What to Read Before and After Seeing Art Spiegelman: Disaster is my Muse

Join Lit Hub at Film Forum on Friday, February 21st, at 7:10 p.m. ET, where weโll be co-presenting a screening of the new film ART SPIEGELMAN: DISASTER IS MY MUSE, an exploration of the famous artistโs life and oeuvre. Our editor Olivia Rutigliano will moderate a Q&A with filmmakers Molly Bernstein & Philip Dolin. Other showtimes are available here.
Get up to two discounted $13 tickets (regular $17) to the screening and first two weeks of showings by entering promo code LITHUB at checkout.ย
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Presented in association with our repertory festival TALES FROM THE NEW YORKER.
Art Spiegelmanโs Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel Maus is a landmark in reckoning with the Holocaust and breakthrough in serious comic artโbut his full achievements are more remarkable and eclectic. ART SPIEGELMAN: DISASTER IS MY MUSE tracks his beginnings in the 1960s as co-creator of the Wacky Packages trading cards; his co-founding of the underground comics magazines Arcade (with Bill Griffith) and Raw (with wife Franรงoise Mouly); In the Shadow of No Towers, his reaction to 9/11, inspired by witnessing the attacks from his home in lower Manhattan; his controversial covers for The New Yorker (1993-2003) that prompted the NYPD to picket the magazineโs office; and his public response to Mausโs recent ban by a Tennessee school board. Spiegelman proves an eloquent guide through his provocative work, along with contemporaries (Robert Crumb, Gary Panter) and younger cartoonists (Joe Sacco, Jerry Craft, Molly Crabapple) inspired by Spiegelmanโs unflinching confrontation of personally traumatic themes.
Presented with support from The Ada Katz Fund for Literature in Film, The Helen Frankenthaler Endowed Fund for Films on Art, The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation Fund, and The Joan S. Constantiner Fund for Jewish and Holocaust Films, donated by Leon Constantiner and Family
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Art Spiegelman: If It Walks Like a Fascistโฆ
What Banning Maus Means for the Generation of Artists It Inspired
A Brief History of America Freaking Out About Horror Comics
The Unspeakable Through the Diminutive: Read a 1986 Review of Maus
A professor has offered to teach Maus to all students affected by its ban.
Graphic Novels and Social Justice: A Primer
Free Maus? Digital access to banned books is important but writers still need to eat!
Adventures in Historical Fiction: History is Everywhere (And Full of Surprises)