Biography of Art Spiegelman (1948- )

Art Spiegelman is a critically acclaimed and highly influential artist and graphic novelist. He was
born in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1948, and soon after immigrated with his parents to Rego Park,
a neighborhood of Queens, NY. Though his parents wished for him to become a dentist,
Spiegelman enrolled in Harpur College in upstate New York (now Binghamton University, part
of the State University of New York) and began studying art and philosophy. He left college two
years later in 1968 without a degree, following a nervous breakdown.

His early career as an artist began in 1966 at Topps Gum Company, where he drew "Bazooka
Joe" comics and helped to create the cult classic "Garbage Pail Kids," which were drawn in a
similar style to the popular "Cabbage Patch Kids" dolls but with gross - often vulgar - details. He
worked at Topps for twenty years, until a dispute over the ownership of his original artworks
caused him to leave.

During his time at Topps, he also began publishing his own artwork in underground magazines
such as Real Pulp and Bizarre Sex. In 1980, Spiegelman founded RAW (Real Art Works), a
magazine of unconventional comics, with his wife, the artist Francoise Mouly. The first volume
of Maus was first published in serial form within the pages of RAW between 1980 and 1985,
and was released as a book the following year, to enormous critical and popular success. After
the second volume of Maus was published in 1992, Spiegelman was awarded a special Pulitzer
Prize for his work. In addition to the Pulitzer, he has received several other awards, including
a Guggenheim fellowship, an Eisner Award (for "Best Graphic Album"), and a nomination for
the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 2005, he was named one of the 100 Most Influential
People by Time magazine.

Art Spiegelman lives in New York City with his wife and two children, Nadja and Dashiell. Recent
works include Little Lit, a series of comics for children, and In the Shadow of No Towers, an
autobiographical account of the September 11th attacks and aftermath, told as a graphic novel.
His work has been published in the New York Times, Playboy, The Village Voice, and the New
Yorker. He received an honorary doctorate from
Binghamton University in 1995.

1
On Art Spiegelman
Art Spiegelman was born in 1948 in Stockholm, Sweden, the son of Andzi (Anja) and Vladek
Spiegelman. The family moved to Rego Park, New York in 1951. Spiegelman demonstrated an
early interest in comic books. Popular horror comics, Mad, underground comics, television, as
well as pop and high art were all formative influences. By adolescence, Spiegelman was
seriously involved in comic making. As Spiegelman tells us, the underground comic movement
developed in the 1960s while he was in junior high school:
"I met some people who later became, like myself, that first generation of underground cartoon-
ists – like Jay Lynch, Skip Williamson. We were all working for the same little magazines. They
were amateur self-produced magazines." (Dreifus, 36)
Chapters of maus were first serialized in 1980 in Art Spiegelman's avant-garde magazine raw.
maus, a survivor's tale i: my father bleeds history was published in 1986 and maus, a survivor's
tale ii: and here my troubles began in 1991. The two volumes won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992 with
the creation of a special category to honour the originality of the work. The acclaim and public
attention that followed the publication of maus came as a surprise to Spiegelman.
"One of the reasons I wasn't ready for the response to maus is that I was living in a world where
comics were being made seriously and taken seriously. So, to me, it was very natural."
(Dreifus, 36)
"There's a kind of shock in people's minds when they hear that this story is a comic strip –
'Somebody did a comic strip about the Holocaust.’
Actually, that invests it with a certain lack of hubris. It's not an opera about the Holocaust; it's
something modest, it's a comic strip – a medium that has a history of being without pretensions
or aspirations to art. And perhaps if there can be no art about the Holocaust, then there may at
least be comic strips." (Dreifus, 35)
Despite the acclaim, Spiegelman experienced angst and misgivings about his work. This self-
doubt is expressed both in the text (I.16) and images of maus, where he is diminished in size
(II.2, II.46).
Today Spiegelman is acknowledged as one of this generation's foremost comic artists. Co-
founder and co-editor of Raw with his wife Françoise Mouly, the acclaimed magazine of avant-
garde comix and graphics, Spiegelman has become widely known for maus and his current work
as a cover artist, contributor and consulting editor for the New Yorker magazine.

2
About MAUS
Art Spiegelman's Maus is the most unlikely of creations: a comic book about the Holocaust. Yet
when the first volume of Maus was published in 1987, it met with enormous critical and
commercial success, and to this day it is widely considered to be among the best and most
powerful of a long list of Holocaust-inspired works. When the second volume was published in
1991, the completed work was awarded a special Pulitzer Prize for Letters, an almost
unprecedented honor for a medium usually reserved for super heroes and the Sunday comics
(though to be fair, the creators of Doonesbury and Bloom County, popular Sunday comics, have
also won Pulitzers for their work).

In Maus, the different races and nationalities within the story are portrayed as different kinds
of animals. Jews, for example, are portrayed as mice, while the Germans are depicted as cats.
A precursor to Maus was first published in an underground comic magazine called Funny
Animals in 1972. The piece was only three pages long, but many of the same elements were
there, including the focus on his father, Vladek Spiegelman, and the decision to portray Jews as
mice. The artwork was, however, more overtly comical and cartoonish. Spiegelman continued
to work on his creation, and in 1980, when he co-founded the underground comic magazine
Raw, he began publishing Maus as a serial graphic novel, which appeared in six installments
between 1981 and 1986. These installments were colleted and published as Maus I: My Father
Bleeds History in 1987. The publication of Maus II: And Here My Troubles Began, followed a
similar route, appearing as a serial in Raw before being published in full in 1992.

Maus consists of two primary narratives of equal importance. The first major narrative is
directed by Art's father, Vladek Spiegelman, who offers the story of his experiences in the
Holocaust, as told to his son through a series of interviews. This narrative begins in pre-war
Poland and tracks his life over a period of approximately ten years, from his marriage to his
wife, Anja, in 1937, through his experiences in Auschwitz, and to his eventual immigration to
Sweden after the war. The second major narrative focuses on Art's complex and conflicted
relationship with his father between 1978 and 1982, while he interviews the old man about his
Holocaust experiences.

In addition to these primary narratives, there are also two "minor" narratives that appear only
briefly within the story. The first of these is a short comic that Art Spiegelman originally
published in 1972, which details the story of Art's mother's suicide in 1968. The comic is
eventually discovered by Vladek and reprinted in full in the middle of the first volume of Maus.
The second minor narrative occurs at the beginning of the second chapter of Maus II and takes
place in 1987, shortly after the publication of Maus I. It is a deeply personal and self-reflective
narrative revealing the conflicting emotions of the author with regards to his father and the
publication of Maus.

Though Maus is a comic book, its impact and complexity are far greater than most works of this
medium. The story explores the nature of guilt, and the narrative serves as a meditation on the
effects of a major historical event - in this case the traumatic events of the Holocaust - on the
lives of people who were born after it ended. With its complex themes and structure and
unconventional medium of a graphic novel, Maus almost defies description. Equal parts fiction,

3
biography, autobiography, and history, it is in many ways a book that rises above genre to
become something completely unique, and it is an amazing and lasting story that is destined to
become a classic.

On the Story
Spiegelman researched his parents' story by visiting Poland and the concentration camp
Auschwitz-Birkenau.

"The crew helped me find my parents' house in Sosnowiec. We found people who remembered
my family. In Auschwitz, we were able to hook up with the curator of the visual archives of the
museum, and he helped me find the pictures I needed for my visual reconstruction. ... The first
time I went, we went to Auschwitz I, which is where my father was incarcerated. And that looks
fairly benign in some bizarre way. It's paved. It's got trees. So in that first trip, I spent a lot of
time in Auschwitz I, which was a rather sanitized place, set up like a museum or a world's fair
display. And that kept it at a peculiar distance... [Birkenau] stretched as far as the eye could see
in any given direction. And then in the back is the rubble of where the killing apparatus was. We
walked in and it was nearing dusk when we found Birkenau. And that was frightening. It was
one of the only places I've ever walked where one really does believe in ghosts. It felt like every
step was walking on ashes." (Dreifus, 37)

Layout

Spiegelman used a lengthy process to complete each page. Starting with his father's taped
memories, Spiegelman selected the most important scenes and scraps of dialogue, which he
then edited to fit the restrictions of a comic-strip. Spiegelman began with a tiny layout of each
page, followed by a full-size trial on a plastic master grid. Spiegelman reworked each panel
many times, paring down the dialogue and tracing and retracing the contours of each drawing
with multi-coloured inks. Spiegelman continued to edit even some of his final versions with
white-out or pasted-in dialogue.
--- o ---
Historical record, memoir or comic book? Maus defies easy definition. The two volume, Pulitzer
Prize winning book by acclaimed graphic artist Art Spiegelman functions on three distinct yet
seamless levels. It is the story of the Holocaust as seen through the eyes of the artist's father,
Vladek; it is the story of the tortured relationship between the artist and his father; and finally
it is the story of the relationship between the artist and his art.

Spiegelman uses a unique cartoon style, characterizing humans as animals, to illustrate the
disturbing story of his parents' Holocaust survival, his father's ongoing pain, its impact on family
relationships and his own artistic struggle. As a character in his own work, Spiegelman
juxtaposes the minutiæ of day to day life with the magnitude of events surrounding the
Holocaust. Beneath the apparent simplicity of maus' comic book format lies a serious and
complex narrative derived from hours of personal interviews and historical research that
included visits to Auschwitz and other places in Poland.

4
Maus first appeared in 1980 in Art Spiegelman's avant-garde magazine Raw. maus, a survivor's
tale i: my father bleeds history was published in 1986 and maus, a survivor's tale ii: and here my
troubles began in 1991. The two volumes were awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1992 with the
creation of a special category to honour the originality of the work.

Some critics contend that the comic book format is inappropriate for the subject matter and
demeans the enormity of the Holocaust experience. Others argue that the cartoon medium
opens up the history to a new readership and that by neither trivializing nor sentimentalizing,
maus raises the comic book to a higher art form.

Graphic Novels
The term 'graphic novel' (like the genre science fiction) is open to interpretation. The Oxford
English Dictionary Online defines a graphic novel as a "full-length (especially science fiction or
fantasy) story published as a book in comic-strip format."

A graphic novel can best be described as being book-length in format, containing sequential
art narrative. It shares many of the characteristics of prose novels, including a beginning, a
middle, and an end. The story is presented through the combined use of image and word.
However, images are not simply illustrations; they contain information critical to
understanding elements of the story not presented verbally. Likewise the verbal components
are not captions, but they convey information not included in the images.

Comic Strip Comic Book Graphic Novel

Single idea (often but not
Serialized story Bound narrative with story arc
always a joke)
Story unfolds across Story unfolds across
multiple panels (typically multiple pages in panels Multiple pages
3-5) or strips
Often serialized, Often multiple artists
Combination of single page
appearing in newspaper and writers for one
illustrations and multiple panels
and magazines series
Often the product of a Illustrations and textual
studio (i.e., Marvel or components work together to
DC) reveal the story

But What about Cartoons?

A cartoon is a simple 2 dimensional drawing in which the features of the subject are
exaggerated in a humorous or satirical way. Typically it appears as a single illustration.
Cartoons also refer to a movie that uses animation techniques to photograph drawings rather
than real objects.

5
Major Types of Graphic Novels

• Fiction
• Personal Narrative or Memoir
• Nonfiction
• Manga ("Manga" is the Japanese word for comic but in the US is used to describe
Japanese style comics. Manga is read from top to bottom and right to left in the
Japanese reading pattern).
• Superhero Stories

The Sequential Art of a Graphic Novel

Sequential art is an art form that uses images deployed in sequence for graphic storytelling or
to convey information. Sequential art predates contemporary comics by millennia. Some of
the earliest examples are cave paintings, Egyptian hieroglyphics, and pre-Columbian American
picture manuscripts, which were recurrent media of artistic expression.
Comics have played a huge part not only in the history of the United States, but really all of
human history. For example, the earliest political cartoon in America helped communicate the
colonies wish for independence in a way that incited a revolution. Another example of just
how much comics have impacted our history is the Martin Luther King and the Montgomery
Story comic, which is a 16-page comic book about Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, and the
Montgomery Bus Boycott published in 1957 by the Fellowship of Reconciliation (one of the
oldest known interfaith peace organizations). It advocates the principles of nonviolence and
provides a primer on nonviolent resistance.