Virtual Memories Show 635:
Ari Richter
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“If I’m not obsessed with this history, then this history goes away.”
Artist, professor and now like-it-or-not cartoonist Ari Richter joins the show to talk about his fantastic book, Never Again Will I Visit Auschwitz: A Graphic Family Memoir of Trauma & Inheritance (Fantagraphics). We talk about how he he began this project in the wake of the Tree of Life massacre in 2018, how it helped him exorcise the demons of his imagination after a lifetime of hearing his family’s stories about the Holocaust, and how the book centered around intergenerational trauma and collaboration. We get into how he incorporated his grandfathers’ holocaust memoirs into the book, why he found different styles for each section of the book, what he had to learn about comics storytelling after a career in fine arts, the revelation of reading Miriam Katin‘s memoirs and why he avoided rereading MAUS during the 5 years he worked on this book. We also discuss how drawing comics has changed his brain, why he was stunned by the commercialism of Auschwitz, why he’s glad he got a German passport, why comics folks seem friendlier than fine arts people, the insanity of composing his comics pages in Photoshop (and what happens when he forgets to label his layers), and a lot more. Give it a listen! And go read Never Again Will I Visit Auschwitz!
“I never in my life had a project with such a long time horizon. It was disorienting, like I ceased to exist in the world creatively.”
“I did not expect I’d be in the Disney World of concentration camps.”
“One thing I miss in drawing on the computer instead of by hand is the possibility of the mistake, the ‘beautiful oops.'”
Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes!
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About our Guest
Ari Richter is a visual artist and Professor at the City University of New York. His drawings, sculptures, videos, performances and lectures have been presented in museums, galleries and academic spaces throughout the U.S. Richter is the recipient of fellowships from the Mellon Foundation and the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, as well as a fully public education from grade school to graduate school. The grandson of Holocaust survivors and son of therapists, he lives in New York with his wife and two daughters.
Follow Ari on Instagram.
Credits: This episode’s music is Fella by Hal Mayforth, used with permission from the artist. The conversation was recorded in a drawing studio on Rutgers’ New Brunswick campus on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 microphones feeding into a Zoom PodTrak P4 digital recorder & interface. I recorded the intro and outro on a Heil PR-40 Dynamic Studio Recording Microphone feeding into a Zoom PodTrak P4. All processing and editing done in Adobe Audition CC. Photo of Ari by Daria Carmon. It’s on my instagram.