Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Von Spatz
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1986
WEBSITE: http://hai-life.com/
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY: Germany
NATIONALITY: German
Co-founded the indie comic festival The Millionaires Club.
RESEARCHER NOTES:
| LC control no.: | no2016066341 |
|---|---|
| LCCN Permalink: | https://lccn.loc.gov/no2016066341 |
| HEADING: | Haifisch, Anna, 1986- |
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| 010 | __ |a no2016066341 |
| 035 | __ |a (OCoLC)oca10475292 |
| 040 | __ |a NjP |b eng |e rda |c NjP |d PU |
| 046 | __ |f 1986 |2 edtf |
| 100 | 1_ |a Haifisch, Anna, |d 1986- |
| 370 | __ |a Leipzig (Germany) |2 naf |
| 372 | __ |a Comic books, strips, etc. |a Graphic novels |2 lcsh |
| 374 | __ |a Illustrators |2 lcsh |
| 375 | __ |a female |
| 377 | __ |a ger |
| 670 | __ |a Von Spatz, 2015: |b t.p. (Anna Haifisch) cover flap (born 1986 in Leipzig, Germany; studied at Hochschule fur Grafik und Buchkunst in Leipzig; illustrator and author of comics and graphic novel) |
PERSONAL
Born 1986, in Leipzig, Germany.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, printmaker, and illustrator. Founder of the comic festival, The Millionaires Club.
WRITINGS
Contributor of comics to publications, including Vice.
SIDELIGHTS
Anna Haifisch is a German writer, illustrator, and printmaker. She has created comics that have appeared in publications, including Vice.
The Artist
Haifisch’s comics series in Vice was called “The Artist.” It followed a main character as he experienced the travails of his daily life as an artist. A collection of these comic strips was released in a book, also called The Artist, in 2016.
In an interview with Matthew James-Wilson, contributor to the Hazlitt website, Haifisch explained how she came to write the comics series. She stated: “The Artist came about because Nick Gazin sent me an email in 2015 and said: ‘Hey, do you want to do a weekly comic for Vice?’ I was shitting my pants because Vice is such a big company and it had to be weekly which was another big thing. So I was like: ‘Well, okay.'” Haifisch continued: “I knew I had to draw and write about something I had a clue of because it had to go on and on weekly and I was scared I would run out of topics. The only thing that came to mind was being an artist, because there’s nothing else I’m really passionate about. I proposed like two episodes to Nick and he was like: ‘Umm yeah, if you could possibly do a comic about an artist, sure.’ and I was like: ‘Yeah, let’s try it!’ Then it kind of just became a thing for me.” Of the series’s content, Haifisch told James-Wilson: “Because I’m friends with a lot of artists, and I’m an artist myself, there’s so much stuff to work from. When I have a beer with a friend, they’ll tell me this story about a gallerist, and it becomes a great story for an episode. Because I don’t want to do diary comics, I need a certain level of abstraction with my work. Of course, I’m exaggerating a lot. I hope it doesn’t come across as being ironic or anything.” Haifisch also stated: “It’s very important to me that The Artist doesn’t come across as a comical figure. I feel for the characters. Of course he’s me in a way, and I don’t want to deliver him to the audience as a prototype or something. He’s definitely more than that. I love him!”
Von Spatz
Von Spatz is a graphic novel by Haifisch, which was released in the U.S. in 2018. It is set at the Von Spatz Rehab Center, a facility for artists with mental illness. The book includes fictionalized versions of real people, including Walt Disney. The patients explain how their art careers caused them to have breakdowns. The lead therapist at the facility is a bird-headed woman named Margaret von Spatz.
Writing on the Spectrum Culture website, Don Kelly remarked: “Haifisch has created a thought-provoking world, but Von Spatz is neither funny nor powerful enough to resonate as the advocacy for which it strives, its very brevity and cleverness undermining its cause. The need to laugh at our derangements is unquestionable, but this slim graphic novel could have used a little gravitas.” However, Brian Nicholson, reviewer on the Comics Journal website, suggested: “Von Spatz, with extremely successful twentieth-century artists as its subject, requires a greater leap of imagination for Haifisch, and the result is a work of art that is less immediately apprehensible. The book is more rewarding for feeling created without an audience’s expectations in mind.” A Publishers Weekly critic described Von Spatz as a “offbeat, loosely plotted graphic novel … with jokes aimed at art comics insiders.” Referring to Haifisch, Rob Clough, contributor to the High Low Comics website, asserted: “Her ragged, cartoony line is simultaneously off-putting and yet impossible to look away from.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Publishers Weekly, February 12, 2018, review of Von Spatz, p. 64.
ONLINE
Anna Haifisch website, http://hai-life.com/ (June 19, 2018).
Booooooom, https://www.booooooom.com/ (April 26, 2018), author interview and review of Von Spatz.
Comics Journal, http://www.tcj.com/ (April 20, 2018), Brian Nicholson, review of Von Spatz.
Hazlitt, https://hazlitt.net/ (April 5, 2018), Matthew James-Wilson, author interview and review of Von Spatz.
High Low Comics, http://highlowcomics.blogspot.com/ (April 4, 2018), Rob Clough, review of Von Spatz.
Spectrum Culture, http://spectrumculture.com/ (March 22, 2018), Don Kelly, review of Von Spatz.
Anna Haifisch was born in 1986 in Leipzig, Germany. Anna co-founded the indie comic festival The Millionaires Club and likes printmaking as well as drawing comics.
Anna Haifisch / Leipzig (Germany)
CONTACT gnyx(at)gmx.de
Shop annahaifisch.tictail.com
twitter (@anna_haifisch)
instagram (the.artist942)
Books:
order 'Von Spatz' (deutsch) Rotopol, 2015
Von Spatz (english), Drawn and Quarterly, 2018
'Clinique Von Spatz' (francais) Misma, 2015
order 'THE ARTIST' 'Der Schnabelprinz' (deutsch) Reprodukt, 2017
order 'THE ARTIST' (deutsch) Reprodukt, 2016
'THE ARTIST' (francais) Misma, 2016
'THE ARTIST (english) Breakdownpress, 2016
THE ARTIST (spanish), Reservoir Books, 2017
2017 ©Anna Haifisch
photo ©Jay Gard
bio
Anna Haifisch @ Gallery Diana Lambert
www.themillionairesclub.tumblr.com
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IMPRESSUM UND DATENSCHUTZ
QUOTED: "offbeat, loosely plotted graphic novel ... with jokes aimed at art comics insiders."
Von Spatz
Publishers Weekly.
265.7 (Feb. 12, 2018): p64+. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Von Spatz
Anna Haifisch. Drawn & Quarterly, $16.95 (68p) ISBN 978-1-77046-312-7
A group therapy session at Von Spatz Rehab Center for artists provides the opening scene of this offbeat, loosely plotted graphic novel. The patients, who include Tomi Ungerer, Saul Steinberg, and Walt Disney, all figured with the heads of different animals, are questioned by bird-headed therapists, as Walt recalls his mental breakdown caused by overwork ("Is destruction an emotion?"). Pages follow with dead-pan visual jokes of the artists going through the center's daily routine, including a four-panel visualization of each of their minds on Prozac. Von Spatz patients have access to surreal grounds including an art supply store, a hot dog stand, a pool full of penguins they are encouraged to care for, and personal studios. Near the end of Walt's stay, the group members put on an exhibition of their work attended by donors to the center. When Saul accidentally shatters a sculpture and Tomi hits on the guests, head psychiatrist Margarete von Spatz begins to despair. Are her treatments aiding any of these tortured souls? Drawn with a rough, unvaried line and painted in blocks of digital color, the pages have a deceptively simple look. Dreams and hallucinations bleed into the depictions of recovery. With jokes aimed at artcomics insiders, this tongue-in-cheek experimental mishmash asks: are visionaries crazy because they make art, or do they make art to keep the craziness at bay? (Mar.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Von Spatz." Publishers Weekly, 12 Feb. 2018, p. 64+. Book Review Index Plus,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A528615513/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=e1197ea7. Accessed 29 May 2018.
1 of 2 5/29/18, 10:11 PM
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MA...
Gale Document Number: GALE|A528615513
2 of 2 5/29/18, 10:11 PM
QUOTED: "Her ragged, cartoony line is simultaneously off-putting and yet impossible to look away from."
D&Q: Anna Haifisch's Von Spatz
Anna Haifisch is tough to pin down. Her art clearly owes a lot to early twentieth century animation and cartooning, but it's impossible to really narrow it down beyond understanding that this is part of her aesthetic. Her ragged, cartoony line is simultaneously off-putting and yet impossible to look away from. That helps create the essential sensibility of her work, which uses deadpan and occasionally absurd humor as the engine that propels the characters and their emotional narrative. The plot supposes that Walt Disney did not die in the mid 1960s. Instead, he had a breakdown and went to recover at the eccentric Von Spatz Rehab Center in California. The center, run by a German immigrant family fleeing Nazi Germany, had some delightfully strange features.
Meant for artists (and cartoonists in particular), the center was notable for its huge penguin pool, its hot dog cart, and its art supply store. Therapy was conducted in a group setting by one of the key characters, a young hippie Von Spatz named Margarete. Disney found himself with great New Yorker cartoonist Saul Steinberg and children's book illustrator Tomi Ungerer. Initially resenting their presence, the book follows this trio as they become friends and bond with each other. The story is told in short vignettes (Haifisch's go-to method), with an early one "The Exercise" doing a lot of story and character duty in a hilarious fashion, as each artist is challenged to do a story with three elements, and Disney's turns out to be the most dark and disturbing by far.
The story lopes and moseys at its own pace, following the odd rhythms of rehab life. The presence of the penguins cheers some of the patients up but annoys Disney. Haifisch cuts between Disney, Steinberg and Ungerer, each dealing with their own problems in terms of confidence and ability to deal with the outside world. There's a great strip titled "Prozac" that essentially shows how radically different each of their reactions to the drug is, with each man having thought balloons dominated entirely by colors and patterns, each one radically different. There's an exhibition important to the center that the artists manage to ruin, as well as a lot of attention paid to Margarete's private life. That includes an affair with someone else at the center and an exasperated phone call to her European mentor regarding her patients.
Haifisch's project to date has been about the life of the artist. She is well aware of how twee that kind of self-reflexivity can come across and is sensitive to pretension and egomania. At the same time, there is something inherently strange and absurd about being an artist for a living and depending on the tastes and whims of others who support you. Especially those who act as gatekeepers. This book focuses on monetarily successful artists who can do whatever they want but still find themselves struggling. Disney here represents not the theme-park building multimillionaire, but rather the soul of someone who is always doubting himself no matter what. Working oneself to death, no matter the profit, only works for a short period of time. This is a book that is fundamentally about self-care, about camaraderie, about love and about non-monetized self-expression. The boys ruin the exhibition precisely because they just don't care about art and money anymore, nor the hoops one must jump through in order to make it.
It's also about the importance of mental health and how quickly it can slip away, especially since creative types tend to be more susceptible to depression on average. Haifisch has a tremendous amount of affection for all the characters in this book, especially the caregiver Margarete, who is trying to figure things out on the fly. Haifisch intermingles sincerity with absurdity, kindness with sharp barbs, and wonder with weariness to create a kind of artist's Shangri-La. It's what the center represents in the course of the story as well as a kind of fantasy Haifisch no doubt wishes really existed, especially since she lists herself as a future patient in the endflaps.
Posted by Rob Clough at 3:00 AM
Labels: anna haifisch
QUOTED: "Haifisch has created a thought-provoking world, but Von Spatz is neither funny nor powerful enough to resonate as the advocacy for which it strives, its very brevity and cleverness undermining its cause. The need to laugh at our derangements is unquestionable, but this slim graphic novel could have used a little gravitas."
Von Spatz: by Anna Haifisch
Don Kelly Don Kelly
March 22, 2018
The need to laugh at our derangements is unquestionable, but this slim graphic novel could have used a little gravitas.
2 / 5
If Von Spatz, the new graphic novel by German artist Anna Haifisch, were a joke, it would open like this: Artists Tomi Ungerer, Saul Steinberg and Walt Disney walk into rehab and…there is no real punch line, but there is a through line about how obsessiveness and perfectionism destroy artists, blinding them to the beauty of their creations. Ungerer, Steinberg and Disney are the three main characters, patients at the fictional Von Spatz Rehabilitation Center. In group therapy and alone in their studios, the artists get time to interrogate the inner turmoil that drives them to create. Since something has broken within each of them, a great deal of time is spent hiding under the covers or lying on the floor. All three are suffering, but its Walt’s journey that drives the slim 68 page volume.
In honor of its star, all the characters except Disney are talking cats, birds and dogs, but this would be a Disney cartoon designed by Dalí. The rehab center caters to artists and has an art supply store so the patients will have the means to express themselves, but it also has a hot dog stand and a penguin pool. Interaction with penguins is highly recommended, though Walt hates the feel of raw fish in his hand. Disney arrives withered and small, drained by a perfectionism that was ruining his staff and studio. In Hollywood, he was a powerful man, but he’s just another artist at Von Spatz, and possibly the patient with the least talent. Ungerer and Steinberg tease him during group therapy, but also seek his criticism. They form a trio of the broken, addled on Prozac while working through their individual depressions.
Haifisch clearly admires her three subjects. Her loose, impressionist cartooning evokes both Ungerer and Steinberg while Disney works as a vessel for imposter syndrome. He draws to survive himself while hating what he produces. He understands that he created arguably the most famous cartoon in the world and will never exceed that achievement. The themes are serious but seem diminished by Haifisch’s yellow, orange and blue palette and child-like drawings. She is skilled in the art of silences, sight gags, splash pages and a general strangeness that buffers against potential melancholy. While a story of tortured artists, Haifisch makes sure her readers do not suffer as well.
The message Von Spatz posits beneath the laughs, bright tones and anthropomorphism is the grave formation that mental illness is the price for creating art. Community offers hope and help if the artist can evade the impulse to isolate and there is a responsibility to help others once a semblance of recovery is achieved. This is Disney’s journey and ultimately it’s a facile one. Haifisch has created a thought-provoking world, but Von Spatz is neither funny nor powerful enough to resonate as the advocacy for which it strives, its very brevity and cleverness undermining its cause. The need to laugh at our derangements is unquestionable, but this slim graphic novel could have used a little gravitas.
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Giveaway
Giveaway: “Von Spatz” by Artist Anna Haifisch
26.04.18 — Staff
For those of you who enjoyed the screen prints and posters we recently featured here by Leipzig-based artist and illustrator Anna Haifisch, you’re in for a treat! Our friends over at Drawn & Quarterly just released Haifisch’s debut graphic novel, Von Spatz, earlier this month. Not unlike her ongoing comic strip, “The Artist” — which features a lanky, bird-esque version of Haifisch herself — Von Spatz offers a meditation on creative life that is both utterly charming and casually brutal.
The novel chronicles the daily activities of Walt Disney during a stay at Von Spatz, a rehabilitation center he’s taken to after suffering a nervous breakdown. There he meets other familiar figures like Tomi Ungerer and Saul Steinberg who are similarly struggling to navigate this strange world of relaxation and recovery. The absurd set up pairs wonderfully with Haifisch’s dark humour and subject matter; although you’ll want a copy of this book for the colour palette alone! And we have two copies to give away!
How To Enter:
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This giveaway is open to residents of US, UK and Canada. Check out our full interview with Anna Haifisch below.
Anna Haifisch
Booooooom: What does a typical day look like for you? Is there a particular time you feel most creative?
Anna Haifisch: I get up around 10 and then I ride my bike to my studio where I usually eat breakfast and have a look at emails. Before noon I’m usually not able to draw anything, so mostly I do office stuff. My prime time working hours where I get the best ideas are starting around 5pm.
Booooooom: Was there a specific moment or point at which you felt you’d arrived at your own personal style?
Anna Haifisch: That was maybe after I finished studying art in 2011. But I feel like I will never arrive at a certain style because I get bored by my own drawings quickly. Then I need to change it up a little bit. Trying new things and stuff.
Anna Haifisch
Booooooom: How would you describe your sense of humour and its role in your work?
Anna Haifisch: My humour comes from tragedy. Watching a character fail is accidentally more funny than watching them succeed. Most of the time I’m not really trying to be funny but humour sure helps to keep the work a bit light. I don’t want to depress anyone.
"I truly believe that as an artist I don’t need to suffer or be anxious in order to make good art."
Booooooom: In Von Spatz art appears as both a potential cure (therapy) and the cause of artists’ distress. Can you speak a bit about the relationship between anxiety and artistry?
Anna Haifisch: The fear of failing is very human I think. Maybe artists are more often confronted with failure. Financial distress, shitty work, horrible clients, etc… those things can lead to anxiety. Also the world around us causes distress. Looking at current political dynamics is scary as fuck. As an artist I’m well aware that I’m only able to do what I’m doing in a functioning democracy. I truly believe that as an artist I don’t need to suffer or be anxious in order to make good art.
Anna Haifisch
Booooooom: What part of the artistic process do you find most challenging?
Anna Haifisch: The worst are people who want a certain thing from me and have expectations of how my drawings should look. Then I lay on the studio couch, paralyzed, thinking that I hate what I am doing. But I can’t complain too much, this is just prima donna shit.
Booooooom: Why Walt Disney?
Anna Haifisch: He is the most famous artist on the planet. Every kid grew up with his work. I find that impressive.
Also I like how much he cared about drawing animals. He was truly a visionary.
Anna Haifisch
Booooooom: Colour is one of the most notable aspects of your work. Did the palette for Von Spatz emerge from something specific?
Anna Haifisch: My colours come from my former days as a screen printer. I always had to choose a limited palette. That’s what I’m still doing, picking 4 or 5 colours to work with. The infinite photoshop palette just makes me nervous.
In the case of Von Spatz I wanted to pay tribute to the merciless sun in California.
Booooooom: What are your biggest sources of inspiration?
Anna Haifisch: Mostly it’s art. Or literature. At the moment it’s children books like “Lyle, the crocodile“ or Peanuts. But that changes weekly.
Anna Haifisch
Booooooom: You’re involved in a variety of things aside from drawing — you cofounded the Indie Comic Festival and do printmaking as well — what’s one thing you haven’t done yet that you’d like to do or try?
Anna Haifisch: I want to write and draw an opera. I want tragedy and I want to go big!
I’d also like to join a tennis club.
Booooooom: What can we look forward to seeing from you next?
Anna Haifisch: The Artist, season 3, is on its way. It will be a bird opera. Changing the whole The Artist game up for me. Also I’m working on a new book with Perfectly Acceptable Press. Getting into the short story format a little bit. Both things should be ready in fall 2018.
Anna Haifisch
Anna Haifisch’s Website
Anna Haifisch on Instagram
Anna Haifisch at Drawn & Quarterly
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QUOTED: ""Von Spatz, with extremely successful twentieth-century artists as its subject, requires a greater leap of imagination for Haifisch, and the result is a work of art that is less immediately apprehensible. The book is more rewarding for feeling created without an audience's expectations in mind."
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REVIEWS
Von Spatz
Anna Haifisch
Drawn and Quarterly
$17, 68 pages
BUY IT NOW
REVIEWED BY Brian Nicholson Apr 20, 2018
Let me attempt to begin with a joke. So Walt Disney, Saul Steinberg, and Tomi Ungerer walk into an insane asylum. No wait, I'm telling it wrong. Walt Disney walks into his therapist's office. The therapist says, "Why the long beak?" Because in this story, Walt Disney is depicted as a bird. I'm kidding; I wasn't really attempting to tell a joke, but summarizing the basic plot and visual sensibility of Anna Haifisch's Von Spatz, where Steinberg is a cat, and Ungerer's a mouse, but no one preys on one another. They are all in rehab due to the psychic toll being artists has taken on them.
This is not one of those comics where the biography of an artist is depicted in a cartoonist's approximation of their style. Haifisch has chosen as her subjects three people whose commonality is that they are all cartoonists of one sort or another, and she depicts them in her own cartooned style. The characters are simply delineated, essentially stick figures, distinguished from one another by their animal heads, but the backgrounds pop with color. Trained as a printmaker, Haifisch uses black lines and limited colors to convey pictorial depth and depth of feeling equally adroitly. There's respect for these artists, and affection for them as characters, but they exist on her terms: It's fiction, not biography. Not only did this never happen, there are many ways in which it never could have happened. Anachronisms and shifting contexts form the core of the book's sense of humor. A few moments suggest cartoon characters might be staying at the clinic as well as cartoonists. The book is a deadpan delight, as the logic, or illogic, of its world is slowly charted. The whole thing proceeds with a "ha ha what?" tension, not quite cohering into something that makes sense, and obliquely suggesting the nature of the characters' breakdowns. The tone is absurd but conveys a tired malaise, like a Steven Wright one-liner, or Zach Galifianakis at his most despondent.
The subject matter is not far from the strip Haifisch produced for Vice, The Artist, which was collected into a book by Breakdown Press. That strip is also about a neurotic bird artist, living in and stressing out about the world of New York City galleries, the pressures of socializing for the sake of networking, not wanting to socialize because of depression. It's a maybe necessary corrective to romantic notions of the artist, but the strip also feels very "on-trend" in its depiction of the lives of contemporary young people as helpless and hapless as they attempt to "make it" in the arts. You might love it, you might see it and think "relatable" or "mood." You will definitely understand why it ran at Vice. If syndicated twentieth-century newspaper comics afforded their creators enough success that they could make strips the middle class could relate to, our current era of online platforms reproduces for creators the struggling circumstances of gig workers in urban settings, allowing them to make eminently relatable work. Von Spatz, with extremely successful twentieth-century artists as its subject, requires a greater leap of imagination for Haifisch, and the result is a work of art that is less immediately apprehensible. The book is more rewarding for feeling created without an audience's expectations in mind, and funnier due to the reader's not knowing when the punchlines will come or where they'll come from. Von Spatz is also an improvement on The Artist for not featuring the halting pace of a cover page then two pages of comics every three pages. Rather than being a series of anecdotes, something like a plot develops. More important than that, we see a world grow. Not only do we see the fleshing out of setting through repeated appearances of the same locations, though there's that too, but we enter into the mental space where Haifisch can freely create.
The chapters vary in page length, letting each character to take the spotlight. The characters don't really interact with each other that much. Character is not revealed through dialogue. (Each artist seems to view the others as something inflicted upon them, though Walt feels guilt for the way he treated Ub Iwerks prior to entering the asylum.) They reveal themselves through their art. A sequence where each draws a comic based around the same predetermined story elements is reminiscent of strips in Olivier Schrauwen's The Man Who Grew His Beard. It's not a detour — it fits into the book's larger freewheeling narrative — and it's not like the book tries to hide its influences.
One thing it doesn't do is contextualize itself in terms of other people's praise. The lone quote on the book's back cover is attributed to Walt Disney,"One cannot imagine a more wonderful place," and if it were ever said at all, which nothing I've found suggests it was, would've most likely been in reference to the opening of Disney Land. Haifisch implies it refers to the book's fictional asylum. If Haifisch isn't going to defer to the facts of Walt Disney's biography, why would she defer to the praise of her contemporaries as means to sell her work?
In contrast to the neuroses displayed by the character of The Artist, it's pretty healthy to be so self-assured. The comic feels like it's about psychiatry as much as it's about postmodern art-making. Another major character is the therapist overlooking the asylum, who stars in a sequence about falconry, a mostly silent bit that emphasizes fields of color. Elsewhere she seems as overwhelmed by how to run a clinic as the artists are about how to make art. Haifisch herself seems confident and assured in her choices, satisfied with the comics medium's ability to do what she wants it to do.
The sequence where our characters witness an eclipse is beautiful as a page, but also suggests a cartoon face. In the adjacent panels of the sun as slivers we see two eyes, and when it's fully blotted out we see the face's nose. It feels wild to witness. We get so used to seeing cartoons and reading images as faces that it takes work to see such things as truly beautiful. That Haifisch can hide the face in something that comes across as soothing and beautiful conveys a revelatory effect once the reader works out that's what was done.
The only other instance in the book where gradients appear instead of pure flat colors is an image of a splash into a pool, directly referencing David Hockney, but as a cartooned image in a comics sequence. It's a quiet joke for those who notice it, but a joke that remains interested in the original painting as a thing of beauty. When it is assumed that comics are a worthwhile form, Hockney homages slide easily into comics pages, and Hockney enters the book's private constellation of great artists. It doesn't matter if the reader gets these inside jokes. I know nothing about Tomi Ungerer or his work, which I think is more popular in Europe than in the United States. All I can deduce from the book, in terms of what matters to it, is that Haifisch is a fan. That becomes enough for me, over the course of reading, to trust her and her judgment. She knows good art well enough to make it.
QUOTED: "The Artist came about because Nick Gazin sent me an email in 2015 and said: 'Hey, do you want to do a weekly comic for VICE?' I was shitting my pants because VICE is such a big company and it had to be weekly which was another big thing. So I was like: 'Well, okay.' ... I knew I had to draw and write about something I had a clue of because it had to go on and on weekly and I was scared I would run out of topics. The only thing that came to mind was being an artist, because there’s nothing else I’m really passionate about. I proposed like two episodes to Nick and he was like: 'Umm yeah, if you could possibly do a comic about an artist, sure.' and I was like: 'Yeah, let’s try it!' Then it kind of just became a thing for me."
"because I’m friends with a lot of artists, and I’m an artist myself, there’s so much stuff to work from. When I have a beer with a friend, they’ll tell me this story about a gallerist, and it becomes a great story for an episode. Because I don’t want to do diary comics, I need a certain level of abstraction with my work. Of course, I’m exaggerating a lot. I hope it doesn’t come across as being ironic or anything."
"It’s very important to me that The Artist doesn’t come across as a comical figure. I feel for the characters. Of course he’s me in a way, and I don’t want to deliver him to the audience as a prototype or something. He’s definitely more than that. I love him!"
You Want to be Surrounded by Weirdness’: An Interview with Anna Haifisch
By Matthew James-Wilson
The author of Von Spatz on the relationship between creativity and mental health, deer-drawing and Disney, and the allure of American landscapes.
Related Books
Interview
April 5, 2018
Matthew James-Wilson
Matthew James-Wilson is a writer and curator from Toronto, Ontario, who currently resides...
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German cartoonist Anna Haifisch’s career began in the world of fine arts. She studied printmaking in college, but through a string of trips to New York City post-graduation, she made the switch to focusing her efforts on indie comics, noticing the autonomy and playfulness the medium affords artists. In the past decade, she has made a name for herself through her unique visual style and touching storytelling. Her most notable contribution is the irreverent and endearing series, The Artist, which she originally published as a weekly strip on VICE and later compiled as a book for Breakdown Press. Many of the comic’s plot lines are all too familiar for anyone who’s experienced the lifestyle and insecurities of being a creative, and the book’s resonance with audiences eventually led to a nomination for an LA Times Book Prize in 2017.
Haifisch has grappled with the minutiae and tribulations that come with being an artist throughout her body of work. One of her early books, Von Spatz, is being published, for the first time in English, this spring by Montreal-based Drawn & Quarterly. In it, Haifisch imagines a fictional rehabilitation center set in Southern California where 20th Century cartoonists Walt Disney, Tomi Ungerer, and Saul Steinberg have retreated after distressing experiences. Disney serves as the book’s primary protagonist, and is checked in to the facility after a dramatic freakout at the company’s animation studio in Burbank. Despite the surreal set up, the book feels deeply personal and unexpectedly believable. Haifisch wrote Von Spatz with a loving pathos for her artistic heros at a very volatile point in their careers. It’s a complex depiction of the fragility of artists.
Matthew James-Wilson: When did you first get into comics and what were some of the first comics that left an impression on you?
Anna Haifisch: When I was a child I read a ton of comics like Asterix, and other comics from France. I always loved reading comics, especially when I was sick as a kid. My parents would take out a lot of Asterix books from the library and I would just lay in bed, so glad to be reading them. It was like watching a series on Netflix, you know? That feeling of, “Oh, there are twenty more episodes?” but instead I had twenty more comic books.
But then I started studying art in 2004 and by then I was much more into fine art. I wanted to do woodcuts and ended up making super ugly art. I’m glad I did the bad stuff back then. I was really into printmaking and color separations and everything that came with it. It wasn’t until I moved to New York for a job that I came back to comics. I moved in with James Turek, who’s a comic artist from New York who now lives in Germany. So I started taking comics seriously as an artistic expression. Before that I was only doing zines and messing around with the medium. But that was in 2008 I think. Ever since then I’ve been hooked!
I feel like a lot of cartoonists I’ve talked to get into comics as kids, then fall out of comics as teens or young adults, and then get back into them once they’re older. How long were you living in New York and what work were you making there?
It was back in 2008. I was still studying at the art school in Germany, and this art school was really old fashioned. It was very German in a way, with all of the crafts, the print studios, the letter presses, and what not. Super cool but I felt kind of stuck there. But a lot of stuff was happening in New York at the time. I wrote a letter to Gary Panter and a letter to Kayrock Screen Printing on the back of two posters. Gary Panter actually answered me and was very friendly, but said “Oh, I don’t need anybody’s help right now,” which was totally fine. Then Kayrock Screen Printing—I just found that studio on Google—was like “Yeah, It’s sunny here, come over! We need somebody!” so I was just like, “Cool!” I had never been to the US before and it seemed so amazing. I had to fly out every three months and then come back, so I stayed from about 2008 to 2010 with several breaks.
I’ve noticed a lot of your comics make references to places in the US. Seeing the Morgan stop on the L train in Brooklyn really stood out to me when I first read The Artist.
The US has always been magnetic to me because of the culture. Whatever is coming out of the US, especially from New York, always seems amazing. I was born behind the iron curtain, and when the wall came down all of a sudden this stuff was available. It just seemed like the US was the way to go. Not becoming a citizen or anything, but going there and being a part of it felt great. When I was there everything looked so foreign to me. Whenever I took road trips with friends I’d love seeing the strip malls, the countryside, the barren lands where almost no one went. I loved the look of it and how simple it was to draw these landscapes. So it all kind of came naturally. It’s more than just a reference, it’s a really personal thing.
What comics did you start making after you visited the US? How did The Artist series come about?
The Artist came about because Nick Gazin sent me an email in 2015 and said “Hey, do you want to do a weekly comic for VICE?” I was shitting my pants because VICE is such a big company and it had to be weekly which was another big thing. So I was like, “Well, okay. Fuck…” I knew I had to draw and write about something I had a clue of because it had to go on and on weekly and I was scared I would run out of topics. The only thing that came to mind was being an artist, because there’s nothing else I’m really passionate about. I proposed like two episodes to Nick and he was like, “Umm yeah, if you could possibly do a comic about an artist, sure.” and I was like “Yeah, let’s try it!” Then it kind of just became a thing for me.
How often do you put your own experiences or life events into the work?
Nothing in specific is autobiographical. It’s not so much like, “I saw this and put it into the comic.” But because I’m friends with a lot of artists, and I’m an artist myself, there’s so much stuff to work from. When I have a beer with a friend, they’ll tell me this story about a gallerist, and it becomes a great story for an episode. Because I don’t want to do diary comics, I need a certain level of abstraction with my work. Of course, I’m exaggerating a lot. I hope it doesn’t come across as being ironic or anything.
Yeah, I feel like you’re really great at getting a personal tone across with your stories, regardless of however grounded in reality they are. You seem to be invested enough in the characters that they still feel genuine and honest.
Yeah! It’s very important to me that The Artist doesn’t come across as a comical figure. I feel for the characters. Of course he’s me in a way, and I don’t want to deliver him to the audience as a prototype or something. He’s definitely more than that. I love him!
When did Von Spatz originally get published in Germany, and what has happened since then that brought it to the attention of Drawn & Quarterly?
It’s actually my first proper comic book. I wrote and drew it in 2015 and it was published in Germany and France. Misma Èditions and Rotopol Press came together and shared the printing costs, and then it came out in the summer of 2015. It took a while to get to Drawn & Quarterly actually. I’m trying to remember how it got to them. In terms of The Artist, Breakdown Press was first in publishing it because they’re closer to my home since they’re in Great Britain. I think when Drawn & Quarterly came to me I said, “That book is gone, but I have this other book. Do you want to have a look at this?” I just sent over a PDF of it with the English translation in the comments. Then after that they picked it up.
I didn’t expect this to be happening. I was just like, “Ah, let’s see what happens,” and when they came back and said, “We actually want to do it!” my heart just skipped a beat while I was in front of the computer. I just started gasping and I hit the desk really hard with my hand out of pure joy and almost broke my finger. It was on my left hand, which is my drawing hand, so I was like “Fuck!” But really, it’s a big thing for me since it’s a big publishing house. I’ve always admired Drawn & Quarterly. The German publishing house Reprodukt picks up so many titles from them, so they’re very present here. I grew up with them! I read Julie Doucet in my teenage days.
How old were you when the Berlin Wall came down? How did that affect your exposure to other culture and media growing up?
I was super tiny—like three years old. But it took about another four years, when I was eight or nine, until the whole setting of the city looked okay. When I was a child everything looked grey and terrible. Buildings were just torn down because they were wet and falling apart. Plants would just be growing into them. This nasty old look of the city just disappeared. Also when I was a child, I grew up with Czech and Russian illustration, which was awesome stuff. That influenced me a ton as well. But then on the other side, all of the Disney stuff came in. McDonalds was a huge thing when I was a child. I was attracted as much as any child to American culture. It was in a very positive way. I don’t have any bad feelings about the consumerism that took me over. Even back in the day after the war, America was always a big thing here. My grandma always told me, “The American soldiers are the nicest.” It’s just this ongoing history through my family and through the country with America enlightening my warmest feeling, even though now the political situation is as awful as it could be.
This book in particular is an interesting examination of America. What attracted you to writing about Walt Disney and the other artists within it? What made you want to tell such a bleak story about someone who’s known for making such jovial work?
I think the first thing that drew me into the topic was a photograph I saw of the Disney Studios when they invited a deer over to draw for Bambi. They sat in a circle and drew the deer in a lovely atmosphere, and I just thought, What the hell? This is amazing! I was just hooked to that photograph and Walt Disney. He’s probably the most famous artist and visionary on the planet. Every kid grew up with his stuff. He’s not a fine artist necessarily, he clearly is a cartoonist, and he’s very close to what I do or what most comic artists do in general—drawing and having to bring characters to life.
The other thing was, I really wanted to draw California. When I drew the book, I had never been there. But the desert and the big cities—there’s so much ambivalence in that state. So just the pure joy of drawing it was a big plus. Then as another point, thinking about rehab as “the perfect place to be” and bringing those ideas together was always a dream of mine. When I started drawing the book, I always had the pictures of Lindsay Lohan with the e-cigarette and the ankle monitor in mind. Or the Betty Ford Clinic with all of the VIPs chilling there. Whatever they’re doing in there, nobody knows because it’s gated. But it always seemed like the most wonderful place.
I really loved the idea of using rehab as a foil for Disneyland, and comparing these two places that are sold as “the happiest place on earth” for different reasons.
Yeah! I think it was in Walt Disney’s opening speech at Disneyland that he called it “the happiest place on earth.” I’ve never been. But that idea sort of brings it back to the clinic.
One of my favorite pages from the whole book is the page where you see one of the characters looking out into this beautiful landscape with paints and an easel, and proceeding to draw a cartoon cat on the canvas. I think Sam Alden first showed me a print of it and he told me about how it spoke to him being someone who worked at Cartoon Network in Burbank.
Yeah, I sent that print to him because he told me about the bleakness of the studio world. He told me about how basic the office space is and he sent me a photo of it. I was amazed and shocked at the same time. This particular panel is just a mouse, alone in the desert, drawing his biggest fear. A cat. The mouse is Tomi Ungerer in Von Spatz.
Throughout all of your work, and especially in this book, there’s this constant relationship between being an artist and your mental health. What do you think is the correlation between the two?
That’s a tough question. It’s always a question of whether artists are mentally fragile or if making art makes you mentally fragile. It’s the same as “the hen or the egg” expression—you don’t know where it starts. I’m not sure if you’re born as an artist or not. I make this up in The Artist comics a lot. I think that being sensitive—maybe that’s a stupid word—but just being aware of your environment and getting hurt easily by it is probably a big plus for being an artist. You suck it up, and then channel it and make whatever work you want out of it.
Making art is so much about vulnerability. So many artists are either comfortable with being vulnerable or they experience being vulnerable so early on in life that they’re more fearless about opening themselves up to people.
Totally! Being an artist comes with the privilege of being a bit nutty. The outside world almost wants the artists to be like this. There’s nothing worse than being on a stage and not acting a bit disordered. The audience is almost disappointed. As an audience member you want to be surrounded by this weirdness. I’m trying to get into it more and more, but I don’t have the right formula yet for the relationship between the outside world and the artist’s world. They are quite different, but I don’t know in what ways. I’m not sure if you have to suffer to make a good piece of art or to write a good story—I’m not sure if that has to be the case necessarily. But I think you have to be empathetic to make art. If those feelings aren’t your own, you have to be able to feel other people’s emotions. It sounds a bit hippieish, but I think that’s important.
I think that sensitivity allows artists to process things that affect a society as a whole that are much farther reaching than just themselves. Then they’re able to be a voice or a vessel for that idea.
Yeah, that’s a perfect way to put it. That’s wonderful!
This book celebrates a lot of different artists. How do you see your inspirations filtering into the work that you make?
There are obvious hints in the book. The main characters in the book are Tomi Ungerer, Walt Disney, and Saul Steinberg. But I also have very hidden ones. Do you know Ed Ruscha? He had this piece where he made a stone and hid it somewhere—I think in California. This artificial stone is laying somewhere, but nobody can find it. So I put the stone in one of the panels. So there are a ton of little references. Mostly they’re just for myself, but I’m glad if people will see the obvious and not so obvious stuff. I’m not mad if nobody recognizes that one of the panels is a David Hockney piece. For me, it’s like paying a tribute to the artists I admire the most.
How has the internet affected your ability to reach an audience outside of your local one? You’ve really become an important figure in the international comic scene in the past few years.
Oh, that’s so sweet of you to say. I’ve always wanted to be part of the American comics culture somehow. Even if it was just taking part at festivals. For the first few years that was my main goal. Being there and looking at stuff and buying stuff—everything seemed so wild and reckless. I think my entry was VICE because that brought me to a wider audience. Every other thing I did was only known by a couple friends in the US and a couple of comic stores. But the constant work with Perfectly Acceptable Press, and VICE, and now major publishers, I’m so surprised that it’s actually happening. My heart is really beating because it’s a big thing for me. I never thought it would be possible at all.
What sense of community do you get from comics that you feel like is missing from the fine art world you were initially a part of?
The comics community is a lot more friendly because there’s not as much money involved. I think that’s a very basic and pure fact of it. But still, in the past few months, I’ve thought Oh, this can also be a very toxic environment. There’s a lot of blaming each other and hitting hard on your fellow artists. The judgmental state is maybe even harsher now in the comics community than in fine art. In fine art, a lot of the not politically correct stuff would just slip through the cracks, because people react like “Whoa! This is art!” But with comics, it’s way more personal, and people assume that it’s a story about you a lot of the time. The comics community seems a bit more dangerous lately. But I’m happy to see it from the outside a bit and often from far away, because it’s terrifying.
What do you want people to take away from seeing the way that you depict artists in your work? Do you want to help people sympathize with the complexities of being an artist through the book?
Yeah, I hope so! One of my main goals is to convey a very lovely and gentle look at artists. Maybe they’re someone in your family or maybe your friend is an artist. I just hope that people can look at them in a very loving way with a lot of acceptance. Sometimes you just have to let them be.
The relationship between the artist and the outside world is so undetermined, but the immediate relationship with your family—if it’s your mom and dad, or your brothers and sisters, or your closest friends—they can say something and it can discourage you for half a year. The people whose opinion counts the most can say something about your line quality or the sloppy way you start your day, and then you’re discouraged for a long time. The books aren’t meant to be an educational thing, but I hope that somebody’s mom buys it and realizes that their child or maybe a weird cousin is actually just an artist. They might then look at them with different eyes.
I think the depiction of an artist has shifted a lot. Fifty years back, or even in the 1900s or the 1800s, the artist was always a mythical figure. It was like “Yeah, of course he has to hide for half a year in the studio. Eventually he emerges with a brilliant piece of work.” These days if you hide, you’re basically dead. In the fine art world, you’re totally done. That’s a dangerous path to choose. But every artist needs that time to be alone with their doubts and themselves basically. Nobody gives you that time anymore I think. I think that’s pretty new in the depiction of artists in general.
Matthew James-Wilson
Matthew James-Wilson is a writer and curator from Toronto, Ontario, who currently resides in New York City. He runs FORGE. Art Magazine and has written for publications like VICE and Rookie Mag.
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