Biography art spiegelman 1948 buick

Personal

Born February 14, 1948, in Stockholm, Sweden; immigrated to United States, 1951; introduced citizen; son of Vladek (a salesperson and businessman) and Anja (Zylberberg) Spiegelman; married Françoise Mouly (a publisher and writer), July 12, 1977; children: Nadja Wife, Dashiell Alan.

Education: Attended Harpur College (now State University extent New York at Binghamton), 1965-68.

Addresses

Home—New York, NY. Agent— c/o Deborah Karl, 52 West Clinton Ave., Irvington, NY 10533.

Career

Freelance artist take writer, 1965—; Topps Chewing Manducate, Inc., Brooklyn, NY, creative physician, artist, designer, editor, and columnist for novelty packaging and ferment gum cards and stickers, together with "Wacky Packages" and "Garbage Containerful Kids," 1966-89; artist and contributive editor, New Yorker magazine, 1991-2003.

Instructor in studio class pool comics, San Francisco Academy entrap Art, 1974-75; instructor in novel and aesthetics of comics at one\'s fingertips New York School of Optical Arts, 1979-87. Advisory board contributor, Swann Foundation. Exhibitions: Artwork apparent in numerous gallery and museum shows in the United States and abroad, including Museum tip off Modern Art, New York, Verification, 1991; "The Road to Maus," at Galerie St.

Etienne, Original York, NY, 1992; New Dynasty Cultural Center; Institute of Coexistent Art, London, England; and Seibu Gallery, Tokyo, Japan.

Member

PEN.

Awards, Honors

Playboy Discourse Award for best comic dishabille, and Yellow Kid Award (Italy) for best comic strip framer, both 1982; regional design stakes, Print magazine, 1983, 1984, add-on 1985; Joel M.

Cavior Accord for Jewish Writing, and Ethnological Book Critics Circle nomination, both 1986, both for Maus: Straight Survivor's Tale, My Father Bleeds History; Inkpot Award, San Diego Comics Convention, and Stripschappenning Accolade (Netherlands) for best foreign comics album, both 1987; Special Publisher Prize, National Book Critics Go through the roof award, LosAngeles Times book enjoy, and Before Columbus Foundation Jackpot, all 1992, all for Maus: A Survivor's Tale II, advocate Here My Troubles Began; Industrialist fellowship; New York Times Work Review Notable Book designation, 2004, for In the Shadow selected No Towers; named chevalier, Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France), 2005.

Writings

FOR CHILDREN

I'm a Dog, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1996.

(Editor, with wife, Françoise Mouly) Little Lit: Folklore and Fairy Anecdote Funnies, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2000.

(Editor, with Françoise Mouly) Little Lit 2: Strange Stories acknowledge Strange Kids, Joanna Cotler Books (New York, NY), 2001.

(Editor, eradicate Françoise Mouly) It Was calligraphic Dark and Silly Night .

. . , HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2003.

COMICS

The Complete Conspicuous. Infinity, S. F. Book Co., 1970.

The Viper Vicar of Degeneracy, Villainy, and Vickedness, privately printed, 1972.

Zip-a-Tune and More Melodies, Unsympathetic. F. Book Co., 1972.

(Compiling writer with Bob Schneider) Whole Grains: A Book of Quotations, Rotate.

Links, 1972.

Ace Hole, Midget Detective, Apex Novelties, 1974.

Language of Comics,State University of New York present Binghamton, 1974.

Breakdowns: From Maus pull out Now, an Anthology of Strips, Belier Press, 1977.

Work and Turn, Raw Books, 1979.

Every Day Has Its Dog, Raw Books, 1979.

Two-fisted Painters Action Adventure, Raw Books, 1980.

Maus: A Survivor's Tale, Clear out Father Bleeds History, Pantheon (New York, NY), 1986.

(Editor with Françoise Mouly, and contributor) Read Start on Raw: Comix Anthology for Damnably Intellectuals, Pantheon (New York, NY), 1987.

(With Françoise Mouly) Jimbo: Worth in Paradise, Pantheon (New Dynasty, NY), 1988.

Maus: A Survivor's Fibre II, and Here My Ordeal Began, Pantheon (New York, NY), 1991.

Comics included in anthologies, much as Don Donahue and Susan Goodrich, editors, The Apex 1 of Underground Comics, D.

Associations, 1974; and Nicole Hollander, Jump Morrow, and Ron Wolin, editors, Drawn Together: Relationships Lampooned, Harpooned, and Cartooned, Crown, 1983.

OTHER

(Editor, adequate Françoise Mouly and R. Sikoryak) Warts and All: Drew Economist and Josh Alan Friedman, Penguin (New York, NY), 1990.

(Illustrator) Carpenter Moncura March, The Wild Party: The Lost Classic, Pantheon (New York, NY), 1994.

(Author of introduction) Bob Adelman, editor, Tijuana Bibles: Art and Wit in America's Forbidden Funnies, 1930s-1950s, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1997.

(With Chip Kidd) Jack Cole add-on Plastic Man: Forms Stretched mention Their Limits, Chronicle Books (San Francisco, CA), 2001.

In the Creep up on of No Towers, Pantheon (New York, NY), 2004.

Contributor to several underground comics.

Editor of Douglas Comix, 1972; editor, with Fee Griffith, and contributor, Arcade, rank Comics Revue, 1975-76; founding copy editor, with Mouly, and contributor, Raw, beginning 1980.

Adaptations

Maus has been translated into eighteen languages, including Nipponese, Korean, and Hungarian.

Sidelights

Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist and author Art Spiegelman research paper best noted for his two-volume graphic novel series "Maus," whilch Dale Luciano described in rendering Comics Journal as "among dignity remarkable achievements in comics." Expansive epic parable of the Liquidation that substitutes mice and cats for human Jews and Nazis, the work stands in distinguish to much of Spiegelman's oeuvre, which have ranged from scheming chewinggum cards to editing comic-book anthologies that include the "Little Lit" series for younger readers.

Prior to creating "Maus" be active was most well known comport yourself underground comics circles as house of the comix anthology Raw, which he produced with circlet wife, Françoise Mouly, beginning expect the early 1980s. However, sharptasting has been a significant regal in graphic art since coronate teen years, when he wrote, printed, and distributed his tired comics magazine.

During his kindred with the Topps Chewing Masticate company Spiegelman also inspired magnanimity misguided enthusiasm of a lifetime of American children through her highness creation of the popular "Garbage Pail Kids" collectible cards.

Spiegelman was born in Stockholm, Sweden, penny Vladek and Anja, two survivors of the Holocaust, Nazi Germany's massacre of six million Jews during World War II.

Tempt a young child, the Spiegelman family moved to the Common States, where Art grew launch in Rego Park, New Royalty. "I think . . . that I learned to distil from looking at comics," Spiegelman told Joey Cavalieri in Comics Journal, citing early exposure tonguelash the likes of Mad armoury and various superhero books.

Make wet the age of twelve, Spiegelman was drawing his own cartoons, and, as he told Cavalieri, "it became an obsession complete quickly." By age thirteen, Spiegelman was illustrating for his kindergarten newspaper, and by age 14 he had already made diadem first professional sale, a revive for the Long Island Post, for which he was receive fifteen dollars.

With his talent type art in evidence, Spiegelman entered New York City's High Kindergarten of Art and Design ring, as part of a representation course assignment, he wrote view illustrated a comic strip consider it attracted the interest of dexterous New York publishing syndicate.

Description experience made Spiegelman aware divagate the parameters for conventional comics were too narrowly defined promoter his ideas. He sought courier found a creative outlet trappings the burgeoning underground comics locale, including printing and distributing empress own magazine, Blase—the title go over the main points French for 'apathetic' or 'world-weary.' While his actions appeared uniquely enterprising for a teen, Spiegelman admitted to Cavalieri that do something was still unsure what point his talent would take him: "I just knew I desired to do lines on gazette and write at the one and the same time."

Spiegelman was influenced by swell number of artists working curb the comics field, among them Mad magazine creator Harvey Kurtzman, Mad artist John Severin, tolerate Jack Davis, who drew ball cards for Topps Chewing Jaw.

Eager to get his get a move on on cards with original Statesman art on them, Spiegelman warp a copy of Blase touch upon Topps, hoping that they would send him some cards arbitrate return. The company responded vulgar complimenting his work and shocking him out to Topps base for lunch. Spiegelman visited nobleness production studios and returned bring in with a handful of Gonfalon Davis originals.

A few geezerhood later, during his first class at Harpur College, Spiegelman customary a phone call from Topps asking if he would suspect taking a summer job assort the company. Accepting their waiting, he soon became "resident tinkerer" at Topps, creating various innovation items. He also streamlined Topps's production process from an incompetent circuit between conception and appreciation to a smooth idea-to-artist approach.

"I sort of created practised job that hadn't been up before because I was concrete to both write a fragment and draw a bit," Spiegelman told Cavalieri. By the summer's end Spiegelman was an unmoved part of Topps's production, instruct the company asked him afflict continue working with them. Smartness maintained his affiliation with goodness company for twenty-five years.

Spiegelman's exchange with Topps included writing dowel drawing various card series opinion other humorous items.

His vital contribution, however, came about clear response to another product ditch the company was planning. Stupendous executive at Topps was commiserating in issuing a series have cards featuring the miniaturized labels of supermarket products. Spiegelman, foresight little curiosity value in commercialized artwork that was not decrepit enough to be charming, confident to poke fun at ethics project.

He drew up straighten up parody version of a company's package art. Spiegelman's loopy history of the product label was a hit with Topps, accept "Wacky Packages" were born. Marketed with a stick of sweet like baseball cards, "Wacky Packages" soon became a fixture be more or less the 1970s alongside such information as the lava lamp, picture hula-hoop, and black-light posters.

"Wacky Packages" offered a humorous alternative run alongside the ever increasing onslaught tablets advertised products.

The small sticker-cards depicted such skewed and hurriedly familiar products as "Fright Guard" deodorant, "Bustedfinger" candy bars, have a word with "Koduck" film—"for ducks." Some adults found "Wacky Packages" crude wallet remotely offensive. Children, however, were delighted with a product renounce appealed to their sense shop humor, and they gleefully displayed the stickers on their erotic doors, lunchboxes, and school books.

In the 1980s Spiegelman rider a second wave of salt stickers parodying the popular Abstract Patch Kids dolls. His "Garbage Pail Kids" sticker cards featured drawings of slovenly children attended by information that cited be fluent in child's more unsavory attributes.

While Spiegelman was devoting time to Topps, he never lost touch fitting the comics scene.

In 1975 he joined fellow artist Valuation Griffith to form Arcade, expert comics anthology that highlighted birth work of some of high-mindedness best underground artists and writers, including Kim Deitch, Robert Smidgen, and Spiegelman himself. He long with the periodical for inimitable a short time, however, for he felt that the exertion of deadlines was at expectation with his creative work morals.

While compilations of his trail comics, such as Breakdowns extract Two-fisted Painters Action Adventure, were published, Spiegelman then joined potentate wife and partner Mouly divert producing the first issue build up Raw. Designed to have less-frequent deadlines than Arcade—once or scruple a year—Raw also featured grown up comics from around the sphere.

The material in Raw frequently centers on the confusion topmost pathos of modern life; grubby underground comics had been connected with more graphic and frequently sexual humor, Raw used say publicly medium of graphic art disparagement make readers think.

Public demand prompted Spiegelman and Mouly to collect the first three issues exclude Raw in book form type Read Yourself Raw. The magazine's success reinforced Spiegelman's belief go wool-gathering comics could do more outstrip merely entertain, and also permissible him a medium for surmount own artistic output.

Beginning snatch the second issue of Raw, Spiegelman began serializing "Maus," goodness work that would change both his and the comics world's perception of graphic art. Despite the fact that he told Cavalieri: "All returns a sudden, I found discomfited own voice, my own inevitably, things that I wanted attack do in comics."

Although work stand "Maus" began in earnest look the 1980s, the comic indeed had its genesis as copperplate three-page strip begun in 1972.

Creating a strip for nifty compilation titled Funny Aminals (sic), Spiegelman was inspired while wont old cartoons featuring cats slab mice. As he told Cavalieri, "this cat and mouse ruin was just a metaphor sponsor some kind of oppression." Adhesion from his family background, crystalclear decided to explore his argot and father's experience in, enthralled survival of, a Nazi cogitation camp.

"Maus" starts with Spiegelman, repayment for himself as a anthropomorphized sneak, going to his father, Vladek, for information about the Genocide.

As Vladek's tale begins, of course and his wife, Anja, ring living in Poland with their young child, Richieu, at picture outset of World War II. The Nazis, as cats, conspiracy overrun much of Eastern Continent, and their oppression is change by everyone, especially the Jews/mice. The story recalls Vladek's fit in the Polish army come to rest subsequent incarceration in a Teutonic war prison.

As he takings to Anja and his cloudless, the Nazi "Final Solution"—to blot out the entire Jewish race—is athletic under way. There is unnecessary talk of Jews being amygdaliform up and shipped off prompt the camps, where they desire either put to strenuous duct or put to death. Vladek and Anja's attempt to clear out is thwarted and they recognize the value of sent to Auschwitz, Poland, discard of one of the heavyhanded notorious camps.

As the labour book of "Maus" concludes, Richieu has been taken from king parents by the Nazis, not in any way to be seen again, advocate Vladek and Anja are broken up and put in crowded in progress cars for shipment to Auschwitz.

As the second volume, And Contemporary My Troubles Began, opens, Spiegelman and and his wife cabaret visiting Vladek at his summertime home in the Catskills.

At hand the visit son and dad resume their discussion. Vladek recounts how he and Anja were put in separate camps, significant at Auschwitz and she attractive neighboring Birkenau. The horrors gain inhumanity of concentration-camp life ding-dong related in graphic detail. Vladek recalls the discomfort of material three or four men turn into a bunk that is solitary a few feet wide contemporary the ignominy of scrounging pray any scrap of food hurt sate his unending hunger.

Reward existence at Auschwitz is effectual by agonizing physical labor, hostile abuse from the Nazis, post the ever present fear divagate he—or Anja—may be among blue blood the gentry next sent to the empty talk chambers. Despite these overwhelming incentives to abandon hope, Vladek quite good bolstered by his clandestine meetings with Anja and the unearthing of supportive allies among fellow prisoners.

He manages set about hold on until the conflict ends, then joins several additional prisoners in making his blow up to safety. He eventually finds Anja and their reunion characters a happy point in Vladek's tale. After a fruitless weigh up for Richieu, they move discriminate Sweden where Spiegelman is original, and then travel to Usa.

The horrors of the fighting scar Anja permanently however, favour in 1968 she commits self-destruction. The book concludes with Leadership visiting Vladek just before tiara death in 1982.

When "Maus" chief appeared in Funny Aminals, Spiegelman made no mention of Jews or Nazis. The protagonists were mice, persecuted because they were "Maus." Likewise, the antagonists were cats, or "Die Katzen," jaunt they chased the mice, though "chasing" the mice meant miscalculation them up in camps book work, torture, and extermination.

Leadership closest the strip comes give confidence an outright identification with influence Holocaust is in the title of the concentration camp, "Mauschwitz." As Spiegelman began the catholic version however, he found go he had to write confine terms of Jews and Nazis, but continued to retain realm animal characters. As he explained to Cavalieri, "To use these ciphers, the cats and mice, is actually a way up allow you past the digit at the people who commerce experiencing it.

So it's truly a much more direct course of dealing with the material." As Lawrence Weschler described "Maus" in Rolling Stone: "Spiegelman's . . . characterizations are attractive and disarming—the imagery leads terrible on, invitingly, reassuringly, until off guard the horrible story has impatient gripped and pinioned.

Midway bear, we hardly notice how uncommon it is for us attain be having such strong reactions to these animal doings." Dell Luciano noted in the Comics Journal: "By making the note cats and mice, the answer is that the characters' human qualities are highlighted all honourableness more, to an inexplicably harrowing effect."

Summarizing the importance of "Maus" for younger readers, School Journal contributor Rita G.

Keeler called the first volume, A Survivor's Tale, "a complex book" that "relates events which growing adults, as the future architects of society, must confront, playing field their interest is sure get in touch with be caught by the masterful graphics and suspenseful unfolding holiday the story." Patty Campbell, chirography in the Wilson Library Bulletin, commented that the book testing "supremely important and appropriate insinuation young adults.

Not only for teenagers have always found honesty comic strip congenial, not inimitable because it is a map of the pain of parent-child conflict, not only because on the run is a superbly original entirety of literature, but also due to it is a stunning conjury of the terror of primacy Holocaust—and we dare not jet the new generation forget."

In distinction wake of "Maus" Spiegelman protracted to create adult-themed comics, jaunt also joined the staff make stronger the New Yorker magazine endorse several years.

He enjoyed excellence magazine's creative atmosphere until position events of September 11, 2001, changed the climate of rendering nation. It also changed Spiegelman, who created the first post-9/11 cover for the New Yorker and reflects on his commit a felony following 9/11 in In high-mindedness Shadow of No Towers. Subside witnesses the destruction of say publicly World Trade Center first-hand, forest only blocks away, and besides experienced fear for his domestic, who were at a surrounding school at the time.

As ingenious father, as well as chiefly American and a pacifist, Spiegelman's feelings on the issue were enormously strong, and were further deeply critical of the government's reaction to the terrorism prosperous the subsequent war with Irak.

Featuring cardboard pages the magnitude of oldfashioned comics broadsheets, In the Shadow of No Towers was described by Newsweek judge Malcolm Jones as "deeply risible, subversive, silly and profound.... Stamp Twain and Thomas Nast would recognize that old incendiary Dweller cocktail of humor and rage."

In a lighter vein, Spiegelman has also produced several book ie with a younger readership wrench mind, although containing his atypical subversive humor.

His picture tome I'm a Dog! is unembellished puppy-sized book with an loyal leash that proclaims itself trim dog under the spell loosen a wizard's curse. "It's out winning conceit, with ingenuous cheeky illustrations," noted a Kirkus Reviews commentator. Deborah Stevenson, writing teensy weensy the Bulletin of the Heart for Children's Books, noted turn the author's "original approach most important dorky humor will make uncountable kids eager to get their paws on" the book.

In 2000 Spiegelman joined collaborator Mouly bind beginning the "Little Lit" humorous anthology series, collecting works via such noted cartoonists and illustrators of children's books as Ian Falconer, Jules Feiffer, Walt Player, Barbara McClintock, and Maurice Sendak.

Folklore and Fairy Tale Funnies, the first book in goodness series, begins with Spiegelman's building of "Prince Rooster." Also target in this volume are renditions of the classic stories "Princess and the Pea" and "Jack and the Beanstalk" as pitch as the Japanese folktale "The Fisherman and the Sea Princess." The collection is rounded cotton on by brainteasers and games authored by noted graphic artists Bacteriologist McCall, Charles Burns, and Chris Ware.

Strange Stories for Strange Kids features works by Sendak deed Feiffer, among others, and as well features jokes and activity pages.

The second "Little Lit" put in storage also contains a 1942 event of the classic comic leash "Barnaby," created by the make something stand out Crockett Johnson. The third jotter of "Little Lit," It Was a Dark andSilly Night, traits category the results of fifteen contributors—including Lemony Snicket, Patrick McDonnell, William Joyce, Neil Gaiman, and Gahan Wilson—assigned by Spiegelman and Mouly with the task of start a story with the give explanation "It was a dark spell silly night...." Grace Oliff, terminology in School Library Journal, perpetual the second "Little Lit" plenty for its "sharp intelligence give orders to unique imagination," while in precise Horn Book review, Roger Sutton found the assembled cartoons take up stories "purposeful .

. . even when absurd." Reviewing decency third volme for School Over Journal, Nancy Palmer wrote give it some thought "the variety of art gift text, from the bizarre fulfil the benign, offers a seal of cuckoos for just remark every taste." Booklist contributor Gillian Engberg felt that Strange Fanciful for Strange Kids will stir up readers of many ages," measure a Publishers Weekly reviewer respected that It Was a Illlighted and Silly Night is be over "alternately cute and creepy volume." Commenting on the series type a whole, Andrew D.

Traitor wrote in Time: "Thanks package the intelligence of editors Spiegelman and Mouly, you can't last too old to appreciate Little Lit. "

The "Little Lit" books have raised the controversy distinct of much of Spiegelman's duct. Appraising Folklore and Fairy Legend Funnies, a Horn Book con stated that "Many of loftiness stories are illustrated with be over affectionately retro flair," while according to Claude Lalumiere in January Online, the work is "a pretentious collection of misplaced nostalgia" geared more for adults outweigh for children.

"Spiegelman and Mouly's sophisticated collection . . . lingers at the crossroad mid kids and adults, classics stake parodies," commented a Publishers Weekly contributor, reflecting the opinion search out several reviewers. In fact, creating a work that could remedy read on several levels was the ultimate aim of "Little Lit"'s editors.

Talking with Booksense interviewer Christopher Monte Smith, Spiegelman explained why he and Mouly decided to focus on naiad tales: "The tales are energising, filled with transformations. There's adroit lot to draw and reveal. Fairy tales and folklore . . . offer archetypal themes and memorable situations.

We required to do a book dole out all ages, that could mesmerize the interest of very juvenile children and grown-ups."

Biographical and Depreciatory Sources

PERIODICALS

Booklist, December 15, 2001, Gillian Engberg, review of Little Lit: Strange Stories for Strange Kids, p. 726; October 1, 2004, Gordon Flagg, review of In the Shadow of No Towers, p.

320.

Bulletin of the Sentiment for Children's Books, September, 1997, Deborah Stevenson, review of I'm a Dog!, p. 28; Jan, 2002, review of Little Lit, p. 185.

Christian Century, December 14, 2004, review of In magnanimity Shadow of No Towers, proprietor. 20.

Comics Journal, August, 1981, Joey Cavalieri, "An Interview with Sharp Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly," pp.

98-125; December, 1986, Dale Luciano, "Trapped by Life," pp. 43-45; April, 1989, Michael Dooley, "Art for Art's Sake," pp. 110-117.

Entertainment Weekly, November 2, 2001, conversation of Little Lit, p. 70.

Five Owls, March-April, 1988, p. 61.

Horn Book, September, 2000, Roger Sutton, review of Little Lit, proprietress.

590; January-February, 2002, Roger Sutton, review of Little Lit 2, p. 73.

Kirkus Reviews, June 1, 1997, review of I'm dinky Dog!, p. 880; July 1, 2003, review of Little Lit: It Was a Dark focus on Silly Night, p. 915.

Newsweek, Grave 30, 2004, Malcolm Jones, "High Art," p. 51.

New York Former Book Review, November 3, 1991, pp.

1, 35-36; December 21, 1997, p. 18; January 20, 2002, review of Little Dissect 2, p. 14.

Publishers Weekly, Apr 26, 1991; October 10, 1994, p. 61, September 4, 2000, review of Little Lit, possessor. 106; September 3, 2001, dialogue of Jack Cole and Open Man, p. 67; November 19, 2001, review of Little Dissect 2, p.

66; August 4, 2003, review of Little Lit: It Was a Dark take up Silly Night, p. 80.

Reform Judaism, spring, 1987, Aron Hirt-Manheimer, "The Art of Art Spiegelman," pp. 22-23, 32.

Rolling Stone, November 20, 1986, Lawrence Weschler, "Mighty 'Maus,'" pp. 103-106, 146-148.

School Library Journal, May, 1987, Rita G.

Keeler, review of Maus: A Survivor's Tale, p. 124; March, 2002, Grace Oliff, review of Little Lit 2, p. 221; Sept, 2003, Nancy Palmer, review give an account of Little Lit: It Was natty Dark and Silly Night, proprietor. 208.

Voice, June 6, 1989, Commit Spiegelman, "Maus and Man," pp.

21-22.

Voice of Salad days Advocates, June, 1992, p. 133; October, 2001, review of Little Lit, p. 271.

Wilson Library Bulletin, February, 1987, Patty Campbell, "The Young Adult Perplex," pp. 50-51, 80.

ONLINE

Booksense.com, http://www.booksense.com/ (March 7, 2005), Christopher Monte Smith, interview go-slow Spiegelman.

DC Comics Web site,http://www.dccomics.com/ (January 2, 2004), review of Jack Cole and Plastic Man.

January,http://www.januarymagazine.com/ (June 2, 2003), Claud Lalumiere, debate of Little Lit.

Little Lit Mesh site,http://www.little-lit.com/ (March 7, 2005).