Art Spiegelman and Phillip Johnston's WORDLESS! Debuts Today at University of Chicago

The Chicago premiere of Art Spiegelman and Phillip Johnston's Wordless!, an innovative show combining slides, talk, film, and live musical performance, will be held at the University of Chicago's Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts' Performance Hall today, January 25, with performances at 3pm and 8pm.

Spiegelman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist renowned for the graphic novels Maus: A Survivor's Tale, In the Shadow of No Towers, and other path-breaking works, collaborated with acclaimed jazz composer Phillip Johnston to create Wordless!, "a resounding success, fusing art lesson, lively entertainment, and dazzling concert" (The Sydney Morning Herald). Johnston's sextet underscores the multimedia presentation with new original music, composed by Johnston specifically for this show.

Spiegelman has long been fascinated by the wordless novels that inspired him early in his career. Drawing from German Expressionism, silent film, and early newspaper comics, they influenced generations of graphic artists and inspired the graphic novel.

Wordless! brings to life the work of the five most important artists of the wordless graphic novel - Milt Gross, Si Lewen, Frans Masereel, Otto Nu?ckel, and Lynd Ward - in a series of animated projections accompanied by live music. The program will also contain new original work by Spiegelman, titled Shaping Thought!, which both reflects on his own relationship to the wordless novels and animates and musicalizes some of his older short wordless strips.

Tickets to the January 25 shows at the Logan Center can be purchased online at ticketsweb.uchicago.edu, by calling 773.702.ARTS, or in person at the UChicago Arts box office in the Logan Center (915 E. 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637). General admission is $20, and $10 for all students.