In the Denver Art Museum’s “Wild Things: The Art of Maurice Sendak,” you get the sense of the author and illustrator as a whole, from an often bedridden childhood staring out his Brooklyn window to his worldwide success and forays onto the stage and the screen.
That’s worth noting, as some exhibitions promise a glimpse into an artist’s mind, but just as often fail to provide a thoughtful look back at the decades of myth-making that made them a household name.
“Wild Things” resists tropes and plays with audience expectations while still delivering the blockbuster visuals promised in the title. So much so that, according to the museum, this is the largest retrospective of his work to date.
Passion courses through the bilingual texts about Sendak’s work, known worldwide from books such as ‘Where the Wild Things Are’, ‘In the Night Kitchen’ and ‘Outside Over There’. It highlights how a self-taught Jewish boy from New York came into contact with hundreds of millions of people through “the magic and all the beauty and mischief he generated during his sixty-year career,” according to the signage.
In collaboration with the Columbus Museum of Art, where a smaller version of this debuted, and the Maurice Sendak Foundation, “Wild Things: The Art of Maurice Sendak” presents a stunningly complete portrait of the artist, who died in 2012. the first time, all the original paintings for ‘Where the Wild Things Are’, plus hundreds of other published and unpublished drawings, sketches and artefacts from his varied creative life.
Runs from October 13 to February. It’s a big effort for the museum, which is advertising it with a billboard-sized sign on the second floor of the Hamilton Building in downtown Denver. “Wild Things” isn’t included in admission, but it’s totally worth the extra $27-$32 ticket (see denverartmuseum.org for tickets and discounts).
Highlights include early drawings from well-known books, as well as detailed sketches of personal quirks. Sendak challenged himself by creating a stand-alone sketch at the top right of a page, then made sure to complete the unfolding, improvised story before a piece of classical music had ended (Mozart was his No. 1 musical). hero).
That would only be cute if it weren’t for the stunningly sharp aesthetics and creativity of the drawn-out exercises, which often satirized high society.
Seeing these drawings and paintings up close proves how unique they are, as every square inch is bursting with mischievous detail and personality. Sendak resisted a signature style, but at every stage you get a strong sense of his disdain for the boring world of adults. His first encounter with Disney and Mickey Mouse was life-changing (in 1940s “Fantasia”) and his talking animals were actually self-portraits, he admits in a quote plastered on a gallery wall.
“He seemed to create a new visual style for each project, like Madonna,” DAM director Christoph Heinrich said at an opening event last week.
Sendak was as prolific as he was groundbreaking, and yet his incredible, shaded attention to detail seems to defy the pace of the production – which includes not just illustrations, but sets for operas and theater productions, and traditional portraits. Oversized props from the productions and from Spike Jonze’s 2009 adaptation of “Where the Wild Things Are” provide a kid-friendly element, as does the reading room. That stop halfway through the exhibition shows the author’s out-of-print books and recreates a virtual view from his home.
Even if you grew up during Sendak’s mid-20th century heyday, you’re unlikely to be familiar with the scope here, including cartoons and artist collaborations on TV and film. He certainly did not spare his genius, even if the specific project did not receive the same attention as other works.
It’s definitely a lot of text and small, densely spaced frames. But it brilliantly evokes the humanity Sendak injected into his work, tracking the uncertainty of life and the impending finale of death, as well as the joy of discovery, the childlike nature of happiness and the slippery, wordless emotion that we feel when we are confronted with all of it.