Lucca Comics 2022: Chris Ware: “My works, fragmented like the stories of our life”

At the beginning, Building Stories it was a book about the stories of the inhabitants of a palace. “Working on it – explains the author – I realized that all these stories were actually seen through the eyes of a single main character, a woman who wants to be an artist or writer and she finds herself being a mother. In the US there is the idea that this is mutually exclusive; I don’t think that’s true, and I also think that being a mother is much more important than being an artist“. Ware’s goal is to discover the other; know and portray strangers, “as we all do every day when we meet a person and we picture a mental image of him“.

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All you need to know about one of the most influential authors in the contemporary comic scene

In a way, too Building Stories it was a continuous discovery for its own author. The unusual format was born from a literary need, and not vice versa. “I was about a quarter of the way through when I realized that the original format was not suitable. That a different structure was needed“. Of course, Ware is notoriously obsessive about the care she pays to the smallest details, even at the editorial level, thanks to her background in artist, sculptor, editorial graphic of newspapers: “When I work I prepare prototypes, I send very precise directions to the publishers, to simplify their life but probably also to bankrupt them”, He jokes, referring to exorbitant costs related to the production of his works – which are also the main reason why Building Stories it has only just arrived in Italy, 10 years after the original publication.

“Typically, the reader’s gaze passes through a book to focus only on the content; comics are a visual medium, and so I want the object to be seen and considered as well”, Explains the author. Also for this reason Ware’s relationship with drawing is focused on paper rather than on new mediums: “I tried digital drawing, but for me it is like having someone breathe in your mouth. An invasive and unsatisfactory experience. There is something about the physicality of the card that cannot be replaced. Like our body“.

When asked about the ontology of his work, Ware constantly shifts the discussion to what really interests him: the human being. “I think the book, as an object, is a perfect metaphor for man”, He insists. “Each has a cover that can tell the truth about the contents inside, or maybe lie; and of each one the inside is greater than the outside“.