Mirror Mirrored: A Contemporary Artists’ Edition of 25 Grimms’ Tales
Artists’ books use intimacy and immediacy to convey pleasure and coax understanding, integrating conception, illustration, design and materials into a unique object of art. William Blake used the form to communicate his tumultuous visions, and in Jazz, the aging and ill Matisse used it to express treasured memories and deep convictions regarding line and color.
The Mirror Mirrored coeditors, artist Corwin Levi and writer Michelle Aldredge, chose to use the artists’ book to make contemporary art available and accessible. Recognizing that the Grimms’ tales could stimulate a wealth of responses, Levi and Aldredge gave free rein to 28 contemporary artists to explore the tales’ freshness and freakishness in new or specially selected artworks. The tales have long drawn attention from illustrators, producing single stories or collections in distinctive styles that highlight the humor, horror and mystery within. From the rich medievalism of Walter Crane to the intimate, textured realism of Maurice Sendak, illustrations add detail and dimension to the Grimms’ fanciful yet elusive texts, and that is the case here.
The illustrations range widely in tone and style, exceeding even that of these notoriously teeming stories, while maintaining integrity as both art and illustration. Amy Cutler’s gouache on paper for Three Little Men in the Woods—an archetypal story of beauty and goodness rewarded—would suit a more traditional illustrated book, yet Cutler’s enigmatic details and depiction of an embittered protagonist challenge the text’s moralizing currents. More abstract yet still illustrative, Rachel Perry’s archival pigment print Silver Hands provides The Girl without Hands with a surreal, disturbing emblem, cutting through the tale’s sentimentality and piety to capture its themes of helplessness, loss and endurance. Surprisingly, eight still images from Joseph Keckler’s single-channel video accompany The Story of the Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was, a popular classic combining terror with humor to keep fear of death from undermining the ability to live. Richly tonal and claustrophobic, Keckler’s imagery recalls spirit photography, heightening the impact of the ultrarealistic final image and grounding the series in a feeling of the inescapable.
The holistic nature of Mirror Mirrored extends beyond the ironies and unexpected media employed in these contemporary works; artists (including Kiki Smith, Carrie Mae Weems and DJ Spooky) use manipulated text, photography, textiles, puppetry and more. The quintessential setting for a Grimm tale is a dark forest, tangled and haunted but also full of opportunity for the brave, honest or clever. Levi has transformed this book, metaphorically, into that forest. Using nearly 2,000 images from more than 240 “golden age” illustrated editions, he has created visually compelling and provocative collages that, in their profusion and variety, do as much as the contemporary works to express the tales’ continued relevance. The repetition of scenes in different styles captures the tales’ timelessness while intensifying their emotional messages: jealousy, narcissism and fear in Little Snow White; grief, guilt and joy in The Juniper Tree. Disorienting changes of scale in images such as those of the haughty queen in Little Snow White or the disdained but confident protagonist in Hans My Hedgehog similarly resonate both thematically and emotionally.
Bizarre, delightful and disturbing, the Grimms’ tales continue to be criticized as overly frightening or sexual, yet despite ongoing attempts to tame them, their judgmental qualities remain. Few characters change their natures, forgiveness is scarce, and the wicked always receive the wages of their sins, while the good attain positions of security from which to look on with indifference at their tormentors’ brutal punishments. “Children are innocent and love justice, while most of us are wicked and naturally prefer mercy,” G. K. Chesterton wrote. Yet society isn’t and never was purely sun or shadow, and the fates befalling bad characters never fully expunge the true menace—the reader’s fear of meeting, and failing, similar tests. Levi and Aldredge have created a volume that allows the potent complexity of these tales to continue speaking to the nuances and ambiguities of our time.
Mirror Mirrored: A Contemporary Artists’ Edition of 25 Grimms’ Tales
By Corwin Levi and Michelle Aldredge
With an introduction by Karen Joy Fowler
Limited-edition, Signed and Numbered
384 page hardcover $99; eBook $9.99
Available exclusively at mirrormirrored.net
ISBN: 978-0-9825176-1-1
Mirror Mirrored: Fairy Tale Infinities
St. Anselm College, Manchester, NH; anselm.edu, through May 11, 2018
Mirror Mirrored cover with art by DJ Spooky and Rapunzel page spread with collage by Corwin Levi. Courtesy of Corwin Levi.
Susan Boulanger is an editor and writer living in Cambridge, MA.