Elegant Enigmas: The Art of Edward Gorey
Elegant Enigmas: The Art of Edward Gorey
February 9 - June 4, 2011
EXHIBITION NOW CLOSED
![Edward Gorey, The Gashlycrumb tinies, or, After the outing. New York : Harcourt Brace, [1991], c1963.](/sites/default/files/ghastly_teenie.jpg "Edward Gorey, The Gashlycrumb tinies, or, After the outing. New York : Harcourt Brace, [1991], c1963.") |
Carnivorous plants, falling masonry, and uninvited guests fill the imaginary world of artist and author Edward Gorey. His stories and accompanying illustrations maintain a delicate balance between the hilarious and the horrific. Gorey’s voracious consumption of literature, his love of the ballet, and his off beat and wry view of the world resulted in a sardonic and witty oeuvre. This exhibition explores the diversity of Gorey’s art through original pen and ink illustrations, preparatory sketches, unpublished drawings, and ephemera. Drawn from the holdings of the Gorey Charitable Trust, the exhibition comprises approximately 180 objects, including selections from The Gashlycrumb Tinies, The Unstrung Harp, The Gilded Bat, and other well-known Gorey publications. |
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Edward St. John Gorey was born in 1925 in Chicago and died just over a decade ago in 2000 on his beloved Cape Cod. In that seventy-five year span, he wrote, illustrated, and published over 100 books. He also illustrated the writings of other authors including Charles Dickens, Edward Lear, Virginia Woolf, John Updike, and Muriel Spark. Examples of his work have appeared in the New Yorker and the New York Times and his signature Victorian gentlemen and languishing ladies animate the opening credits of PBS’s Mystery series. The theatricality of Gorey’s creations inevitably meant their natural and easy translation into ingenious stage productions in New York, on Cape Cod, and elsewhere. Gorey was eclectic and eccentric in the best senses of those words. As author Karen Wilkin points out, he defied—indeed consciously resisted—categorization. “In the end,” Wilkin notes, “Gorey remains, like the steepest ascents in bicycle races, hors catégorie. Describing him as—for example—a maker of, in his phrase, ‘mildly unsettling’ books … fails to capture the many facets of this elusive polymath. So does labeling him as writer, artist, poet, or theater person. He is something far more complicated and interesting: a true American original.” |
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Elegant Enigmas: The Art of Edward Gorey, on view at the Athenæum through the spring of 2011, includes over 150 drawings that Gorey made for over thirty of his books (published between 1953 and 2006), as well as a fascinating assortment of archival material—sketchbooks, illustrated envelopes, book-cover ideas, and theatrical costume designs—all imbued with the macabre sensibility, subtle wit, and charming historicism of Gorey’s characteristic style. Technically brilliant in their economy and precision, these drawings repay repeated inspection and careful introspection with satisfying flashes of recognition, insight, and understanding of the human spirit. In other words, these small, initially unassuming objects perform the inspirational and educational magic of great art. This exhibition is organized by the Brandywine River Museum, Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, and is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue by curator and critic Karen Wilkin. At the Boston Athenæum, the exhibition is organized by David B. Dearinger, Susan Morse Hilles Curator of Paintings & Sculpture. |
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“I just kind of conjured them up out of my subconscious and put them in order of ascending peculiarity.”
—Edward Gorey
Gorey books in the Athenæum Collection
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Works Written and Illustrated by Edward Gorey Amphigorey also Ascending Peculiarity: Edward Gorey on Edward Gorey: Interviews Awdrey-Gore legacy Doubtful guest Epiplectic bicycle Gashlycrumb tinies, or, After the outing Haunted tea-cosy : a dispirited and distasteful diversion for Christmas Headless bust : a melancholy meditation on the false millennium Listing attic [and] The unstrung harp Loathsome couple Merrill Moore and the American sonnet Object-lesson Other statue Utter zoo PS3513.O614 U8 1967
Works with Contributions by Edward Gorey Costumes by Karinska Extraordinary realities
Works about Edward Gorey World of Edward Gorey |
Works with Illustrations by Edward Gorey Chessmen of doom Cultural slag Ghost in the mirror Haunted looking glass : ghost stories House with a clock in its walls Lamp from the warlock's tomb Light metres Mummy, the will, and the crypt Old possum's book of practical cats Pippin's journal: or rosemary is for remembrance Scrap irony Shrinking of Treehorn Spell of the sorcerer's skull Trolley to yesterday |
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