Yesterday I went to the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst, MA, both to visit my dear friend and erstwhile office wizard techmaster, Emily Prabhaker, and also to see their dynamite exhibit of the art of Ludwig Bemelmans (Madeline). You must see it if you care at all about 20th c. picture book art. Among other things, what could sometimes seem to me occasionally dashed off and unresolved in Bemelmans work is, upon closer inspection, highly controlled yet still liberated in a Dufy-esque MittelEuropean way. Merely to examine the handling of the paint and the varying viscosities was a revelation of his planning and control (on a printed page much of this is lost). My favorite--besides seeing Emily--was the assortment of originals featuring Madeline and her nemesis-BFF, Pepito, the son of the Spanish Ambassador--the Bad Hat. Pepitos very hat is on display too (is it a Catalan style, I wonder?), with its broad dark-brown or black brim, its upturned-flowerpot shape, and two red boleros, one at the peak and one at the brim. It makes me remember that, in the annals of my own reading life, the Bad Hat was probably the first character in literature that I had a boy-crush on. I still do.
Posted on: Sat, 24 Jan 2015 13:06:20 +0000