Making his first visit to Hopkins since 1999, cartoonist Ben Katchor will give an illustrated lecture entitled “Hand-Drying in America and Other Stories: Picture-recitations from 18 years of comic-strips about architecture and urban design from Metropolis Magazine” on April 4.
The lecture, which will take place in the Mattin Center, is co-sponsored by the Center for Visual Arts and Homewood Arts Programs.
Craig Hankin, the director for the Center of the Visual Arts, expressed eagerness about bringing Katchor back to Hopkins.
“We co-sponsored his first visit to Hopkins back in 1999,” Hankin said. “He gave a great talk. He’s also a bit of a performer.”
Hankin also noted he believes a majority of the talk will be comprised of Katchor discussing his current strip in Metropolis Magazine.
Katchor is a name familiar for those interested in illustration, cartooning and graphic novels — any medium that uses image diegetically. He has long since mastered the art of the comic strip.
He has received a great deal of attention including an extensive profile in The New Yorker in 1993 after creating the character Julius Knipl in 1988 for his weekly column in The New York Press.
The cult comic strip, entitled “Julius Knipl, Real Estate Developer,” still runs in various weekly newspapers. It follows Knipl through the fictionalized and eccentric streets of New York City, where he encounters niche small businesses and outlandish characters, all of which come and go within the span of one strip. Katchor spins an unabashedly fictional and surreal world but fills it with details and particularities that recall an older New York City — one full of small businesses, a working class and a sense of locality.
To label Katchor’s work as simply nostalgic or bizarre would be inaccurate. His work is extremely dense, nuanced and poetic. Because of the themes Katchor takes on in the Knipl strip as well as later cartoons and graphic novels, his work can be read as social activism.
His cartoons have diverse subject matter, from agriculture to architecture to complex socioeconomic conditions.
Katchor has described his own work as Jewish, American and socialist. While these traditions are evident in his cartoons, each series requires substantial unpacking.
In addition to three volumes of “Julius Knipl, Real Estate Developer strips,” Katchor has published several other graphic novels and collections of cartoons including The Jew of New York (1998), The Cardboard Valise (2011) and Hand-Drying in America: And Other Stories (2013). The latter title is an anthology of strips he has been creating for the back page of Metropolis Magazine each month since 1998.
Katchor’s works have won various awards and accolades throughout the years. He was granted a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1995 and a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 2000. More recently, Hand-Drying in America: And Other Stories made “Best Of” lists for both Time Magazine and NPR in 2013.
In addition to his many cartoon strips and graphic novels, Katchor has written several works of musical theater in collaboration with American musician Mark Mulcahy. He currently directs the illustration program at Parsons School of Design and The New School in New York City.
Katchor is also involved in theater, an art form he describes as more “luxurious” than the comic strip and has written a number plays. He is currently working on an opera.
Katchor’s upcoming talk is free and open to the public. He commented on the nature of giving presentations like these to audiences.
“I think different people will take away different things,” he said. “It’s always a mystery presenting things to other people.”
