I really like good children’s books. The good ones read as well for adults as they do for the kids, speaking in simplified terms about universal themes, Sometimes it’s just refreshing to see a simple truth not hidden beneath a mountain of adult garbage.
Most of us know Maurice Sendak for his classic children’s book Where the Wild Things Are and many others but he was also a very prolific illustrator for other author’s books. Early in is career, he had an eight year collaboration with Ruth Krauss (1901-1993) who is considered a giant in the children’s book genre although many of us probably are not aware of her work. Her editor, Ursula Nordstrom, described the appeal of her books in the 1950’s in a way that sort of describes why I believe I like kid’s books so much:
Krauss books can be bridges between the poor dull insensitive adult and the fresh, imaginative, brand-new child. But of course that only will work if the dull adult isn’t too dull to admit he doesn’t know the answer to everything. Krauss books will not charm those sinful adults who sift their reactions to children’s books through their own messy adult maladjustments. That is a sin and I meet it all the time. But there are some adults who don’t sift their reactions to children’s books through their own messy adult maladjustments and I guess those are the ones who will love and buy Krauss.
Maybe they are bridges between the dullness of our adult minds and the openness and flexibility of our child’s mind.
I came across one of their books, Open House for Butterflies from 1960, and found many of the images charming and timeless. Beautiful bridges.
Sunday morning and I am in need of a little kick. Maybe a little flamenco music? There something in the energy and precision of the music and the dance that makes it invigorating while still feeling calm. And that seems right this morning. Just want I want and need.
Flamenco always reminds me of El Jaleo, the huge ( it’s about 8′ by 11′ in size) masterpiece shown above from John Singer Sargent. that hangs in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. The very large painting at the Smithsonian’s American Art Museum in Washington, shown here on the right, is actually a study for the dancer in El Jaleo although I think most people who see it think it works very well as its own painting.
Another Thanksgiving and it might seem that it would be hard to find much to be thankful for in this turbulent world with its endless cornucopia of anger, hatred, intolerance, injustice and inequality set out for our consumption each day. With a diet of so many negatives it would be easy to forget that one simple thing that truly feeds and sustains us– gratitude.
I just love the paintings of Henri Rousseau. It’s not something that I can quantify in any way. It’s not just the harmony of color and form or the subject matter or even the way it is painted. There’s just such a great sense of rightness in the work, a great sense that this is the artists’s reality. It just reaches out and allows you to step easily into it while still maintaining a feeling of depth and emotion, a quality that many artists seek but few find.
You can’t think a story — you can’t think, “I shall do a story to improve mankind.” It’s nonsense! All the great stories, all the really worthwhile plays, are emotional experiences. If you have to ask yourself whether you love a girl, or whether you love a boy, forget it — you don’t! A story is the same way — you either feel a story and need to write it, or you’d better not write it.
I found myself awake late one night this past week watching a film I’d seen a couple of times before. It was He Who Gets Slapped, a silent film from 1924 which was the first film made by the then new movie studio MGM. It stars Lon Chaney in a pretty grim and tragic story ( it is based on a Russian play after all) that is sometimes hard to watch and hard to turn away from at the same time. On this particular night I couldn’t look away.
But a great film it is. The imagery of the clowns in the film is quite remarkable and haunting. Whenever I see this film or Chaney’s other dark clown classic, Laugh, Clown, Laugh,(it was on right after He but I couldn’t take that much pain in one sitting) I am not surprised that many people have coulrophobia, the fear of clowns. It made me do a quick search for some GIF’s with clowns and putting them together is quite creepy.
Redtree Times 