Françoise Mouly: "Being married to a genius is a recipe for being ignored."

BarcelonaHe New Yorker celebrates a century of existence, and for the last third of its existence, Françoise Mouly has been responsible for choosing—and guiding—its iconic covers as art director. These are images by the world's best illustrators that comment on the week's current events with a touch of irony, but also contemplate the course of the year or reflect on what it means to be an illustrated urbanite today. A key figure in the American cultural landscape of the last half-century, Mouly visited Barcelona for Kosmopolis, accompanied by her husband, the celebrated comic book author Art Spiegelman.

I read a biography of yours from twelve years ago in which you said you had "the best job in the world." Do you still think so in 2025?

— It is! It's as exciting to me now as it was thirty-three years ago, when I started. I joined the magazine without knowing how I should do my job, and I still haven't found a formula. We do the interview on a Thursday, and I still don't know what the cover of the next issue will look like. And having to react to a different stimulus each time is wonderful, especially if you don't have to do it every week, because then it would be tiring. Plus, I have access to the best artists in the world, who are usually interested in collaborating so that the The New Yorker It's a good showcase. And I also enjoy the work because we have readers to whom we don't need to explain everything and give everything pre-chewed.

The feeling is that the magazine sets its own pace.

— In the media industry, almost everyone is always concerned with the same thing: what do readers react to? What makes them click? For us, the process is different. We start with a question: what ideas do artists have? We don't tell someone "draw this," but rather we work with the ideas we receive. And this is exciting because it's a source of creativity that never runs out.

But this freedom pays off: in the end, you work for Condé Nast, which is a large publishing group that must want to make money.

— I work for him New Yorker And I have the exceptional privilege of only needing one person: David Remnick, the director. If he says yes, that image goes on the cover. If he says no, doesn't see it clearly, or doesn't understand it, then no.

And do you get a lot of rejections?

— A few, a few! [laughs] We only publish one cover a week, but I show him sketches for a few more. And this makes me totally dependent on the artists' goodwill and having to play it cool: if I always say no, they'll stop proposing them, so I work hard to make the process interesting for the artist.

Is making covers with Trump 2.0 in the White House easier or harder?

— The hardest thing, with Trump, is living: waking up in the morning and realizing the nightmare is real. But again, I think I'm lucky, because even though everything is terrible, I'm involved in offering him a response, holding up a mirror to him.

In these times of polarization, are you afraid that taking sides will cause you to lose audiences on the other side of the political spectrum?

— I fear that there are many people who don't read books or magazines or aren't open to intellectual discussion. They live immersed in the doctrine of fear and visceral politics. I lived for many years in New York as an illegal immigrant, and I know firsthand what it's like to have fear dominate your entire life: you can't use your name, and you don't know if you can return to your country if something happens to your family. That's why, when I hear someone repeat the Fox News line that immigrants come to steal and rape, I'm outraged. This network doesn't generate information; it only exploits the fear of feeling threatened.

It is a model that has been successfully exported to half the world.

— Of course, when someone is scared, you can't confront them with rational arguments or explain, for example, that the economy is actually sustained by having huge numbers of underpaid immigrants. In any case, we're not dogmatic, nor are we spokespersons for the Democratic Party. In fact, what I also like about working with images is that the reactions can be very diverse, depending on the reader.

Any cases of misunderstood covers?

— I remember we published a cover where two women were sitting on a bench. One was a little chubby and had lots of children hanging around her neck; the other was thin, wearing a blazer and black. And they were looking at each other. We received a lot of letters asking, "How dare you say women should have children and not work?" But we also received a lot saying, "How dare you say women should work and not have children?" The artist was just presenting the dilemma. Images are not linear, unlike texts, which follow the thread of a thought. When faced with an image, it's you who might have a contradiction, and it's you who must complete the puzzle. Our mission is to present different points of view.

These were also years of decline for the print format. One can imagine New Yorker only digital?

— In it New Yorker We're about two hundred people, and everyone believes the magazine's future is digital except me. I believe in print. People fall into a mental fallacy: since the proportion of people who look at things on their mobile phones grows every year, they conclude that everyone will read it on their mobile phones eventually. But the magazine has never had a conventional model. Other magazines in the group are designed to connect brands like Mercedes, Rolex, or Chanel with a specific readership, but in the New Yorker We have decided to stop depending on ads and start depending on readers.

What is the supreme value of paper?

— Being able to build up a pile of magazines waiting to be read week after week at the foot of the bed. It's the cliché that we don't have time to read them, right? But this isn't a liability of the magazine, but its greatest asset: knowing that you can fish out a year-and-a-half-old issue with the certainty that you'll find an article that's still interesting, since it's edited to be exactly that. The same goes for the covers: they should be valid for that specific week, but I want the reader to revisit them in a year, ten years, or fifteen years, and for them to still work and for the dialogue to remain alive. It's different on the web; we publish so many things that it's hard to know when each article belongs and how they fit into the whole. The emotional attachment is different.

After 1,500 covers, are there any that you regret passing, looking back?

— Not many, but there are some, yes. I look at it and think: I don't remember how we got to this point! And it's like a slap in the face because I think that if I don't remember, no one will ever know why we chose that image.

She arrived in New York in 1974, with $200 in her pocket, somehow escaping her family's fate: her father, a prominent plastic surgeon in Paris, wanted to recruit her. Was it difficult to make her way?

— In fact, I went to the United States, but I wasn't fascinated by it. And certainly my idea of New York was distorted. Because of the skyscrapers, I imagined it like Frankfurt, where everything was newly made. And no, at that time New York was falling apart and was full of crime. It wasn't civilized Paris, but rather it was a free-for-all. Wild West. Now, people were open and no one ever rejected me for being a outsider. I was able to satisfy all my cultural concerns and my creativity.

Does the city still retain that vibration?

— No. Now, in New York, like in Barcelona or Paris, money has swallowed everything up. Renting the smallest apartment costs a fortune, and people pay thousands of dollars for a small room in Queens, a three-quarters-hour subway ride away. Just surviving is difficult, and many end up leaving, so the city's ability to find people of all ages and backgrounds is being lost. That New York of old was destroyed, but it hadn't been colonized by the rich. And gentrification has had devastating effects on creativity: if you exploit people to make mere survival difficult, you take away their freedom to take the leap into creative work. In those early years of mine, I worked as an electrician, a plumber, and sold cigarettes, but I still had time to try things out. And I paid expensive rent, but it didn't eat up half the income. Now, the rent takes everything, and if you want a beer, they charge you fifteen dollars. For a beer!

Do you consider yourself an artist?

— Yes and no. I'm not in the traditional sense of the word. But I also think of it as someone who participates in the creation of something new. As an editor, it doesn't need to be my art on the cover: I can be its facilitator and work with the artists. Seen that way, it's very comfortable for me not to be appreciated because I'm not in competition with the artists. I've never sought recognition. It's more important to show your work to the world than public acclaim.

Have you always been so modest?

— At the architecture school where I studied, I remember having discussions about this. Commissions always seemed like a dilemma to me. As an architect, you can have an idea, but then the market and people tell you you have to do things this way or that way. Just yesterday I was visiting one of Gaudí's buildings, with its curved walls. If an architect today were to design it, they'd be told, "How dare you fit a sofa into a round wall!"

But the reasons why she has not been recognized – not only as art director of the The New Yorker but as an editor – matter: for being a woman, for not being an illustrator, for being the wife of Art Spiegelman.

— Being married to a genius is the perfect recipe for being ignored; that's what it is. Everything he says is true. Of course, the way women are viewed has changed. We're now very present in the comics world, and it's wonderful. Not being under the radar, on the other hand, allowed me the privilege of editing and publishing the magazine. Raw Doing things my way, without needing anyone's approval, without asking anyone to pay me anything. This far outweighs the frustration of not receiving recognition.

They should always ask you, but if you had to choose just one cover to be the image for your first-page compilation book...

— I'm actually working on this book! And I guess the one that means the most to me is the cover from when I lost faith in drawing on 9/11. I was addicted to the idea of believing that drawings could save the world. But after the attacks, I hit rock bottom. I didn't want anything to do with illustrations. Charles Burns and other authors sent me sketches with proposals, and I was convinced that no image could capture the horror. I thought, "How could we do an issue without a cover?" Until finally, we found that black-on-black image of the two silhouettes of the fallen towers.

Your husband signed it, but you drew it.

— The thing is, I lacked credibility, and he did. And I wanted so badly for that cover to be there. So when David Remnick asked me who did it, I lied: "It was Art." I was afraid that if I said I did it, he'd say, "Okay, what else do you have?"

Let's do this interview the day before you turn 70. What are your plans for the future?

— I'd love to publish the book: I've been working on it and mulling it over for years. Making a book is a way to organize my thoughts. To put them all in one place.

The book is not a goodbye, I hope.

— No, of course not! [Smiles] But it is a way of finding the answer to the question I asked myself at the beginning, about the value of print. I want to celebrate print. Everyone's conclusion is that we're inexorably moving towards digital. But no, I feel it. We're in Barcelona, ​​I've been to the Finestres bookstore, I've seen the beautiful exhibition they did with Chris Ware at the CCCB... We don't live on screens. There's an attachment to objects. The exhibition will end, but the book remains. Digital is a river. And you're on a bridge, looking at water that's never the same. And you can't remember it precisely, and you can't understand it. But the printed object is fixed forever and can hold a dialogue with you; you can learn from it, derive pleasure from it. Put down your phone, put down your iPad, and spend more time with printed objects.