Chris Ware is an award-winning cartoonist known for Building Stories, his Acme Novelty Library series, and the graphic novels Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth. Ira Glass is an American public radio personality and the host and producer of the radio show This American Life. Art Spiegelman is an award-winning cartoonist, editor, and comics advocate best known for his graphic novel Maus. Francoise Mouly is a Paris-born, New York-based designer, editor, and publisher best known as publisher of Raw and as art editor of The New Yorker.
"The great cartoon artist . . . tells the story of his life in
comic form, accompanied by family photographs, New Yorker covers,
his toylike wood sculpture, and the wonderful dollhouse-like models
he builds of some of his characters' homes. There's also a class
syllabus full of self-deprecating asides and useful artistic advice
. . . Mr. Ware has always written as well as he draws, especially
here, when he knows his subject well."
--The New York Times, The Best of Art Books 2017
" 'Monograph, ' the obsessive autobiographical chronicle
of the life and work of the cartoonist Chris Ware, is not for the
faint of heart. It is dense with comics, photographs, mementos and
recollections of the artist. Savor the New Yorker cover section
near the end."
--The New York Times, Holiday Gift Guide "The size of a
large roasting pan, Ware's latest whopping collection (after
"Building Stories," 2012) is a chronological tour of the singular
cartoonist's life and work. "Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on
Earth" and plenty of other panels of his instantly recognizable,
stylized characters share space with New Yorker covers, photos,
paintings, sculptures and notes. Completists and neophytes alike
will get lost in it all -- happily so."
--San Francisco Chronicle "The new Chris Ware book has sat
beside my desk for weeks. It's been tough to miss. It's about a
foot-and-a-half tall with a canary-yellow spine, and the cover
image is signature Ware: Comic book hieroglyphics of domestic
ennui, linked by thin schematic lines, flow charts of word balloons
and worried portraits of the Oak Park genius himself."
--Chicago Tribune "Just the other day, I received the
ultimate opus, Chris Ware: Monograph (Rizzoli), and tore
through it knowing that this extra tall, super heavy, inspiringly
printed volume (with a few surprisingly tipped in comic book gems)
was going to take up a lot of my free time."
--Imprint.com "The noted artist, collector, and visionary
offers a personal anthology/memoir, complete with junior high
photos and memories of the cul-de-sacs of Omaha. "Does the world
really need another printed tome about an artist, let alone one
about an admittedly marginal and rather questionable graphic
novelist/artist/writer who has already littered the recycling
centers and used bookstores of his home country with dog-eared
examples of his own self-regard?" So asks Ware (Building
Stories, 2012, etc.), deep into a collection whose
Greek-derived and "somewhat self-referential" title speaks to his
usual custom: writing alone, tucked away in a dark corner with pens
and books. NPR host Ira Glass, who provides the preface, got him
out of the house a few years ago, Ware writes, and the exposure
helped him become better known to readers, but it wasn't as if he
was a hermit. He worked as a newspaper cartoonist, a graphic
artist, an illustrator, and, as he writes, learned on the job to be
a social being and to pay attention to deadlines and requirements,
all good things for a budding artist to know. Throughout, Ware
peppers his narrative with other lessons he's learned along the
way: about technique, the history of art, the links between
cartoons and cinema, and yes, about life, aging, and so forth;
it's good to change your horizons and see the world, as he reckons,
because "artists don't develop in a vacuum." The oversized book is
overstuffed with art, each page spread containing numerous
images, cartoon strips, sketches, mockups, snapshots, scrapbook
items, and other such treasures that will be of immense appeal to
fans of Krazy Kat and Joseph Cornell alike. The text is as
smart and illuminating as the images, and Ware has wise things to
say everywhere along the way. This collection has a last-word feel
to it, offering a delightful summation of a fruitful and very busy
last few decades. Fans, of course, will want much more, but this
makes a great start.
--Kirkus Reviews "Monograph is a coffee-table comic
book featuring a mixture of Mr Ware's life's work, from his most
recognisable characters Quimby the Mouse and Jimmy Corrigan the
Smartest Boy In the World, to iconic New Yorker covers, as well
as some never-before-seen sketches from the beginnings of his
career, and biographical elements in the form of photographs
from the artist's childhood."
--Mr. Porter "Monograph affords this deeper, tactile, and
concentrated engagement with Ware. His willingness to confront his
own memory and his past self is a treat to decipher, page after
page, image after image. [...] Monograph lets us behind the curtain
of that fiction to watch Ware gather the pieces, take them apart,
and reassemble them."
--HyperAllergic.com
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