In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • David Wiesner and the Art of Wordless Storytelling by Eik Kahng et al
  • Claudia Söffner
DAVID WIESNER AND THE ART OF WORDLESS STORYTELLING.
By Eik Kahng, Ellen J. Keiter, Katherine Roeder, and David Wiesner.
Yale University Press, 2017, 109 pages.
ISBN: 978-0-3002-2601-0

This carefully produced volume in landscape format was published in 2017 to accompany multi-award-winning author-illustrator David Wiesner’s first comprehensive exhibition, curated at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art (SBMA) in collaboration with the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art. The exhibition catalog presents a wide range of high-quality reproductions of illustrations taken mostly from Wiesner’s books, yet it also includes several smaller pictures of artwork, comic strips, books, and films that influenced him. In the first section of the catalog, three articles offer a deeper insight into the creative process of the well-loved books Wiesner has created.

The introductory article by the SBMA’s assistant director and chief curator, Eik Kahng, provides some general background information to the museum and its connection to children’s book illustration. Kahng points out that Wiesner’s retrospective is a first for the museum insofar as it “seeks to contextualize the work of a noted, so-called ‘children’s book illustrator’ in the greater art-historical context.” The SBMA’s aim of the exhibition and catalog was not merely to offer an introduction to the oeuvre of one of the most important US children’s book artists, but also to shed some light on the arduous and time-consuming process he employs to achieve his “seemingly effortless effect of visual wit.”

This short introduction is followed by an informative and entertaining interview between Eik Kahng, Ellen Keiter (chief curator at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art), and David Wiesner. With their wide-ranging questions, the two curators invite Wiesner to discuss various artists, genres, and media that have left a mark on his imagination. The influences of comic artists such as Moebius and George Herriman, illustrators like Edward Gorey and Lynd Ward, surrealist painters such as Dalí, and films, in particular Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, can easily be detected when studying his paintings. In addition, the artist also delivers a large array of enlightening details about his work process. He elaborates on the research he does for his stories and on how he uses 3-D models, book dummies, and an abundance of sketches and drawing to visualize his stories first. Asked about his preference for working with watercolors, he describes how this medium’s spontaneity, transparency, and subtlety attract him. Along the way, readers also learn how [End Page 81] his childhood fascination with drawing and sequential art increased during his formal art schooling and resulted in his particular love for visual storytelling—with and without words.

Keeping Wiesner’s words in mind, Katherine Roeder’s key article, “The Art of Wordless Storytelling,” might have more aptly been named “The Art of Visual Storytelling,” because even though the artist is celebrated as a creator of wordless picturebooks, about half of his creative output is, in fact, not completely wordless. However, Roeder—a university professor who specializes in comics, picturebooks, and graphic novels, within the wider range of “mass culture and modernism in the American tradition”—states that his wordless works are the most challenging ones for the readers, who have both the chance and the task to add their own voice and their subjective interpretation of the pictures. Moreover, it is apparent that even in his stories that include text, the visual elements are the ones driving the narrative momentum. Analyzing his published works in chronological order, Roeder provides additional information on his varied influences and offers a short summary of each story for those who have not (yet) read some of his books. In addition, she points out the connections between and peculiarities of each work within the complete body of Wiesner’s artwork. Starting with his first solo work, Free Fall, published in 1990—which she places in the tradition of other boy-in-bed-dream-adventures, such as Winsor McKay’s Little Nemo stories and Maurice Sendak’s...

pdf

Share