The Jewish Museum Opens Art Spiegelman's CO-MIX: A RETROSPECTIVE Today

From today, November 8, 2013 through March 23, 2014, The Jewish Museum will present Art Spiegelman's Co-Mix: A Retrospective celebrating the career of one of the most influential living comics artists and showing the full range of five decades of relentless experimentation. Best known for Maus, his Pulitzer prize-winning graphic novel about his parents' survival of the Holocaust, Art Spiegelman (b. 1948) has produced a diverse body of work that has blurred the boundaries between "high" and "low" art. This first U.S. retrospective spans Spiegelman's career: from his early days in underground comix to the thirteen-year genesis of Maus, to more recent work including provocative covers for The New Yorker, and artistic collaborations in new and unexpected media. The exhibition highlights Spiegelman's painstaking creative process, and includes over three hundred preparatory sketches, preliminary and final drawings, as well as prints and other ephemeral and documentary material.

Spiegelman first made a name for himself as a cartoonist and editor in underground comix, the graphic expression of the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s. As he matured as an artist, Spiegelman diverged from the sex and drug ethos of his peers and, in a postmodern fashion, increasingly challenged the narrative, visual, and structural possibilities of comics. He also began exploring themes that dominate his work to this day: intimate personal expression, memory, and history. In the 1980s Spiegelman reinvigorated underground comics by co-founding the avant-garde magazine RAW with his wife Françoise Mouly. RAW showcased the most groundbreaking graphic artists of the time, and serially published chapters of the then work-in-progressMaus.

Maus recounted his parents' life in Nazi-occupied Poland and later at Auschwitz, as well as Spiegelman's own complex relationship with his father, Vladek. Eventually published in two volumes (in 1986 and 1991 respectively) by Pantheon,Maus was the first of its kind in content and format: the unique structure of the comics medium allowed the artist to navigate time and memory beyond the limitations of prose, creating a rich narrative that exploded the boundaries of comics and nonfiction.

Refusing to be defined by the overwhelming attention brought by this singular work, Spiegelman largely turned away from autobiography in the 1990s, instead writing and drawing for The New Yorker and other publications, and creating children's books.But after witnessing firsthand the collapse of the Twin Towers on 9/11, he returned to personal narrative with his autobiographical account In the Shadow of No Towers(2004). This lifelong concern with memory and personal experience has continued in his short comic strip memoir Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@*&! (2008), and inMetamaus (2011), a meditation on his creative process and career.

A self-proclaimed "stylistic switch-hitter," Spiegelman's versatility and encyclopedic knowledge of comics history has allowed him to adapt his visual language to many contexts and audiences. For those most familiar with Maus, this retrospective exhibition will be revelatory, exploring his early formal experiments, honest self-exposés, as well as provocative illustrations and comic essays. Museum visitors will gain an intimate look at an artist who continuously pushes himself and his art to the edge. The exhibition will also include recent projects in unexpected media, such as a collaboration with the dance troupe Pilobolus.

Art Spiegelman's Co-Mix: A Retrospective was organized by Rina Zavagli-Mattotti for the 2012 Festival International de la Bande Desinée in Angoulême, France - where Art Spiegelman was honored with the Grand Prix for lifetime achievement in illustration - and is coordinated for The Jewish Museum in New York by Emily Casden, Curatorial Assistant. The exhibition has traveled to the Library of the Centre Pompidou, Paris; the Museum Ludwig, Cologne; and the Vancouver Art Gallery. The Jewish Museum is the only U.S. venue.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue, CO-MIX: A Retrospective of Comics, Graphics, and Scraps, published by Drawn & Quarterly. The 120-page, full-color, hardcover book features essays by J. Hoberman and Robert Storr and will be available worldwide and at The Jewish Museum's Cooper Shop for $39.95.

Born in Stockholm in 1948, Art Spiegelman was the first comics artist to win the Pulitzer Prize, which he received for the groundbreaking bestseller Maus. He coedited Raw, and his comics have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Playboy, and Harper's. Spiegelman has been named one of the 100 Most Influential People by Time, elected to the Art Director Club's Hall of Fame, made a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2005 (promoted to Officier in 2012), and played himself on The Simpsons. He lives in New York City.

Related Program
On Thursday, December 5th at 7pm The Jewish Museum will present Art Spiegelman in conversation with Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner. They will discuss issues of authorship and identity through the lens of the exhibition. Program tickets are $15 general public, $12 students and 65+, $10 Jewish Museum members'

Support
Art Spiegelman's Co-Mix: A Retrospective is made possible, in part, with endowment support from the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Exhibition Fund and the Alfred J. Grunebaum Memorial Fund. Generous support is also provided by Jean Schulz.

About The Jewish Museum
Widely admired for its exhibitions and collections that inspire people of all backgrounds, The Jewish Museum is one of the world's preeminent institutions devoted to exploring art and Jewish culture from ancient to contemporary. Located at Fifth Avenue and 92nd Street, The Jewish Museum organizes a diverse schedule of internationally acclaimed and award-winning temporary exhibitions as well as dynamic and engaging programs for families, adults, and school groups. The Museum was established in 1904, when Judge Mayer Sulzberger donated 26 ceremonial art objects to The Jewish Theological Seminary of America as the core of a museum collection. Today, the Museum maintains a collection of 25,000 objects - paintings, sculpture, works on paper, photographs, archaeological artifacts, ritual objects, and broadcast media.

The Jewish Museum is located at 1109 Fifth Avenue at 92nd Street, New York City. Museum hours are Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, 11am to 5:45pm;Thursday, 11am to 8pm; and Friday, 11am to 4pm. Museum admission is $12.00 for adults, $10.00 for senior citizens, $7.50 for students, free for visitors 18 and under and Jewish Museum members. Admission is Pay What You Wish on Thursdays from 5pm to 8pm and free on Saturdays. For information on The Jewish Museum, the public may call 212.423.3200 or visit the website at TheJewishMuseum.org.

Images: Left: Self portrait by Art Spiegelman. Copyright © 1989 by Art Spiegelman. Right: Cover artwork for the February 15, 1993, issue of The New Yorker by Art Spiegelman. Copyright © 1993 by Art Spiegelman. All images used by permission of the artist and The Wylie Agency LLC.