Art Spiegelman Performs WORDLESS!

Created in collaboration with Phillip Johnston Sunday, October 19, 2014 | 7:00 PM Helzberg Hall

Art Spiegelman, noted as a historian and theorist of comics as well as an artist, collaborates with Phillip Johnston, the critically acclaimed jazz composer who will be performing live with his sextet. Johnston’s music accompanies the cartoonist’s personal tour of the first legitimate “graphic novels”— silent picture stories made by early 20^th century masters like Frans Masereel, Lynd Ward and Milt Gross—and their influence on him. As Spiegelman explores “the battle between Words and Pictures,” he smashes at the hyphen between High and Low Art in a presentation featuring a new work drawn specifically for this project, “Shaping Thought.”

This event is sponsored by Lawrence and Donna Gould Cohen and Martha Gershun and Don Goldman in memory of Gloria P. Gershun, a professional librarian and passionate booklover with deep ties to the Jewish community.

Art Spiegelman: Art Spiegelman has almost single-handedly brought comic books out of the toy closet and onto the literature shelves. In 1992, he won the Pulitzer Prize for his masterful Holocaust narrative Maus— which portrayed Jews as mice and Nazis as cats. His comics are best known for their shifting graphic styles, their formal complexity, and controversial content.  

Phillip Johnston:  A saxophonist and composer of both jazz and new music, Phillip has been a significant figure in the underground music scene of New York’s downtown since the beginning of the 1980’s. He has composed extensively for film, and his original scores for silent film have been performed at the Sydney Opera House and beyond. 

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Phillip Johnston’s official website