Chris Ware on architecture, America, and being called the “James Joyce of comics”

At the very end of the layout of “Dibuixar és pensar”, the expansive exhibition dedicated to Chris Ware at Barcelona's CCCB, a room is filled with the many covers the American artist has drawn for The New Yorker throughout his career. “This is the only magazine that still has no words on the cover, just an image,” Ware notes. 

Chris Ware is widely regarded as one of the most influential comic book artists of all time. His reputation comes not only from his meticulous, emotional, and often witty storytelling but also from his finely crafted, detail-packed panels and a unique style that foregrounds themes such as emotion, racism, consumerism, and the contradictions of American life.

Meet him in person, and you'll find yourself face to face with one of the best guides to the intricate world of comics and its history. While his work often feels like a melancholy object — so composed it might seem sealed off — Ware himself is unexpectedly warm, his deadpan humor constantly pierced by sharp observations.

So influential has Ware become that he’s often compared to literary giants like Tolstoy or Joyce. When this happens, he briefly retreats behind the small lenses of his glasses, leaving the room in silence before puncturing the awkwardness with a perfectly timed punchline.

Chris Ware

Among the many New Yorker covers on display, one stands out to Ware: the March 16, 2016 issue. That same month, Black Lives Matter protests brought Chicago — Ware's home — to a standstill during a visit by Donald Trump, who at that point had been President only for a few months. The drawing shows a line of children crossing a street, watched over by a woman holding a stop sign, standing between them and a police car. The children are Black, as is the woman, and the message is unmistakable.

“The inspiration comes from something I saw myself,” Ware says. His wife is a teacher in a public school, and that’s where he saw the woman who inspired the illustration. “The real one sometimes has to hit the ground with the sign to make the cars stop, and her sign is deformed, but that’s something I couldn’t find a way to include.” That woman’s daily job is essential, he adds. Cars often don't stop, and one child even lost a leg after being run over. For Ware, this is not just a tragic accident but a revealing tale — perhaps even a metaphor — of how America has changed in just a few years. “Art is all about empathy, and we’re erasing empathy,” he says. “Trust” is the word Ware uses to describe the fundamental bond between people — the very basis of humanity — which he feels is disappearing in the United States but which he has found again here in Barcelona. With his wife teaching in a public school where most students are of South American origin, he witnessed the wave of fear sparked by the Trump administration’s immigration policies. “These things inevitably affect you when you come home and talk to your stupid cartoonist husband who's been trying all day to write a comic strip,” he remarks with sharp irony. “There are horrible things going on outside my door.”

For Ware, today’s America seems like the end of the so-called “land of freedom,” where people could once “be a teenager forever.” The current political climate, he admits, has affected both him and his family. “This exhibition has been a kind of therapy.”

Inside the Mirador hall, at the top of the CCCB building, one of Chris Ware’s comic book panels flashing on the big screens feels painfully timely: a nondescript boulevard in an American city, with people walking as a superhero crashes from the sky. One person glances briefly; nobody stops; everything continues as if nothing happened. The sensation is clear — the dream is dead.

This drawing belongs to Jimmy Corrigan, Ware’s most famous work. The exhibition unfolds chronologically on the ground floor of CCCB — once the basement of a former orphanage. “Underground,” Ware smiles, “like the comics I used to read as a kid.” The exhibition, curated by Jordi Costa, is the most complete iteration yet of a European project that began years ago in Angoulême, moved on to Paris, Basel, Pordenone, Haarlem, and Leipzig, before landing in Barcelona. This expanded version features additional material and video interviews, including one with novelist Zadie Smith — “the greatest writer alive,” according to Ware.

Chris Ware

Beyond Jimmy Corrigan, visitors encounter spaces dedicated to Rusty Brown, Building Stories, and other essential works, along with a room focused on the origins of the comic strip — a vital aspect, since Ware is not just an artist but also a scholar and theorist. His reinvention of the medium couldn’t have happened without critically revisiting its roots. His works often feel timeless, drawing from an era before cinema shaped how comics were drawn. “Movies are the most powerful visual language we have,” Ware says. “At least twice my daughter has told me that, at the end of her dreams, there are closing credits.” The show also traces the history of the comic strip itself. On display is Histoire d'Albert by Rodolphe Töpffer, created in 1845 and considered the first comic in history. Nearby stands a giant reproduction of a page from George Herriman's Krazy Kat, which Ware calls “the greatest comic ever.” “Comics were created to make people laugh,” he explains. Then came Peanuts, which shifted the paradigm by inviting readers to feel for those simple, inked characters. “Charles Schulz changed everything.”

“When I was a young cartoonist, I did what everyone teaches you to do at school,” Ware recalls. “You come up with your idea, plan out everything — beginning, middle, and end — write the entire script, and then draw it.” But the result, to him, felt dead. “Amazingly, I found that when I just started drawing without thinking too much, it worked — the story wrote itself.” In Ware’s world, drawing is not just a technique; it is the very heart of the creative act. This is why the exhibition is called Drawing is thinking: it's how he builds stories, worlds, and meaning. Architecture — which Goethe called “frozen music” — plays a crucial role in Ware's art, which he describes as “writing with pictures.” Nowhere is this clearer than in Building Stories, the extraordinary “box of comics” shortlisted by The New York Times among the ten best books of 2012. “Architecture is so important to me,” Ware says simply, “because it’s where we live.” Beyond that, he adds, it’s how we think: buildings shape memory and thought. The Romans knew this when they invented the “memory palace,” a mnemonic system assigning rooms to things one needed to remember.

In Building Stories, Ware turns architecture into a narrative engine. A lifelong lover of books, he has spent his entire career experimenting with formats, often pushing against the limits of traditional publishing. Chip Kidd, Ware’s longtime editor and publisher, remembers how Random House executives called him into meetings asking, “What is this?” when they first saw the strange object Ware was proposing. “Something nobody today would publish,” Kidd jokes — yet it sold over 100,000 copies and is now considered a masterpiece. At its core is a three-story building where lives and stories intertwine. Ware even built it out of cardboard, and it is now physically on display at the CCCB.

Like much of what’s on view, the model is simple, powerful, and evocative. Chris Ware loves old buildings, in contrast to the formalistic tendencies of contemporary architecture. This miniaturized house feels out of time — suspended between eras, much like all of Ware’s art. Ultimately, the show is a celebration not only of Chris Ware's works, but also of an art form whose popularity may be waning, but whose magic remains intact. Comics were born “to make people laugh” but have grown into something more — art, literature, and memory. Yet, Ware notes with a smile, it’s still a strange sight to see them in a museum. “It’s normal to go to an art exhibition and not understand anything, that’s part of the game” he says. “It’s part of the game and part of the fascination. But if you read a comic and don’t understand it,” he adds, “then the idiot it’s not you, but the artist.”

Opening image: Chris Ware at Barcelona's CCCB. Foto Domus