Art Spiegelman: Maus his star work
Introduction.
Art Spiegelman was born on February 15, 1948 in Stockholm (Sweden). He is the son of a Polish Jewish family, his mother Anja, and his father Vladek, were survivors of the Auschwitz extermination field. Art, had a brother he never met, Richieu, who died during World War II accordingly of the Holocaust. This death took place before the birth of Spiegelman. This manifests in his work Mous who always felt some suspicion and competition with the photograph of his late brother, whose death his parents never overcame.
In 1951 Art and his parents, they emigrated to the United States, where he was only 3 years old. This is where they would set their place of residence and Spiegelman would grow in a neighborhood in the Queens district, in New York. He studied at the School of Art and Design in Manhattan, studies focused on the professional field of comics and animation. At the early age of 16, he began professionally to carry out jobs as a cartoonist.
Then, he studied at the University of Binghamton. Art stood out in art and philosophy, but despite this he did not finish his studies and abandoned them. Thirty years later, the same university gave him the honorary title Doctor Honoris Causa, a title that is given to eminent people, highlighting professionally and not necessarily licensed.
Developing.
Spiegelman became a cartoonist from the underground of the 60s, the year he was working under Skeer Grant’s nickname, being a conscious author of contemporary artistic currents. At the end of 68 Spiegelman was affected by a serious nervous breakdown which led him to the psychiatric. That same year he regained his health but shortly after leaving the bump there was something they did not expect, his mother Anja’s suicide. When this fact occurred, Art began a production of a series of avant -garde cartoons that he published in the alternative press, perhaps for evading that traumatic event.
In the 70s he worked in works such as The complete Mister Infinity, The Viper, Villainy and Vickedness, Ace Hole, among others. Years later he published some of his works collected, he was director of several publications and co -directed Arcade magazine with Bill Griffith, a renowned American cartoonist. In the early 80s, Art was one of the most influential alternative cartoonists, he moved away from the dominant styles and genres of the time.
Influencing the youngest generations of American authors, both for their work, as for their work as an editor and their study of the medium through RAW magazine. A magazine that co -founded together with his wife Françoise Mouly, published from 1980 to 1991, made a selection of comics of the alternative movement of the 80s. It was precisely in RAW where Art began the serialization of Mous, narrating the life of the Spiegelman family in Nazi Germany. It was published in two volumes and translated into a variety of languages. Mous caused such an unusual attention in the comic world that he became exposed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA), later in 2004 he offered his vision of the terrorist attack on the twin towers of September 11, 2001,In one of his works called Shadow of the Towers.
Maus, the chosen work
Mous is Spiegelman’s most recognized graphic novel, completed in 1991 and considered one of the best comics in history. Winner in 1992 of the Pulitzer Award for the best literary work of fiction and special prize. It is a serialized alternative comic that the author initially began in the 80s in the RAW magazine until 1991. Mous has been defined as a memoir, while fiction, biographical, historical or a mixture of all of them.
The work is composed of two parts of almost 300 pages. The first part is called my father bleeds history. In this part, Art tells us his father’s story before he meets his mother. This part develops between mid -1930 and the winter of 1944. It is composed of six chapters, the first entitled The Sheik;the second, the honeymoon;the third, prisoner of war;the fourth, the knot adjusts;The fifth, mousetrap and finally the sixth, the trap.
The second part is called and there began my problems. In this part, Art tells us the experience of Vladek in the concentration camps, as he could survive, and how it was to have a life in the United States. This second part is composed of five chapters. The first chapter is called Mauschwitz;the second, Auschwitz (time flies);The third, and here my problems began …;the room, saved;And the fifth and last chapter, the second honeymoon.
Finally these two parts make up a single volume, maus. In this work, Art Spiegelman tells the real story of his father Vladek. How a Polish Jew survived during World War II. At the same time that the complicated relationship between the father and son during the history creation process tells us. In it he shows Spiegelman interviewing his father to know everything about his experiences lived as a Polish Jew and survivor of the Holocaust.
These interviews, which he recorded, were the basis for his graphic novel that began in 1978. The comic makes use of postmodernist techniques, representing in a significant way the human race in the form of various animals. Jews are represented by mice, Germans such as cats, non -Jewish Poles such as pigs, French such as frogs, Americans as dogs, British such as fish and Swedes as deer.
conclusion.
In the novel, most of the book oscillates between two timelines. The plot thread of the narrative is present, in which Spiegelman interviews his father Vladek in 1978-79. The story that Vladek is telling, is shown in the past, since it began in the 1930s and is advancing until the end of the Holocaust in 1945.
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