The Wonderful Art of Oz
at The Eric Carle Museum
of Picture Book Art,
Amherst, Massachusetts.
July 11, 2006-October 22, 2006
William Wallace Denslow’s illustrations for The Wonderful
Wizard of Oz (1900)
bleed pictures across full pages and taunt the frame with
chiseled, lacy, intervening images. His pen led him, at the turn
of the twentieth century, to places other children’s
illustrators wouldn’t go. So did his liking for asymmetry
and for the unfettered use of color at a time when the
children’s genre did less with little.
The sardonic wit of Denslow—a sometime dandy and hard
drinker—shod the doleful Tin Woodman with spats (look
closely) and gave the important oilcan double duty as a
cocktail glass. He was brave enough to make Dorothy, the
heroine, appear ugly. He had the gall to compete
with the author himself on many a page of Oz,
where a curtain of fibrous lines and drenching hues would
descend to swaddle L. Frank Baum’s words. Denslow may need
no defending now, even though for years American librarians
caviled at his moral and stylistic license.
In
Michael Patrick
Hearn’s show at the Carle Museum in
Amherst, Denslow’s pictures remained bold as ever, yet now
with strange new bedfellows on hand: Oz disciples, Oz
dissenters. Among those, Andy Warhol’s 1981 silkscreen mug
shot of a ripsnorting Margaret Hamilton as the Wicked Witch
of the West from the 1939 movie stood out. With fat black
marks Warhol circled and underlined elements of