When I was little I did not like that widely beloved picture book, “Where the Wild Things Are.” To be quite honest, it scared me. But I hereby declare that I have gotten a little braver than my five-year-old self. Faced with several models of Maurice Sendak’s creatures and a life-sized version of my childhood anxiety at the New York Jewish Museum’s exhibition of the Jewish author/illustrator’s work, I discovered that fear is as deliberate as it is effective in the world of Sendak’s illustrations.
The child of Polish-Jewish immigrants, Sendak (1928 -) has enjoyed a long history of illustration. On the heels of his high school graduation, the young artist’s illustrations were published in the textbook, “Atomics for the Millions.” After brief work as a window-dresser for F.A.O Schwartz and an illustrator for other authors, Sendak launched his own career.
Through the 1950s and 60s, Sendak worked prolifically on his own projects, gaining a substantial group of devotees. 1963 marked the publication of his celebrated picture book, “Where the Wild Things Are,” which Sendak converted into an opera in 1979. He then went on to do stage design for “The Nutcracker” in 1983. His angst-ridden quality of his work suggests a certain kind of inherited fear that the exhibit interprets as relating to the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust.
The Jewish Museum elucidates the origins of various representations that Sendak incorporates into his illustrations. The title creatures of “Where the Wild Things Are” are actually imaginings of the effusive Eastern European relatives who would drop by Sendak’s childhood home and never seem to leave.
The exhibit consists of three thematically arranged rooms. The first acquaints viewers with those of Sendak’s works that are distinctly Jewish in origin, from the subtext of “Where the Wild Things Are,” about Jewish family tensions, to the illustrations for famed Yiddish writer Isaac Bashevis Singer’s “Zlateh the Goat and Other Stories.” Another room contains Sendak’s illustrations of several notable German folk stories, which are explained by the curators in light of the Holocaust. Sandwiched between the two disparate and somber rooms is yet another, which deals with Sendak’s more urban works, from the “Rosie” series to “In the Night Kitchen” and some of the Holocaust imagery that serves as the subtext of those works.
Perhaps the most compelling insight into the importance of Sendak’s work lies in the exhibit’s fourth exhibition hall, which is devoted entirely to the artist’s illustration for “Brundibar,” a Czech opera that had been performed in Terezin. Sendak’’s “Brundibar,” (2003) though, is a collaboration between himself and playwright Tony Kushner. It is both a picture book and an opera, and is based on the allegory that became a powerful symbol of resistance for the inmates of Terezin. The exhibition also puts a great deal of emphasis on Sendak’s original designs, which depict Brundibar (the tale’s villain) as strongly resembling Adolf Hitler.
Despite the fascinating content of the exhibit, its omissions and casual inclusions are what most piqued my interest. Though it does create an easily approachable exhibit, the thematic organization also fragments the narrative of Sendak’s life and oeuvre. It was not until I decided to take a second walk-through that I realized that the chronology was jumbled. Considering them chronologically, Sendak’s subjects regularly change between the themes of German folk stories, sentimental urbanism, and the Jewish experience. This fact complicates the thematic method, which can mistakenly lead viewers to assume that, like Picasso, Sendak produced works that fall into temporal and thematic periods. The multifaceted, coterminous nature of Sendak’s works only amplifies their power.
At the same time, however, his art is certainly infused with recurring themes and images, which the exhibit does a remarkable job of underscoring. Through this exhibit, we learn that the same author who felt a special tie with American icon Mickey Mouse, with whom he shares a birth year also worked with Bashevis Singer on a translation of Yiddish folk tales, in a collection that bears witness to the eclectic nature of the Jewish experience/s.
The Jewish Museum successfully highlights the Sendak beyond “Really Rosie,” with the final segment of the exhibition comprising a powerful materialization of the historical catastrophes that informed his work. Sendak’s application of both traditional and Hitlerian images of iniquity in “Brundibar” create an icon that would undoubtedly have been much more frightening to my five-year-old-self than the hairy monsters of “Where the Wild Things Are” ever were.
