An Artist In Motion: Art Should Haunt Us

Jim Powell's argument that "thus, any art attempting to represent the Holocaust should continue to haunt us with its inability to represent the unrepresentable, to say the unsayable. It should continue to haunt us with the feeling that there is something Other than representation." in Postmodernism for Beginners contradicts my view that art is the closest way for one to feel emotion for something that they did not witness.

Art isn't just about representation, it is about emotion, how it is a voice not only for an issue, but for every voice drowned out. Words cannot express a horror fully, art is there to reach across all platforms and evoke something in everyone. Art is a snippet into a whole issue, idea, horror, it is a picture into reality.

While reading Maus: A Survivors Tale, this piece brought about the heartbreaking realization regarding the position of the Jews during the Holocaust. While learning about Jewish history in the past, I always felt a bit of resentment, spitefulness, because of their being "chosen people" in my childhood religion. Full contemplation of the Holocaust and its horrors never was a priority, I knew it was terrible, and I knew it was horrible. But, the emotion never reached beyond that, or beyond my taping over the graphic pictures in my history books so I wouldn't have to see it, or closing my eyes during the documentaries when I saw the ovens. Art, eventually, is what bridged the gap so I was better able to understand.

Art is a fill in the blank type of thing, you use it to further your understanding.

Now, there was a part of this book that stood out to me, and I felt showed exactly why art is important, why art should haunt us, but not because it cannot speak for itself. When Art Spiegelman introduces another comic, Prisoner on the Hell Planet: A Case History I was confronted by a more applicable horror, one that I related to, one that through pictures spoke to me. Suicide. When I saw that grinning skeleton, and the tears of Spiegelman, I myself was brought to tears. This horror is a real one to me, and the art representing it haunts me. This art helps me think from different perspectives, helps me make realizations and helps me understand.

For someone who doesn't comprehend something, it is arts job to haunt them, and it is arts job to be that representation.

(I just realized that it can be taken as a pun, since the cartoonists name is Art)

But.... with the linoleum stamp styled work, with the vivid detailing surrounding the precise moment of horror (Arts moms suicide), it make me really think about his perspective. I appreciated what he had gone through, I felt as if I connected, understood. He represented himself in something personal to him, something so that I can catch a glimpse on the issues surrounding him.

While one may summarize his horrors with a grinning skull from my nightmares, but its about the tears, the human aspect. How can something as terrible as suicide be summarized in words?

This art is a way to address the horrific severity of the Holocaust, of the aftermath, of the future. Death is so overwhelming, the Holocaust is even more so. The words I am typing cannot and will not ever be as overwhelming as the Holocaust, but the comics can help us understand, become overwhelmed, become haunted.