Maurice Sendak is best known as a children’s book author and illustrator, but his timeless works speak to adults, too.
He’s the famous artist behind the classic 1963 children’s book “Where the Wild Things Are,” with its little boy in his onesie with the tail and crown who gallantly cavorts with a conga line of various, endearing and toothy monsters.
“Sendak would have said I don’t write for kids,” said Christoph Heinrich, the Frederick and Jan Mayer director of the Denver Art Museum. “I write because a story comes to me or I have some idea I want to put on paper and do the drawings for it. He always said he never intentionally wrote for children. Maybe that makes these books for kids because he takes them seriously as readers and makes it interesting for us as adults.”
The new exhibit “Wild Things: The Art of Maurice Sendak” explores the life and career of Sendak, who died at 83 in 2012. Co-organized by the Denver Art Museum and the Columbus Museum of Art in partnership with The Maurice Sendak Foundation, the show is up at the museum through Feb. 17.
Sendak’s award-winning book was an immediate hit, though of course there were naysayers who worried it was too scary for kids.
“And kids would love it. They’d say this is not scary,” Heinrich said. “That happened with several of his books. People said you can’t do this with kids. But Sendak always knew what he wanted to do and didn’t try to take the easy road. That made him an artist.”
“Wild Things” went on to be translated into more than 40 languages and reprinted more than 40 million times, and was followed by other award-winning books: “In the Night Kitchen,” “Outside Over There” and “Nutshell Library.” Altogether, Sendak created illustrations for more than 100 books and wrote and illustrated more than 20 of his own.
“He deals with life and love and belonging and the longing for friendship and with death. Several of his books touch on the great equalizer of death,” said Heinrich, the exhibit’s co-curator. “They are really about resilience and how to survive, being strong, courageous, taming the beast. That’s something that is reassuring, not just for kids, but adults. And the way it’s done is exquisitely beautiful.”
The new show features about 450 works that cover the lifespan and work of Sendak, including sketches, art, storyboards and paintings. The earliest piece is a Mickey Mouse painting he did as a kid — Sendak felt a strong bond to the Disney character due to being born at the same time as the mouse, and at one point was the largest Mickey Mouse collector.
The exhibit’s largest piece is the 14-foot-tall goose that Sendak created for an obscure Mozart opera, “L’oca del Cairo ((The Goose of Cairo).” Beyond his children’s books, Sendak also was a music lover who always wanted to be a musician and prized Mozart the composer above all else. His dream came true around 1980, when he was invited by various companies to contribute his costume and set designs to such operas and ballets as Mozart’s “The Magic Flute,” Leoš Janácek’s “The Cunning Little Vixen” and Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker,” among others.
“He created a new visual language for every project,” Heinrich said. “You would think an illustrator wants to create his or her own personal style and cast different content in that style. What he’s doing, and you can follow this in the show, is inventing a new style or visual language for every project. I don’t use this word often — he’s a genius.”
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