Talks
Art Spiegelman and Phillip Johnston: WORDLESS!
- 7:30PM
Art Spiegelman and Phillip Johnston: WORDLESS!
Words / Music / Comix
Picture stories by Frans Masereel, H.M. Bateman, Lynd Ward, Otto
Nuckel, Milt Gross, Si Lewen, and Art Spiegelman
Music by Phillip Johnston
Celebrated cartoonist Art Spiegelman comes to BAM with WORDLESS!, an innovative hybrid of slides, talk, and musical performance created in collaboration with acclaimed jazz composer Phillip Johnston. Spiegelman leads audiences on a personal tour of the first graphic novels—silent picture stories made by early-20th-century masters like Frans Masereel, Lynd Ward, and Milt Gross—accompanied by an all-new score by Johnston, who performs with his sextet. In navigating “the battle between words and pictures,” Spiegelman smashes at the hyphen between high and low art, featuring a new work drawn specifically for this project called “Shaping Thought!”
Originally commissioned by Sydney Opera House for GRAPHIC
Art Spiegelman is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic
novel MAUS. He has been named one of Time's “100
Most Influential People” and his work has been translated into over
25 languages. He co-edited the influential magazine RAW
with his spouse and frequent collaborator, Françoise Mouly, and has
created many covers for The New Yorker. Spiegelman’s most
recent book is CO-MIX, A Retrospective of Comics, Graphics and
Scraps.
Phillip Johnston is best known for his work as a jazz composer
(Microscopic Septet, The Coolerators) and creator of music for
silent films, most recently Lotte Reiniger’s 1927 animated feature,
The Adventures of Prince Achmed.
