The Guardian continues its very comics-friendly policy (kudos to them), with an article today by Angelique Chrisafis on Art Spiegelman to go along with the publication of his sketchbooks, Be a Nose and his art exhibition in Paris (he also mentions working on a combined book and DVD called Meta-Maus, a form of ‘making of Maus’ as he describes it): “I have too much respect for books, so to make a mark in a blank one seems like a violation,” he says. “Then the neurosis compounds itself, because if you make a good drawing, you don’t want to screw the book up by making a bad drawing after. So I have a lot of sketchbooks that have one drawing in them – a whole shelf full. And then if you make a bad drawing, you never want to look at the book again. So I have a lot of sketchbooks that have one page torn out that I never went back to. It’s very rare that I can just get myself engaged and overcome all these strange inhibitions I’ve set up for myself.”
(a sketch – still with someone’s telephone number scribbled on it – from one of Art’s books, (c) Art Spiegelman)
As if that’s not enough the brilliant Steve Bell has a short bit at the end discussing Art’s sketch work and there’s a short slideshow of some of the work – go and check it out.
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