Sarah Lightman - Graphic Details

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Jefferson, North Carolina

The media sponsor of the exhibit Graphic Details is The Jewish Daily Forward/forward.com, Americas national Jewish news outlet. The Jewish Daily Forward takes great pride in the project, which began with the article by Michael Kaminer that appears in this volume. The exhibition has subsequently been seen by audiences across North America and in Great Britain, informed by a catalogue that was also produced by The Jewish Daily Forward.

Graphic Confessions of Jewish Women: Exposing Themselves Through Pictures and Raw Personal Stories by Michael Kaminer originally appeared in The Jewish Daily Forward on December 12, 2008.

Sticking Their Tongues Out at the World by Dan Friedman is adapted from Up Close, Personal & Brutally Specific: A Very Particular Sub-Genre with Broad Ramifications in The Graphic Details Catalogue.

The Latest Revolutionary Chapter? by Zachary Paul Levine is adapted from The Latest, Revolutionary, Chapter in The Graphic Details Catalogue.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE

BRITISH LIBRARY CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE

e-ISBN: 978-1-4766-1590-5

2014 Sarah Lightman. All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Cover graphics: self-portraits of the artists from top to bottom: Aline Kominsky-Crumb, Corinne Pearlman, Racheli Rottner, Vanessa Davis, Bernice Eisenstein, Miriam Libicki, Sharon Rudahl, Ilana Zeffran, Sarah Lightman, Laurie Sandell, Sarah Glidden, Sarah Lazarovic, Ariel Schrag, Miriam Katin, Diane Noomin, Lauren Weinstein, Miss Lasko-Gross, Trina Robbins

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640
www.mcfarlandpub.com

To the 18 artists in this book and to all the women around the world who are bravely making comics about their own lives.

SARAH LIGHTMAN

The show is a kind of yichus

Graphic Details: Confessional Comics by Jewish Women is an internationally touring exhibition that has opened at the Cartoon Art Museum, San Francisco (2010); Koffler Center of That is huge exposure for artworks that are in reality very small scale and often began as self-published zines. Many of the images in Graphic Details are black and white, in ink, wash or pencil. And, in a satisfying twist, my contribution to the show has also included my triptych Dumped Before Valentines.

In Dumped Before Valentines [Day] (2007), I sat facing the River Thames, on a bench outside the Tate Modern Gallery, London [Figs. 8082]. My phone rings, my soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend lets me know that he will not, after all, be turning up. These three drawings concisely present my changing social status as I become unwillingly newly single, just before the international day of romantic love. But I was not just socially alone. While a student at the Slade School of Artcreating a visual autobiographyI felt another distinct sense of isolation. No other art students had embarked on similar projects, jointly exploring their religious backgrounds and personal histories in a visual narrative form. I found myself, a Jewish woman comic artist, without peers. I was situated professionally parallel to this bench outside the Tate, my artwork and practice positioning me, unwillingly and uncomfortably, outside the academy.

My email to Michael Kaminer in 2009 changed all that. I was responding to his article Graphic Confessions of Jewish Women: Exposing Themselves Through Pictures and Raw Personal Stories for The Jewish Daily Forward and between us we would bring comics by Jewish women into established art spaces, and in the process find me the creative family I had always hoped for. I had already curated Diary Drawing (2008), a touring show that included the work of two Jewish women who made autobiographical comics, Ariel Schrag and Miriam Katin. I suggested to Michael in an email we curate a show together based on his article and between us we drew up a list of 15 other artists from Israel, America, Canada and England who fitted our remit.

The artworks in Graphic Details cover much of life experiencethe unhappy childhoods of Aline Kominsky-Crumb in Wise Guys (1995) [Figs. 7172], and of Laurie Sandell in The Impostors Daughter (2009) [Figs. 9599]; the awkward school days in Lauren Weinsteins Last Dance (2006) [Fig. 41]; the burgeoning love affairs and broken hearts in Miriam Katins Eucalyptus Nights (2006) [Figs. 6568] and Sharon Rudahls The Star Sapphire (1975) [Figs. 9194]. Bodily functions and friendship feature in Miss Lasko-Grosss The Turd (2009) [Figs. 3738], Ariel Schrags Shit (2003) [Figs. 100101] and the personal tragedy of Baby Talk: A Tale of 3 4 Miscarriages by Diane Noomin (1993) [Figs. 2122, 8386]. The success of the show is a reflection of the relevance, immediacy and insight of these artworks, with their honest coverage of the Jewish women, but also importantly more general, life experience.

There have been multiple comics exhibitions before, but Graphic Details is unique in its highlighting of the work of female Jewish comics artists. As a curator I had a feminist agenda. The Graphic Details exhibition, with over 80 artworks, redresses the uphill struggles previous generations of women comics artists would have experienced. The exhibition was a chance to expose their stories in mainstream environments; the galleries were beautiful spaces where intimate stories were relayed and where their, and my, art became valued and appreciated. From sex shops to synagogues, featuring both heart-breaking and heartbroken Israeli soldiers, some stories may seem shocking; but perhaps the real scandal is the realization that a show like Graphic Details hadnt happened before.

Jews have contributed significantly to the world of comics. Jewish comic creators include Jerry Siegels and Joe Shusters Superman (1938), Art Spiegelmans PulitzerPrizewinning Maus (1991), and Will Eisners Contract with God, and Other Tenement Stories (1978). But where were the women comic artists? Were there any?

As I began my talk about Graphic Details at the Limmud Conference at Warwick University in December 2012, an audience member asked me: Are there really any Jewish women comics artists? And, if there are, the next question would be: Why dont we know about them? A short answer, in traditional Jewish fashion, would be more questions: How could we know about them? How do we hear about the artists we do know about?

We know about artists through many arenas: artists books, group shows and retrospectives in museums, in catalogues, postcards and press that accompany the shows. But if an artist does not have access to these means of production, cannot get exposure, for example through galleries and art collections, and does not have allies in the press, how will the artist reach greater audiences? This was the predicament of many female comics artists, until very recently.