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Maurice Sendak - The Work of A Lifetime

6/21/2012

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Maurice Sendak 1928-2012
Childhood was very good to Maurice Sendak - not his own so much, but the childhood he gave to others. His books opened up new worlds for children. Though it was sad to lose him last month, he left a great deal - great in all senses - not a bad way to go at 83. Many of the children that were his first audience are now grey-haired grandparents, but I’ll bet a little boy named Max, dressed in a wolf suit, still lives in their hearts.

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From Where the Wild Things Are 1963
Where the Wild Things Are came out in 1963, the same year Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar and Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique were published. As much as the others Where the Wild Things Are caused an uproar – it was a time when the future was challenging an outmoded mindset with a dose of hard reality. Librarians and teachers vilified Sendak’s book, calling it dark and too frightening for children, but the kids knew better, recognizing in the simple story of a child struggling to control his own wild impulses the basic truth that childhood is, in fact, darker and more frightening than adults own up to once they’re past it.

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From The Juniper Tree 1974
Sendak had a gift for taking childhood seriously - I’d call it his greatest strength. Too many well-intentioned kid’s book authors think children and their state of being are ‘cute.’ Sendak never made that mistake. His own well-documented childhood in a family of Holocaust survivors (along with ever-present specters of his family’s victims) gave him a front row seat on dark and frightening, but combined with the ebullient humor and spirit ever present in his work, his was a powerful, compelling vision.

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From the Juniper Tree 1974
What isn’t always mentioned with Maurice Sendak is how steeped he was in the traditions of children’s illustrations. He was an original with a beautifully unique voice, but like all great artists, he had a profound knowledge of and respect for his craft and his predecessors. In The Juniper Tree, a collection of Grimm’s Tales (1974), Sendak went directly to the source with a meticulous technique based on European, especially German, engraving techniques. The Juniper Tree is a tour de force of children’s illustration, very different from the bolder linear drawings in Where the Wild Things Are and In the Night Kitchen, but with Sendak’s signature faces, expressions, and gestures  - deeply thought, a bit troubling, and humorous, all at the same moment.

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John Tenniel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland 1865
The German connection in Sendak’s work has been clearly noted, but there is plenty more from the broad field of fine children’s illustration. Beatrix Potter’s anthropomorphic animals, full of charm but no squishy sentimentality, John Tenniel’s seriously, delightfully kooky world in Alice in Wonderland, Walter Crane’s gorgeous command of line and composition, Edward Lear’s goofy playful illustrated verses – and plenty more, including Fritz Eichenberg, an older contemporary.

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Edward Lear 1804
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Walter Crane 1883
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Beatrix Potter - diary page 1880's
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Fritz Eichenberg Jane Eyre 1943
As a young illustrator Sendak must have been well aware of Eichenberg, who fled Germany ahead of the Nazi’s in the 30’s and built a significant career as a teacher and illustrator in New York. Eichenberg’s dark brooding wood engravings for Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights are among my most enduring childhood memories - when I encountered the editions as an adult I felt the shock of recognition of a long-lost friend. Sendak and Eichenberg were, in some senses, kindred souls, each a master with an affinity for craft and fine careful work in illustration, divided and united by a common history.

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The Prodigal Son 1967
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Child's Christmas in Wales 1969
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Maurice Sendak In the Night Kitchen 1970
Sendak’s path led him to lighter ground where his sense of play had full rein, not only in books but in theatre and opera design. Spend some time with Where the Wild Things Are and In the Night Kitchen and you’ll see that Sendak was always a set designer – his books unfold with all the drama of a well-made play. He never shortchanged children - he gave them the best, and his best was magnificent. The work of a lifetime, and lifetimes before him, is in every line he drew.

An exhibit of Sendak's work has just opened at the Rosenbach Museum in Philadelphia.
Maurice Sendak: A Legacy continues through May 26, 2013

https://www.rosenbach.org/learn/exhibitions/maurice-sendak-legacy

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Art and Artists - Fine and Online: Etsy, FAA, Behance, Spoonflower

4/24/2012

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Anna Gonzalez on Etsy
It's not that hard to call yourself an artist - the word has become almost meaningless. Being an artist, however, is still not easy, and making a living as one is as tricky as it's ever been - maybe more so. Galleries are invaluable - as in Philadelphia's Old City area, good galleries and dealers can center the energy of a lively, thriving arts scene and provide vital community spaces. It can be tough, though, for an artist to find the right one or to find one at all. But thanks to the technology we all love/hate, there are lots of opportunities for artists - and for viewers and collectors - that didn't exist before.

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Marilyn MacGregor on Etsy
So this blog post is dedicated to working artists who engage with the promise and potential of online galleries as the newest way to get their work noticed and, with luck, sold. A disclaimer: I'm on that list. I'm a believer in social media as a living community, and in the opportunities made available by online art spaces - my participation is a vote for these avenues as a good thing for human and arts interactions.

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Sally Mara on Etsy
You probably know the biggest of these sites - Etsy. Etsy, which got started in 2005 (it has a Wikipedia page, surely a mark of success!) is well-known as the go-to site for charmingly hand-crafted home decor, clothing, kid's stuff and objets in general. It also allows vintage sellers and craft suppliers. What you may not know is that there are a lot of very good artists on Etsy, often successful illustrators or gallery artists who like having a way to sell lower cost prints or even originals direct from their studios.

Fine Art America is another big site, one that is more focused on 'fine art.' There's a lot of very amateur and questionable work to sort through, unfortunately, but it's worthwhile taking a careful look - you can find truly 'fine' artists on FAA offering their work as low priced prints and cards. Behance is another quality online portfolio site, this time geared towards illustrators and graphic artists - some really amazing things. Some of the work is for sale, or you can find links to where you can purchase prints. Major illustrators and designers show their work on Behance - as with all these sites, you can show your appreciation for impressive skill and imagination with a comment or a click on a button.
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P Maure Bausch on FAA
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Eric Hancock on Behance
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My card for the Surtex Show in May in NY
Recently I've been working with agent Kimberly Montgomery of Montage Licensing on designs and illustration work for the Art Licensing field, including paper, textile, and other uses. In the course of learning more about this field I've discovered another fun site where you can find original art, this time in the form of fabric designs. The site is called Spoonflower - you'll have a great time browsing through an abundance of original designs by real artists. You can purchase these unique fabrics for a single pillow or a complete overhaul of your upholstery!

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Cestlaviv - Vivian Ducas on Spoonflower
Most artists by nature are multi-taskers. These sites are a few of the ways that they can show their work in more than one dimension and for multiple purposes. It's a huge opportunity for buyers too. It may take a little patience to sort through and find favorites, but life is like that - and it can be fun and very rewarding. You'll be looking at art and artists from all over the world. (Anna Gonzalez - at the top of the page - lives in the Canary Islands) I've included some examples from each of these sites, chosen almost at random in a search for high quality and my own taste, with links to the work on the sites (click on the images). I've also included my links - please click on them to take a look and leave me a comment or a click!
http://www.etsy.com/shop/MacGregorArt
http://fineartamerica.com/profiles/marilyn-macgregor.html
http://www.marilynmacgregor.com/
http://www.behance.net/marilynmacgregor/frame


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Thanksgiving - Pass (on) the Irony

11/23/2011

1 Comment

 
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Norman Rockwell - Freedom from Want 1943
_ Norman Rockwell did not invent Thanksgiving. It may seem like it: if you've ever seen his iconic illustrations for the holiday, you know what Thanksgiving is supposed to be like. There they are (nobody I know but they must be out there) clean, scrubbed, and hungry, ready to dig into the enormous (authentic farm-raised) bird cooked by the loving grandmother, who brings it to the table, her (spotless) apron still in place, to place before the patriarch in his best (well-worn but neatly mended) suit so that he can offer a (modest but sincere) blessing.
It's easy, in our ironic, less modest and sincere age, to poke fun at this and other of Rockwell's images, to criticize - where are the people of color?, where are the vegetarian alternatives? - but Rockwell's Thanksgiving images, like much art, must be judged in context to appreciate. It's just as easy to miss the sly bits - the guy in the right corner peeking up at the viewer, breaking the illusion to ask, 'What do you think? Do you believe this?'

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Norman Rockwell 1921 (The Country Gentleman)
_ An illustrator would not want to paint like that now, nor would there be a client for it -  but Rockwell was a master and there is much to admire. Look at the way he places arms and legs, how he uses white or negative space, the subtle play of gesture and angle. Ironically, however, his most famous 'Thanksgiving' image is, well, a bit ironic. It doesn't represent Thanksgiving - the title is Freedom from Want. This was the cover of the March 6, 1943 Saturday Evening Post, one of Rockwell's celebrated Four Freedom covers, created in the midst of a grueling war to remind America of it's good fortune. (The others are Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, and Freedom from Fear) Some of those freedoms feel under fire these days, with the troubling news of economic and physical battering for too many Americans right now. It is a different time, and art always wears the cloak of its own time and place.

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Norman Rockwell - Thanksgiving Day 1942 (Saturday Evening Post)
_ Rockwell did do other actual Thanksgiving illustrations, less sober and moralistic. He was a wonderful storyteller in the wholesome American folktale sort of mode, with a rollicking sense of visual humor that matched perfectly to the unironic, self-congratulatory mid 20th century, before hippies, rebels, and civil rights protesters started peeling back the veneer to reveal so much that needed to be admitted and addressed.

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N.C. Wyeth - Pilgrim Mural 1940's
_ Rockwell follows in the footsteps of America's greatest illustrator, N. C. Wyeth, who is best known for his powerful Treasure Island series. He also did what could be classified as Thanksgiving illustrations; in 1940 he began a series of murals about the Pilgrims for the Metropolitan Life building in New York.

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N.C. Wyeth - Pilgrim Mural 1940's
_ His take on this American tradition is colorful but somber, with careful attention to historical detail - gravitas fit to a darker time. You can find some of the Pilgrim illustrations gathered into a beautiful picture book, N. C. Wyeth's Pilgrims, by Robert San Souci, himself a prize-winning illustrator. An illustrator has to be a good storyteller - what sets both Wyeth and Rockwell at the top is their handling of story, color, form, detail - everything adding up to so much more than the whole.

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NC Wyeth - Pilgrim Mural 1940's
Happy Thanksgiving! What does your Thanksgiving look like?





Here is a range of images of Thanksgiving images from the sublime to Betty Boop!

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