Pictures in Conversation

Abstract

Immediately prior to embarking on her adventures in Wonderland, Alice considers, “Where is the use of a book [. . .] without pictures or conversations?” The extensive history of re-imagining through re-illustration over 150 years of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland demonstrates evident cultural agreement with Alice’s position on the interdependent nature of words and pictures. Through an analysis of a selection of editions of Alice’s story ranging from 1864 to 2015, I argue that this extensive history of re-illustration has resulted in a shared Wonderland iconography that has both built a sense of visual familiarity and made space for book artists to re-engage readers with Wonderland through a disruption of this familiarity. This project examines the trajectory of Alice re-illustration and positions four artists’ books (by Salvador Dalí, Barry Moser, Didier Mutel, and Anna Hellsgård & Christian Gfeller) as materially significant contributions to the ongoing visual history of Carroll’s text.