Podcast #147: Art Spiegelman on How He Sees Himself, Becoming a Devotee to Another Artist, and the Artist After Art
Art Spiegelman is the author and illustrator of Maus, the first graphic novel to win a Pulitzer Prize. He came to the New York Public Library in the fall of 2016 to discuss the republication of Si Lewen's wordless book, The Parade. For this week of the New York Public Library Podcast, we're proud to present Art Spiegelman on how he sees himself, becoming a devotee to another artist, and the artist after art.
Asked to describe himself, Spiegelman said:
"I feel more like a multiphrenic than a schizophrenic with only two selves, but I think that— it has to do with when I was younger, but as they were hauling me off into a mental hospital, literally, I just assumed I was God. And although it’s true— I found that it wasn’t a good idea to brag about it, because then nobody would forgive me for the kind of crap we live through these days. So I had to develop the inferiority complex just to function in the world."
While Spiegelman's best known work has been informed by his biography, his most recent project has been writing, editing, and the designing a book centered around the work of Si Lewen. He spoke about the time he spent submerged in Lewen's work:
"I don’t usually devote myself to another artist’s work for a year and a half or two years and try to learn what the body of it is. But I think, you know, for me obviously it came through that lens of this feels like these pictures of the recycling of war through the ages again and again through these victory marches and death—it seemed to me like it was emotional, but it wasn’t 'tolokitsch,' which is a phrase I coined some years ago, which was the violins in the background milking it for all it’s worth. It was just somebody passionately responding to the nature of war. So I was able to buy into that, and then I have to look at these pictures, some of which were a little syrupy, some of which were a little psychadelic and fun. But what it is with artists, when you begin to trust them, then you read the lesser works. You read the other works that you find some of these so-called lesser works become the major works. And that’s just a process with reading, with looking. Then once you begin to find who’s home, you want to go visit there. So now all those pictures are raised in my estimation."
Spiegelman remembered one of the great traumas of Lewen's life, being no longer able to paint:
"This was one of the biggest traumas in his life. The trauma was he couldn’t paint any more, and as he would tell me every day, “You know what keeps me alive? Curiosity. I want to know what I’m gonna’ paint the next day.” And then he started complaining a couple of years ago about this rheumatoid arthritis. Nothing would help it, and it made it very hard to hold a brush. And he would do against the pain, and sometimes would forget for a little while, but it was getting worse and worse... I get an email from his daughter Nina, saying, “Si did something incredibly stupid last night.” What he did was he, you know, he had this miniature studio, just like any artist’s studio, but it was one bedroom of a two-bedroom condo. He stretched canvases there. The place was filled with piles of canvases and drawers of canvases, and he just couldn’t stand it. So he took the buzz saw he used for – sorry, for cutting up the wood for his stretching his canvases, and he applied things to his right hand. And fortunately, he didn’t know enough about anatomy, as he said to the doctor later when they thought he was crazy—he said, “You know, you’re crazy, Si, we should have put you away, except you’re not crazy.” And he said, 'I miscalculated how hard bone is, I’ll never try it again.'"
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