art spiegelman on the vulgar and the gentile

tonight i had the pleasure of having audience with Art Spiegelman, comix legend and one of my personal heroes. The illustrious illustrator is the co-creator of the Garbage Pail Kids, a former and sometimes current contributor to the New Yorker, (as well as Harper’s, the Nation and other magazines, books and comix) and the pulitzer prize winning author of the monumental holocaust biography of his late father, Maus.

growing up as the grandchild of all holocaust survivors, Maus really and literally illustrated the horror and reality of the nazi extermination project. it was – albeit inadequate given the gravity and complications of the event – a work through which i could understand my grandparent’s experience in specific and more generally attempt to understand what happened in auschwitz.

the graphic tribute is all the more meaningful for me personally as Art’s father Vladek lived in the polish town of Sosnowiec during the ghetto period. i vividly remember being ten years old and urging my paternal grandmother Sala, generally dismissive of comic books, to read Maus and finding out that she too was from Sosnowiec, had seen the jewish men hanging from lampposts, had been to the selections and had lived in the ghetto, not to mention further understanding her trauma in the death camps.

now as a semi-adult, Art Spiegelman continues to influence and affect me. as briefly mentioned in a previous post here, Art is a total do-it-yourself-er and along with his wife the founder of Raw, a milestone magazine of the underground comix movement. i’ve never read Raw in detail, as it’s never been reprinted and copies are expensive, but it was groundbreaking in moving sequential art towards being an form that is now widely taken seriously (not that we amateur-outsiders care about recognition anyway).

Art was at uOFt giving his talk on Forbidden Imagery and it was insightful, educational and hilarious. in a well put together slide-show, the venerable speaker took his audience through the history of comic storytelling, continuously reinforcing the power images have over us. he talked about – in no particular order – thomas nast ovethrowing tammany hall, the abu ghraib prisoner abuse photos, mad magazine and r. crumb (my influence Art and i have mutual influences!), the danish mohammed cartoons, the seduction of the innocent censorship and much, much more i’m probably forgetting. Art’s well made point – to my mind – is that images, from the vulgar to the gentile and back again, are viewed in context and through the eyes of the beholder and are absolutely crucial in our understanding of the issues and ourselves.

it was a real treat delight to hear Mr. Spiegelman’s musings and i completely agree with his tacit assertion that freedom of expression should always win the day. as an aside i also congratulate his aside that a trend toward total ironic detachment needs to be corrected by a heavy dose of genuine sentiment. no matter how hypocritical i am in typing so, i say amen.

i continue to look to Art Spiegelman as a force for good, a genuine artist and thinker and a real influence in my life, especially as i aspire to creating my own Raw and continuing his work of telling stories through pictures and using pictures to reveal truth, no matter how painful, offensive or raw.