Within seconds of walking into the Jacqua Concert Hall at The Shedd Auditorium, with a cigarette between his fingers, renowned illustrator Art Spiegelman had the crowd laughing.
“This is a performance by a neurotic, self-absorbed cartoonist from New York,” he said.
Spiegelman delighted a packed house of about 800 people Monday night with stories from his career and historical and modern issues of cartoons. He also discussed his latest book, “In the Shadow of No Towers,” a collection of comics that recounts the story of Spiegelman and his family witnessing firsthand the Sept. 11 destruction of the World Trade Center towers. The book was described by O Magazine as a “post-traumatic masterpiece.”
Spiegelman admitted immediately that he has learned everything he knows from comics.
“I learned about sex contemplating Veronica, economics from Donald Duck, philosophy from Peanuts, ethics and everything else from Mad Magazine,” he said.
Spiegelman’s graphic novel, “Maus: A Survivor’s Tale,” won him a Pulitzer Prize in 1992.
“The things that were rolling through my head (around the time of Sept. 11) just couldn’t be said right then,” Spiegelman said.
He said everyone in the area was finding some aspect of art to deal with their feelings. While some chose poetry or music, Spiegelman said that comics were the only things that helped him.
“I began to do comics about what I was feeling and seeing around,” he said.
Spiegelman said that capturing his own disproportion and chaos in his illustrations was more important to him than clarity.
“I was just trying to draw what I saw, like my terrified daughter who saw people falling past her window in her first week of high school,” he said.
One image in the book is a cartoon of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney riding a bald eagle with a caption saying, “Why do they hate us, why?”
The image represents the administrations hijacking of the tragedy, Spiegelman said.
The book includes many older styles of cartoons because he had many old cartoon characters running through his mind at the time, he said. He related this to the fact that American newspaper cartoons were created two or three blocks from the World Trade Center in the offices of Joseph Pulitzer’s newspapers.
He discussed how cartoons have affected the world in the past 100 years and the present. He talked about the 12 comics, which depicted the prophet Muhammad, printed in a Danish newspaper that recently led to Muslim extremists burning embassies and killing people. He opened the section by showing a blank white screen.
“This is a prophet,” Spiegelman joked, and then switched to another blank screen shot. “This is a prophet in profile.” He then showed a Calvin and Hobbes comic, with Hobbes saying, “It sure is hard to draw the prophet Muhammad.”
Many American newspapers have been reluctant to print the cartoons. The New York Times, for instance, printed an essay explaining why it will not print the cartoons out of respect. Spiegelman said he would have preferred the Times tell the truth.
“Its not a matter of respect, it’s just that they’re scared shitless,” he joked. “I’m not religious, but I am a devout coward.”
Spiegelman said it’s hard to understand the full impact of the controversial cartoons as an insult. After going through many of the drawings, Spiegelman showed an Arab cartoon with an illustrator stabbing a Muslim in the back and also showed a person titled “Western Media” bowing to a shrine representing the holocaust and Judaism.
“I thought that was real insulting – I just don’t understand insult anymore,” Spiegelman said.
Spiegelman also discussed controversy he’s encountered throughout his career, such as the first cover illustration he made for The New Yorker: a drawing of a rabbi and a black woman kissing. Spiegelman made fun of the criticism he received, including one black reverend who said if the artist had any guts he’d draw a black man kissing a white Jewish woman.
“And then once again (it’d) be showing a black man as a predator to white women,” he said. “You can’t win with this stuff.”
Spiegelman joked that one woman sent him a letter saying she “thought it was really sweet that The New Yorker had a picture of Abraham Lincoln kissing a slave on the front cover.”
Correction:
Because of a reporter’s error, Tuesday’s “Art Spiegelman promotes ‘comic’ relief” incorrectly reported Spiegelman’s past position. He has never been the art director of The New Yorker, although his wife, Francoise Mouly, has been the magazine’s art director.
The article incorrectly quoted Spiegelman. He said, “This is a performance by a neurotic, self-absorbed cartoonist from New York.”
The article inaccurately reported the experiences of Spiegelman’s daughter on Sept. 11. She saw people falling past her window.
The article inaccurately described the illustrations of Muhammad that Spiegelman discussed. Spiegelman presented 12 cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad.
The article inaccurately reported that an Arab cartoon showed a person “bowing to a shrine representing the holocaust and Judaism.” The shrine was a toilet.
The article reported that one of Spiegelman’s covers for The New Yorker depicted a rabbi. He was a Hasidic Jew, not necessarily a rabbi.
The article inaccurately described a cartoon depicting an illustrator stabbing the prophet Muhammad in the back. The illustrator was stabbing Islam in the back.
The Emerald regrets the errors.
Contact the people, faith and culture reporter at [email protected]