There are already in the gestures and expressions of the grandparents and small children in that earliest work, as well as in the claustrophobic sense of Jewish family solidarity he there projects, a preview of the delicate and more universal portrayal of childhood happiness and security Sendak began to create six years later for Else Holmelund Minarik’s five Little Bear books. What is wholly original in Sendak has been so since his first rather pedestrian drawings (not exhibited in the current show) for a little-known work published by the United Synagogue Commission on Jewish Education, Good Shabbos, Everybody (1951): his uncanny ability to make palpable the emotional reality of any tale, the atmosphere in which its child and adult characters exist, and the psychological spark of life which at once unites and separates each of them. On the contrary, it is high tribute to an illustrator who, from the outset of his career, has steadily rated inner content above self-indulgent graphic flamboyance. Given our valuation of originality, such a prelude may appear to derogate the artist’s work.
Marking the artist’s gift to that institution of the bulk of his original drawings, and spanning the whole of Sendak’s career to date-from his first earnest efforts for Marcel Ayme’s The Wonderful Farm (1951) to several faultless drawings from his latest picture book, In the Night Kitchen (1970)-the work exhibited comprises a moving record of the slow mastery of style, of several styles, of any style in fact, that happened to serve the Sendak work at hand. Rosenbach Foundation in Philadelphia is how little originality of style counts in the evaluation of this master illustrator’s art. Perhaps the most refreshing impression one took from the recent exhibition of “The Art of Maurice Sendak” (December 6, 1970-March 28, 1971) at the Philip H. I clocked it I knew that to be original was what it was all about.” She held this up and said it was the best because it was original. In a recent profile of Louise Nevelson in the Sunday Times Magazine, the sculptor speaks of her earliest encouragement by an art teacher in grade school: “.
THE QUALITY OF ORIGINALITY is often strained in our judgments of artists, be they painters, sculptors or illustrators of children’s books.
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