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The Chicago premiere of Art Spiegelman and Phillip Johnston’s WORDLESS!, an innovative show combining slides, talk, film, and live musical performance, will be held at 3 and 8 p.m. in the Performance Hall of the University of Chicago's Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, on Saturday, Jan. 25.
Spiegelman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist renowned for the graphic novels Maus: A Survivor’s Tale and In the Shadow of No Towers, among other groundbreaking works, collaborated with acclaimed jazz composer Phillip Johnston to create WORDLESS! The Sydney Morning Herald praised the work as “a resounding success, fusing art lesson, lively entertainment and dazzling concert.” Johnston’s sextet underscores the multimedia presentation with new original music, composed by Johnston specifically for this show.
“It’s an incredible honor to bring Art Spiegelman back to the Logan Center to present this live work that actually demonstrates the connection between word and image,” says Hillary Chute, a Neubauer Family Assistant Professor of English, who is partnering with the Logan Center to bring the production to campus. “It’s a rare opportunity to witness a new, dynamic performance about form, aesthetics and the very nature of seeing.”
The wordless novels that have inspired Spiegelman since his early career draw from German Expressionism, silent film and early newspaper comics, which influenced generations of graphic artists and inspired the graphic novel.
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WORDLESS! brings to life the work of five of the most important artists of the early graphic novel—Milt Gross, Si Lewen, Frans Masereel, Otto Nückel, and Lynd Ward—in a series of animated projections accompanied by live music. The program will also feature new original work by Spiegelman, titled Shaping Thought!, which both reflects on his own relationship to the wordless novels and animates and musicalizes some of his older, short wordless strips.
Sydney-based New Yorker Phillip Johnston is best known for his work as a jazz composer (Microscopic Septet, The Coolerators) and a creator of music for silent films, most recently Lotte Reiniger's 1927 animated feature, The Adventures of Prince Achmed.
He has performed his original scores for silent film at museums and festivals all over the world, including the New York Film Festival, the American Museum of the Moving Image, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and Rote Fabrik in Zurich.
In addition to the performance, Spiegelman and Johnston will participate in residency activities at UChicago. Those include a jazz workshop with Johnston at 1 p.m. Friday, Jan. 24 in the Logan Center’s Performance Penthouse. Johnston will lead a Department of Music-sponsored interactive workshop with jazz performers and UChicago composers.
Also on Friday, Jan. 24 in the Logan Center’s Performance Penthouse, Spiegelman will join Thomas Gunning, the Edwin A. and Betty L. Bergman Distinguished Service Professor of Art History, Cinema and Media Studies, and the College, at 4 p.m. for a Gray Center Exchange. The Richard & Mary L. Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry is hosting this public conversation.
The performance of WORDLESS!, marks a return to campus for Spiegelman, who took part in the Richard and Mary L. Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry’s 2012 Comics: Philosophy & Practice, a conference organized by Chute and one of the first major events held at the Logan Center.
This event is part of the first performance tour of WORDLESS!, following stops at the Sydney Opera House and New York City’s Broadway Academy of Music. The Sydney Opera House commissioned the new work for its fall festival, GRAPHIC, where WORDLESS! premiered on Oct. 5, 2013.
Tickets to both Jan. 25 shows at the Logan Center can be purchased online at ticketsweb.uchicago.edu, by calling 773.702.ARTS, or in person at the UChicago Arts box office in the Logan Center, 915 E. 60th St. General admission is $20, and student tickets are $10.
—Prof. Jacqueline Stewart
