What Makes A Van Gogh A Van Gogh by Robert Muhlberger

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Series of What Makes A.... A...." introduces young readers to a series of famous artists. For this post I will review one of the books in this series, What Makes A Van Gogh A Van Gogh?.

Each book in the series follows a similar format, beginning with an introduction to the artist. This introduction provides some background information about the artist's early life.

In What Makes A Van Gogh, readers learn that Vincent Van Gogh was a person who "inherited a deep respect for humanity" from his minister father, while his passion for art and nature came from his mother. Van Gogh was a hard-working student who studied a number of languages. But school was not his forte and he quit when he was sixteen. Van Gogh worked in an art gallery, as a school teachers and then a minister. But eventually Van Gogh came to believe that he was called to be an artist.

What Makes A Van Gogh follows Vincent's artistic journey from its beginnings in 1885 when he painted his first masterpiece. This painting was of a group of peasants eating their dinner of potatoes.  He used his friends, the DeGroots making many sketches before finally paint the larger portrait. From Holland, Van Gogh traveled to Antwerp and then on to Paris where his brother Theo lived. One of the first people Van Gogh met in Paris was the owner of an art supply shop, Julien Tanguy. Their friendship was to prove an important influence on Van Gogh and his art. It was probably due to the Through Tanguy, Van Gogh formed a friendship with fellow artist Paul Signac, who painted with bright colours and used a new technique called pointillism. Although Van Gogh never really adopted pointillism, he did begin to use brighter colours. He painted more than twenty self-portraits during his time in Paris.

In 1888, Van Gogh moved to the town Arles in southern France. This was to be the most productive time of his life, a period where he painted his famous sunflower canvases.  What Makes A Van Gogh explores the influences on Van Gogh's art and technique, which scenes and subjects attracted his interest, and some of the different techniques he used to create his beautiful paintings. Muhlberger devotes a few pages to Van Gogh's famous painting, Starry Night, exploring the some of the features of the painting.

Like the other books in the series, this book ends with a section that uses the title of the book to summarize the special attributes of Van Gogh's art and technique. Although these books are out of print now, they are worth obtaining from your local library or through interlibrary loan. They provide young readers with many interesting facts about the artist, their techniques and paintings.

Book Details:

What Makes A Van Gogh A Van Gogh by Robert Muhlberger
New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Viking Press    1993
49 pp.

It Began With A Page by Kyo Maclear

Even as a small child, Gyo Fujikawa loved to draw. At the young age of five, she may not have yet known what she wanted to be but she knew she loved colours, line and "the feel of the pencil in her hand."

Gyo didn't have many friends when she was young and she didn't seem to be much noticed either. When her parents moved to a small fishing village near San Pedro, California, Gyo began to thrive. Although she still struggled socially at school, her beautiful drawings were noticed by two of her teachers, Miss Cole and Miss Blum.

Because Gyo's family was not well off, continuing school was not an option but Miss Cole found money to pay for her schooling. So Gyo attended art school in Los Angeles. It was unusual in 1925 for a woman and an Asian American to attend college but Gyo was determined.

She decided to continue her studies in Japan. When she returned to America, Gyo created murals and art for magazine. In 1942, with America at war with Japan, Gyo was forced to stay on the East Coast while her family were forced to leave their home on the West Coast and sent to a prison camp. All Japanese were considered enemies, even if they were born in America as Gyo was. This time was a period of great sadness for Gyo and she found it difficult to create art.

When the war was over, Gyo began drawing in earnest again, this time with the intention of having books send a message. A book featuring babies from different races was initially rejected by the publishers but Gyo insisted that they needed to break the rules. She remembered all the times she felt unwelcome as a Japanese American. Her book was published and the stage was set for Gyo to make more art like this.

Discussion

Gyo's are on her book Fairy Tales and Fables

Few people know about Gyo Fujikawa, a ground-breaking Asian American woman artist. Gyo  was born in 1908 to Hizoko and Yu Fujikawa. Interested in art at an early age, Gyo received a scholarship to study at the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles. She became part of the Nisei artist community in that city, that is young people of Japanese ancestry who were born in America to Japanese citizens who had come to the country. After completing her studies at Chouinard, Gyo spent a year travelling in Japan studying traditional art making techniques. She returned  to America to work at Chouinard in 1933, staying until 1937.  Gyo also began working at Walt Disney Studios in 1933, eventually moving in 1941 to New York City to work in the studio there.

With the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941, America declared war against Japan and all Japanese living in America were considered enemy aliens. Gyo's family did not escape the consequences of war, nor the government policies regarding Americans of Japanese heritage and were sent to a prison camp. Yu, Hikozo and Fred were first sent to Santa Anita Park racetrack and then onto a camp in Jerome, Arkansas. Gyo was restricted to living on the East Coast. Like most Japanese Americans, Gyo's family lost everything.

In the postwar years, Gyo worked as a freelancer, creating art for a variety of projects. In 1957 her illustrations appeared in a new edition of Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses. In 1963, she wrote and illustrated Babies which portrayed babies with different skin colours. With the success of this first book and second companion titled, Animal Babies, Gyo decided to focus on creating children's books.

Gyo's books were created with the idea that books could be so much more than just stories, that they could uplift and comfort people. Her focus on multiracial children in her books, aimed to send the message that people of different races are all part of the human family.  Although the civil rights movement was blossoming during this time, this was a very unique perspective for children's books and one which publishers were reluctant to tackle. Because of  Gyo and her family's experiences of racism during the Second World War, Gyo must have seen a need for children to be exposed to the idea that people of all skin colours should be treated equally.

Kyo Maclear tells Gyo's story with using simple text accompanied by the artwork of Julie Morstad. Morstad's illustrations rendered in liquid watercolour, gouache and pencil crayon, are stylistically reminiscent of Gyo's drawings.As both the author and illustrator mention in a note at the back, Gyo's art had a sense of delicacy about it. It is Gyo's use of fine lines to create her characters and her use of colour that give this quality to her art.

Maclear includes numerous photographs of Gyo courtesy of her family in the back matter of the book, but no pictures of her artwork. There is a detailed timeline of Gyo's life as well as a Selected Bibliography and a list of Sources. It Began With A Page is recommended as a read-aloud book and for anyone interested in art history.

Book Details:

It Began With A Page by Kyo Maclear
Tundra Books      2019

Degas, Painter of Ballerinas by Susan Goldman Rubin

"Drawing is not what one sees, but what one can make others see." 

Degas, Painter of Ballerinas is an exquisite biography for young readers of this famous artist, known for his sketches, paintings and sculptures of dancers.From 1852 to 1912, Degas produced over a thousand dance pictures. While many artists were part of the Impressionist movement, Degas' interest was much different. Impressionists painted landscapes outdoors. Degas spent hours indoors at the Paris Opera observing dancers.The dancers were known as petits rats or "little rats" because they were always hungry. The petits rats would practice different ballet moves over and over to perfection. Degas would sketch their poses as they stretched, rested on a bench or worked at the barre.

Because he spent so much time at the Paris Opera, Degas was very familiar with the different ballet moves and would sometimes do a pirouette or an arabesque. He formed a fatherly friendship with many of the dancers whom he treated as if they were his own children. He saw how hard they worked and  how difficult the art of ballet was.

Degas did his sketching in the ballet studio or his own studio where the dancers were invited to pose. Afterwards he would combine these sketches into his paintings which were done when he was alone.

As time passed, Degas' art changed and developed. He explored different techniques,  and as his eyesight deteriorated, Degas moved to creating sculpture. The result was art that is timeless, beautiful and now considered very valuable.

Discussion

Degas, Painter of Ballerinas is an fascinating exploration into the process and technique of this famous artist.  Rubin keeps younger readers engaged with her simple explanations and with the many wonderful colour plates of Degas' paintings, drawings and sculptures, courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Rubin informs her readers on some of the different techniques Degas applied to his work. For example, he often used a single color to create an accent, making a canvas "come to life" or mixed pastels with charcoal and tempera paint. He even used bleach and steam to create different effects in his paintings.The layout of the book is such that there is a bit of text on each page accompanied by many wonderful pictures of Degas' artwork. Rubin mentions Degas poor eyesight, something that plagued him even as a young man and how he tried to preserve his eyesight by wearing blue tinted glasses. As his eyesight worsened, Degas turned to sculpture, creating incredible wax sculptures of dancers in certain poses.

While the first part of the book focuses more on Degas art. Rubin also includes a fairly detailed biography of the artist in a separate section at the back of the book. This gorgeous edition with the beautiful cover and the pink satin spine would make a lovely gift for either a young aspiring dancer or someone interested in art and artists.


Book Details:

Degas, Painter of Ballerinas by Susan Goldman Rubin
New York: Abrams Books For Young Readers    2019
60 pp.