Exploring the Text

1. What is your first reaction to the picture? What about your subsequent reactions? Make sure that you turn the image to the light to catch its subtleties.

   Question

   ALMF/kS1zzW73MouRsoXk1h0lKY=

   Exploring the Text: - What is your first reaction to the picture? What about your subsequent reactions? Make sure that you turn the image to the light to catch its subtleties.
2. How does Art Spiegelman use color—or the lack of color—to comment on the events of September 11, 2001?

   Question

   ALMF/kS1zzW73MouRsoXk1h0lKY=

   Exploring the Text: - How does Art Spiegelman use color—or the lack of color—to comment on the events of September 11, 2001?
3. Spiegelman has said that his first draft was of the shrouded towers in orange against a blue sky. He has said he was channeling surrealist artist René Magritte. Why might he have been thinking about a surrealist? Why do you think that version was not the final one?

   Question

   ALMF/kS1zzW73MouRsoXk1h0lKY=

   Exploring the Text: - Spiegelman has said that his first draft was of the shrouded towers in orange against a blue sky. He has said he was channeling surrealist artist René Magritte. Why might he have been thinking about a surrealist? Why do you think that version was not the final one?
4. Art editor Françoise Mouly, who chooses the covers for the New Yorker, commented on this cover: “Ten years ago, my husband, the cartoonist Art Speigelman, our daughter, and I stood four blocks away from the second tower as we watched it collapse in excruciatingly slow motion. Later, back at my office, I felt that images were suddenly powerless to help us understand what had happened. The only appropriate solution seemed to be to publish no cover image at all—an all-black cover. Then Art suggested adding the outlines of the two towers, black on black. So from no cover came a perfect image, which conveyed something about the unbearable loss of life, the sudden absence in our skyline, the abrupt tear in the fabric of our reality.” Do you think it’s the perfect cover? Explain why or why not.

   Question

   ALMF/kS1zzW73MouRsoXk1h0lKY=

   Exploring the Text: - Art editor Françoise Mouly, who chooses the covers for the New Yorker, commented on this cover: “Ten years ago, my husband, the cartoonist Art Speigelman, our daughter, and I stood four blocks away from the second tower as we watched it collapse in excruciatingly slow motion. Later, back at my office, I felt that images were suddenly powerless to help us understand what had happened. The only appropriate solution seemed to be to publish no cover image at all—an all-black cover. Then Art suggested adding the outlines of the two towers, black on black. So from no cover came a perfect image, which conveyed something about the unbearable loss of life, the sudden absence in our skyline, the abrupt tear in the fabric of our reality.” Do you think it’s the perfect cover? Explain why or why not.