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Where the Wild Things Are
Maurice Sendak in His Own Words and Pictures, a multi media exhibit about the life-long art of Maurice Sendak on display at the Lancaster Museum of Art.
Toronto Public Library celebrates 50th anniversary of "Where the Wild Things Are" letsgoflyakiteuptothehighestheight.blogspot.ca/2016/01/wh...
From a NYT photo from 1963
Another hero in my pantheon of interesting people. As an artist Maurice was as good as any great master. His stuff accessed a weirdness and his "Children's" stories were morally ambiguous and unfiltered. Tomi Ungerer was a influence and Maurice never wrote cutesy, sweet characters for children. Like Tomi he thought children were smart and could handle real stories. In fact the world rarely serves up nice stories. It's complex and they are capable of letting them sort things out. Parents who read his books enjoy them as much as children as the themes are universal and very human.
Maurice was a curmudgeon...or at least had a curmudgeon persona. He once reportedly said that a school class wrote him letters about one of his books and the only letter he really respected was the one from the student who didn't like it. By all accounts he was a gentlemen and very good with children.
His artwork is so beautiful. Children's books and comic books and advertising (Where he started) are not considered art. It is considered craft at best. Something that is sold out to make money. In fact successful artist like Norman Rockwell and Robert Indiana are shunned as sell-outs, and un-creative by the art world. There are no awards or museums for illustrators - but one look at an original Rockwell piece and you can see he was a great master - even if he didn't think so. Maurice Sendak's art is also magnificent. His skyline of NYC rendered in bottles and kitchen utensils is a masterpiece worthy of as much praise as they great masters.
Maurice also brings the complexity of real life to his works. He was traumatized by the holocaust, as he was from European-Jewish ancestry. But the trauma came from his parents who routinely invoked that he should be more grateful as his relatives were being rounded up in Europe. He claimed that the monsters in "Where the Wild Things Are" are his aunts and uncles who would tell this to a child. Clearly they suffered a lot of trauma from persecution and poor Maurice, as a small kid bore the brunt of their fears. He was just an American kid trying to get by like all kids.
He additionally had an older brother, who by all accounts was the athletic, outgoing guy, and a shepherd to Maurice. His older brother was killed by a car while playing with Maurice. He carried a lot of anxiety and trauma through his life, that shows up in his art and stories. The Holocaust, to me, while well known in America, is not as horrific to most people as it should be. American's seemed to want to get on with things after the war and kind of just let it go. This probably in no small part because most Americans had racist and antisemetic views that they'd admit in public. Unfortunately this is on the rise again today. This is why I'll never celebrate someone like Werner Von Braun. Brilliant, but clearly he was a Nazi who utilized slave labor and was not just surviving in the times of the Nazis. He was a high level person. And even if he was doing it just to survive, he certainly utilized his position and lived well under it. We could have gotten to the moon and created the powerful rockets without him. There are lots of Americans and others in the world who would have figured this stuff out without being Nazis.
Maurice was also gay in a time where it was dangerous and could ruin you. If you had anxiety already, imagine having this fear, which should not even be a fear, hanging over your head. He navigated this world, and from what I've read he had a fulfilling, long-term relationship till his death in 2022.
Every interview I've heard with him, he is a curmudgeon, a bit of a mensch. But I always thought "I would so much love to buy him lunch and sit and just talk with him. He is another national treasure, while beloved for his books is not celebrated enough for his art or books. He would eschew the accolades but the world is so much better a place for people like Maurice. Peace.