Word: spiegelman
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...they need to, considering how wide their audience and influence were. "At one time comics were genuinely a mass medium," Spiegelman said, "and didn't have to seek approval form the cultural institutions that exist. As that has changed, comics have had to reinvent themselves or die." Reinvent they did, and in the process reinvented the publishing business. As artist Raymond Pettibon puts in in the exhibition catalog: "Comics, the jilted suitor of the high airs art world, come back as the savior of the book industry in the form of the graphic novel...
...evolution of the art arbiters' prissy attitude toward comics gradually evolved, thanks in part to Raw magazine, the alternative comics showcase that Spiegelman co-edited. In the early '90s he also convened a summit of museum curators in his Soho studio to help them understand what comics were. And weren't. "Comics are not necessarily trying to do what a Van Gogh on the wall was trying to do," he said. "They aren't the same kind of direct expression. They have something more in common with architectural drawings and set design. They are picture writing that has to function...
...survey until after the exhibition closed, I'll tell you. One reason is that the New York-New Jersey show was far from iddeal. The L.A. museums were a car-drive away, and everyone drives out there. Back here in Manhattan, Newark might as well be New Delhi. As Spiegelman wrote to the show's producers: "While swell for New Jersey residents, placing the first half of the 20th century's comic strip artists into the Newark Museum is, from the perspective of this provincial New Yorker, the equivalent of hiding them in a Federal Witness Protection program." The Jewish...
...akin to the argument that tries to make movies art by defining them as pictures seen on a wall (museum pieces) rather than illustrated stories. Yet Ingmar Bergman and Preston Sturges, to name just two great "directors," are primarily not visual stylists but writers. Similarly, Kurtzman and Spiegelman are remarkable less for their draftsmanship than for conjuring a world and giving it narrative shape, density and bite. You don't see their work so much as you read...
...that raises my last quibble about the museuming of comics. Many of the artists included as writers more than "directors." Put it this way: would you rather see (read) Kurtzman's Mad or Spiegelman's Maus illustrated by other artists, or have others write stories for which Kurtzman and Spiegelman provided the drawings? The first, obviously, because the genius was in the writing. Indeed, though Kurtzman and Feldstein did their own drawing for some EC comic covers and stories, most were illustrated by terrific artists (Elder, Wallace Wood, Jack Davis) who brought their own personalities to the equation. At Marvel...