We welcome you at One Fine Show, where the Observer highlights an exhibit that just opened at a museum outside of New York City, a place we know and love is already getting a lot of attention.
As a Millennial, I fear what future history books will say about my generation. That we could not buy homes because we used the money we had to make avocado bread. That we loved Barack Obama despite his open contempt. And that, grown children that we are, is a cultural product that best represents the 2009 film Where the Wild Things Arenot only written by Dave Eggers and directed by Spike Jonze but also scored by Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. I have never seen it.
Some of this cursed generation now have children of their own, and those in Denver can bring them to “Wild Things: The Art of Maurice Sendak,” an exhibit that just opened at the Denver Art Museum celebrating the author and illustrator's frenzy. offers to introduce Gen Alpha to an artist who is loved by their parents and grandparents. The exhibition includes paintings, drawings and sketches from Sendak's little-known work as a stage designer and theater producer such as The Magic Flute again The Nutcrackerwith important loans from that foundation of works on paper, the Morgan Library, where Sendak himself (1928-2012) sometimes read the work of William Blake (1757-1827).
This exhibition offers enough of Sendak's work in process that you can feel the influence of other artists he likes, among them Philipp Otto Runge (1777-1810) and Carl Wilhelm Kolbe (1757/59-1835), as well as the work of this Polish. The emigre feels closer to these loving German ancestors than he feels in the work of Dr. Seuss. In one of his lesser-known books, Hello Milli (1988), Sendak revived the Brothers Grimm's fairy tale, taken from a letter Wilhelm wrote to a little girl in 1816.
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But if you really like hits, this show contains the ultimate masterpiece Where the Wild Things Are (1963), in watercolor, ink and graphite on paper. The last page that shows Max coming home from his parties to eat his dinner is great. The room looks normal compared to everything he's seen and the wild things, but is it really? The bed has unusual proportions and the intersecting shadows, which are very important among other scenes, are now woven throughout. Its generality is only superficial, like Vincent van Gogh's painting of his bedroom.
His line often owes something to Winsor McCay's “Little Nemo in Slumberland,” which is honored in title and design throughout. In the Night Kitchen (1970). Its flexibility, however, is often shown here. Also on display are realistic ink drawings of Higglety Pigglety Pop! Or There Must Be More To Life (1967), in which a pampered but dissatisfied terrier packs a suitcase and hits the road. He joins Sendak's other children, animals and monsters who use props or costumes to emphasize deeper truths. “Obviously, I have one theme,” Sendak said Rolling Stone in 1976. Perhaps, but the art styles were diverse, energetic and wildly creative.
“Wild Things: The Art of Maurice Sendak” is on view at the Denver Art Museum through February 17, 2025.
