
Curators, critics and collegians declare they know the difference between an artist and an illustrator. Often it is clear, but I am not always so sure.
For decades, they described Norman Rockwell as only an illustrator. As I walked through a hotel lobby shortly after I returned from Vietnam, I saw a Rockwell painting with a thousand dollar price tag, so low it now sometimes raises doubts in my mind. I like Rockwell so much Alie once gave me a book featuring all his Saturday Evening Post covers. That painting haunts me; I didn’t have a thousand dollars and did not foresee his rise to artistic fame; today the painting is worth millions.
We are pleased – and perhaps astonished – to find the relatively small Columbus Museum of Art able to present the one-of-a-kind U.S. exhibit of the Raphael cartoons for tapestries and more recently the first retrospective of Maurice Sendak’s work since his 2012 death.
We were long past our childhoods and did not have children when Sendak’s fabulously successful 1963 book Where The Wild Things Are was published. I was aware, however, of some of the more famous paintings from that book, and interested to see the CMOA exhibit.
In 2009, Sendak founded the Sendak Fellowship with the stated goal to help picture book artists to create work that is not vapid or stupid but original; work that excites and incites. Illustration is like dance; it should move like—and to—music.
My sense is the curator is making the case that Sendak is a true artist, not a mere illustrator. I still do not know the definitive answer to that question. Sendak’s goal above speaks of illustration, but it sounds like art to me.
I enjoyed the exhibit, bought a copy of the book and read it before giving it to a five-year-old friend, a wild thing himself.
Click on images to enlarge.










What do you think?







Date of our visit: 28 Dec 22
Apologies for the photos marred by the glare of the glass protecting the originals.