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From the BBC programme, February 5, 2012.Art Spiegelman (; born Itzhak Avraham ben Zeev Spiegelman on February 15, 1948) is an American cartoonist, editor, and comics advocate best known for his. His work as co-editor on the comics magazines and has been influential, and from 1992 he spent a decade as contributing artist for. He is married to designer and editor and is the father of writer.Spiegelman began his career with the bubblegum card company in the mid-1960s, which was his main financial support for two decades; there he co-created parodic series such as in the 1960s and the in the 1980s. He gained prominence in the scene in the 1970s with short, experimental, and often autobiographical work. A selection of these strips appeared in the collection in 1977, after which Spiegelman turned focus to the book-length Maus, about his relationship with his father, a 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 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, such as, and, 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 (2004), about his reaction to the in New York in 2001.Spiegelman advocates for greater comics literacy. As an editor, a teacher at the in New York City, and a lecturer, Spiegelman has promoted better understanding of comics and has mentored younger cartoonists. After Spiegelman's release from, 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. After a summer internship when he was 18, Topps hired him for Gelman's Product Development Department as a creative consultant making trading cards and related products in 1966, such as the series of parodic trading cards begun in 1967.Spiegelman began selling self-published on street corners in 1966.
He had cartoons published in underground publications such as the and traveled to San Francisco for a few months in 1967, where the underground comix scene was just beginning to burgeon.In late winter 1968 Spiegelman suffered a brief but intense, which cut his university studies short. He has said that at the time he was taking with great frequency. He spent a month in, and shortly after he got out his mother committed following the death of her only surviving brother. Underground comix (1971–1977) In 1971, after several visits, Spiegelman moved to and became a part of the 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), a work in the vein of fellow underground cartoonist.
Spiegelman's work also appeared in underground magazines such as, Real Pulp, and Bizarre Sex, and were in a variety of styles and genres as Spiegelman sought his. He also did a number of cartoons for such as, and.In 1972, asked Spiegelman to do a three-page strip for the first issue of Funny Aminals. He wanted to do one about racism, and at first considered a story with African-Americans as mice and cats taking on the role of the. 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 '. With this story Spiegelman felt he had found his voice.Seeing Green's revealingly autobiographical 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 ‹The is being.› #1, which he edited.
Spiegelman's work thereafter went through a phase of increasing formal experimentation; the Apex Treasury of Underground Comics in 1974 quotes him: 'As an art form the comic strip is barely in its infancy. Maybe we'll grow up together.'
The often-reprinted 'Ace Hole, Midget Detective' of 1974 was a -style parody of full of. '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. 'Nervous Rex: The Malpractice Suite' of 1976 is made up of cut-out panels from the soap-opera comic strip refashioned in such a way as to defy coherence.In 1973 Spiegelman edited a and book of quotations and dedicated it to his mother. Co-edited with Bob Schneider, it was called Whole Grains: A Book of Quotations.
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In 1974–1975, he taught a studio cartooning class at the.By the mid-1970s, the underground comix movement was encountering a slowdown. To give cartoonists a safe berth, Spiegelman co-edited the anthology with, in 1975 and 1976. Arcade was printed by and lasted seven issues, five of which had covers. 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. Arcade also introduced art from ages past, as well as contemporary literary pieces by writers such as. In 1975, Spiegelman moved back to New York City, which put most of the editorial work for Arcade on the shoulders of Griffith and his cartoonist wife,.
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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., an architectural student on a hiatus from her studies at the in Paris, arrived in New York in 1974. While looking for comics from which to practice reading English, she came across. Avant-garde filmmaker friend 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.Spiegelman introduced Mouly to the world of comics and helped her find work as a for. After returning to the U.S. In 1977, Mouly ran into visa problems, which the couple solved by getting married. 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.
Mouly assisted in putting together the lavish, oversized collection of Spiegelman's experimental strips in 1977. Raw and Maus (1978–1991). Spiegelman visited the in 1979 as research for; 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.
She took courses in and bought a printing press for her loft, on which she was to print parts of a new magazine she insisted on launching with Spiegelman. With Mouly as publisher, Spiegelman and Mouly co-edited starting in July 1980. The first issue was subtitled 'The Graphix Magazine of Postponed Suicides'. While it included work from such established underground cartoonists as Crumb and Griffith, Raw focused on publishing artists who were virtually unknown, avant-garde cartoonists such as, and, and introduced English-speaking audiences to translations of foreign works by, and others.With the intention of creating a book-length work based on his father's recollections of the Holocaust Spiegelman began to interview his father again in 1978 and made a research visit in 1979 to the, where his parents had been imprisoned by the. The book, Maus, appeared one chapter at a time as an insert in Raw beginning with the second issue in December 1980.
Spiegelman's father did not live to see its completion; he died on 18 August 1982. Spiegelman learned in 1985 that 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, (1986), was inspired by Maus and became eager to have his unfinished book come out before the movie to avoid comparisons. He struggled to find a publisher until in 1986, after the publication in of a rave review of the work-in-progress, 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.
The book found a large audience, in part because it was sold in bookstores rather than in comic shops, which by the 1980s had become the dominant outlet for comic books. Spiegelman and, (pictured in 1982), taught at the from 1978 to 1987.Spiegelman began teaching at the in New York in 1978, and continued until 1987, teaching alongside his heroes. Spiegelman had an essay published in entitled 'Commix: An Idiosyncratic Historical and Aesthetic Overview'.
In 1990 Spiegelman he had an essay called 'High Art Lowdown' published in critiquing the High/Low exhibition at the.In the wake of the success of the series of dolls, Spiegelman created the card series for Topps in 1985. Similar to the Wacky Packages series, the factor of the cards was controversial with parent groups, and its popularity started a gross-out fad among children. Spiegelman called Topps his ' 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.In 1991, Raw Vol. 2, No.3 was published; it was to be the last issue. The closing chapter of Maus appeared not in Raw but in the second volume of the graphic novel, which appeared later that year with the subtitle And Here My Troubles Began.
Maus attracted an unprecedented amount of critical attention for a work of comics, including an exhibition at New York's and a in 1992. The New Yorker (1992—2001).
Spiegelman and Mouly began working for in the early 1990s.Hired by as a contributing artist in 1992, Spiegelman worked for for ten years. Spiegelman's first cover appeared on the February 15, 1993, Valentine's Day issue and showed a black woman and a man kissing. The cover caused turmoil at The New Yorker offices. Spiegelman intended it to reference the of 1991 in which racial tensions led to the murder of a Jewish student. Spiegelman had twenty-one New Yorker covers published, and submitted a number which were rejected for being too outrageous.Within The New Yorker 's pages, Spiegelman contributed strips such as a collaboration titled 'In the Dumps' with children's illustrator and an obituary to titled 'Abstract Thought is a Warm Puppy'. An essay he had published there on, the creator of, 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.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 called. Spiegelman contributed the essay 'Getting in Touch With My Inner Racist' in the September 1, 1997 issue of.
Editorial cartoonist 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 in 1999. In an article titled 'The King of Comix' in, 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'. Cartoonist 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.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. From 2000 to 2003 Spiegelman and Mouly edited three issues of the children's comics anthology, with contributions from Raw alumni and children's book authors and illustrators.
Post-September 11 (2001–present). The provoked Spiegelman to create.Spiegelman lived close to the, which was known as 'Ground Zero' after the that destroyed the. 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. Spiegelman and Mouly created a cover for the September 24 issue of The New Yorker which at first glance appears to be totally black, but upon close examination it reveals the silhouettes of the 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.
Spiegelman was critical of the Bush administration and the mass media over their handling of the September 11 attacks.Spiegelman did not renew his New Yorker contract after 2003. He later quipped that he regretted leaving when he did, as he could have left in protest when the magazine ran a pro- piece later in the year.
Spiegelman said his parting from The New Yorker was part of his general disappointment with 'the widespread conformism of the mass media in the era'. He said he felt like he was in 'internal exile' following the September 11 attacks as the U.S. Media had become 'conservative and timid' and did not welcome the provocative art that he felt the need to create.
Nevertheless, Spiegelman asserted he left not over political differences, as had been widely reported, but because The New Yorker was not interested in doing serialized work, which he wanted to do with his next project.Spiegelman responded to the September 11 attacks with, commissioned by German newspaper, where it appeared throughout 2003. Was the only American periodical to serialize the feature. The collected work appeared in September 2004 as an oversized of two-page spreads which had to be turned on end to read. — Art SpiegelmanSpiegelman suffers from a, and thus lacks. 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. 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.
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!' His comics experiment with time, space, and representation. He uses the word 'decode' to express the action of reading comics and sees comics as functioning best when expressed as diagrams, icons, or symbols.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.
A critic in compared Spiegelman's dialogue writing to a young in his ability 'to make the Jewish speech of several generations sound fresh and convincing'.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 and electronic drawing tablet, or mixes methods, employing scanners and printers.
Influences. ^, p. 18., p. 16., p. 146., p. 37. ^. ^, p. xvii. ^, p. 401., pp. 78–79.
^, p. 56.;., pp. xvii–xviii., p. 116. ^, pp. xviii. ^, p. 102;, p. 56., p. 122;;, p. 401. ^, p. 402. ^, p. 103., p. 144.
^, p. 103., p. 140., p. 98. ^, p. 413. Donahue, Don and Susan Goodrick, editors.
The Apex Treasury of Underground Comics (Links Books/Quick Fox, 1974)., p. 138., p. 138;, p. 413., p. 68., p. 214;, p. xviii., pp. 67–68., p. 252. ^, p. xix. ^, p. 108., pp. 26–30., p. 137. ^, p. 41., pp. 47–48. ^, pp. 45–47., p. 49., pp. 111–112. ^, p. 109., p. 225.
^, p. 171., p. 125. ^, p. 113., p. 118;, p. 172., p. 171;, p. 118., p. 115. ^, p. 111.
^, p. xx., p. 154., p. 338., p. 54;;., p. 59., p. 180;, p. 59;, p. xx. ^, p. 119.;, pp. xx–xxi. ^, p. xxii.
^, p. xxi. ^, p. 58. ^., pp. xxii–xxiii., p. xxi.
^., ASME/ magazine.org. Retrieved 2016-08-13. ^, p. 264. ^. ^, p. 60., p. 263.
^, p. 414. ^., p. 115., p. 116. ^, p. 1., p. xxiii.;. ^. ^, p. 96., pp. 56—57. ^, p. 61., p. 412., pp. 412–413.
^, p. 57. ^, p. 700., p. 28., p. 18., p. 86., p. 262., p. 404., pp. 699–700., p. 123.
^, pp. 58–59., p. 180., p. 217., p. 212. ^, p. 318. ^, p. 575. ^, p. 699. ^.;, p. xxiii.Works cited.
Cover of the first volume of MausCreatorDate1991Page count296 pagesPublisherOriginal publicationPublished inIssuesVol. 3Date of publication1980–1991Maus is a by American cartoonist, serialized from 1980 to 1991. It depicts Spiegelman interviewing his father about his experiences as a and survivor.
The work employs techniques and represents Jews as mice, Germans as cats, and Poles as pigs. Critics have classified Maus as memoir, biography, history, fiction, autobiography, or a mix of genres. In 1992, it became the first graphic novel to win a (the ).In the timeline in the narrative present that begins in 1978 in New York City, Spiegelman talks with his father Vladek about his Holocaust experiences, gathering material for the Maus project he is preparing.
In the narrative past, Spiegelman depicts these experiences, from the years leading up to to his parents' liberation from the. Much of the story revolves around Spiegelman's troubled relationship with his father, and the absence of his mother, who committed suicide when he was 20. Her grief-stricken husband destroyed her written accounts of. The book uses a minimalist drawing style and displays innovation in its pacing, structure, and page layouts.A three-page strip also called 'Maus' that he made in 1972 gave Spiegelman an opportunity to interview his father about his life during World War II. The recorded interviews became the basis for the graphic novel, which Spiegelman began in 1978. He serialized Maus from 1980 until 1991 as an insert in, an avant-garde comics and graphics magazine published by Spiegelman and his wife, who also appears in Maus. A collected volume of the first six chapters that appeared in 1986 brought the book mainstream attention; a second volume collected the remaining chapters in 1991.
Maus was one of the first graphic novels to receive significant academic attention in the English-speaking world. Contents.Synopsis Most of the book weaves in and out of two timelines. In the of the narrative present, Spiegelman interviews his father Vladek in the neighborhood of New York City in 1978–79. The story that Vladek tells unfolds in the narrative past, which begins in the mid-1930s and continues until the end of in 1945.In Rego Park in 1958, a young Art Spiegelman complains to his father that his friends have left him behind.
His father responds in broken English, 'Friends? Your friends? If you lock them together in a room with no food for a week, then you could see what it is, friends!' As an adult, Art visits his father, from whom he has become estranged.
Vladek has remarried to a woman called Mala since the suicide in 1968 of Art's mother Anja. Art asks Vladek to recount his Holocaust experiences. Vladek tells of his time in the Polish city of and how he came to marry into Anja's wealthy family in 1937 and move to to become a manufacturer. Vladek begs Art not to include this in the book and Art reluctantly agrees. Anja suffers a breakdown due to after giving birth to their first son Richieu, and the couple go to a sanitarium in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia for her to recover. After they return, political and tensions build until Vladek is just before the. Vladek is captured at the front and forced to work as a.
After his release, he finds Germany has and he is dropped off on the other side of the border in the. He sneaks across the border and reunites with his family. From the original, more detailed 1972 'Maus' stripSpiegelman became a key figure in the underground comix movement of the 1970s, both as cartoonist and editor. In 1972 produced the semi-autobiographical comic book, which inspired other underground cartoonists to produce more personal and revealing work. The same year, Green asked Spiegelman to contribute a three-page strip for a comic named , which Green edited. Spiegelman wanted to do a strip about racism, and at first considered focusing on African Americans, with cats as members chasing African-American mice.
Instead, he turned to the Holocaust and depicted Nazi cats persecuting Jewish mice in a strip he titled 'Maus'. The tale was narrated to a mouse named '. After finishing the strip, Spiegelman visited his father to show him the finished work, which he had based in part on an anecdote he had heard about his father's Auschwitz experience. His father gave him further background information, which piqued Spiegelman's interest. Spiegelman recorded a series of interviews over four days with his father, which was to provide the basis of the longer Maus. Spiegelman followed up with extensive research, reading survivors' accounts and talking to friends and family who had also survived. He got detailed information about Sosnowiec from a series of Polish pamphlets published after the war which detailed what happened to the Jews by region.
Spiegelman visited Auschwitz in 1979 as part of his research.In 1973, Spiegelman produced a strip for Short Order Comix #1 about his mother's suicide called 'Prisoner on the Hell Planet'. The same year, he edited a, book of quotations, and dedicated it to his mother. He spent the rest of the 1970s building his reputation making short comics. He moved back to New York from San Francisco in 1975, which he admitted to his father only in 1977, by which time he had decided to work on a 'very long comic book'.
He began another series of interviews with his father in 1978, and visited Auschwitz in 1979. He serialized the story in a comics and graphics magazine he and his wife Mouly began in 1980 called Raw. Comics medium were big business with a diversity of genres in the 1940s and 1950s, but had reached a low ebb by the late 1970s. By the time Maus began serialization, the 'Big Two' comics publishers, and, dominated the industry with mostly titles. The movement that had flourished in the late 1960s and early 1970s also seemed moribund. The public perception of comic books was as adolescent power fantasies, inherently incapable of mature artistic or literary expression.
Most discussion focused on comics as a genre rather than as a medium.Maus came to prominence when the term ' was beginning to gain currency. Popularized the term with the publication in 1978 of. The term was used partly to mask the low cultural status that comics had in the English-speaking world, and partly because the term 'comic book' was being used to refer to short-form periodicals, leaving no accepted vocabulary with which to talk about book-form comics. Publication history The first chapter of Maus appeared in December 1980 in the second issue of Raw as a small insert; a new chapter appeared in each issue until the magazine came to an end in 1991.
Every chapter but the last appeared in Raw.Spiegelman struggled to find a publisher for a book edition of Maus, but after a rave review of the serial in August 1986, published the first six chapters in a volume called Maus: A Survivor's Tale and subtitled My Father Bleeds History. Spiegelman was relieved that the book's publication preceded the theatrical release of the animated film by three months, as he believed that the film, produced by 's, was inspired by Maus and wished to avoid comparisons with it.The book found a large audience, partly because of its distribution through bookstores rather than the comic shops where comic books were normally sold. Maus was difficult for critics and reviewers to classify, and also for booksellers, who needed to know on which shelves to place it. Though Pantheon pushed for the term 'graphic novel', Spiegelman was not comfortable with this, as many book-length comics were being referred to as 'graphic novels' whether or not they had novelistic qualities. He suspected the term's use was an attempt to validate the comics form, rather than to describe the content of the books. Spiegelman later came to accept the term, and with publisher Chris Oliveros successfully lobbied the in the early 2000s to include 'graphic novel' as a category in bookstores.Pantheon collected the last five chapters in 1991 in a second volume subtitled And Here My Troubles Began. Pantheon later collected the two volumes into soft- and hardcover two-volume boxed sets and single-volume editions.
In 1994 the released The Complete Maus on, a collection which contained the original comics, Vladek's taped transcripts, filmed interviews, sketches, and other background material. The CD-ROM was based on, a -only application that has since become obsolete.
In 2011 Pantheon Books published a companion to The Complete Maus entitled, with further background material, including filmed footage of Vladek. The centerpiece of the book is a Spiegelman interview conducted. It also has interviews with Spiegelman's wife and children, sketches, photographs, family trees, assorted artwork, and a DVD with video, audio, photos, and an interactive version of Maus.Spiegelman dedicated Maus to his brother Richieu and his first daughter. The book's is a quote from: 'The Jews are undoubtedly a race, but they are not human.' International publication obtained the rights to publish the initial volume in the in 1986. In support of the 's cultural boycott in opposition to, Spiegelman refused to 'compromise with fascism' by allowing publication of his work in South Africa.
(left) set up a publishing house in 2001 to put out a Polish edition of Maus in the face of protest.By 2011, Maus had been translated into about thirty languages. Three translations were particularly important to Spiegelman: French, as his wife was French, and because of his respect for the sophisticated tradition; German, given the book's background;. Poland was the setting for most of the book and Polish was the language of his parents and his own. The publishers of the German edition had to convince the German culture ministry of the work's serious intent to have the swastika appear on the cover, per. Reception in Germany was positive— Maus was a best-seller and was taught in schools.
The Polish translation encountered difficulties; as early as 1987, when Spiegelman planned a research visit to Poland, the Polish consulate official who approved his visa questioned him about the Poles' depiction as pigs and pointed out how serious an insult it was. Publishers and commentators refused to deal with the book for fear of protests and boycotts., a journalist for, set up his own publishing house to publish Maus in Polish in 2001. Demonstrators protested Maus 's publication and burned the book in front of Gazeta 's offices. Bikont's response was to don a pig mask and wave to the protesters from the office windows. The magazine-sized Japanese translation was the only authorized edition with larger pages. Long-standing plans for an translation have yet to come to fruition.
A Russian law passed in December 2014 prohibiting the display of Nazi propaganda led to the removal of Maus from Russian bookstores leading up to due to the swastika appearing on the book's cover.A few panels were changed for the edition of Maus. Based on Vladek's memory, Spiegelman portrayed one of the minor characters as a member of the Nazi-installed Jewish Police. An descendant objected and threatened to sue for. Spiegelman redrew the character with a in place of his original police hat, but appended a note to the volume voicing his objection to this 'intrusion'. This version of the first volume appeared in 1990 from the publishing house. It had an indifferent or negative reception, and the publisher did not release the second volume. Another Israeli publisher put out both volumes, with a new translation by poet that included Vladek's broken language, which Zmora Bitan had refused to do.
Marilyn Reizbaum saw this as highlighting a difference between the self-image of the Israeli Jew as a fearless defender of the homeland, and that of the American Jew as a feeble victim, something that one Israeli writer disparaged as 'the diaspora sickness'. Themes Presentation. Spiegelman's use of, similar to those shown here, conflicted with readers' expectations.Spiegelman's perceived audacity in using the Holocaust as his subject was compounded by his telling the story in comics. The prevailing view in the English-speaking world held comics as inherently trivial, thus degrading Spiegelman's subject matter, especially as he used animal heads in place of recognizably human ones. Have been a staple of comics, and while they have a traditional reputation as children's fare, the underground had long made use of them in adult stories, for example in 's, which comics critic Joseph Witek asserts shows that the genre could 'open up the way to a paradoxical narrative realism' that Maus exploited.Ostensibly about the Holocaust, the story entwines with the frame tale of Art interviewing and interacting with his father. Art's 'Prisoner on the Hell Planet' is also encompassed by the frame, and stands in visual and thematical contrast with the rest of the book as the characters are in human form in a, style inspired by.Spiegelman blurs the line between the frame and the world, such as when neurotically trying to deal with what Maus is becoming for him, he says to his wife, 'In real life you'd never have let me talk this long without interrupting.'
When a prisoner whom the Nazis believe to be a Jew claims to be German, Spiegelman has difficulty deciding whether to present this character as a cat or a mouse. Throughout the book, Spiegelman incorporates and highlights banal details from his father's tales, sometimes humorous or ironic, giving a lightness and humanity to the story which 'helps carry the weight of the unbearable historical realities'.Spiegelman started taking down his interviews with Vladek on paper, but quickly switched to a tape recorder, face-to-face or over the phone. Spiegelman often condensed Vladek's words, and occasionally added to the dialogue or synthesized multiple retellings into a single portrayal.Spiegelman worried about the effect that his organizing of Vladek's story would have on its authenticity. In the end, he eschewed a approach and settled on a linear narrative he thought would be better at 'getting things across'.
He strove to present how the book was recorded and organized as an integral part of the book itself, expressing the 'sense of an interview shaped by a relationship'. Artwork The story is text-driven, with few wordless in its 1,500 black-and-white panels.
The art has high contrast, with heavy black areas and thick black borders balanced against areas of white and wide white margins. There is little gray in the shading. In the narrative present, the pages are arranged in eight-panel grids; in the narrative past, Spiegelman found himself 'violating the grid constantly' with his page layouts.Spiegelman rendered the original three-page 'Maus' and 'Prisoner on the Hell Planet' in highly detailed, expressive styles. Spiegelman planned to draw Maus in such a manner, but after initial sketches he decided to use a pared-down style, one little removed from his pencil sketches, which he found more direct and immediate. Characters are rendered in a minimalist way: animal heads with dots for eyes and slashes for eyebrows and mouths, sitting on humanoid bodies. Spiegelman wanted to get away from the rendering of the characters in the original 'Maus', in which oversized cats towered over the Jewish mice, an approach which Spiegelman says, 'tells you how to feel, tells you how to think'. He preferred to let the reader make independent moral judgments.
He drew the cat-Nazis the same size as the mouse-Jews, and dropped the stereotypical villainous expressions.Spiegelman wanted the artwork to have a diary feel to it, and so drew the pages on with a fountain pen and typewriter. It was reproduced at the same size it was drawn, unlike his other work, which was usually drawn larger and shrunk down, which hides defects in the art. Influences.
Wordless novels such as those by were an early influence on Spiegelman.Spiegelman has published articles promoting a greater knowledge of his medium's history. Chief among his early influences were, Will Eisner, and 's '. Though he acknowledged Eisner's early work as an influence, he denied that Eisner's first graphic novel, (1978), had any impact on Maus. He cited 's comic strip as having 'influenced Maus fairly directly', and praised Gray's work for using a cartoon-based storytelling vocabulary, rather than an illustration-based one. Justin Green's (1972) inspired Spiegelman to include autobiographical elements in his comics.
Spiegelman stated, 'without Binky Brown, there would be no Maus'. Among the graphic artists who influenced Maus, Spiegelman cited, who had made early in such as (1919). Reception and legacy Spiegelman's work as cartoonist and editor had long been known and respected in the comics community, but the media attention after the first volume's publication in 1986 was unexpected. Hundreds of overwhelmingly positive reviews appeared, and Maus became the center of new attention focused on comics. It was considered one of the 'Big Three' book-form comics from around 1986–1987, along with and, that are said to have brought the term 'graphic novel' and the idea of comics for adults into mainstream consciousness.
It was credited with changing the public's perception of what comics could be at a time when, in the English-speaking world, they were considered to be for children, and strongly associated with superheroes. Initially, critics of Maus showed a reluctance to include comics in literary discourse.
The New York Times intended praise when saying of the book, 'Art Spiegelman doesn't draw comic books'. After its win, it won greater acceptance and interest among academics. The staged an exhibition on the making of Maus in 1991–92.
Spiegelman continues to attract academic attention and influence younger cartoonists.Maus proved difficult to classify to a genre, and has been called biography, fiction, autobiography, history, and memoir. Spiegelman petitioned The New York Times to move it from 'fiction' to 'non-fiction' on the newspaper's bestseller list, saying, 'I shudder to think how. Would respond to seeing a carefully researched work based closely on my father's memories of life in Hitler's Europe and in the death camps classified as fiction'.
An editor responded, 'Let's go out to Spiegelman's house and if a giant mouse answers the door, we'll move it to the nonfiction side of the list!' The Times eventually acquiesced.
The Pulitzer committee sidestepped the issue by giving the completed Maus a in 1992.Maus ranked highly on comics and literature lists. Called it the fourth greatest comics work of the 20th century, and placed it first on their list of 100 Greatest Graphic Novels. Listed Maus at seventh place on their list of The New Classics: Books – The 100 best reads from 1983 to 2008, and put Maus at seventh place on their list of best non-fiction books from between 1923 and 2005, and fourth on their list of top graphic novels.
Praise for the book also came from contemporaries such as and literary writers such as. Spiegelman turned down numerous offers to have Maus adapted for film or television.Early installments of Maus that appeared in Raw inspired the young to 'try to do comics that had a 'serious' tone to them'. Maus is cited as a primary influence on graphic novels such as 's and 's.In 1999, cartoonist had an article published in criticizing Spiegelman's prominence and influence in the New York cartooning community. Entitled 'King Maus: Art Spiegelman Rules the World of Comix With Favors and Fear', it accused the Pulitzer board of opportunism in selecting Maus, which Rall deemed unworthy. Cartoonist responded to the piece with a prank email in which Hellman posed as Rall, soliciting discussion at the email address [email protected].
Hellman followed up by posting fake responses from New York magazine editors and art directors. Rall launched a lawsuit seeking damages of $1.5 million for libel, breach of privacy, and causing emotional distress. To raise funds to fight the suit, in 2001 Hellman had the Legal Action Comics anthology published, which included a back cover by Spiegelman in which he depicts Rall as a urinal. Academic work and criticism A cottage industry of academic research has built up around Maus, and schools have frequently used it as course material in a range of fields: history, dysfunctional family psychology, language arts, and social studies. The volume of academic work published on Maus far surpasses that of any other work of comics. One of the earliest such works was 's 1988 'Of Mice and Memory' from the, which deals with the problems Spiegelman faced in presenting his father's story.
Marianne Hirsch wrote an influential essay on post-memory called 'Family Pictures: Maus, Mourning, and Post-Memory', later expanded into a book called Family Frames: Photography, Narrative, and Postmemory. Academics far outside the field of comics such as, and took part in the discourse. Few approached Maus who were familiar with comics, largely because of the lack of an academic comics tradition— Maus tended to be approached as Holocaust history or from a film or literary perspective. In 2003, Deborah Geis edited a collection of essays on Maus called Considering Maus: Approaches to Art Spiegelman's 'Survivor's Tale' of the Holocaust.
Maus is considered an important work of, and studies of it have made significant contributions to. Arnold, Andrew D. (September 7, 2001). Retrieved February 19, 2014.
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Retrieved February 1, 2012. Jannequin, Jean-Paul (April 1990). 'Druillet and Spiegelman Take Grand Prizes'. (121): 19. Kannenberg, Gene, Jr. (February 1999).
(210). McGlothlin, Erin Heather (May 2003). 'No Time Like the Present: Narrative and Time in Art Spiegelman's Maus'. 11 (2): 177–198. Merino, Ana (2010).
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Archived from on November 29, 2014. Retrieved April 16, 2012. Wizard staff (June 2009). '100 Greatest Graphic Novels of our Lifetime'. (212).Newspapers. Couvreur, Daniel (March 5, 2012). From the original on November 2, 2013.
Retrieved June 15, 2012. Garner, Dwight (October 12, 2011). Retrieved June 12, 2012. Franklin, Ruth (October 5, 2011). Retrieved January 30, 2012. Hays, Matthew (October 8, 2011).
'Of Maus and man: Art Spiegelman revisits his Holocaust classic'. Kois, Dan (December 2, 2011). Retrieved January 27, 2012. Langer, Lawrence L (December 6, 1998). Retrieved August 28, 2012. McGrath, Charles (July 11, 2004). Retrieved June 7, 2012.
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Colbert, James (November 8, 1992). Retrieved January 31, 2012. Comic Salon staff (2012). (in German). Retrieved January 31, 2012. Conan, Neal (October 5, 2011).
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Retrieved August 23, 2015. Grossman, Lev (March 6, 2009). Retrieved April 16, 2012. Hammarlund, Ola (August 8, 2007).
(in Swedish). Retrieved April 27, 2012. Harvey Awards staff (1992). Archived from on March 15, 2016. Retrieved January 31, 2012. Johnston, Ian (December 28, 2001).
Archived from on January 22, 2012. Retrieved February 29, 2012. Morman, Todd (January 29, 2003). Retrieved June 7, 2012. Mozzocco, J. Caleb (December 1, 2011). Retrieved May 18, 2012.
National Book Critics Circle staff (2012). Retrieved January 31, 2012. Obst, Peter. Retrieved May 16, 2012. CS1 maint: extra punctuation. Pulitzer Prize staff (2012).
Retrieved January 31, 2012. Silver, Alexandra (August 30, 2011). Retrieved April 16, 2012. Smith, Russ (July 30, 1999). Retrieved February 19, 2014. Tout en BD staff (1993). (in French).
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Tout en BD staff (1998). Archived from on February 7, 2012. Retrieved January 31, 2012. Tzadka, Saul (February 2, 2012). Retrieved May 18, 2012.Further reading. Ewert, Jeanne (2004). 'Art Spiegelman's Maus and the Graphic Narrative'.
In Ryan, Marie-Laure (ed.). Narrative Across Media: The Languages of Storytelling. University of Nebraska Press. Pp. 180–193. Geis, Deborah R., ed.
Considering Maus: Approaches to Art Spiegelman's 'Survivor's tale' of the Holocaust. Kannenberg, Eugene P. Form, Function, Fiction: Text and Image in the Comics Narratives of Winsor McCay, Art Spiegelman, and Chris Ware. Miller, Frieda (1998).
Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre.External links.
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