Prolonging

Art Spiegelman's comic books have been my favorite objects, favorite art for about 25 years. One of the reasons is perhaps because his books are in my possession. I can actually own his artwork because his format is affordable. I like to be able to see his books close by on a table or prominently standing with other favorite books. I guess the next descriptive term I could use would be to say they act as shrines. But I don't want to allude to that. Culture may reaffirm faith but I'm trying to work things in the other direction. How does faith affirm culture? I mean, I live in culture and among expectations and manners. Faith is at odds with culture because it seems like hierarchy from culture to faith makes it so that culture is a clunky, malfunctioning, pitiful imposter that copes with the matter of living and faith is an ineffable elegance beyond thought. But I need faith to support the matter of living. Imagination and humor make faith. So what I'm saying is my Art Spiegelman books, Francoise Mouly designs, go one better than shrines. I was given Breakdowns as a xmas gift last year. The image on the cover is a slapstick pratfalling character going ass over tea kettle through the air - and the air is a loop de loop swoop doodle that appears over and over in the pages of this book. It's a quintessential doodle, a symbol of winding up, a triple lutz, a kundalini coil, a minimalist tornado, a 3 continuing into a 9, a primal gesture. I love to rub my hand over the hard cover and feel the glossy ink against the flat vintage-alluding matte of the cardboard. The character reminds me of Penfield's humunculous - the prominence of the bulging eyes, the mouth and the large hands close together - the prominence of how our senses grapple with the world. Spiegelman's introduction to Breakdowns is a work in itself, and it closes with notes from Victor Shklovsky, "Art as Technique" from 1917. I'll pull one salient bubble: "The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known...because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged."