27.1825, Review: Ling & Lit: Druker, Kümmerling-Meibauer (2015)

Tue Apr 19 20:20:26 UTC 2016

LINGUIST List: Vol-27-1825. Tue Apr 19 2016. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 27.1825, Review: Ling & Lit: Druker, Kümmerling-Meibauer (2015)

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Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2016 16:19:53
From: Jennifer Duggan [jennifer.duggan at hist.no]
Subject: Children's Literature and the Avant-Garde

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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/26/26-3658.html

EDITOR: Elina  Druker
EDITOR: Bettina  Kümmerling-Meibauer
TITLE: Children's Literature and the Avant-Garde
SERIES TITLE: Children's Literature, Culture, and Cognition 5
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2015

REVIEWER: Jennifer Duggan, Norwegian University of Science and Technology

Reviews Editor: Helen Aristar-Dry

SUMMARY

“Children’s Literature and the Avant-Garde” is a welcome effort, both because
it explores a topic about which little has been published and because it seeks
to include international as well as Anglo-American views. Although its
chapters focus on various countries throughout Europe and North America, the
collection manages to create a cohesive view of the avant-garde as a movement
that occurred and was transformed throughout the Western world. It emphasizes
the importance of emigrants and of displays of international of art and
theater in establishing the avant-garde throughout Europe, as well as
stressing the importance of children’s literature illustration to the
avant-garde movement.

Editors Elina Drucker and Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer open the book by
problematizing the term ‘avant-garde’, reminding us that it has been used as
an umbrella term to include various and interrelated movements, such as
Cubism, Dadaism, and Surrealism, as well as having been used to refer to
different and sometimes contradictory movements in different countries
throughout Europe. They stress the importance of keeping the term’s
situatedness in mind as one reads the volume, a concern that is echoed
throughout the volume by the contributors, who each provide a situated
definition of what ‘avant-garde’ means in relation to their specific topics. 

The contributors to the volume have provided essays exploring the avant-garde
from the late nineteenth century through to the end of the twentieth century;
however, the majority of contributions explore works from the early to
mid-twentieth century. As this is a transdisciplinary volume, it encompasses a
variety of approaches to the topic, ranging from literary analyses (see, e.g.,
Reynolds) to print and exhibition histories (see, e.g., Stommels and Lemmens).
All of the contributions emphasize the internationality and multiplicity of
the avant-garde, citing the emigration of illustrators and artists from
mainland Europe during the World Wars (see, e.g., Reynolds); the publication
of translated international children’s books throughout Europe and North
America (see, e.g., Steiner; Beckett); the influence of other, often mobile
art forms, such as dance and theatre, on situated avant-garde movements (see,
e.g., Druker); and the inspiration of reviews and exhibitions of international
books and artworks (see, e.g., Stommels and Lemmens) as contributing factors
to this internationality. Some reassert while others question the primacy of
the Russian avant-garde (compare, e.g., Stommels and Lemmens with Steiner).

The collection as a whole underscores the interplay between various art forms
as well as the playful experimentation and pastiche of avant-garde picturebook
illustrators (see in particular Beckett; Kümmerling-Meibauer). Some papers
explore in detail the influence of specific art movements seen to make up the
avant-garde, such as Pop Art (see Kümmerling-Meibauer), as well as
epistemology of the infantile, central to a number of early twentieth-century
artistic and psychological movements (see Weld). 

The collection is separated into three sections, “Vanguard tendencies at the
beginning of the twentieth century,” “The impact of the Russian avant-garde,”
and “Postbellum avant-garde children’s books.” The chapters included are as
follows:

Marilynn S. Olson discusses John Ruskin’s ideas and the Arts and Crafts
movements as forebears of the avant-garde in Britain and in Europe more
generally.

Elina Druker links the work of picture book illustrator Einar Nerman with
avant-garde dance and theatre, as well as international graphic design.

Samuel D. Albert explores various editions of Hungarian Modernist Sándor
Bortnyik’s “Potty és Pötty”.

Kimberley Reynolds argues that British picturebooks exhibit a British
avant-garde, despite that the avant-garde is often overlooked in histories of
British children’s literature.

Sara Pankenier Weld explore geometric design and the primitive in Soviet
avant-garde art and children’s picturebooks, emphasizing the interrelatedness
of infantile art and picture book illustrations aimed at young audiences.

Serge-Aljosja Stommels and Albert Lemmens reconstruct a catalogue of the 1929
Amsterdam exhibition of Soviet children’s picture books and discuss the
reception of these avant-garde picturebooks in the Netherlands.

Nina Christensen explores progressive Danish picture books in the 1930s and
1940s, focusing on the changes seen in illustration during this period and
possible sources of illustrators’ inspiration.

Evgeny Steiner discusses the simultaneity and symbiosis of Soviet and Western
avant-garde illustrations in the 1920s and 1930s, providing examples of
avant-garde picturebook illustration from Russia, Germany, France, and the
United States.

Sandra L. Beckett explores the avant-garde in French picture books from the
early twentieth century until the 1970s. Her discussion includes an analysis
of the importance of crossover and interactive picture books to the
avant-garde, as well as the influence of specific artistic styles such as
Cubism and Surrealism on picturebook illustrations.

Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer examines European and American Pop Art
picturebooks of the 1960s and 1970s, emphasizing their anti-establishment,
non-pedagogical addresses to child readers.

Philip Nel addresses the paradox of avant-garde books for children, examining
the possibilities and impossibilities of Surrealist children’s literature from
the perspectives of the audiences supposed knowledge and experience.

EVALUATION

Although there is not space here to review each chapter in depth, I do wish to
emphasize three chapters I found to be particularly enlightening or to have
refreshing views on the subject. As is likely obvious from the above, I found
the volume to be a useful collection for anyone wishing to explore the
interdependence of artistic movements and picturebook illustrations.

Kimberley Reynolds, in “The forgotten history of avant-garde publishing for
children in early twentieth-century Britain,” argues that despite little
recognition of the movement in histories of British children’s literature, the
avant-garde was quite visible in mid-century British picturebooks. Her
examples include “Alice and Thomas and Jane” (1930), a co-creation of Enid
Bagnold and her nine-year-old daughter, Laurian. Reynolds emphasizes that this
picturebook not only included Laurian’s illustrations alongside her mother’s
but also that some of the text may have been coauthored by mother and
daughter. She further explores works by émigrés, including Belgian Jean de
Bosschère, Hungarian Klara, and Polish Jan Le Witt and George Him (who
published under the name Lewitt-Him), all of whom adapt European artistic
movements, such as Surrealism, Cubism, and the Absurd, to British tastes. In
doing so, she successfully argues that avant-garde illustration was notably
present in British picturebooks from the 1910s through to the 1940s. This
chapter provided a glimpse of the avant-garde in Britain after the turn of the
century, complementing Marilynn S. Olson’s discussion of the Arts and Crafts
movement as avant-garde, located earlier in the collection. It also reminds us
that despite the general consensus in children’s literature scholarship that
there is very little literature created by and for children, there are
fascinating exceptions to be found. 

Sandra L. Beckett’s “Manifestations of the avant-garde and its legacy in
French children’s literature” is thorough in its investigation of the history
of French avant-garde picture book illustrations. She provides examples of
illustrations throughout the avant-garde movement, from the 1919 “Macao et
Cosmage” through to the legacy of the avant-garde in picture books published
from the late 1960s forward, exploring several book’s illustrations in the
context of a particular avant-garde movement, from the pastiche employed by
Legrande in “Macao et Costmage” to the Surrealism and Constructivism displayed
in Lise Deharme and Claude Cahun’s “Le cœur de pic” (1937) and Nathalie
Parain’s interactive “Ronds et carrés” (1932), respectively. Her chapter
highlights the reciprocal inspiration of artistic movements throughout Europe
and throughout time, as well as the importance of émigrés to the flourishing
of avant-garde picturebook illustrations in France.

Similarly, Evgeny Steiner compares Western European and American with Soviet
avant-garde picturebook illustrations from the early twentieth century,
highlighting both the influence of Soviet art on American illustrations as
well as the simultaneity the development of the avant-garde in both countries.
Her chapter suggests that while Soviet art available in America and European
émigrés who had settled in America influenced the American avant-garde, some
aspects of the American avant-garde developed simultaneously to similar Soviet
avant-garde works and were not imitative. Her chapter further explores the
political and epistemological symbolism of various Western picture books,
including the German “Die Scheuche Märched” (1925), by Kurt Schwitters, Käte
Steinitz, Theo van Doesburg, and typesetter Paul Focht, and the American
“Little Machinery” (1926), by Mary Liddell. 

Together, these three chapters provide a fascinating glimpse into the
interdependence and transnationalism of the avant-garde, showing intriguing
examples of artworks that manage to be nationally (politically, artistically,
socially, and topographically) situated while reflecting this interdependence.
They therefore exemplify why an international collection of essays such as
this was needed.

However, it must be noted that in some chapters more than others, a number of
typos and errors in grammar distract from the content. It is unfortunate for
the editors, whom I am sure put a great deal of effort into this collection,
that John Benjamins Publishing Company—which, like many academic publishers,
charges exorbitant amounts for its books—refrains from including the cost of
copy editors in the cost of the production of its books.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Jennifer Duggan is an assistant professor of English literature in NTNU's
teacher training program. She specializes in Victorian, YA, and children's
literature.

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