend Ken Jacobs introduced Mouly and Spiegelman, when Spiegelman was visiting, but they did not immediately develop a mutual interest. Spiegelman moved back to New York later in the year. Occasionally the two ran across each other. After she read 'Prisoner on the Hell Planet' Mouly felt the urge to contact him. An eight-hour phone call led to a deepening of their relationship. Spiegelman followed her to France when she had to return to fulfill obligations in her architecture course.[35]
Spiegelman introduced Mouly to the world of comics and helped her find work as a colorist for Marvel Comics.[36] After returning to the U.S. in 1977, Mouly ran into visa problems, which the couple solved by getting married.[37] The couple began to make yearly trips to Europe to explore the comics scene, and brought back European comics to show to their circle of friends.[38] Mouly assisted in putting together the lavish, oversized collection of Spiegelman's experimental strips Breakdowns in 1977.[39]
Raw and Maus (1978–1991)[edit]
Spiegelman visited the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1979 as research for Maus; his parents had been imprisoned there.
Breakdowns suffered poor distribution and sales, and 30% of the print run was unusable due to printing errors, an experience that motivated Mouly to gain control over the printing process.[39] She took courses in offset printing and bought a printing press for her loft,[40] on which she was to print parts of[41] a new magazine she insisted on launching with Spiegelman.[42] With Mouly as publisher, Spiegelman and Mouly co-edited Raw starting in July 1980.[43] The first issue was subtitled 'The Graphix Magazine of Postponed Suicides'.[42] While it included work from such established underground cartoonists as Crumb and Griffith,[34]Raw focused on publishing artists who were virtually unknown, avant-garde cartoonists such as Charles Burns, Lynda Barry, Chris Ware, Ben Katchor, and Gary Panter, and introduced English-speaking audiences to translations of foreign works by José Muñoz, Chéri Samba, Joost Swarte, Yoshiharu Tsuge,[25]Jacques Tardi, and others.[42]
With the intention of creating a book-length work based on his father's recollections of the Holocaust[44] Spiegelman began to interview his father again in 1978[45] and made a research visit in 1979 to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where his parents had been imprisoned by the Nazis.[46] The book, Maus, appeared one chapter at a time as an insert in Raw beginning with the second issue in December 1980.[47] Spiegelman's father did not live to see its completion; he died on 18 August 1982.[33] Spiegelman learned in 1985 that Steven Spielberg was producing an animated film about Jewish mice who escape persecution in Eastern Europe by fleeing to the United States. Spiegelman was sure the film, An American Tail (1986), was inspired by Maus and became eager to have his unfinished book come out before the movie to avoid comparisons.[48] He struggled to find a publisher[7] until in 1986, after the publication in The New York Times of a rave review of the work-in-progress, Pantheon agreed to release a collection of the first six chapters. The volume was titled Maus: A Survivor's Tale and subtitled My Father Bleeds History.[49] The book found a large audience, in part because it was sold in bookstores rather than in direct-market comic shops, which by the 1980s had become the dominant outlet for comic books.[50]
Spiegelman and Will Eisner, (pictured in 1982), taught at the School of Visual Arts from 1978 to 1987.
Spiegelman began teaching at the School of Visual Arts in New York in 1978, and continued until 1987,[33] teaching alongside his heroes Harvey Kurtzman and Will Eisner.[51] Spiegelman had an essay published in Print entitled 'Commix: An Idiosyncratic Historical and Aesthetic Overview'.[52] In 1990 Spiegelman he had an essay called 'High Art Lowdown' published in Artforum critiquing the High/Low exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art.[52]
In the wake of the success of the Cabbage Patch Kids series of dolls, Spiegelman created the card series Garbage Pail Kids for Topps in 1985. Similar to the Wacky Packages series, the gross-out factor of the cards was controversial with parent groups, and its popularity started a gross-out fad among children.[53] Spiegelman called Topps his 'Medici' for the autonomy and financial freedom working for the company had given him. The relationship was nevertheless strained over issues of credit and ownership of the original artwork. In 1989 Topps auctioned off pieces of art Spiegelman had created rather than returning them to him, and Spiegelman broke the relation.[54]
In 1991, RawVol. 2, No.3 was published; it was to be the last issue.[52] The closing chapter of Maus appeared not in Raw[47] but in the second volume of the graphic novel, which appeared later that year with the subtitle And Here My Troubles Began.[52]Maus attracted an unprecedented amount of critical attention for a work of comics, including an exhibition at New York's Museum of Modern Art[55] and a special Pulitzer Prize in 1992.[56]
The New Yorker (1992—2001)[edit]
Spiegelman and Mouly began working for The New Yorker in the early 1990s.
Hired by Tina Brown[57] as a contributing artist in 1992, Spiegelman worked for The New Yorker for ten years. Spiegelman's first cover appeared on the February 15, 1993, Valentine's Day issue and showed a black West Indian woman and a Hasidic man kissing. The cover caused turmoil at The New Yorker offices. Spiegelman intended it to reference the Crown Heights riot of 1991 in which racial tensions led to the murder of a Jewish yeshiva student.[58] Spiegelman had twenty-one New Yorker covers published,[59] and submitted a number which were rejected for being too outrageous.[60]
Within The New Yorker's pages, Spiegelman contributed strips such as a collaboration titled 'In the Dumps' with children's illustrator Maurice Sendak[a][61] and an obituary to Charles M. Schulz titled 'Abstract Thought is a Warm Puppy'.[62] An essay he had published there on Jack Cole, the creator of Plastic Man, called 'Forms Stretched to their Limits' was to form the basis for a book in 2001 about Cole called Jack Cole and Plastic Man: Forms Stretched to their Limits.[62]
The same year, Voyager Company published a CD-ROM version of Maus with extensive supplementary material called The Complete Maus, and Spiegelman illustrated a 1923 poem by Joseph Moncure March called The Wild Party.[63] Spiegelman contributed the essay 'Getting in Touch With My Inner Racist' in the September 1, 1997 issue of Mother Jones.[63]
Editorial cartoonist Ted Rall begrudged Spiegelman's influence in New York cartooning circles.
Spiegelman's influence and connections in New York cartooning circles drew the ire of political cartoonist Ted Rall in 1999.[64] In an article titled 'The King of Comix' in The Village Voice,[65] Rall accused Spiegelman of the power to 'make or break' a cartoonist's career in New York, while denigrating Spiegelman as 'a guy with one great book in him'.[64] Cartoonist Danny Hellman responded by sending a forged email under Rall's name to thirty professionals; the prank escalated until Rall launched a defamation suit against Hellman for $1.5 million. Hellman published a 'Legal Action Comics' benefit book to cover his legal costs, to which Spiegelman contributed a back-cover cartoon in which he relieves himself on a Rall-shaped urinal.[65]
In 1997, Spiegelman had his first children's book published: Open Me...I'm a Dog, with a narrator who tries to convince its readers that it is a dog via pop-ups and an attached leash.[66] From 2000 to 2003 Spiegelman and Mouly edited three issues of the children's comics anthology Little Lit, with contributions from Raw alumni and children's book authors and illustrators.[67]
Post-September 11 (2001–present)[edit]
The September 11 attacks provoked Spiegelman to create In the Shadow of No Towers.
Spiegelman lived close to the World Trade Center site, which was known as 'Ground Zero' after the September 11 attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center.[68] Immediately following the attacks Spiegelman and Mouly rushed to their daughter Nadja's school, where Spiegelman's anxiety served only to increase his daughter's apprehensiveness over the situation.[59] Spiegelman and Mouly created a cover for the September 24 issue of The New Yorker[69][70] which at first glance appears to be totally black, but upon close examination it reveals the silhouettes of the World Trade Center towers in a slightly darker shade of black. Mouly positioned the silhouettes so that the North Tower's antenna breaks into the 'W' of The New Yorker's logo. The towers were printed in black on a slightly darker black field employing standard four-color printing inks with an overprinted clear varnish. In some situations, the ghost images only became visible when the magazine was tilted toward a light source.[69] Spiegelman was critical of the Bush administration and the mass media over their handling of the September 11 attacks.[71]
Spiegelman did not renew his New Yorker contract after 2003.[72] He later quipped that he regretted leaving when he did, as he could have left in protest when the magazine ran a pro-invasion of Iraq piece later in the year.[73] Spiegelman said his parting from The New Yorker was part of his general disappointment with 'the widespread conformism of the mass media in the Bush era'.[74] He said he felt like he was in 'internal exile'[71] following the September 11 attacks as the U.S. media had become 'conservative and timid'[71] and did not welcome the provocative art that he felt the need to create.[71] Nevertheless, Spiegelman asserted he left not over political differences, as had been widely reported,[72] but because The New Yorker was not interested in doing serialized work,[72] which he wanted to do with his next project.[73]
Spiegelman responded to the September 11 attacks with In the Shadow of No Towers, commissioned by German newspaper Die Zeit, where it appeared throughout 2003. The Jewish Daily Forward was the only American periodical to serialize the feature.[71] The collected work appeared in September 2004 as an oversized[b]board book of two-page spreads which had to be turned on end to read.[75]
'Gargantua', a cartoon critical of King Louis Philippe I, led to the imprisonment of its author, Honoré Daumier.
In the June 2006 edition of Harper's Magazine Spiegelman had an article published on the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy; some interpretations of Islamic law prohibit the depiction of Muhammad. The Canadian chain of booksellers Indigo refused to sell the issue. Called 'Drawing Blood: Outrageous Cartoons and the Art of Outrage', the article surveyed the sometimes dire effect political cartooning has for its creators, ranging from Honoré Daumier, who spent time in prison for his satirical work; to George Grosz, who faced exile. To Indigo the article seemed to promote the continuance of racial caricature. An internal memo advised Indigo staff to tell people: 'the decision was made based on the fact that the content about to be published has been known to ignite demonstrations around the world.'[76] In response to the cartoons, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called for submissions of anti-Semitic cartoons. Spiegelman produced a cartoon of a line of prisoners being led to the gas chambers; one stops to look at the corpses around him and says, 'Ha! Ha! Ha! What’s really hilarious is that none of this is actually happening!'[77]
To promote literacy in young children, Mouly encouraged publishers to publish comics for children.[78] Disappointed by publishers' lack of response, from 2008 she self-published a line of easy readers called Toon Books, by artists such as Spiegelman, Renée French, and Rutu Modan, and promotes the books to teachers and librarians for their educational value.[79] Spiegelman's Jack and the Box was one of the inaugural books in 2008.[80]
In 2008 Spiegelman reissued Breakdowns in an expanded edition including 'Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*!'[81] an autobiographical strip that had been serialized in the Virginia Quarterly Review from 2005.[82] A volume drawn from Spiegelman's sketchbooks, Be A Nose, appeared in 2009. In 2011 MetaMaus followed—a book-length analysis of Maus by Spiegelman and Hillary Chute with a DVD-ROM update of the earlier CD-ROM.[83]
Library of America commissioned Spiegelman to edit the two-volume Lynd Ward: Six Novels in Woodcuts, which appeared in 2010, collecting all of Ward'swordless novels with an introduction and annotations by Spiegelman. The project led to a touring show in 2014 about wordless novels called Wordless! with live music by saxophonist Phillip Johnston.[84]Art Spiegelman's Co-Mix: A Retrospective débuted at Angoulême in 2012 and by the end of 2014 had traveled to Paris, Cologne, Vancouver, New York, and Toronto.[81] A book complementing the showed titled Co-Mix: A Retrospective of Comics, Graphics, and Scraps appeared in 2013.[85]
In 2015, after six writers refused to sit on a panel at the PEN American Center in protest of the planned 'freedom of expression courage award' for the satirical French periodical Charlie Hebdo following the shooting at its headquarters earlier in the year, Spiegelman agreed to be one of the replacement hosts,[86] along with other names in comics such as writer Neil Gaiman. Spiegelman retracted a cover he had submitted to a Gaiman-edited 'saying the unsayable' issue of New Statesman when the management declined to print strip of Spiegelman's. The strip, titled 'Notes from a First Amendment Fundamentalist', depicts Muhammad, and Spiegelman believed the rejection was censorship, though the magazine asserted it never intended to run the cartoon.[87]
Personal life[edit]
Spiegelman married Françoise Mouly in 1977 (pictured in 2015).
Spiegelman married Françoise Mouly on July 12, 1977,[88] in a City Hall ceremony.[37] They remarried later in the year after Mouly converted to Judaism to please Spiegelman's father.[37] Mouly and Spiegelman have two children together: a daughter Nadja Rachel, born in 1987,[88] and a son Dashiell Alan, born in 1991.[88]
Style[edit]
All comic-strip drawings must function as diagrams, simplified picture-words that indicate more than they show.
— Art Spiegelman[89]
Spiegelman suffers from a lazy eye, and thus lacks depth perception. He says his art style is 'really a result of [his] deficiencies'. His is a style of labored simplicity, with dense visual motifs which often go unnoticed upon first viewing.[90] He sees comics as 'very condensed thought structures', more akin to poetry than prose, which need careful, time-consuming planning that their seeming simplicity belies.[91]Spiegelman's work prominently displays his concern with form, and pushing the boundaries of what is and is not comics. Early in the underground comix era, Spiegelman proclaimed to Robert Crumb, 'Time is an illusion that can be shattered in comics! Showing the same scene from different angles freezes it in time by turning the page into a diagram—an orthographic projection!'[92] His comics experiment with time, space, recursion, and representation. He uses the word 'decode' to express the action of reading comics[93] and sees comics as functioning best when expressed as diagrams, icons, or symbols.[89]
Spiegelman has stated he does not see himself primarily as a visual artist, one who instinctively sketches or doodles. He has said he approaches his work as a writer as he lacks confidence in his graphic skills. He subjects his dialogue and visuals to constant revision—he reworked some dialogue balloons in Maus up to forty times.[94] A critic in The New Republic compared Spiegelman's dialogue writing to a young Philip Roth in his ability 'to make the Jewish speech of several generations sound fresh and convincing'.[94]
Maus Art Spiegelman Read Online
Spiegelman makes use of both old- and new-fashioned tools in his work. He prefers at times to work on paper on a drafting table, while at others he draws directly onto his computer using a digital pen and electronic drawing tablet, or mixes methods, employing scanners and printers.[91]
Influences[edit]
Wordless woodcut novels such as those by Frans Masereel were an early influence.
Harvey Kurtzman has been Spiegelman's strongest influence as a cartoonist, editor, and promoter of new talent.[95] Chief among his other early cartooning influences include Will Eisner,[96]John Stanley's version of Little Lulu, Winsor McCay's Little Nemo, George Herriman's Krazy Kat,[95] and Bernard Krigstein's short strip 'Master Race'.[97]
In the 1960s Spiegelman read in comics fanzines about graphic artists such as Frans Masereel, who had made wordless novels in woodcut. The discussions in those fanzines about making the Great American Novel in comics later acted as inspiration for him.[44]Justin Green's comic book Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary (1972) motivated Spiegelman to open up and include autobiographical elements in his comics.[98]
Spiegelman acknowledges Franz Kafka as an early influence,[99] whom he says he has read since the age of 12,[100] and lists Vladimir Nabokov, William Faulkner, Gertrude Stein among the writers whose work 'stayed with' him.[101] He cites non-narrative avant-garde filmmakers from whom he has drawn heavily, including Ken Jacobs, Stan Brakhage, and Ernie Gehr, and other filmmakers such as Charlie Chaplin and the makers of The Twilight Zone.[102]
Beliefs[edit]
Spiegelman is a prominent advocate for the comics medium and comics literacy. He believes the medium echoes the way the human brain processes information. He has toured the U.S. with a lecture called 'Comix 101', examining its history and cultural importance.[103] He sees comics' low status in the late 20th century as having come down from where it was in the 1930s and 1940s, when comics 'tended to appeal to an older audience of GIs and other adults'.[104] Following the advent of the censorious Comics Code Authority in the mid-1950s, Spiegelman sees comics' potential as having stagnated until the rise of underground comix in the late 1960s.[104] He taught courses in the history and aesthetics of comics at schools such as the School of Visual Arts in New York.[33] As co-editor of Raw, he helped propel the careers of younger cartoonists whom he mentored, such as Chris Ware,[73] and published the work of his School of Visual Arts students, such as Kaz, Drew Friedman, and Mark Newgarden. Some of the work published in Raw was originally turned in as class assignments.[51]
Spiegelman has described himself politically as 'firmly on the left side of the secular-fundamentalist divide' and a '1st Amendment absolutist'.[77] As a supporter of free speech, Spiegelman is opposed to hate speech laws. He wrote a critique in Harper's on the controversial Muhammad cartoons in the Jyllands-Posten in 2006; the issue was banned from Indigo–Chapters stores in Canada. Spiegelman criticized American media for refusing to reprint the cartoons they reported on at the time of the Charlie Hebdo shooting in 2015.[105]
Spiegelman is a non-practicing Jew and considers himself 'a-Zionist'—neither pro- nor anti-Zionist; he has called Israel 'a sad, failed idea'.[72] He told Charles Schulz he was not religious, but identified with the 'alienated diaspora culture of Kafka and Freud ... what Stalin pejoratively called rootless cosmopolitanism'.[106]
Legacy[edit]
Maus looms large not only over Spiegelman's body of work, but over the comics medium itself. While Spiegelman was far from the first to do autobiography in comics, critics such as James Campbell considered Maus the work that popularized it.[11] The bestseller has been widely written about in the popular press and academia—the quantity of its critical literature far outstrips that of any other work of comics.[107] It has been examined from a great variety of academic viewpoints, though most often by those with little understanding of Maus' context in the history of comics. While Maus has been credited with lifting comics from popular culture into the world of high art in the public imagination, criticism has tended to ignore its deep roots in popular culture, roots that Spiegelman has intimate familiarity with and has devoted considerable time to promote.[108]
Spiegelman's belief that comics are best expressed in a diagrammatic or iconic manner has had a particular influence on formalists such as Chris Ware and his former student Scott McCloud.[89] In 2005, the September 11-themed New Yorker cover placed sixth on the top ten of magazine covers of the previous 40 years by the American Society of Magazine Editors.[69] Spiegelman has inspired numerous cartoonists to take up the graphic novel as a means of expression, including Marjane Satrapi.[95]
A joint ZDF–BBC documentary Art Spiegelman's Maus was televised in 1987.[109] Spiegelman, Mouly, and many of the Raw artists appeared in the video documentary Comic Book Confidential in 1988.[52] Spiegelman's comics career was also covered in an Emmy-nominated PBS documentary, 'Serious Comics: Art Spiegelman' produced for WNYC-TV in 1994. Spiegelman played himself in the 2007 episode 'Husbands and Knives' of the animated television series The Simpsons with other comics creators Daniel Clowes and Alan Moore.[110] A European documentary Art Spiegelman, Traits de Mémoire appeared in 2010 and later in English under the title The Art of Spiegelman,[109] directed by Clara Kuperberg and Joelle Oosterlinck and mainly featuring interviews with Spiegelman and those around him.[111]
Awards[edit]
Maus was the first graphic novel to win a Pulitzer Prize.
- 1982: Playboy Editorial Award, Best Comic Strip[112]
- 1982: Yellow Kid Award [de], Lucca, Italy, for Foreign Author [113][112]
- 1983: Print, Regional Design Award[112]
- 1984: Print, Regional Design Award[112]
- 1985: Print, Regional Design Award[112]
- 1986: Joel M. Cavior, Jewish Writing[114]
- 1987: Inkpot Award[112]
- 1988: Angoulême International Comics Festival, France, Prize for Best Comic Book, for Maus[52]
- 1988: Urhunden Prize, Sweden, Best Foreign Album, for Maus[115]
- 1990: Guggenheim Fellowship.[52]
- 1990: Max & Moritz Prize, Erlangen, Germany, Special Prize, for Maus[114]
- 1992: Pulitzer Prize Letters award, for Maus[116]
- 1992: Eisner Award, Best Graphic Album (reprint), for Maus[117]
- 1992: Harvey Award, Best Graphic Album of Previously Published Work, for Maus[118]
- 1992: Los Angeles Times, Book Prize for Fiction for Maus II[119]
- 1993: Angoulême International Comics Festival, Prize for Best Comic Book, for Maus II[52]
- 1993: Sproing Award, Norway, Best Foreign Album, for Maus[114]
- 1993: Urhunden Prize, Best Foreign Album, for Maus II[115]
- 1995: Binghamton University (formerly Harpur College), honorary Doctorate of Letters.[63]
- 1999: Eisner Award, inducted into the Hall of Fame[62]
- 2005: French government, Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres[62]
- 2005: Time magazine, one of the 'Top 100 Most Influential People'[120]
- 2011: Angoulême International Comics Festival, Grand Prix[121]
- 2015: American Academy of Arts and Letters membership[122]
Bibliography[edit]
Author[edit]
- Breakdowns: From Maus to Now, an Anthology of Strips (1977)
- Maus (1991)
- The Wild Party (1994)
- Open Me, I'm A Dog (1995)
- Jack Cole and Plastic Man: Forms Stretched to Their Limits (2001)
- In the Shadow of No Towers (2004)
- Breakdowns: Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*! (2008)
- Jack and the Box (2008)
- Be a Nose (2009)
- MetaMaus (2011)
- Co-Mix: A Retrospective of Comics, Graphics, and Scraps (2013)
Editor[edit]
- Short Order Comix (1972–74)
- Whole Grains: A Book of Quotations (with Bob Schneider, 1973)
- Arcade (with Bill Griffith, 1975–76)
- Raw (with Françoise Mouly, 1980–91)
- City of Glass (graphic novel adaptation by David Mazzucchelli of the Paul Auster novel, 1994)
- The Narrative Corpse (1995)
- Little Lit (with Françoise Mouly, 2000–2003)
- The TOON Treasury of Classic Children's Comics (with Françoise Mouly, 2009)
- Lynd Ward: Six Novels in Woodcuts (2010)
Notes[edit]
- ^In The New Yorker for September 27, 1993
- ^The book edition of In the Shadow of No Towers measures 10 by 14.5 inches (25 cm × 37 cm).[75]
References[edit]
- ^ abcdSpiegelman 2011, p. 18.
- ^Naughtie 2012.
- ^Spiegelman 2011, p. 16.
- ^Teicholz 2008.
- ^Hatfield 2005, p. 146.
- ^Hirsch 2011, p. 37.
- ^ abKois 2011.
- ^ abcWitek 2007b, p. xvii.
- ^ abHorowitz 1997, p. 401.
- ^Gardner 2017, pp. 78–79.
- ^ abcCampbell 2008, p. 56.
- ^Horowitz 1997; D'Arcy 2011.
- ^Witek 2007b, pp. xvii–xviii.
- ^Jamieson 2010, p. 116.
- ^ abcdefgWitek 2007b, pp. xviii.
- ^ abKaplan 2006, p. 102; Campbell 2008, p. 56.
- ^Fathers 2007, p. 122; Gordon 2004; Horowitz 1997, p. 401.
- ^ abHorowitz 1997, p. 402.
- ^ abKaplan 2006, p. 103.
- ^Epel 2007, p. 144.
- ^ abWitek 1989, p. 103.
- ^Kaplan 2008, p. 140.
- ^Conan 2011.
- ^Witek 1989, p. 98.
- ^ abcChute 2012, p. 413.
- ^Donahue, Don and Susan Goodrick, editors. The Apex Treasury of Underground Comics (Links Books/Quick Fox, 1974).
- ^Hatfield 2012, p. 138.
- ^Hatfield 2012, p. 138; Chute 2012, p. 413.
- ^Kuskin 2010, p. 68.
- ^Rothberg 2000, p. 214; Witek 2007b, p. xviii.
- ^Grishakova & Ryan 2010, pp. 67–68.
- ^Buhle 2004, p. 252.
- ^ abcdWitek 2007b, p. xix.
- ^ abKaplan 2006, p. 108.
- ^Heer 2013, pp. 26–30.
- ^Heller 2004, p. 137.
- ^ abcHeer 2013, p. 41.
- ^Heer 2013, pp. 47–48.
- ^ abHeer 2013, pp. 45–47.
- ^Heer 2013, p. 49.
- ^Kaplan 2006, pp. 111–112.
- ^ abcKaplan 2006, p. 109.
- ^Reid 2007, p. 225.
- ^ abKaplan 2008, p. 171.
- ^Fathers 2007, p. 125.
- ^Blau 2008.
- ^ abKaplan 2006, p. 113.
- ^Kaplan 2006, p. 118; Kaplan 2008, p. 172.
- ^Kaplan 2008, p. 171; Kaplan 2006, p. 118.
- ^Kaplan 2006, p. 115.
- ^ abKaplan 2006, p. 111.
- ^ abcdefghWitek 2007b, p. xx.
- ^Bellomo 2010, p. 154.
- ^Witek 2007a.
- ^Shandler 2014, p. 338.
- ^Liss 1998, p. 54; Fischer & Fischer 2002; Pulitzer Prizes staff.
- ^Campbell 2008, p. 59.
- ^Mendelsohn 2003, p. 180; Campbell 2008, p. 59; Witek 2007b, p. xx.
- ^ abKaplan 2006, p. 119.
- ^Fox 2012.
- ^Weiss 2012; Witek 2007b, pp. xx–xxi.
- ^ abcdWitek 2007b, p. xxii.
- ^ abcWitek 2007b, p. xxi.
- ^ abCampbell 2008, p. 58.
- ^ abArnold 2001.
- ^Publishers Weekly staff 1995.
- ^Witek 2007b, pp. xxii–xxiii.
- ^Baskind & Omer-Sherman 2010, p. xxi.
- ^ abcASME staff 2005.
- ^'9/11 Magazine Covers > The New Yorker', ASME/magazine.org. Retrieved 2016-08-13.
- ^ abcdeCorriere della Sera staff 2003, p. 264.
- ^ abcdHays 2011.
- ^ abcCampbell 2008, p. 60.
- ^Corriere della Sera staff 2003, p. 263.
- ^ abChute 2012, p. 414.
- ^Adams 2006.
- ^ abBrean 2008.
- ^Heer 2013, p. 115.
- ^Heer 2013, p. 116.
- ^Publishers Weekly staff 2008.
- ^ abSolomon 2014, p. 1.
- ^Witek 2007b, p. xxiii.
- ^Heater 2011.
- ^Artsy 2014.
- ^Randle 2013.
- ^Chow 2015.
- ^Krayewski 2015; Heer 2015.
- ^ abcMeyers 2011.
- ^ abcCates 2010, p. 96.
- ^Campbell 2008, pp. 56—57.
- ^ abCampbell 2008, p. 61.
- ^Chute 2012, p. 412.
- ^Chute 2012, pp. 412–413.
- ^ abCampbell 2008, p. 57.
- ^ abcZuk 2013, p. 700.
- ^Frahm 2004.
- ^Kannenberg 2001, p. 28.
- ^Chute 2010, p. 18.
- ^Mulman 2010, p. 86.
- ^Kannenberg 2007, p. 262.
- ^Horowitz 1997, p. 404.
- ^Zuk 2013, pp. 699–700.
- ^Kaplan 2006, p. 123.
- ^ abCampbell 2008, pp. 58–59.
- ^Brean 2015.
- ^Mendelsohn 2003, p. 180.
- ^Loman 2010, p. 217.
- ^Loman 2010, p. 212.
- ^ abShandler 2014, p. 318.
- ^Keller 2007.
- ^Kensky 2012.
- ^ abcdefBrennan & Clarage 1999, p. 575.
- ^Traini 1982.
- ^ abcZuk 2013, p. 699.
- ^ abHammarlund 2007.
- ^Pulitzer Prizes staff.
- ^Eisner Awards staff 2012.
- ^Harvey Awards staff 1992.
- ^Colbert 1992.
- ^Time staff 2005; Witek 2007b, p. xxiii.
- ^Cavna 2011.
- ^Artforum staff 2015.
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Further reading[edit]
- The Topps Company Inc. (2008). Wacky Packages. Harry N. Abrams. ISBN978-0-8109-9531-4.
- The Topps Company Inc. (2012). Garbage Pail Kids. Harry N. Abrams. ISBN978-1-4197-0270-9.
External links[edit]
- Appearances on C-SPAN
Retrieved from 'https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Art_Spiegelman&oldid=911493022'
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. Animals in Literature
2.1 Animal Characters as Literary Device
2.2 'Funny Animals' in Popular Culture and in Comic Books
2.1 Animal Characters as Literary Device
2.2 'Funny Animals' in Popular Culture and in Comic Books
3. Spiegelman's Maus
3.1 Synopsis
3.2 Reception
3.1 Synopsis
3.2 Reception
4. The Animal Metaphor in Spiegelman's Maus
4.1 Spiegelman's Personal Dimension of the Animal Metaphor
4.2 The Animal Mask
4.3 The Animal Metaphor as a Distancing and Defamiliarizing Device
4.4 The Self-Reflexivity of the Animal Mask
4.5 Construction of Identity and Ethnicity by the Animal Metaphor
4.6 The Visual Dimension – Maus 's Drawing Style
4.7 Criticism and Incongruities of the Animal Metaphor
4.7.1 Stereotyping and Insulting of Ethnicities
4.7.2 Narrative Incongruities
4.1 Spiegelman's Personal Dimension of the Animal Metaphor
4.2 The Animal Mask
4.3 The Animal Metaphor as a Distancing and Defamiliarizing Device
4.4 The Self-Reflexivity of the Animal Mask
4.5 Construction of Identity and Ethnicity by the Animal Metaphor
4.6 The Visual Dimension – Maus 's Drawing Style
4.7 Criticism and Incongruities of the Animal Metaphor
4.7.1 Stereotyping and Insulting of Ethnicities
4.7.2 Narrative Incongruities
5. Conclusion
Works Cited
1. Introduction
Representing the Holocaust in a comic book is a daring enterprise; doing it with animal figures is even bolder. Spiegelman's work Maus braves many conventions of dealing with the Holocaust but reconstructs it in an unprecedented and unique manner. By exceeding literary boundaries and generic expectations, it is thus an essential addition to Holocaust literature. The use of the animal metaphor is central to Spiegelman's work. As a literary device and in its visual realization, Maus 's animal metaphor opens up various dimensions of analysis and interpretation. Its manifold implications have triggered controversial and vivid discussions which indicate Maus 's ambiguity and its value as a serious work of literature.
This paper analyzes the animal metaphor in Spiegelman's Maus. It examines and discusses the different spheres in which the functions of the animal metaphor become evident. First, this paper traces back to the origins of using animals in literature. After a brief historical introduction of the sources and the development of animal figures, chapter 2 explains their literary function and their significance in comic books. The so called 'funny animal' genre is a popular category of comic books and animated cartoons which bears its own conventions and customs. For the further analysis, it is essential to have an understanding of how animal characters function within this popular tradition. Chapter 3 delivers a brief overview of Maus. It includes a synopsis of the comic's plot as well as a summary of its reception.
Chapter 4, the main part of this paper, investigates the various functions and receptions of the animal metaphor in Maus from different perspectives. In chapter 4.1, Spiegelman's personal explanations reveal how Maus' s animal characters function for him as a second generation witness. He explains how the animal metaphor empowered him to approach the Holocaust as a literary subject and as a second-hand experience at all. The notion of the animal mask is a distinctive feature of Maus adding a further layer to the discussion of the metaphor. Chapter 4.2 focuses upon these implications brought into play with the use of the mask. A further subject, discussed in chapter 4.3, is how the animal imagery serves as a distancing and defamiliarizing device in order to deal with the horror of the Holocaust. A post-modern feature of Maus is its self-reflexiveness which is closely intertwined with the animal mask. Chapter 4.4 discusses the interconnection between both features. In chapter 4.5, the examination tries further to comprehend how the animal metaphor contributes to the reconstruction of ethnicity and identity in Maus. Since any analysis of a comic book must not neglect its visual dimension, chapter 4.6 considers Maus 's drawing style and the significance of its visual representation. Maus has attracted many critics and its reception has been diverse and manifold. Target of the criticism has been especially the use of animals as substitutes for human beings. Chapter 4.7 examines and discusses Maus 's animal device from a critical point of view regarding its incongruities and problems brought into play with the association of human beings and animals. The last chapter summarizes the insights of the analysis and discusses in what way Maus 's animal metaphor strikes a new path in the conception and reconstruction of the Holocaust.
2. Animals in Literature
The use of animal characters in literature is as old as recorded literature. In fables, fairytales or comic books, animals appear as protagonists serving as literary figures. This chapter explores animal characters as literary device from a historical perspective and focuses on their use in popular culture as they appear in comic books.
2.1 Animal Characters as Literary Device
Aesop's fables (c. 550 BC) might have been the first tales of western literature in which animal characters attain human traits. These short stories by Aesop, presumably a slave in ancient Greece around 550 BC, are based on animal characters and usually convey a brief moral lesson. 'The Fox and the Grapes' and 'The Tortoise and the Hare' are among the most famous of Aesop's fables dealing with ethic conflicts and human issues such as honesty or failure. Another ancient source of fables, besides the Greek origin, is the Indian 'Panchatantra' (The Five Discourses on Worldly Wisdom), a collection of animal fables in verse and prose believed to have been composed in the 3rd century BC. As 'certainly the most frequently translated literary product of India', its stories are worldwide known and contain proverbs promoting the wise conduct of life (cf. Viṣṇuśarman, Olivelle 17-19). Aesop's fables as well as the Indian Panchatantra feature anthropomorphized[1] animals whom are given human qualities such as reason or language. In these traditional animal fables which convey a certain moral or wisdom, human character traits are abstracted and projected onto animals (cf. Witek 110).
Beast fables or beast epics emerged in European medieval times and put less emphasise on moral issues than original fables. According to Joseph Witek, they 'link into a system of well-established correspondences based on the natural attributes of species; foxes are cunning, wolves voracious, mules stubborn, cats curious, and so on' (110). Prominent examples are 'Roman de Renart', a 12th-century group of related tales, Edmund Spenser’s 'Prosopopoia' (1591), a satirical poem, and John Dryden's 'The Hind and the Panther' (1687), an allegory and account of the hostility between Anglicanism and Roman Catholicism (cf. Encyclopædia Britannica 'Fable, Parable, and Allegory'). In the 17th century the fables of French poet Jean de La Fontaine continued the Aesopian tradition. He enriched the simple stories which were subordinated to their didactic intention and forged his animal characters as serious representations of human types. His fables hint that human nature and animal nature have much in common and skillfully exploit the incongruities between the animals and the human elements they embody (cf. Encyclopædia Britannica 'Jean de La Fontaine').
A more modern example of a literary work featuring animal characters is George Orwell's Animal Farm (1945), 'a sophisticated modern version of this allegorical tradition' (Witek 110). As a political satire, fable, and allegory, it criticizes the misuse of political power in Stalinist Russia. Animal Farm 's animal characters are based on specific historical people, such as Marx, Lenin, Stalin and Trotzky.
But why using animals in literature and why using them in a metaphoric way assigning them human traits? Art critic and writer John Berger explains that the use of the animal metaphor reflects upon the relationship, the differences, and the similarities of animals and humans. He states in his essay 'Why look at animals?' that the first symbols were animals. The first subject matter for painting was animal, the first paint was animal blood and 'the first metaphor was animal' (7). He explains that this was 'because the essential relation between man and animal was metaphoric'; what man and animal 'shared in common revealed what differentiated them. And vice versa' (7). Berger refers to the works of Rousseau and Lévi-Strauss, and especially to examples from Homer's Iliad (ca. 1194-1184 BC), in which 'the use of metaphor still reveals the proximity of man and animal, the proximity from which metaphor itself arose' (9). According to Berger, without animals as metaphoric references, Homer would not have been able to convey such 'excessive or superlative qualities of different moments' as for instance in book 17 of the Iliad, when 'Menelaus bestrode his body like a fretful mother cow standing over the first calf she has brought into the world' (cf. 9-10).
According to Randy Duncan and Matthew J. Smith, 'as a literary device, anthropomorphism acts as a mirror, allowing the storyteller to reflect human characteristics – more often than not, the less flattering ones – back upon the readers in order to enlighten them about the human condition' (206). Lorraine Daston and Gregg Mitman (2005) explain that the use of animals in literature is based on the assumption that humans share thought and feeling with a wide array of animals. Hence, animals have long been used by men 'to symbolize, dramatize, and illuminate aspects of their own experience and fantasies' (2).
Such a perception of animals might be too short-sighted and morally problematic since casting animals in human roles can be seen as a form of self-centered narcissism or anthropocentrism (cf. Daston, Mitman 4). Although, for moral stories such as fables, the use of animal characters instead of human beings entails several advantages: much more than humans, animals strongly differ in their visual and auditory forms and appearances, in their behavior and habits. Thus, they offer a wide array of resources for literary characters and serve perfectly for the projection of human stereotypes. Further, '[a]nimal characters are perfectly designed to meet Aristotle's requirements of characters in drama. They should show only the characteristics appropriate to their identity and nature and should remain consistent throughout each action' (cf. Aristotle, Poetics, XIV, 4-6 in Calder 122). Thus, the fox is cunning, the lion is brave and the dog is loyal. Stories told about humans might run the risk to lose the moral in a tangle of individuating detail we are usually excited to know about other people. Hence, 'substituting animals as actors strips the characterizations down to prototype. Animals simplify the narrative to a point that would be found flat or at least allegorical if the same tales where recounted about humans' (Daston & Mitman 9).
2.2 'Funny Animals' in Popular Culture and in Comic Books
Animal characters have appeared in some of the greatest achievements in American popular culture. Not only Walt Disney's world-famous characters Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck dominated animated cartoons for decades, but also Otto Mesmer's Felix the Cat, as well as Warner Brothers' Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, were equally central to the development of American animation.
Anthropomorphized animal cartoons and comics have its formal sources from beast fables and folktales, although the 'funny animal' genre of comics 'has developed its own distinctive, peculiar conventions and metaphysics' (Witek 109). The characters of funny animal comics think and act more human than animals. They combine animal faces with bodies and behavior including human properties such as intelligence, language, clothing etc.. George Herriman's Krazy Kat (1913) and Floyd Gottfredson's Mickey Mouse (1930) might have been the most prominent animal comics which appeared in newspaper comic strips. Others such as Messmer's Felix the Cat or Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse perfectly matched the needs of the animated film industry which emerged in the early 20th century. Funny animal characters have been intended to reach a rather young audience (cf. Booker 234/ Witek 109). For Witek, perhaps the best animal comic book of all is found in the works of Carl Barks. He was the creator and story writer of cartoon capitalist Uncle Scrooge and Donald Duck for more than twenty years. Bark's Donald Duck is a complex person and Bark always conceived of him as a human being who just happened to be shaped like a duck (cf. Witek 109). According to Witek '[t]his curious indifference to the animal nature of the characters is a distinguishing mark of the 'funny animal' tradition in popular narratives' (Witek 109).
A central question raised by the funny animal comics seems to be whether their characters represent animals who act like people or whether they represent people who look like animals or something else (cf. Booker 234). In contrast to the allegorical characterization of animals in the beast fable, 'which sets up inflexible correspondences between traits and animals that have come to embody such traits in a culture, the 'funny animal' comic transcends allegory in its embrace of human typology' (Chaney 137). The animal comic 'takes these allegorical meanings as a starting point but then proceeds to ignore, qualify, or reverse them' (Witek 110). The funny animal comic uses those meanings often 'only to establish relations among characters, and the 'animalness' of the characters becomes vestigial or drops away entirely (...) the species are subordinate to their relation; Mickey is essentially a man, and Pluto is 'man's best friend' (Witek 110).
M. Keith Booker observes a racial undertone in the funny animal comics. He remarks that '[f]unny animal characters were built on, overlapped with, and gradually replaced other cartoon tradition of racial and ethnic stereotyping' (Booker 235). The repeated lesson exercised through its characters 'seemed to be that children, but particularly black children, were simply another species of friendly animals' (235-236). Michael Rogin points out that Walt Disney's 'white-gloved and black-faced Mickey Mouse, was copied from the Jazz Singer', a 1927 American musical film featuring a black-faced protagonist (29).[2]
Robert Crumb's Fritz the Cat became one of the only underground comic figures which crossed over into the popular media. In this work, which embodied increasingly adult content such as satiric social commentary, the conventions of animal comics were thoroughly explored (cf. Booker 229/Witek 111). In one of Crumb's stories, titled 'The Goose and thee Gander Were Talking One Night', the characters being geese are aware that they are animals 'but think of themselves as human, too' (Witek 111). Witek states, 'that the gooseness becomes part of the furniture of the story, enabling us to see past the intentional banality of the setting and conversation to the real-life situation it depicts; we are aware that these are talking geese even as we ignore the fact' (111). In this way, Crumb superimposes 'the conventions of animal comics onto a mundane and threatening modern world'. As a result of Crumb's underground comics, the funny animals genre could 'open up the way to a paradoxical narrative realism' (Witek 111).
3. Spiegelman's Maus
After having gained some insight in the world of literature – especially comic books – featuring animal characters, in the following, Spiegelman's work Maus is introduced. This chapter provides a brief synopsis of its content as well as a summary of its reception.
3.1 Synopsis
Maus is a two-volume comic book in which the comic artist Art Spiegelman retells the story of his father Vladek, a Polish Jew, who survived together with his wife and Art's mother Anja the Nazi concentration camp in Auschwitz. Besides telling a story about the Holocaust entirely in the comic-strip format, the most striking feature of Maus is that Spiegelman draws its characters as anthropomorphized animals, Jews as mice, Nazis as cats, Poles as pigs etc.. The author puts himself in the narrative appearing as Artie Spiegelman. As a figure in his own comic, Spiegelman comments self-reflexively on the work and on the writing process of Maus.
The first chapter of Maus appeared in 1980 in Spiegelman's comic magazine Raw. In 1986, Pantheon Books collected the first six chapters and published them in one book. The volume was called Maus: A Survivor's Tale, and subtitled 'My Father Bleeds History'. In 1992, Pantheon Books published the last five chapters in the second volume, subtitled 'And Here My Troubles Began'. In 1996, the two-volume edition The Complete Maus was published, containing both Maus I: A Survivor's Tale and Maus II: And Here My Troubles Began.[3]
Maus is a combination of a historical and personal account of Vladek's Holocaust experiences and of the portrayal of Art's life with his father. Additionally, it provides an ethnographic examination of contemporary Jewish survivor culture (cf. LaCapra 141). This makes Maus not easy to categorize which became apparent in 1922, when the Pulitzer Prize committee had difficulty finding an appropriate category. The obvious rubric biography seemed ill-suited for a comic-book. Finally, Maus was rewarded with the 'Special Award'. The New York Times Book Review moved Maus from the fiction to the non-fiction category of its bestseller list after Spiegelman's protest (cf. Doherty 69).
Each of the book's six chapters opens with Art visiting his father Vladek at his home in Rego Park, New York. Art retells the interview sessions in which his father recalls episodes from his years in Europe during the Nazi Regime. In this way, the actual story is embedded in a frame story of Art and Vladek's father-son relationship and the aftermath of Vladek's experiences. The individual chapters follow Vladek and Anja through their early romances and marriage in the period right before they become aware of the Nazi threat, and until the point when they pass through the gates of Auschwitz concentration camp in winter 1944 (cf. Baker 140).
A distinct feature of Maus is its self-reflexivity. The comic contains various passages in which Spiegelman breaks the narrative flow and accounts for the problems and complications in his writing process. One example of this post-modern convention is 'Prisoner on the Hell Planet: A Case History', a four-page story embedded in the larger narrative of Maus. The story deals with the suicide of Art's mother Anja and is depicted with human characters in a totally different style (cf. Witek 98-100). Further self-reflexive passages occurring in the narrative, deal with the interview sessions between Art and his father and with the complications of the animal metaphor.
3.2 Reception
Maus has attracted huge attention and received ambivalent reception. For many critics and comic readers Maus represents unquestionably a landmark comic credited as a major work in holocaust literature generally (cf. Sabin 91). One of Maus 's merits was to help 'to establish comic storytelling as a sophisticated adult literary medium' (Encyclopædia Britannica 'Art Spiegelman'). The 'Special Award' of the Pulitzer Prize was awarded to Maus in 1992 and the work appeared on the New York Times bestseller list. The commercial and critical success of Maus brought Spiegelman a solo exhibit at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art. Another indicator of Maus's success is the translation of the two volumes into more than 20 languages (cf. Encyclopædia Britannica 'Art Spiegelmann').
Miki Maus Deutsch
Jospeh Witek refers to the critical voices which Maus has stirred but claims that '[m]ost readers of Maus have struggled to understand how a Holocaust comic book can be so compelling and why the unlikely genre of 'talking animals' seems so paradoxically appropriate' (Witek 109). One main issue Maus' s reception has mainly been concerned with is the question of whether the medium of a comic, 'associated with the madcap, the childish, the trivial' (Doherty 71), can be appropriate in representing the Holocaust. Other critics have addressed the style and the way of substituting humans as animals in the framework of a Holocaust representation. Chapter 4.7 provides a detailed discussion of the critique concerning the animal metaphor in Maus.
Maus Art Spiegelman Summary
The question of whether Maus follows the tradition of Aesop's fables or rather the funny animal genre has been answered differently and depends upon the aspects focused on. Maus seems to incorporate different aspects from various traditions and genres being aware of its precedents. Adam Gopnik holds that '[i]t's extremely important to understand that Maus is in no way an animal fable or an allegory like Aesop or Animal Farm', since '[t]he Jews are just Jews who just happen to be depicted as mice, in a peculiar, idiosyncratic convention' (31). He claims that '[t]here isn't any allegorical dimension in Maus, just a convention of representation' (31). Wolk refers to the similarities and differences of Maus and the funny animal comics. He judges Maus as inspired by the tradition of funny animal comics, even though 'the story is about horrible reality instead of whimsical fantasy, and the actual linework of Maus is deliberately unlike the smooth, clean lines of most funny animal comics' (343). In contrast to Gopnik, Huyssen claims that Maus'resonates less with Disney productions than with a whole tradition of popular animal fables from Aesop to LaFontaine and even Kafka' (70). At the same time, Maus would differentiate itself from the older tradition of the enlightening animal fable. If the animal fable 'had enlightenment as its purpose either through satire or moral instruction, Maus [would] remain thoroughly ambiguous, if not opaque, as to the possible success of such enlightenment' (Huyssen 70). Instead of providing a moral or a happy reconciliation, 'the aesthetic and emotional effect of Maus remains jarring throughout' (Huyssen 70). Huyssen explains that Maus evolved rather from an American comic book counter-tradition born in the 1960s including Krazy Kat and Crumb's Fritz the Cat (cf. 70). Witek as well refers to Crumb's kind of satiric social commentary which is in Maus extended in a historical and (auto-)biographical fashion (cf. 111).
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Art Spiegelman Maus Deutsch Pdf Writer Online
[1] The interpretation of nonhuman things or events in terms of human characteristics (Encyclopædia Britannica 'anthropomorphism')
[2] Blackface is a form of theatrical makeup used in minstrel shows, and later vaudeville, in which performers create a stereotyped caricature of a black person. The practice gained popularity during the 19th century and contributed to the proliferation of stereotypes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackface).
Spiegelman Maus Pdf
[3] The citations of Maus in this paper refer to the The Complete Maus as appeared in 2003 by Penguin Books (Maus I pp. 1-161, Maus II pp. 164-296)).