Kids illustrated books used be pretty sedate, even when they delt with horrific subjects like a wolf trying to eat Red Riding Hood (above).
At some point radical utopian artists, which were all over the place in the late 1800s and early 19oos discovered illustrated kids books and transformed them. The picture of Goldilocks (above) is more about the Craftsman house than it is about the little girl. The house says, "Look at me! Wouldn't you rather live here than in some dopey tenament apartment? See what you could have if only you'd throw off your blinders and stop cow-towing to the establishment!"
The utopian theme ran through lots of kids books right up tp the 1960s when reality finally matched the revolutionary weirdness in the kids books and the utopian artists bailed out into other venues. Dr. Seuss was one of the last great utopians, though I'm not aware that he had a political agenda. The picture above is typical Seuss: water flows uphill to a Venice-like city containing narrow bridges and minarets. What imagination! Someday water may be made to flow uphill (liquid helium already does) and if it happens it might come about because the person who made it possible read Dr. Seuss.
Here's a Tenggren picture (above) of a girl walking through a beautiful, menacing forest. This too is a radical, utopian statement. It's saying, "Don't you want adventure in your life? Aren't you tired of living a life of quiet desperation? Why do you allow urban sprawl to wipe out the mysterious, primeval forests that make adventure possible. Take up arms! Man the barricades!"
Here's a Tenggren witch (above). The picture is saying, "Modern life has robbed us of the textures and characters that used to make life exciting! Tear down the modern buildings and make the world safe for witches, trolls and fairies!"
Am I reading too much into this? I don't think so. Romantic utopian movements like fascism, anarchism, and hippieism had to come from somewhere. Movements like that don't suddenly spring from nothing. A film like "Easy Rider" seems harmless and quaint to us now but it was regarded as a powerful motivator to radical utopian action in its day. "Uncle Tom's Cabin" seems harmless enough now but Lincoln is quoted as saying that it started the Civil War. When you look at a really well-done old picture you have to make an effort to imagine how it appeared to the audience it was created for. You have to imagine what motivated the artist to put so much passion into his picture. I believe utopian kids picture books were one of the powerful and uncredited shapers of the modern world.
24 comments:
Some really great points Uncle Eddie! I'll never look at my toddler's books the same again!
(Although, I must say that some of the pablum they are producing today disappoints me. Layouts stink and the art is completely unimaginative. Why, back in my day ....)
I experienced most of the fairy-tale genre of kid's books as moralistic and spirit-crushing: Don't venture out into the big scary world, you stupid little orphan! But that's probably because I was a particularly independent kid. Family life was chaotic for me, and, as much as I admire Dr. Seuss, I found his books too "crazy", too realistic. They made no sense, there was too much going on, everything looked like cake frosting, there didn't seem to be a "floor" anywhere--I gravitated toward P.D. Eastman instead. Are You My Mother? had it all: simple art, not too much anxiety or danger, a satisfying ending, and NO PUNISHMENT for the independent baby bird.
I wonder if, when you're an artistic kid and good at "being in your own world", as parents love to say, happily creating your own utopia, looking at fantastical imagery triggers sensory overload.
Nothing is more off-putting than those "moral of the story" books; You're a little kid who spends all day being lectured to by some teacher, then you go home and "learn your lesson" about whatever it is you screwed up that day. You crawl into bed with a new book and it tells you what happened to that naughty, disobedient kid who made too many donuts or something, and you just want to say SHUT UP! Enough already! Stop harassing me! At least I did. That's why I liked Lyle the Crocodile and Harold, with his purple crayon. They didn't make me feel like crap. That's my criterion for most things, come to think of it.
Do you think that illustrations by Arthur Rackham would be classed as utopian? I ask this because I'm not sure I would have liked to wander through a forest full of twisted and knarled trees, hiding mischeivous goblins and grotesque witches hehe!
I can remember I had a pop-up version of 'Twas The Night Before Christmas' and I used to imagine how wonderful it would be to live in that house. I think the creation of small Utopian worlds for kids is a wonderful thing indeed.
Thanks, guys!
Forbes: Rackham is an interesting case. He seems to be saying to his utopian artst friends, "Your solutions are too simplistic! A dark force runs through the world that will undermine all your utopias!"
Spizz: I'm going to look up "Are You My Mother?" What you said about sensory overload and books that don't make you feel bad about yourself is interesting.
Brief detour---->"Are You My Mother" is a seminal book of my toddlerhood. : ) It's just terrific...as good today as almost 50 years ago. I love everything of P.D. Eastman's; I was lucky enough to be able to acquire an original cover illo from one of his books. I should scan it today, as a matter of fact. Love love love.
/end detour.
Nice post there, eddie.
Hi Eddie! Wow, I love your blog.
To add to S.G.A.'s note, Mr. Rogers had one crucial element that is missing from most pre-school programming today. With all the CG eye-candy, nowhere have I seen Mr. Roger's simple message, "You're welcome here, friend".
That was the key to his success. He made each and every child feel welcome - no matter if he was in his reality or fantasy land.
Eddie, you should've linked to the recent ASIFA post with Tenggren stuff.
Hey Eddie
Didn't Bob Clampett do a Dr. Suess story?
This has nothing to do with your post Eddie but I found a show that should be brought back to Adult Swim on Cartoon Network that I feel all the cool animation people should know about.
The Bob Clampett Show.
"The Bob Clampett Show was a Television program produced by Cartoon Network, it featured animated theatrical shorts from the Warner Bros. library that were animated or directed by Bob Clampett as well as a selection of shorts from the Beany and Cecil animated television series. It originally aired on Cartoon Network and was later added to Adult Swim programming block but only aired for a short time."
This is a terrific post Eddie.
Children's books are for me a live issue as I have a 6 months old daughter and read them to her.
I have noticed that she always become extremely restless when I show her Dr Seuss though.
I have been wondering about this and have not come to any firm conclusion.
Is it the perspectives, the compositions, the mood? I don't really know and she can't tell me what it is yet.
"Rackham is an interesting case. He seems to be saying to his utopian artst friends, "Your solutions are too simplistic! A dark force runs through the world that will undermine all your utopias!"
...and sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and a blonde young innocent child is walking through a sinister, dark forest, period. ; )
I can't follow you down the path that Rackham was "saying" this or that hidden message to his peers in these paintings-not that there isn't anything subconscious going on, or aren't societal and emotional things at play, but it's as if there's something too simple for you in the idea that Larsson and Rackham and others weren't simply making interesting, arresting illustrations--for themselves, as well as for the delight of their audience of children(and in that they're just like all animators and cartoonists-doing it for their first, last and closest audience-themselves, first). "Utopian artist friends"? Cite your evidence for this--not a challenge, I really want to know. : )
"Are You My Mother" is a seminal book of my toddlerhood. : ) It's just terrific...as good today as almost 50 years ago. I love everything of P.D. Eastman's; I was lucky enough to be able to acquire an original cover illo from one of his books. I should scan it today, as a matter of fact. Love love love.
Right on, Jenny! That book meant the world to me: it was the very first book I picked out and bought with my own money, at the Bookmobile, when I was in kindergarten, and I still have it, right here on my shelf of best things ever, next to my statue of the Abominable Snow Monster from that stop-motion Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer TV special. I also loved Sam and the Firefly.
And speaking of TV,
Hell most shows now are CG graphics and sing songs for low grade morons.
They are keeping our Babies stupid.
Sweet merciful Jesus on a bike, don't let babies watch TV! THAT'S evil.
Max,
It's likely that your daughter can't make head or tail of what she's looking at with regard to Dr. Seuss, at her tender age. Too much information for such a little one. Go for something like good old Eric Carle or Ezra Jack Keats. Simple and beautiful, with plenty of places for the eye to rest.
Does anyone remember Tico and the Golden Wings? The wings were originally gold-foil stamped. What a beautiful book that was to me.
Jenny: I'm guessing that Rackham had radical utopian artist friends because because so many well-known European artists since 1789 have been radicals. After Manet almost all the big names were. There were a few exceptions like Renoir and Dali (Dali on hearing news of a trainwreck was said to have been concerned only for the people in the first class cars) but they're the exceptions that prove the rule.
The intellectual climate in Europe in the early 20th century was strongly utopian. It was so much in the air that it's hard to imagine that Rackahm could have been indifferent to it, even if he disagreed with it.
Even so, I admit that I was guessing. It's fun to speculate about this stuff.
Cableclair. I'm a big fan of Pieck! I used to have a book about him but I haven't been able to find it for years. It was fun to look at the pictures on the site you linked to. Eftling looks great! I'll go back and spend some time on that site as soon as I finish the work I'm doing.
In my opinion Carravagio was overrated. He was a terrific technician but his work lacks soul and conviction. They say he killed somebody and if he did it wouldn't surprise me. Hockney says he used optics. There's nothing wrong with that but other artists who are also suspected of using lenses managed to make more emotionally engaging pictures.
One of these days I'll do a post on this artist and I hope you'll defend him. Maybe you'll convince me that I'm wrong about him. A lot of people in the know seem to like him.
Eddie, fair enough. : )
But I see many iF not most of these artists as technicians of fantasy and beauty, not politicians OR pundits. They might have had political interests of course but in my reading it seems most of them are apolitical, or just plain disinterested in incorporating this into their art. I'm talking children's illustrators, mind you, not artists like Dali or Renoir. ((I get shivers when I think of what Rand might say about all this...}}
In my imagination the artist of the goldilocks or red riding hood illo(isn't it Carl Larsson?)is simply communicating a warm, appealing, welcoming indoor environment to his young readers as best suits the story and his tastes.
That's not dumbing down the art to leave it at that imho, just not presenting a political or sociological message to his friends. There are profound things to be got from these pretty illustrations, all of which I know you know: composition, color, mood, story.
It is fun to speculate, though, and don't let me rain on your imagination here. ; )
Eddie"In my opinion Carravagio was overrated. He was a terrific technician but his work lacks soul and conviction. They say he killed somebody and if he did it wouldn't surprise me. Hockney says he used optics. There's nothing wrong with that but other artists who are also suspected of using lenses managed to make more emotionally engaging pictures"
What? Are you kidding? After Carravagio, everything looked like Carravagio's paintings, I don't think he's overrated...
The key to understanding what early illustrators like Rackham, Dulac, Tenggren and Nielsen were saying is reading the stories. They were illustrators, making visual all of the dark undercurrents of the fairy tale. The sanitized "retellings" of the classic Grimms tales you find in the children section of the bookstore today bear little resemblence to the original folk tales. Grimm's original version is violent, cruel, political and... well, grim!
Nothing in fairy tales is on the surface. When it comes to legends and folk tales that evolved through oral tradition over hundreds of years, there are layers upon layers of meaning. A cigar almost never is just a cigar.
The best books on this subject that I've found are...
The Choking Doberman and The Meaning of EnchantmentK. That's an odd pair of books, but once you read them, you'll immediately see the link between them.
See ya
Steve
Yes he was accused of murder. Apparantly it came from a dispute during a game of tennis. It was reported that he was a violent man who had a liking for young boys. I think he spent his final days on the run, begging for a pardon from the Pope. They found his haggard body on a beach. His first biographer stated "His death, like his life, was disgraceful". Oh dear!
It seems he was technically accomplished but not someone to help old Grannies with their shopping bags.
I really like this post, Eddie. It's rare for me to hear anyone talk about any sort of history of "this kind" of art! Great stuff.
About Dr. Seuss, I think he definitely did have a political agenda. I mean, just look at the Lorax! Definitely points a finger of shame at the whole idea of big-box type capitalism. And I have seen some earlier political comic strips he did about Hitler and stuff. Those must be online somewhere, not sure where though.
Keep up the intriguing posts! Yeah!
Spizz: I asked my 18 year-old daughter which kids picture books she liked the most when she was a little kid. She immediately said "Donald Duck", meaning the hard-cover reprints of the Carl Barks comic books. My son who's in his mid-20s used to say the same thing. I know I had to fight them everytime I wanted to read to them at bedtime. They always wanted me to read comics and I always insisted on other kinds of books.
This doesn't disprove what you said, but it shows that kids have different tastes just like adults. My kids hardly opened their Eric Carle. I liked him myself, in fact I used to have a fold-out of a chinese dragon he did on my workroom wall.
Hey Steve--yeah, I've read Bettleheim's "Uses of Enchantment" and my library is filled with other studies of faerie tales(the real, original, hard core nasty stuff--that is, violent, disturbing folklore), and I read the original Grimm and Andersen as a kid, thanks to my brothers, mom and a love for old books. I agree with some of Bettleheim, not all. He's in the same boat as Freud to me: a genius, but not the guy with all the answers. That said, I do know that the so-called "children's stories" of Grimm and even some Perrault, etc. weren't written for kids in the way we think of now...and that there's a hell of lot of psychodrama, sociological context from those times, etc.etc....but those originals were written way before Rackham and Larsson worked on them to illustrate, and I was thinking of the art. I don't think it's ignoring anything to say that Larsson or Rackham was making an illustration--a gorgeous one--using all their technical and emotional tools, but perhaps without a political agenda or shout-out(as Eddie was positing)to their utopian art pals, no matter the original intent of a Grimm tale.
But what the hell, maybe it's the girl in the woods surrounded by those "trees" that look like weird leeks is surrounded by avatars for the male anatomy. Could be! ; )
All this deconstruction comes later...in our "modern" age, and I think that Bettleheim aside some of the original symbolism is lost. That's not including Andersen, whose Christianity is so slathered on the stories(many of them beautiful, but gee, think the guy slept in a hairshirt? I do)it's glaringly obvious, even a child can get it. As I did as a kid--creeped me out! Lots of bleeding stumps in his sweet tales. Ugh.
Mad Max,
You're right about Dr. Seuss being political; Check out Dr. Seuss Goes to War. Great book. His political cartoons were hilariously unsubtle. As for his having an agenda with his children's books, he wasn't out to "indoctrinate" his audience. His themes just came from his own take on the world. I doubt he ever deliberately set out to write a story about how Communism is bad or anything like that.
Kids' books "mean" whatever the reader thinks they mean--the author might mean something entirely different from what the reader takes away from a story. Something strikes a chord with them. They probably don't even know why that is, if they're young enough.
Horton Hatches the Egg was about an elephant keeping a promise no matter what. Or maybe it was actually about Nixon refusing to admit he was a corrupt little troll and refusing to step down from his nest. Or maybe it was actually about what happens if you let some irresponsible asswipe make a chump out of you and you should never trust anyone or you'll be saddled with a boring job and lousy pay and another trunk to feed.
Regardless of my attempts to venture into new territory, the stories I've written or characters I've invented inevitably reflect my personal schema. I usually don't notice it until someone else points it out. It's just innate. I can't help it. I think if you don't put at least a scrap of yourself into your art, it will most likely fail, because it will lack the necessary truth (the soul?) that makes for great art.
This is why I am put off by Chris Van Allsburg. Sure, he's extremely talented with a box of graphite dust, but he's always distanced himself from his own stories, and his characters look like statues (not surprising, since he started out as a sculptor), heavy but somehow bloodless. (He draws a great broom, I'll give him that.) He and Caravaggio have a lot in common, artistically speaking, though I doubt Van Allsburg has murdered anyone yet.
I just don't see how you can create anything worthwhile if you don't put yourself in the kitchen with the monkeys.
Eddie, your kids liked Donald Duck?!
Spizz: Put up a sample of one of your stories on your blog!
Eddie
Jenny: I think the Goldilocks illustration was by Frederick Richardson.
Eddie
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