Art Spiegelman and MAUS

Art Spiegelman’s history

All about Maus

Art’s Artistic Influences

Chester Gould – Dick Tracey Robert Crumb – Underground Comix

Art’s Artistic Influences

George Herrimans Krazy Kat Will Eisner

Art’s Contextual Influences

MAD magazine Underground Comix

Art’s Contextual Influences

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1940’s Moral Panic over Comics

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Art’s Style

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Even though his skills have increased, Art has not changed his ability to cause controversy

The Connection

• Art himself said that it’s not the art, it’s the connection

• The cartoon is simple, but the connection to the reader is complex

• An image can be interpreted many different ways, and looked into to the point where the connection is lost.

Arts Process

• Draw 40 panels one time, or draw one panel 40 times

Art’s Techniques of cartooning

• Colour

• Panels

• Lines

• Gutters – space and time

• Lettering / Words

• Recursion

• Symbolism and Iconography – coding and decoding

Colour - and lack thereof

• Colour in comics is used to set a mood, or evoke an emotion

• Black and white is a distinctly chosen style – It reflects the sombre atmosphere and duality, a theme he often uses

Black and white and Black and white

Black and white and Black and white

Panels

• Using panels are one of the most fundamental rules of comics. Without it, there is chaos

• Rules, of course, were made to be bent and broken

Splash Panels

• Large panels have a sense of power or emotive value, and to establish mood and time

Opening a Panel

• Opening a panel allows space and time to escape the confines of the panel

• Think of it as a new paragraph

• Subject to Subject technique

Opening Panels

• When a panel is opened, it goes into a timeless area, or can be used to go back and forward in time.

• Art uses this a number of occasions to signify something leaving, or moving on or just leaving forever

Time in Panels

• Time is difficult to convey

• Art uses experimental techniques to show how time can be slowed down and dissected

Time in Panels

Time in Panels

Time in Panels

Bleeding panels

When a gutter breaks, timelessness breaks out and stretches on forever, which is to set a sense of the infinite

Lines

• Art uses Early German Expressionist lines to convey the reality of the issues in hell planet

Gutters

• The lines between the panels

• Although an unceremonious word, is the most powerful tool in comics.

• Transportation Device

Gutters

Gutters

• Art uses Scene-to-Scene and Subject-to-Subject quite extensively throughout MAUS and less so in his other works

Exposition

• Telling your story without explicitly saying so

Silence

• Space and time can be manipulated by use of gutters. Silence is a powerful tool in Maus. Panels without sound have repercussions which stick with you for a long time

Silence

• Is used lazily in mainstream comics, saves time and doesn’t have the same impact

Recursion

• Recursion used to repeat ideas in a similar way

• This is used to represent time and its repetition from father to son

Dualism

• Nazi/Jew

• Animal/Man

• Black/White

• Vulgarity/Refined

• Mouse/Cat

• Parody/Homage

Vulgarity/Refined

• Art believes that comics are the perfect mix between vulgarity and refined art.

• The basic instinct is to gleam a picture, and then refine it by digesting the words.

• Images and Words

Why Animals???

• Physiognomy is Art’s Main tool here

• Rudolphe Töpffer • Stereotypes is a way of

reducing the large topic to something easier to understand, and at the same time, harder.

• Stereotyping by face and race alludes to Chester Goulds’ “Rogues Gallery”

Good and Evil

• The point is to “Work with stereotypes and caricatures but giving them the individuality of personality”

Stereotypes

Iconography The Drawings, Symbols are important ways to convey an emotion without having explicitly told so.

The mouth – Symbol of vulnerability

Pacing your story

Lettering and Onomatopoeia

MetaMaus

• Outdoing the metaness of Maus, Art uses the technique of meta again to further explore his story

Art’s Ongoing work

Any Questions?