Co-Mix: A Retrospective of Comics, Graphics, and Scraps - Hardcover

Spiegelman, Art

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1770461140 ISBN 13: 9781770461147

Publisher: Drawn and Quarterly, 2013

Synopsis

"Designed with Mr. Spiegelman's help, [Co-Mix] has the tall, narrow proportions of Raw...its images form a chronological sampling of Mr. Spiegelman's extraordinary imagination, including his precocious early work, underground comics, preparatory notes and sketches for Maus, indelible covers for The New Yorker, lithographic efforts and much else."―New York Times

In an art career that now spans six decades, Art Spiegelman has been a groundbreaking and influential figure with a global impact. His Pulitzer Prize-winning holocaust memoir Maus established the graphic novel as a legitimate form and inspired countless cartoonists while his shorter works have enormously expanded the expressive range of comics.
Co-Mix: A Retrospective of Comics, Graphics, and Scraps is a comprehensive career overview of the output of this legendary cartoonist, showing for the first time the full range of a half-century of relentless experimentation. Starting from Spiegelman's earliest self-published comics and lavishly reproducing graphics from a host of publications both obscure and famous, Co-Mix provides a guided tour of an artist who has continually reinvented not just comics but also made a mark in book and magazine design, bubble gum cards, lithography, modern dance, and most recently stained glass. By showing all facets of Spiegelman's career, the book demonstrates how he has persistently cross-pollinated the worlds of comics, commercial design, and fine arts. Essays by acclaimed film critic J. Hoberman and MoMA curator and Dean of the Yale University School of Art Robert Storr bookend Co-Mix, offering eloquent meditations on an artist whose work has been genre-defining.

About this title

About the Author

Born in Stockholm in 1948, Art Spiegelman was the first comics artist to win the Pulitzer Prize, which he received for his groundbreaking bestseller Maus. He coedited Raw, and his comics have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Playboy, and Harper’s. He 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. In 2011, Spiegelman was elected president of the Angoulême International Comics Festival and was awarded the Grand Prix of the Festival. He lives in New York City.

Reviews

Spiegelman is best known for his Pulitzer Prize–winning graphic novel, Maus (1986), but the comics cognoscenti laud him for a five-decade body of work that includes some of the most formally daring efforts the medium has seen. Based on a museum retrospective, this lavish coffee-table compilation encompasses Spiegelman’s 1970s commercial work (including Topps gum trading cards and stickers); book illustrations; New Yorker covers (including his acclaimed 9/11 tribute); and even a painted-glass window done for a New York City school. But his comics output is appropriately at the fore, from his late-1960s underground comics and his groundbreaking strips for his 1980s avant-garde magazine, Raw, to his recent nonfiction pieces for the New Yorker, including tributes to cartoonists Charles Schulz and Harvey Kurtzman. Combining brazen experimentation with lowbrow yuks, Spiegelman pulls off the hat trick of being simultaneously intelligent, graphically compelling, and entertaining. Maus did much to “legitimize” comics to the wider world, but this thoughtfully curated, elegantly presented volume is an even more convincing testament to the potential of the medium. --Gordon Flagg

Edition details

• Publisher: Drawn and Quarterly
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1770461140
• ISBN 13: 9781770461147
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 120