“Am I laughably naïve to think we might all somehow grow up and continue this relatively youngish two-hundred-and-forty-six-year-old experiment? I’m starting to think I am,” the artist Chris Ware said. His cover for the July 4, 2022, issue of the magazine captures the divides underlying this year’s Independence Day celebrations. As suburban real-estate agents prepare to carpet the nation’s lawns with miniature flags, millions of Americans are riveted to the proceedings of the House select committee investigating the January 6th attack on the Capitol. Down the street, the Supreme Court struck down, on June 23rd, a New York state law restricting the ability to carry a gun in public, even as the Senate voted to pass gun-control legislation in the aftermath of the Uvalde school shooting. A day later, the Court eliminated the constitutional right to abortion, with its ruling on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a decision that is at once devastating to many Americans—two-thirds of whom were against overturning Roe v. Wade—and a cause for celebration for others. We talked to Ware about his inspiration for this image of a divided America.
Where did you draw inspiration from?
Back in the old days of the George W. Bush Administration, I lived in Oak Park, Illinois, and would regularly pass a corner with two houses. One house’s yard was decorated with Obama campaign signs and the other—unusually, for left-leaning Oak Park—with McCain-Palin placards. The houses were divided by the nostalgically named Pleasant Street. Although I never witnessed any shouting or fisticuffs, I often wondered how the residents of the two houses might have got along. The corner sort of felt like a suburban Thirty-eighth Parallel, an asphalt moat through which much of the town drove.
You have never been an optimist, but does this moment feel worse than usual?
I was taught in school that the American experiment was rooted in consensus and compromise. But Internet algorithms have put us at an uncompromising moment of nonconsensual reality. Sometimes it seems the only thing that the left and right can agree on is that compromise is laughably naïve. I was buoyed by the brief flirtation with reality that the January 6th hearings have resurrected in a sliver of the G.O.P., but now the Texas Republican party’s vote to adopt a platform that asserts the illegitimacy of Biden’s electoral victory makes it feel as if something very, very, very bad is about to happen.
Do you often get into political arguments?
About as often as I discuss sports. A few years ago, I inadvertently discovered an un-Google-able topic while trying to find the nation on planet Earth which ranked sports as the least valuable human activity, because I’d decided that was where I’d move my family. But all I came up with were Olympic-medal counts, links to the NFL, and player stats. No answer. Thing is, our red and blue teams can’t play ball if they can’t agree on whether the ball is legitimate, or whether it’s legal for the players to own assault weapons.
Your love for architecture is striking. Do you work from memory or use reference photos?
Though I usually take photos and make liberal use of Google Images, while working on this drawing I consulted the actual truth right out my window. The mature honey-locust tree which shades the yard outside my studio compelled me to capture the droop and drift of its leaves. At one point I thought, Jeez, I’m so lucky that lovely old big tree is there. Then, an hour and a half later, a horrible storm came through and tore out half of its branches.
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