Book Illustration Research Articles

Mark Twain in Context

Mark Twain in Context

Illuminated Gospel, dated 1684, from the Cathedral of the Archangel at the Moscow Kremlin Museums: to the question of iconographic sources

This article deals with miniatures of the Gospel from the collection of the Moscow Kremlin Museums, dated 1684. The author analyzes the iconography of the compositions, identifies the sources used as models for the masters who decorated the book, and also examines the circumstances associated with the order of the manuscript. The text touches on the issue of artistic connections between Russia and Western Europe in the field of book illustration of the 17th century and describes in detail the creative work of the court masters on the miniatures of the Gospel. The author discovers a Western European visual source that has never been associated with the range of Kremlin monuments before, which complements our vision of the iconographic lexicon of the court masters of the second half of the 17th century.

Keep it simple: streamlining book illustrations improves attention and comprehension in beginning readers

This study used eye-tracking to examine whether extraneous illustration details—a common design in beginning reader storybooks—promote attentional competition and hinder learning. The study used a within-subject design with first- and second-grade children. Children (n = 60) read a story in a commercially available Standard condition and in a Streamlined condition, in which extraneous illustrations were removed while an eye-tracker recorded children’s gaze shifts away from the text, fixations to extraneous illustrations, and fixations to relevant illustrations. Extraneous illustrations promoted attentional competition and hindered reading comprehension: children made more gaze shifts away from text in the Standard compared to the Streamlined condition, and reading comprehension was significantly higher in the Streamlined condition compared to the Standard condition. Importantly, fixations toward extraneous details accounted for the unique variance in reading comprehension controlling for reading proficiency and attending to relevant illustrations. Furthermore, a follow-up control experiment (n = 60) revealed that these effects did not solely stem from enhanced text saliency in the Streamlined condition and reproduced the finding of a negative relationship between fixations to extraneous details and reading comprehension. This study provides evidence that the design of reading materials can be optimized to promote literacy development in young children.

O ilustracjach Brunona Schulza do noweli „Z dworu ślepej bogini”

The cause of this investigation were two unknown drawings by Bruno Schulz (ink, two 4x7 cm, two 6x7 cm, each with the artist’s signature) found in the newspaper Chwila, a Polish language Zionist daily published in Lviv in 1919-1939. Chwila paid much attention to Schulz: 43 articles, reviews, and notes on his life and work were published throughout the paper’s history. Few texts published in the Chwila were illustrated, and book illustrations were also rare in the artistic career of the writer: next to illustrating his own books, he designed covers and illustrations only for Juliusz Witt and Witold Gombrowicz. Searching for information about the author of an illustrated story “Z dworu ślepej bogini,” Oskar Alexandrowicz (1885-1939?), a resident of Drogobych, painter, art critic, and lawyer, added to the knowledge about the circle of Schulz’s friends. For instance, an interesting character was Oskar’s brother, Roman Alexandrowicz (1882-1940), a well-known lawyer and collector of Schulz’s works which he used to show to the public in his apartment on the corner of Akademicki Square and Fredry Street in Lviv. The literary critic Ostap Ortwin (1876-1942), who was a regular patron of a famous café in the same building, most likely supported Schulz’s participation in the Spring Salon of 1922. Just opposite, on 7 Fredry Street, there was a studio of Kazimierz Sichulski, painter and professor of the Lviv State Industrial School, and Wanda Diamand’s photo studio “Światłocień.” The author also succeeded in establishing the identity and biographical data of another Alexandrowicz, Marek (1890-?), manager of one of the biggest oil companies in Europe, “Gazy Ziemne,” who was a close friend of Izydor Schulz.

Notes on Contributors

Notes on Contributors

News, Programs, Publications, and Awards

News, Programs, Publications, and Awards

Found in Translation: Images Visionary and Visceral in the Welles-Ros Bible

This essay introduces to a wider audience the manuscript that I call the Welles-Ros Bible (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 1), the most complete surviving witness and sole extant illuminated copy of the Anglo-Norman Bible, the earliest full prose vernacular Bible produced in England. I argue that this grand, multilingual manuscript and the vernacular translation preserved in its pages were commissioned in the 1360s by the widowed baroness Maud de Ros to serve as a primer, mirror, guide, family archive, and source of consolation for her son, John, fifth Baron Welles of Welle, Lincolnshire, and other estates. Working under the direction of a Carmelite chaplain, who I believe composed the translation, the two secular artists who illuminated the manuscript strove to visualize scripture in a manner that was at once faithful to the vernacular biblical text in all its concrete detail, evocative of its most elevated themes, and relevant to the values and lived experience of its intended reader-viewer. I show how the Bible’s pictorial and heraldic program reframes Christian salvation history as Welles family history. In addition, using as case studies a selection of illustrations for the Old Testament books, I endeavor to reconstruct the main artist’s creative process, and to identify some of the possible contours of the collaboration that produced the Bible’s visual program. This essay contributes to our picture of lay literate and religious aspiration; the history of Bible translation and reception; women’s cultural patronage; artists’ literacy and working methods; and medieval ideas about gender, sexuality, memory, and the emotions in post-Black Death England.

“CINDELARAS” KIDS ILLUSTRATION AS A MORAL LEARNING MEDIA FOR CHILDREN

Moral learning can be taught through stories, which act as orientations and role models to stimulate understanding which then becomes the habituation and personal character of the child. In this study project moral learning is presented in stories in the form of comic books, with Cindelaras's story as example. The comic book creation process goes through several stages of the creative process namely the pre-production process, the production process and the post-production process. The main work produced was a dummy form from a comic book titled "Cindelaras: A Boy with Rooster" and several merchandise works as supporters such as bookmarks, key chains, art prints and stickers. All the sequences pages of this comic are visual illustrations that tell the story of Cindelaras' journey in fighting for justice. In this comic also illustrated how Cindelaras behaves to parents, people who need even those who are evil to him. This comic has the main message that every good or bad deed will return to the culprit. This work is analyzed from the technical aspects, aesthetic aspects and illustrative aspects. Technically, the entire work is done in digital format and techniques with Adobe Photoshop CS5 applications, while viewed from an aesthetic aspect, it highlights visual elements that are depicted such as colors, lines, drawing styles, and so on. The illustrative aspect explains how illustrations play an important role in communicating stories in this comic book. Through this comic book illustration creation it is hoped that it can add to children's reading recommendations as a medium of moral learning as well as a means of promotion to introduce native Indonesian folklore.

Pierwszy pitawal wegetariański, czyli o ilustracjach Emilii Dziubak do Horroru Madleny Szeligi


 
 
 
 W artykule autorka skupia się na warstwie wizualnej książki Horror Madleny Szeligi z ilustracjami Emilii Dziubak, wydanej przez krakowskie wydawnictwo Gereon w 2017 roku. Jest to zbiór dwudziestu miniatur literackich opisujących tragiczne losy siedemnastu różnych gatunków warzyw i owoców, a także pieczarek, słonecznika i pokrzyw, na co dzień traktowanych przez ludzi jako produkty spożywcze, a tu przedstawionych jako żyjące, a zatem czujące osobniki. Książka w interesujący sposób odnosi się do wielowiekowej tradycji obrazowania śmierci, męczeństwa i cierpienia oraz popularnych zwłaszcza w epoce baroku wątków wanitatywnych, bardziej niż do rekwizytorium horroru. Jako gatunek bowiem horror jest dobrze osadzony w literaturze i filmie, ale nie w refleksji nad sztukami plastycznymi. W artykule przedstawiono zatem inspiracje europejskim malarstwem nowożytnym, zarówno religijnym, alegorycznym, jak i martwymi naturami, a także epitafiami oraz ornamentem barokowym, twórczo wykorzystanymi przez ilustratorkę. Autorka wskazuje także na tradycję animizowania roślin wywodzącą się z europejskiej XIX-wiecznej ilustracji książkowej.
 
 
 

Blake and Exhibitions, 2019

2019 was an extraordinary year for Blake. The retrospective at Tate Britain reassessed his work in the context of the choices that shaped the making of an artist’s career in Romantic-period London; elsewhere, individual works were reinterpreted within thematic exhibitions. The Judgment of Paris, illustrating Homer’s Iliad, was displayed as part of Troy: Myth and Reality. A selection of Blake’s illustrations represented the tension between fact and fantasy in an exhibition accompanying the 2019 biennial conference of the British Association for Romantic Studies in Nottingham. In Extreme Nature!, Behemoth and Leviathan from Illustrations of the Book of Job came across as an attempt to imagine all-powerful biblical beasts, captured within the frame of a book illustration, as examples of restrained, domesticated, and vanquished pride. The National Maritime Museum used Blake’s miniature emblem captioned “I want! I want!,” featuring a tiny figure propping up a long ladder across the sky to bridge the distance between earth and moon, to introduce the imagining of moon travel among mythical and scientific specimens brought together to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the moon landing. Blake’s watercolor Christ Refusing the Banquet Offered by Satan from John Milton’s Paradise Regained exemplified the dynamic of temptation and abstinence in a religious relationship with food in Feast and Fast: The Art of Food in Europe, 1500–1800, while earlier series illustrating Paradise Lost and On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity were on view at Tate Britain as examples of the patronage of the Rev. Joseph Thomas. Versions of The Good and Evil Angels were on display in three exhibitions. The pen and watercolor from 1793–94 was central in shaping the demonic power and active energy of the elements in Fire: Flashes to Ashes in British Art, 1692–2019 from June to September, while in October it went home to The Higgins, where its child-snatching element was inflected in a new context in Dreams and Nightmares. Meanwhile, Tate Britain’s impression of the color print of 1795 appeared on the wall of an outdoor basketball court as part of the animation of a series of iconic works in Sam Gainsborough’s trailer for the Blake retrospective. Inside the gallery, it was hung among the twelve large color prints—whose only known contemporary collector was Thomas Butts—showing how they might work as a series translating the experience of Renaissance cycles within a bourgeois interior.

G. L. Crusius, Leipzig Artist and Engraver, and His Literary Illustrations in the 1750s

Focusing on his illustrative output in the 1750s, the essay will introduce the two largely neglected principal works that the Saxon illustrator and engraver, Gottlieb Leberecht Crusius, undertook in that decade, while still in his 20s. It will contextualise his illustrations for the second, 1753 edition of Hermann, oder das befreyte Deutschland, a patriotic epic poem by Christoph Otto von Schönaich, and his plates for Johann Franz von Palten's 1758 translation of James Thomson's The Seasons, concentrating especially on his style evolution and his adoption of a Rococo aesthetic. The essay establishes Crusius's significance for eighteenth-century German book illustration and his participation in the transnational Rococo.

Koleksi buku cerita bergambar (picture storybooks) di Perpustakaan Desa Sukamukti

Introduction. The teachers at Kelompok Belajar Islam Terpadu (KBIT) Sukamukti village have used picture storybooks from the Library of Sukamukti village and reading them in a story telling session to their students. Two of this activities as a basic in the pre-reading activity to early childhood, so that the purpose this reaserch is to understand how the teachers use the picture storybooks, reading technique, and storytelling.
 Data Collection Method. This paper used a qualitative perspective with phenomenology by using observations, interviews, focus group discussions, and literature study.
 Analysis Data. Data from interviews were transcribed for further analysis 
 Results and Discussion. The teachers at KBIT Sukamukti village used the picture of storybooks with fables. The teachers also discussed plot, animal activities, themes and morality based on the story. The language in the story is easy to understand by the children, book illustrations explain the reality of the character in the forest. Activities read aloud by introducing the identity of the book used, and storytelling activities through self-assement, stories, sounds, expressions, gestures, and other abilities.
 Conclusion. The teachers read and tell stories to educate young children in alphabet, vocabularies, and creativity. This helps early children in the process of learning pre-reading.

TWO PRINTS BY LEONTY BUNIN IN THE 18TH CENTURY SERBIAN GRAPHIC

The article is devoted to two engravings depicting Jesus Christ and the Mother of God in lush ornamental cartouches. They are well known to Serbian art critics and are published in the catalogs of Serbian metal engravings of the 18th century. Copper engraved boards of these engravings, which Serbian researchers attribute to the end of the 18th or the beginning of the 19th century, are preserved in the Krka Monastery. Prints from them of the 18th-19th centuries are unknown in Serbian collections. In Serbia, the first prints from these boards were made in the 20th century. However, prints from these engravings were well known in Russia in the 17th-18th centuries. They were primarily used as illustrations in Russian manuscript books. The engravings were made by a Russian master at the end of the 17th century. According to the features of engraving, manner, and stylistics, they can be attributed to Moscow engraver Leonty Bunin. In Russian manuscripts, they were usually used as illustrations in the book The Passion of Christ along with the 14-sheet series The Passion of Christ by Leonty Bunin. Cases of using them as independent illustrations are known. In the 1730s, these engravings disappeared from the illustrations in The Passion of Christ series in Russian manuscript books. Their later prints are unknown in Russia. The history of their appearance in Serbia, in the Krka Monastery, remains unknown. Perhaps they appeared there as gifts from Russia which the monastery regularly received. In the 18th century, Serbian religious art experienced a powerful influence from Dutch graphics. As iconographic sources, Serbian masters used Flemish and Dutch engravings of the 16th and 17th centuries. They were the same ones that were used by Russian masters of the 17th century, especially of the second half of the century, as iconographic examples. The identity of the artistic processes that took place in the art of Serbia in the 18th century and Russia of the 17th century turned out to be so close that Serbian art historians regarded the Russian prints of the 17th century by Leonty Bunin as Serbian works of an unknown engraver of the late 17th - early 19th centuries. The biography of Leonty Bunin is considered in detail in the article, some facts of his life are presented for the first time.

The Men Who Drew for Boys (and Girls): 101 Forgotten Illustrators of Children's Books 1844–1970. Robert J. Kirkpatrick

<i>The Men Who Drew for Boys (and Girls): 101 Forgotten Illustrators of Children's Books 1844–1970.</i> Robert J. Kirkpatrick

News, Programs, Publications, and Awards

News, Programs, Publications, and Awards

Book Illustration or the Art of Illustrating

Book Illustration or the Art of Illustrating

Blake in the Marketplace, 2019

The 2019 market began propitiously with the discovery, and offer for sale by the London dealer Peter Harrington, of a previously unrecorded copy of Edward Young’s Night Thoughts with Blake’s engravings hand colored. This January surprise was followed in the next month by the Art Institute of Chicago’s acquisition of Blake’s The Day of Judgment, a watercolor illustration to Robert Blair’s The Grave. Many copies of Blake’s Job engravings appeared throughout 2019 and one notable rarity among his commercial book illustrations, Elizabeth Blower’s Maria: A Novel, came to auction in December. A receipt written by Thomas Butts and signed by Blake fetched a high price at a Parisian auction.

Из цикла «Прогулки и диалоги с Владимиром Глуховцевым»

Статья посвящена реконструкции особенностей творческого мировоззрения художника и книжного графика Владимира Глуховцева. Публикуемые материалы созданы ученым и поэтом Аркадием Слуцким, который был близким другом художника на протяжении тридцати лет. Автором использован историко-биографический метод, при этом материалами, помимо авторских воспоминаний, послужили произведения классиков русской литературы. Представленные микросюжеты в постмодернистском ключе раскрывают различные события и особенности творческой биографии художника. Эстетические поиски Глуховцева как книжного графика были обращены кструктуре книги. Своей главной задачей он видел не интерпретацию литературных образов, а организацию книжного пространства и читательского восприятия текста. Начав свой творческий путь как продолжатель традиций русской графики, В.А.Глуховцев со временем выработал собственный подход к художественному творчеству, при этом сумев сохранить постоянную и живую связь с академической традицией.The article is devoted to the reconstruction of the biography and features of the creative worldview of Vladimir Glukhovtsev, an artist and book illustrator. The published materials were created by the scholar and poet Arkady Slutsky, who had been a close friend of the artist for thirty years. The methodological basis of the publication was the historical-biographical method, which allows revealing the features of the historical process through the analysis of various situations and micro-plots that arise in human life. Slutskys memoirs that he wrote over the last years of his life constituted the main factual outline of this article. The materials of the article were works of Russian and foreign philosophers and theorists of fine art, works of the classics of Russian literature. Consistently presented micro-plots (about the Glukhovtsev dynasty and the archive of Alexander Glukhovtsev (the artists father), about working on illustrations for Alice in Wonderland, Traveling with Pushkin, Traveling to Prague) reveal various features and events of the artists creative biography in a postmodern way. The research focuses on Glukhovtsevs experiments in the field of book design, on his pedagogical activity and inner imaginative world. Slutsky describes and analyzes Glukhovtsevs cultural environment in the context of the intellectual demands of Russian society at the turn of the 21st century, rich in turbulent sociopolitical events. The concept of factual presentation of the material is supplemented by oral history, the artists live speech, reproduced textologically from the phonograms of conversations with Glukhovtsev that Slutsky transcribed. A valuable part of the content of the article is the so-called philosophical and lyrical digressions, an attempt to comprehend everything that happened to the author and the character in space and time. The author concludes that the aesthetic searches of Glukhovtsev as a book graphic artist were focused on the structure of a book. The main task of the artist was the organization of the book space and the reading perception of the text rather than the interpretation of literary images. The artist sought to focus the readers attention in a special way, and for this he masterfully used a set of techniques for designing printing elements in his own authorial style. Having begun his career as a successor of the traditions laid down by the luminaries of the Russian graphics of the 20th century (Vladimir Favorsky, Andrey Goncharov, Mikhail Kupriyanov), Glukhovtsev eventually developed his own approach to artistic creativity, while being able to maintain a constant and lively connection with the academic tradition.

Ephemeral Spenser

This essay approaches Edmund Spenser’s Renaissance masterpiece, The Faerie Queene, through a hitherto unknown series of twenty-four vignette illustrations that the eighteenth-century painter and book illustrator, Thomas Stothard, contributed to the nowadays little-known annual, The Royal Engagement Pocket Atlas, in 1794. Apart from making sense of Stothard’s visual interpretation of Spenser’s romance, the article will pay attention to how the painter creates an anthological miniature gallery of moments with which the users of the pocket diary may have been familiar. In other words, these vignettes may have conveyed mnemonically a prior reading experience of The Faerie Queene or have stimulated recall of other engagements with the moments represented. Understanding Stothard’s illustrations as iconic interventions in the reception history of Spenser’s work that, by being included in a disposable, annual pocket diary, were significantly more ephemeral than illustrations issued as part of an edition, I shall investigate how Stothard mediates the text by providing textual excerpts and how these one-line cues evoke a particular allusive experience of the text that affects the reading experience.

ВЛАСТИВОСТІ БУКТРЕЙЛЕРА: УКРАЇНСЬКИЙ ТА СВІТОВИЙ ДОСВІД

&lt;div&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The purpose of the study is to analyze the aesthetic and cultural-educational peculiarities of the booktrailer as a phenomenon of publishing. The paper provides a comparative analysis of Ukrainian and foreign booktrailers in order to identify conceptual differences. The methodology of the study is the use of common scientific methods of analysis and synthesis, comparison and generalization. The booktrailer has long been studied in the paradigm of marketing and advertising or librarianship, which left it beyond the attention of scholars to understand it as an aesthetic phenomenon. In the process of presenting the main paper theses, the means of formal, figurative, stylistic and comparative analysis were used, which made it possible to reveal the aesthetic and cultural-educational peculiarities of Ukrainian and foreign booktrailers.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The scientific novelty of the paper is the comprehensive study of the booktrailer as a phenomenon of publishing. The comparative analysis of Ukrainian and world book trailers revealed fundamental differences caused by the features of creation (developers and purpose of creation). The current state of development of the booktrailer in Ukraine is characterized by the fact that it is created mainly by fans. Ukrainian booktrailers are currently mostly book-based presentations and descriptive features. Today, the most common in Ukraine is a booktrailer based on book illustrations and slideshows of works. In this case, the contents of the books contents are mechanically transferred to the monitor. In turn, foreign booktrailers are created as a figurative audiovisual series designed to convey the atmosphere of a work of art, to give the impression of a book. If in foreign booktrailers the aesthetic function comes to the fore, then Ukrainian analogues tend to emphasize cultural and educational.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Key words:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;em&gt; booktrailer, book promotion, publishing phenomenon, aesthetic peculiarities, cultural and educational function&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;