A Look at Art Spiegelman

If he were simply an artist depicting Western trauma—if his books about the Holocaust and 9/11 were mere memoir or journalism—then Art Spiegelman would still have garnered success by his skill and humanity. But the genius of it all, the thing that won Spiegelman a Pulitzer Prize for Maus (the first given to a graphic novel), is his uncanny ability to reveal the “comic” form as a medium more nimble and subtle than anyone had previously suspected. After him, comics and graphic novels were forever more serious, more valid, and more dangerous in their uncanny ability to express both truth and fiction in a single frame. The Vancouver Art Gallery presents 400 drawings, sketches, and studies in the first (and long overdue) retrospective of his genre-defying career to date.

CO-MIX: A Retrospective of Comics, Graphics and Scraps opens on Saturday, Feb. 16 at the Vancouver Art Gallery. The same day, hear the artist in conversation with VAG curator Bruce Grenville where he will expand on the exhibition’s themes. At Goldcorp Centre for the Arts. 149 W. Hastings St. For tickets, call: 604-662-4717