Maurice Sendak’s Unreleased Drawings and Intaglio Prints

What an Australian printmaker has to do with Mozart.

After this morning’s bittersweetly funny Sendak remembrance, a trip to his more serious and obscure past: In 2003, Sendak collaborated with Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner on Brundibar — a WWII children’s opera, originally written by Czech composer Hans Krása, which the duo adapted into a book illustrated by Sendak and an opera for which Sendak designed the sets and costumes. But Sendak’s fascination with the opera dated back some three decades, to the 1970s, when he began collaborating with printmaker Kenneth Tyler while working on sets and costumes for Mozart’s The Magic Flute and Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker.

These operas inspired him to create a wealth of sketches, drawings, and watercolors. Some of them appeared in his beloved book Nutcracker and others were printed at Tyler Graphics between 1977 and 1984, and again in 2002, employing lithography and intaglio processes. But circumstances prevented any of these editions from being published. The inventory of rare proofs, collected here as the project’s intaglio ghosts, was signed in 2002, and the prints divided three-ways between Sendak, to the National Gallery of Australia’s Kenneth Tyler Print Collection, and to Tyler’s own personal collection. Sendak went on to hand-watercolor some of the black-and-white intaglios, including Wild Thing and Ida.

Wild thing, state

© Maurice Sendak

Wild thing, state II

© Maurice Sendak

Queen of the night

© Maurice Sendak

Study for the magic flute

© Maurice Sendak

Ida, state

© Maurice Sendak

Ida, state VI

© Maurice Sendak

Nutcracker 1984

© Maurice Sendak

↬ Jen Bekman ↬ Printeresting

Images courtesy of the National Gallery of Australia’s Kenneth Tyler Print Collection

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Grim Colberty Tales: Maurice Sendak’s Last Video Appearance

“I don’t write for children. I write — and somebody says, ‘That’s for children!’”

The world is a little dimmer this week at the news that Maurice Sendak has died at the age of 83, he who gave us such cultural treasures as Where The Wild Things Are and such hidden gems as these little-known Velveteen Rabbit illustrations. It is perhaps some kind of cosmic joke that this week also marks the release of Stephen Colbert’s first children’s book, I Am A Pole (And So Can You!), which features possibly the best book blurb of all time, by none other than Sendak himself:

The sad thing is, I like it.

In this two-part interview titled Grim Colberty Tales with Maurice Sendak, recorded in January 2012, Sendak makes his last known video appearance and banters with Colbert, lucid and wryly witty as ever, about everything from the state of children’s literature today to the free market to being gay.

COLBERT: Why do you write for children?

SENDAK: I don’t write for children. I write — and somebody says, ‘That’s for children!’ I didn’t set out to make children happy or make life better for them, or easier for them.

COLBERT: Do you like them?

SENDAK: I like them as few and far between as I do adults — maybe a bit more, because I really don’t like adults at all.

Maurice Sendak (left) and Stephen Colbert draw a pole. Sendak's drawing, true to his signature wit, depicts a Polish woman holding a pole.

In the second part, Colbert reads from I Am A Pole (And So Can You!) and gets a drawing lesson from Sendak.

COLBERT: What does it take for a celebrity to make a successful (children’s) book, what do I gotta do?

SENDAK: You’ve started already by being an idiot. That is the very first demand.

Top photo via MSNBC

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The Secret Art of Dr. Seuss

“…a creature content with himself as animal and artist, and one who didn’t give a lick or a spit for anyone’s opinion, one way or another, of his work.”

When we celebrated the 108th would-be birthday of Dr. Seuss earlier this month with his little-known book of nudes, reader Jennifer Alluisi flagged a fascinating deeper dive into Geisel’s more obscure creations — The Secret Art of Dr. Seuss, originally published in 1995, collects 65 of Geisel’s whimsical paintings, sculptures, and rough sketches of weird and wonderful beings in otherworldly settings, created for his own pleasure and never exhibited in public. Though Geisel’s most enduring legacy remains his timeless children’s literature, this volume sheds new light on his contribution to contemporary art — a realm he approached with the same blend of idiosyncratic talent and uncompromising dedication that made him a cultural icon in his “other life.”

A Seuss drawing suggesting that no matter how big, inflated or different the image we try to portray, being ourselves is most important.

TM & © 1995 Dr. Seuss Enterprises, L. P., Secret Art Collection, courtesy of the Museum of Science and Industry

For an added treat, the introduction was penned by none other than the great Maurice Sendak, who writes:

I retain a most vivid picture of Ted standing in his studio before his easel, palette in hand, brush poised. He would lean forward and then back on his heels, head cocked to one side and then to the other. The artistic ‘dance’ step was repeated over and over again.

He enjoyed working after midnight — seldom during the working-day hours. He did not consider painting to be ‘work,’* so it had to wait till late at night. Painting was what he did for himself and not something he felt comfortable in sharing.

[…]

I remember telling Ted that there would come a day when many of his paintings would be seen and he would thus share with his fans another facet of himself — his private self. That day has come. I am glad.

'Pink-Tufted Small Beast in Night Landscape,' 1960

TM & © 1995 Dr. Seuss Enterprises

'The Stag at Eve,' 1960

TM & © 1995 Dr. Seuss Enterprises

Sendak captures Geisel’s remarkable character:

The Ted Geisel I knew was that rare amalgamation of genial gent and tomcat — a creature content with himself as animal and artist, and one who didn’t give a lick or a spit for anyone’s opinion, one way or another, of his work. He was, of course, immensely charming and polite about the whole matter, but when Ted fixed you with his calm cat-gaze, you knew when to shut up. It was easy to respect the simple honesty and curious privacy behind the gentle bluster of the man, but Seuss’s apparent lack of interest in style, fashion, and any kind of analysis relating to his work astonished me. Only after years of friendship was I completely won over; Dr. Seuss was serious about not being ‘serious.’**

'Peru 1 (Giant Llama Led Through Village), 1925

TM & © 1995 Dr. Seuss Enterprises

'Peru 2 (Vultures Waiting for the Fall), 1925

TM & © 1995 Dr. Seuss Enterprises

'Peru 3 (Cock Fight), 1925

TM & © 1995 Dr. Seuss Enterprises

'Peru 4 (Angry Pig), 1925

TM & © 1995 Dr. Seuss Enterprises

Zachery

TM & © 1995 Dr. Seuss Enterprises

'The Manly Art of Self-Defense,' 1927

TM & © 1995 Dr. Seuss Enterprises

Untitled

TM & © 1995 Dr. Seuss Enterprises

Untitled

TM & © 1995 Dr. Seuss Enterprises

Of Seuss’s art in general and the works collected in The Secret Art of Dr. Seuss in particular, Sendak writes:

There was certainly nothing cookie-cutter, bland, or trendy about Ted Geisel. These works abound in nuttiness, ‘political incorrectness,’*** and lots and lots of cats. In short, you have entered Seussville, where questions and doubts are left at the door with the coo-coo something-or-other. Enjoy yourself.

* See Lewis Hyde on work vs. creative labor

** See Paula Scher’‘s TED talk on serious vs. solemn design

*** For the radical politics and political incorrectness of iconic children’s authors, see Tales for Little Rebels

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