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BEN KATCHOR

MACARTHUR AWARD-WINNING CARTOONIST AND GRAPHIC NOVELIST, TO SPEAK

NYS Writers Institute, April 10, 2011
2:00 p.m. Slide Presentation and discussion | Albany Institute of History and Art, 125 Washington Avenue, Albany, NY

CALENDAR LISTING:
Ben Katchor, cartoonist and graphic novelist, winner of the MacArthur “Genius Award,” will deliver a presentation, “Idol Worship in the Yiddish Press and Other Stories,” as part of the “Jewish Renegades in the Arts Series” of the UAlbany Center for Jewish Studies on Sunday, April 10, 2011 at 2:00 p.m. at the Albany Institute of History and Art, 125 Washington Avenue in downtown Albany. The event is free and open to the public, and is sponsored by the UAlbany Center for Jewish Studies, the UAlbany Art Department, and the New York State Writers Institute.

PROFILE
Critically-acclaimed and award-winning American cartoonist and graphic novelist Ben Katchor will present a slide show and discussion on the theme of image worship as presented in his book, The Jew of New York (Pantheon, 2000).  Through an examination of 20th-century Yiddish books and newspapers, Katchor explains how Jewish bans against idolatrous images have influenced, and been influenced by, modern printing technology. 

Katchor’s acclaimed works include Cheap Novelties (1991), The Jew of New York (2000)and Julius Knipl: Real Estate Photographer (1996 and 2000)

Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer comic strips have appeared in magazines and newspapers (currently The Forward) since 1988. Knipl, the main character, is a man in love with the physical landscape of New York City, particularly its buildings and its signs. Knipl material has also been published in two book-sized collections, Julius Knipl, Stories (1996) and Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer: The Beauty Supply District (2000). Published in 1999, The Jew of New York tells the story of an attempt to found a Jewish homeland in New York State in the 1830s.

The New York Times calls Ben Katchor, “the most poetic, deeply layered artist ever to draw a comic strip.” In 2000, Katchor became the first cartoonist to receive a prestigious MacArthur Foundation Fellowship.

In bestowing its fellowship, the MacArthur Foundation said, “Katchor has distilled through the medium of the comic strip an art rich with history, sociology, fiction and poetry. His meditations on urban life represent a sustained effort to re imagine the history of New York, recalling the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century city of words, with its hundreds of placards and signs, inscriptions and sandwich boards, lost places of entertainment and instruction, and forgotten forms of craft and industry.”

The event is sponsored by the UAlbany Center for Jewish Studies, the UAlbany Art Department, and the New York State Writers Institute, with funding from the Legacy Heritage Fund, the Association for Jewish Studies, and the University at Albany Foundation.

Previous Visit: November 14, 2000