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"Roeder, Katherine"
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Whistler in watercolor : lovely little games
For renowned artist James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903), watercolor was the medium through which he reinvented himself in the 1880s and painted his way into posterity. No one was more smitten with Whistler and his works than Gilded Age industrialist Charles Lang Freer, who amassed the world's largest collection of watercolors by the artist and included them in his bequest to the Smithsonian in 1906. Freer's collection comprises more than fifty examples of Whistler's watercolors, yet these works have never left the confines of the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. This landmark book takes a fresh look at the exhibition and reception of Whistler's watercolors in Britain and the United States and provides a new scientific analysis of his materials and techniques, from the papers he used to the pigments he chose.
Book
Wide Awake in Slumberland
Cartoonist Winsor McCay (1869-1934) is rightfully celebrated for the skillful draftmanship and inventive design sense he displayed in the comic stripsLittle Nemo in SlumberlandandDream of the Rarebit Fiend. McCay crafted narratives of anticipation, abundance, and unfulfilled longing. This book explores McCay's interest in dream imagery in relation to the larger preoccupation with fantasy that dominated the popular culture of early twentieth-century urban America.
McCay's role as a pioneer of early comics has been documented; yet, no existing study approaches him and his work from an art historical perspective, giving close readings of individual artworks while situating his output within the larger visual culture and the rise of modernism. From circus posters and vaudeville skits to department store window displays and amusement park rides, McCay found fantastical inspiration in New York City's burgeoning entertainment and retail districts.Wide Awake in Slumberlandconnects McCay's work to relevant children's literature, advertising, architecture, and motion pictures in order to demonstrate the artist's sophisticated blending and remixing of multiple forms from mass culture.
Studying this interconnection in McCay's work and, by extension, the work of other early twentieth-century cartoonists, Roeder traces the web of relationships connecting fantasy, leisure, and consumption. Readings of McCay's drawings and the eighty-one black and white and color illustrations reveal a man who was both a ready participant and an incisive critic of the rising culture of fantasy and consumerism.
eBook
Seeing Inside-out in the Funny Pages
Discusses the use of unusual points of view by cartoon artists as a means of drawing in the viewer to the narrative space. The author discusses the legacy of American cartoonist Winsor McCay (1867-1934) highlighting his use of a range of visual angles to reflect on the city, discusses the artist's influence on the American cartoonists Frank King (1883-1969) and Chris Ware (b.1967) noting their emphasis on linearity, use of flat areas of colour, and architectural approach to page composition, and contrasts their differing representations of the theme of childhood. She concludes by arguing that both King and Ware push the limits of the comic strip format by conveying the passage of time in non-traditional ways, highlighting their exploitation of the architectural qualities of the comic-strip format.
Journal Article
Commentaries : seeing inside-out in the funny pages
Although the comic strip ostensibly appears to be a medium allowing little room for artistic innovation, artists such as Winsor McCay, Frank King, and Chris Ware have made use of unusual visual angles and composition techniques in their comics.
Journal Article
Picturing Boyhood
On October 15, 1905, Winsor McCay introduced readers of theNew York HeraldtoLittle Nemo in Slumberland. In the serial’s debut, and in the weeks to follow, Nemo repeatedly attempted to reach the enchanted kingdom of Slumberland, only to have the journey preempted when he awakened and found himself safely at home in his bed. It was an ideal subject for a weekly comic in that the curtailed narrative induced readers to purchase the next installment. Such literature also taught its young readers an appreciation for the pleasures of both fantasy and delayed gratification. It is well established that
Book Chapter
Strategies and Techniques of the Advertiser
Writing in 1907, a Boston journalist delighted in describing how seasonal decorations transformed a local department store, noting that “artistic decorators and electricians have been engaged more than a week in completing a transformation which makes the interior of Gilchrist Company’s great store look like a dream-view of fairy land.”¹ As I discussed in earlier chapters, fantasy and whimsy were strategically deployed throughout the commercial environment of the early twentieth century—in department stores, world’s fairs, amusement parks, and within the pages of the funny papers, as a way of enticing casual onlookers and cultivating consumer desire. This delicate marriage
Book Chapter
The Marriage of Humor and Anxiety
Whereas the exuberant fantasia that isLittle Nemo in Slumberlandarguably contributed to the rising consumerist aesthetic, McCay explored the darker side of dreaming inDream of the Rarebit Fiend. Directed at a sophisticated, adult audience, each comic features an anonymous person caught in a nightmare induced by overindulgence. As inLittle Nemo, every episode ends the same way, with the protagonist awake in bed in the final frame, suddenly aware that the preceding scenes were but a dream. Whereas Nemo occasionally finds himself in difficult positions in his dreams, the personal danger does not compare to that of the
Book Chapter
Exploding Boys and Hungry Girls
Winsor McCay is best known to contemporary audiences as the artist responsible forLittle Nemo in SlumberlandandDream of the Rarebit Fiend, his two longest-running and most widely reproduced comic strips. However, McCay’s first truly successful weekly series for theNew York Heraldwas a comic strip calledLittle Sammy Sneeze, which debuted on July 24, 1904. The newspaper’s art department had recruited McCay less than a year prior, in the fall of 1903. Upon his move to New York, McCay’s first efforts for the company included editorial cartoons and news illustrations for both theHeraldand theNew
Book Chapter
Popular Amusement for All
As Little Nemo slumbers he descends into a world rife with all manner of beasts, from lions and tigers to elephants and giraffes. He visits the upside down funhouse of Befuddle Hall, with its distorting mirrors and trick staircases. He encounters the endlessly receding columns of King Morpheus’s palace. As one writer described it in 1907, “His imaginary geography, with its startling fauna and flora and the strange inhabitants possess such a strange, logical coherence in their topsy-turviness as to almost convince you that somewhere they really exist.”¹ And yet, despite its otherworldliness, the fantastic landscapes and exotic animals of
Book Chapter