In this episode, “AugenRausch” visits comic artist Nicolas Mahler in Vienna – “Is this art? Is this literature?” Austrian comic artist Nicolas Mahler (b. 1969) can only smile wearily at such questions; after all, he has been able to earn a living by selling his comic strips to the major daily newspapers ever since he left school. At the end of the 1990s, he found a market for his minimalist drawings and absurd humour in the high-end independent comic sector, which included magazines and publishers such as “Strapazin”, “L’Association” and “Reprodukt”. His inclusion in the “Insel-Bücherei” series and his literary adaptations of works such as Thomas Bernhard’s “Old Masters” have now placed Mahler, this “master of reduction”, in the category of high culture, a sector which had long disdained him.

For our next episode of “AugenRausch”, we will again be visiting a studio in Leipzig. Illustrator Anna Haifisch will be opening the doors to her studio (release date: 25 October 2024).

Photo: Nils Kahlefendt

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Nicolas Mahler in his studio in Vienna

Pagination

: Nicolas Mahler at his desk …