Maus vs. Art essays

Maus vs. Art essays How Maus Compares to Contemporary Art Maus is a book that is very much unlike any other story. Maus is a gripping story of the holocaust and a man that tells a story about what he went through at Auschwitz, the famous death camp. The story is presented in comic book form instead in the form of a novel, and the characters, instead of being humans are drawn as animals. This is a very clever idea because each group of characters is a different animal group. For example, the jews are characterized as mice, the Germans as cats, the French as frogs and the polish as pigs. This helps the reader to understand better what is going on. This book can be compared to two contemporary artists that we studied in class. The first artist that uses a style similar to the one in Maus is Roy Lichtenstein. Lichtensteins career was mainly based on his technique of taking specific sections out of comics and enlarging them to portray a certain theme. If Roy Lichtenstein had picked this book up he could have had a field day with it, because there are so many controversial parts of the story. There are many gruesome scenes in this book that if they were singled out and blown up, they would be very controversial just by themselves. I had trouble trying to find another artist that we talked about in class that had pieces that could be easily compared to those of Maus. Cindy Sherman, eventhough she didnt do anything with comics, I think that she had something in common with the book. Cindy Sherman was famous for her photography, and made many breakthroughs in contemporary photography in the 1970s. The reason I think that her work is similar because in her pictures she would use props and costumes to create controversial pictures. This reminded me of the author in Maus and how he was wearing a mouse mask so he could see things like the mice did and get a better idea of what he was writing about. I think that this book ...