ART REVIEW : A Story of Children’s Books : Long Beach Show Illustrates How Movements Live Happily Ever After

You can tell the summer doldrums are upon us when this column stoops to reviewing photocopied book illustrations.

Actually, it isn’t as bad as it sounds. Mechanically reproduced book illustrations are already at one remove from the hand-drawn or painted originals, and even photocopies of the exquisite illustrations in 19th- and 20th-Century editions of children’s literature reveal the influence of such turn-of-the-century art movements as Art Nouveau and Symbolism.

Fortunately, “Once Upon a Time . . . The Fantastic Tradition in Children’s Book Illustration,” at the FHP Hippodrome Gallery in Long Beach through July 1, also includes a sampling of vintage volumes.

With their decorated covers and ornamental page borders, these books recall a pre-TV, pre-video game era when a beloved book was a best friend, storyteller, moral guide, art gallery and spur to imaginative play.

On the gallery walls are row upon row of crisp color reproductions of color plates from editions of “Aesop’s Fables,” folk and fairy tales, nursery rhymes and such children’s classics as Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” illustrated by such giants of the field as Arthur Rackham, Edmund Dulac, Kay Nielson and Walter Crane.

Disconcertingly, the photocopies are all same size, homogenizing the idiosyncratic formats of the originals.

Emphasizing the “fantastic” side of children’s book art, the show is organized by book or fable title, rather than by artist, facilitating comparisons of the same episode.

Looking at six versions of the Mad Hatter’s tea party in “Alice in Wonderland,” beginning with the original John Tenniel illustration from 1865, you can see how key features of the scene (and of Tenniel’s witty style) were dropped, de-emphasized or exaggerated by other artists.

In Tenniel’s pen-and-ink version, Alice (feeling pretty fed up by now and extremely dubious about the many extra place settings at the table) slouches crossly in her seat. The White Rabbit looks typically alert, and the Dormouse sleeps while the Hatter harangues everybody.

In a version from 1907--the year “Alice’s” copyright expired, permitting competing editions illustrated by other artists--Rackham retains all the essentials, including the forlorn row of unused teacups, but his Alice is expressionless. A 1907 version in Charles Robinson’s cloying style focuses on a gaudily decorated tea set.

Gwynnedd Hudson’s aggressively colorful 1922 version of the scene lacks the strained and straitened quality of the original. She gives the Hatter and the Rabbit farcically extreme expressions, adds cute currant buns and a pink frosted cake to the table and leaves out Alice altogether.

But the best children’s book illustrations from the “golden age” (roughly, 1850-1930) are a treat. While today’s illustrators (some of whom are represented in the show) work in an era when the art world does not embrace storytelling through drawn and painted imagery, the situation was just the opposite in Victorian and Edwardian Britain.

It is no coincidence that the center of children’s publishing was also the home of the Arts and Crafts movement, Art Nouveau draftsman Aubrey Beardsley and Pre-Raphaelite painting.

Capitalizing on dissatisfaction with the ugly and soulless products of the Machine Age and a hankering for the romanticized ideals of Europe’s medieval past, several art movements provided the perfect launching pad for imaginative children’s art.

The English Arts and Crafts movement, which dates from the early 1860s, emphasized the beauty of uncluttered designs of medieval origin and the value of intensive handwork. Founder William Morris presided over a factory producing furniture, fabrics, wallpapers and stained glass that broke away from the fussy Victorian standard.

In the 1890s, Symbolist painters and poets turned away from Realist and Impressionist depictions of the visible world to explore an interior realm of mystical ideas. Some Symbolist artists patterned their canvases with flat areas of non-naturalistic color combinations to evoke sensory qualities, while others retained a realistic style but delved into religious and mythological themes.

The sinuous line and fantastic forms of Art Nouveau, which flourished in the latter half of the 19th Century through World War II, borrowed from such diverse sources as Byzantine, Celtic, Egyptian, Gothic and Japanese art. Illustrators used these influences in everything from costume details (fabric patterns, hats, the linear treatment of folds of cloth) to architecture and landscape motifs.

Walter Crane was a leading figure of the English Art Nouveau. A designer of textiles and wallpaper as well as a book illustrator and cartoonist for Socialist periodicals, Crane drew on many sources for his children’s illustrations.

The girl in a sprigged red dress hanging out a yellow sheet to dry in Crane’s 1866 illustration for “Sing a Song of Sixpence” evokes the vivid color combinations of Morris’ textiles. The delicate reeds and the fan on which “The Fox and the Crane” verse is inscribed in Crane’s illustration for an 1886 edition of “Aesop’s Fables” probably derives from Crane’s study of Japanese prints.

Nielsen’s delicate illustrations for “East of the Sun and West of the Moon: Old Tales From the North” from 1914 evoke a gnarled and mysterious fantasy world. In Rackham’s version of “Hey! Diddle Diddle!” from a 1913 Mother Goose book, the fiddle-playing cat wears billowing trousers and an obi sash. The dark silhouette of a cypress tree adds pathos--and a memory of Vincent van Gogh’s emotional evocations of nature--to Dulac’s 1910 illustration of Beauty comforting the Beast.

If one image could sum up the artistry of the entire golden age, it might be Anne Anderson’s undated cover art for “The Old Mother Goose Nursery Rhyme Book,” showing Mother Goose decked out in a voluminous green-and-yellow striped skirt, black-and-tan checkerboard blouse with huge puffed cuffs and a Pilgrim hat. Her slightly sinister smile belies the comforting amplitude and retro charm of her outfit, creating the perfect mix of sugar and spice.

Although some of the illustrations in the show are more saccharine and sentimental, they generally demonstrate a subtle and creative sense of color and form largely absent in today’s illustrations. Despite the care lavished on details that keep viewers poring over a single illustration, most of the artists resisted making scenes too literal.

Maxfield Parrish is the major exception to this rule. In his hands, fantasy turns to kitsch, most often by drenching unimaginatively rendered scenes in a sickening yellow light.

Can it be coincidental that Parrish is the only artist in the show who is represented by advertisements based on characters from children’s stories? You could say he was ahead of his time.

* “Once Upon a Time . . . The Fantastic Tradition in Children’s Book Illustration,” through July 1 at the Hippodrome Galleries of FHP Healthcare, 628 Alamitos Ave., Long Beach. Hours: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday. Free. (310) 432-8431.