Art Spiegelman
Itzhak Avraham ben Zeev Spiegelman (/ˈspiːɡəlmən/ SPEE-gəl-mən; born February 15, 1948), professionally known as Art Spiegelman, is an American cartoonist, editor, and comics advocate best known for his graphic novel Maus. 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. In September 2022, the National Book Foundation announced that he would receive the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.[3]
Art Spiegelman
Spiegelman began his career with Topps (a bubblegum and trading 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 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, ethnic Poles as pigs, and citizens of the United States as dogs. It took 13 years to create until its completion in 1991. In 1992 it won a special Pulitzer Prize and has gained a reputation as a pivotal work.
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, and a lecturer, Spiegelman has promoted better understanding of comics and has mentored younger cartoonists.
Life and career[edit]
Early life[edit]
He began cartooning in 1960[9] and imitated the style of his favorite comic books, such as Mad.[10] In the early 1960s, he contributed to early fanzines such as Smudge and Skip Williamson's Squire, and in 1962[11]—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.[10] 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 from high school.[9] At age 15, Spiegelman received payment for his work from a Rego Park newspaper.[12]
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.[13]
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.[112] 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".[113] 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.[113] He taught courses in the history and aesthetics of comics at schools such as the School of Visual Arts in New York.[36] As co-editor of Raw, he helped propel the careers of younger cartoonists whom he mentored, such as Chris Ware,[81] 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.[54]
Spiegelman has described himself politically as "firmly on the left side of the secular-fundamentalist divide" and a "1st Amendment absolutist".[85] 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.[114]
Spiegelman is a non-practicing Jew and considers himself "a-Zionist"—neither pro- nor anti-Zionist; he has called Israel "a sad, failed idea".[80] He told Peanuts creator Charles Schulz he was not religious, but identified with the "alienated diaspora culture of Kafka and Freud ... what Stalin pejoratively called rootless cosmopolitanism".[115]