“When I heard this morning that Maurice Sendak had died, I asked the New Yorker over Twitter if they could unlock a two page comic: art spiegelman and Maurice Sendak in conversation in 1993, drawn by both of them. They did, and I am grateful to them.”

I know Joe put up the links in the week, but figure the NY wouldn’t mind a little reproduction – so here it is…. Maurice Sendak and Art Spiegelman from The New Yorker, 1983 (New Yorker archive, Blown Covers Blog)

I know I posted on the sad passing of the great Maurice Sendak yesterday, but Charles Santoso’s tribute art is simply too lovely not to share on here. And on a related note Neil Gaiman asked the New Yorker very nicely if they could unlock a couple of pages of comics by Sendak and Art Spiegelman showing the pair of them in conversation, which the New Yorker has nicely done as a tribute.

Co-Mix, the grand exhibition of his own life’s work that Art Spiegelman curated on the occasion of his presidency of the Angoulême Festival at the beginning of this year year (to much international acclaim), is going on the move.  from March 21st until May 21st you can visit the show, free of charge this time, at the Centre Pompidou Library in Paris.  The exhibition, which was generally lauded as one of the best President’s Shows the Festival has ever featured, covers all of Spiegelman’s work, from his contributions to the comix in the San Francisco underground scene, over Breakdowns and Raw to his masterpiece, Maus, and the quite controversial, In The Shadow Of No Towers.  Additionally, his illustrative work for the New Yorker and other magazines is present, as are his designs for the Garbage Pail Kids trading cards (which are very funny).

All aspects of Spiegelman’s work are lavishly illustrated with loads of original sketches and strips, but the most impressive part of the show has to be the presentation of Maus II.  The complete book has been turned into a meters-long frieze, with preparatory work, sketches, text tryouts and documentation accompanying the pages.

If you are in Paris overf the next three months, you would rob yourself if you didn’t pay this show a visit too.

Co-Mix, in the Bibliothèque publique d’information/ Centre Pompidou, rue Beaubourg, 75004 Paris.  March 21st until May 21st, daily from 12 until 22 h and weekends from 11 until 22 h.

I attended the comics festival of Angoulême a couple of times in the past, and even though the event generally has a fairly international feel to it, it’s always been a predominantly French affair, albeit with a good contingent of guests from other lands. With the presidency of Art Spiegelman however, it would seem that Anglophones have really discovered the festival in overwhelming numbers. In the Rue Herge as well as in the different tents English seems to have become the second language of choice.

Similarly, a lot of British and American authors were present  in several booths, as French publishers strongly continue their catching up by adding all and any modern classics to their catalogues. Even Scottish artist and now Australian resident Eddie Campbell came halfway across the world to sign the French translation of his Alec collection, which is on the official selection for the best album award.

(editing RAW)

The main reason to call this the English edition of the Festival, however, are the exhibitions that President Spiegelman created for the CBDI and for the Museum. In the first, he created a very extensive, detailed and complete overview of his own work. From his very early self-published comics to the underground magazines he edited in San Francisco in the early 70s to Raw, Maus and later his work for the New Yorker. Even the Garbage Pail Kids were present in their full glory, sharing wall space with original art, vintage artifacts and prints and an immense amount of sketche and preparatory work.

(above: snap of Spiegelman’s first fanzine at the exhibition, below: The Loonies, very early work from Spiegelman)

Especially the presentation of Maus, which had a whole room dedicated to it, gave a good idea of the impressively maniacal amount of preparation and sketching Spiegelman undertakes before he ends up with his seemingly simple pages. Maus was presented in its entirety, in the form of a gigantic frieze of live sized reproductions of the pages of both books. Every other page was accompanied by preliminary tryouts, sketches, unfinished dialogue or reference material. Much of what was on display is also present in the book MetaMaus, but it still is quite different when you see it in reality.

(above: creating the cover artwork for the brilliant MetaMaus. below: pages from Maus)

In the Museum Spiegelman took on the permanent collection and added his personal touch, focusing on the authors and creators that influenced him, or which he greatly admires. As a result of this the lion’s share of the museum was dedicated to American authors, with original art by anybody from Outcault or MacManus, Milt Gross and Rube Goldberg to Chester Gould and Jack Kirby, Bill Griffith and Patrick McDonnell.

A whole row of display cases was reserved for alternative, underground and current cartooning, by Wally Wood and Bill Elder, Harvey Kurtzman and Rick Griffin, Spain and R Crumb. Many of the pieces were especially for this exhibition lent by collector extraordinaire Glen Bray, and almost all of them were accompanied by very insightful commentary by Spiegelman himself.

A separate room told the story of Raw Magazine and featured original art by Ben Katchor, Charles Burns, RK Sikoryak and many others, along with ephemera like an sketch by Jacques Tardi and a very sweet letter by Burns offering his work for consideration by the magazine.

(the great Jacques Tardi sketches for Spiegelman)

Without a doubt, this was the best show by a President that I have seen thus far in Angoulême. Spiegelman’s successor has a far from easy job waiting for him

Last year Art Spiegelman won the City of Angoulême Grand Prix, and, as tradition dictates, this makes him the acting president of this year’s edition, and his work the subject of one of the major exhibitions.  The Spiegelman show will be divided into two parts.  The first will focus on Maus and how it came to be.  Not only will the show feature all the original pages that make up the entirity of Maus, it will also include no less than 700 drawings, sketches, reference photographs and other documents.  Spiegelman is well-known for how he catalogues and archives his past (just have a look at MetaMaus, one of the best books of last year), so this should be a treat.  Next to Maus the show will also tell the history of Raw magazine, with plenty of original art and artifacts.

In addition to this exhibition, Spiegelman took over the Cité Internationale (the Angoulême comics museum) and built his own Museum on the History and Accomplishments of Comics.  He’s bringing along original artwork by some of those who inspired him, such as Windsor McCay, George Herriman and Harvey Kurtzman, but also from his contemporary peers, such as Justin Green, Jacques Tardi, Chris Ware, and Lorenzo Mattotti (what a roll call of top comic talent).  The show promises to be no less than a personal tribute of a master to the medium that he has helped to make great.

Next to Spiegelman, the festival pays hommage to another great creator, who’s probably less well-known beyond France and the French-speaking countries.  With his series Philémon, Fred has created one of the true great philosophical comics, while never ceasing to experiment with narrative structure, page design and language.  The exhibition will feature original plates from books like Magic Palace Hôtel (1980), La Magique lanterne magique (1983), L’Histoire du corbac aux baskets (1993, which won the award for Best Album at the Angoulême Festival in 1994) or L’Histoire du conteur électrique (1995).

Charles Berbérian created the icon for the show L’Europe Se Dessine, in which fifty cartoonists and comic artists from all over Europe visualise what Europe stands for, its origins, strengths and future.  Contributors include Enki Bilal, Milo Manara, Ruben Pellejero, Joost Swarte, Ulli Lust, Anouk Ricard, Nix, Florence Cestac, Andi Watson, Miguelanxo Prado, Kati Kovacs, and others.

More focus on international comics in two more exhibitions, one on Spanish comics (with artwork by Prado, Guarnido, Max, Bernet and more) and one on comics from Sweden (featuring Anneli Furmark, Loka Kanarp, Joanna Hellgren (Frances, Éditions Cambourakis), Knut Larsson, and more.

And I haven’t started to mention all the smaller shows that seem to pop up all over town.  It’s going to be a very full festival, but we’re not complaining !

See Wim’s prevous post in his Countdown to – looking at the Selection – here.

The tradition dictates that whoever wins the Grand Prix at the Angoulème Comics Festival, is invited to curate the next edition of the Festival.  This means that he or she will probably get a major retrospective exhibition (which are always a treat in their own right), but also that the festival will focus on particular topics, genres, authors, etc.  This year, American cartoonist-par-excellence Art Spiegelman is the head honcho of the Festival, and in an interview at the official Press Conference presenting this year’s Festival, he explained what he is trying to do.   The interviewer is French journalist Jean-Luc Hees.

It’s dubbed in French, but with the appropriate mental prowess, you will be able to zone out the French voice, and focus on Art speaking.

“TOM SPURGEON: Can I ask you about France right off the bat? You’ve had a crazy last month, I know, being over there and putting the finishing touches on some of the exhibits and participating in their publicity cycle.

ART SPIEGELMAN: Sure. Actually, it’s more like it’s been a crazy year-plus. The last couple of weeks were especially nuts. You can ask me about either.

SPURGEON: I was wondering about the direct build-up to the Festival. You’re the Grand Prix winner, which puts you square in everyone’s sights as the Festival gets closer. How has that experience been in terms of all the attention, and how are your preparations going for your contribution to the show?

The way it was presented to me was, “Call this number in France at 10:30 in the morning to say thank you to Frédéric Mitterand, the minister of culture, when he names you the president” — whatever it was, the grand prize winner, the grand marshal — “of the next Festival as he announces it to a tent full of a thousand people.” So it was sort of like a fait accompli. It wasn’t like I was being asked would I consider it. So I had to call up, and all I could really do as a kind of caveat — because I was flattered, of course, but I also am aware that various other presidents I’ve met as friends fall into a black hole once they’ve been given this honor. In France, if you live in France, it makes a lot of sense that you do it. From far away, I’m not so sure. So my response, short of one of those kind of jingoistic “You crazy, cheese-eating surrender monkeys, go peddle your pornography elsewhere” or something, I had no clue as to how to wriggle out of what I knew was going to loom as a big deal. So I just promised to try and do as good a job as the last American president, Robert Crumb.”

And don’t forget you still have a few days remaining to try and win yourself a matched set of Art’s recently published MetaMaus, a fascinating work looking into the creation of the Pulitzer winning comic, and the new 25th anniversary hardback edition of the Complete Maus from Penguin. Just drop me a line – joe (dot) gordon (a) forbiddenplanet (dot) co (dot) uk – telling me the name of Art’s father whose memories most of Maus is built on before Monday 14th November to be in with a chance of winning a set of both handsome books.

And yet it wasn’t ever sure Maus would become this iconic book – as Art explains in the forthcoming MetaMaus many publishers rejected the concept when his agent pitched the book to them. It may seem a little like the infamous man who turned down the Beatles, but to be fair to most English language book publishers back then a full length graphic novel was an unusual item most wouldn’t be familiar with, or know how to deal with (some probably didn’t even know exactly how to read it, I suspect – being able to read a comics page is a learned skill). But eventually it was accepted, with neither the publisher or artist having any idea that it would go on to become such a literary landmark.

I’ve been lucky enough to have a read at an advance copy of MetaMaus, a fascinating look by Art back into how Maus came into being, from the original short three pager in Funny Animals through his talks with his father for his personal recollections, years of research, struggling to decide how to portray some characters and scenes, trying to secure a publisher and, even after the book is published and had become a huge success, the effect this had had on him and his life – something he likens to being akin to Heller with Catch-22, wondering if anything else you create afterwards will be judged fairly on its own merits or held up against Maus as the standard, not an easy shadow to live in. The book also talks about how it has affected his own family, asking some questions I hadn’t considered about Maus before (and I’ve re-read it a number of times over the years). Packed with rarely seen work, sketches and other pieces of Maus history, the lovely hardback also comes with a DVD packed with various multimedia items to supplement it. It’s pretty much essential reading for anyone interested in the artform of serious comics and a fascinating (and sometimes personal and touching) insight into the creation of one of the most important comics works of the last quarter century, all built around a series of talks by Art with Hillary Chute of the University of Chicago.

In addition to MetaMaus, Penguin Viking are also publishing a gorgeous 25th anniversary hardback edition of the Complete Maus, in the same matching format as MetaMaus (quite lovely hardbacks with cloth spines), which is also published this week. And thanks to the generosity of our friends at Penguin we have 5 sets of MetaMaus and the Complete Maus 25th Anniversary Hardcover just waiting for 5 lucky readers to give a good home to. To be in with a chance of winning a copy of both books email in the answer to one simple question – what is the name of Art’s father? Send your answer (and contact details) to joe (dot) gordon (at) forbiddenplanet (dot) co (dot) uk before Monday 14th of November to be in with a chance of winning this gorgeous set of books.

Inside Art Spiegelman’s MetaMaus, an Unofficial Tour from Paul Montgomery on Vimeo.