Context of Practice : Essay

In What Way Has Illustration Responded to the Changing Social and Cultural Forces of The 1960’s?

In 1945, at the end of the Second World War, there was a general consensus that the nation hadn’t suffered for six years only for things to go back to how they had been before the war, this led to the voting in of the Labour government and the establishment of the National Health Service, the availability of secondary education for all and the expansion of new council estates to provide better housing for all. There was general agreement, that what everyone aspired to, was a chance to bring up a healthy family in a suburban semi and give them an education which would ideally lead to their children ‘getting on’ into jobs in the professions or management. These ideals of the 1950’s provided a flavour for the decade which can be summed up as neat conformity. Fashions for both men and women were dull, for men suit and tie, and short back and sides and for women restrictive buttoned up suits worn with matching hat, gloves and shoes. The children of the 1950’s were clean and tidy, well dressed and respectable, hair neatly cut or kept in its place with slides, ribbons and plaits. A world exemplified by the illustrations in the Ladybird books (fig. 1&2).

The parents of these neat 1950’s children were hurt, angry and let down however, when their children having grown up with the benefits of good education, housing and healthcare decided to reject the conformity of these neat suburban values.. The 1960’s was a decade which emphasised freedom, in fashion (the mini skirt of Mary Quant and simple precision cut hairstyles of Vidal Sassoon), in sexual freedom ( the pill in 1965 and the liberalising of homosexuality in 1967) in the theatre and literature (the Lady Chatterley trial in 1962), in music (the raunchiness of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones compared with the safe appeal of Cliff Richard or Tommy Steele in Summer Holiday or Half a Sixpence respectively) even in speech ( unlike the 1950’s an aspiring young man would no longer need to hide his regional accent).Combined this led to an explosion of ideas and experimentation which had the effect of a burst of colour in a black and white world. In the area of children’s literature this was literally true as the bright colourful books of the 1960’s replaced the black and white realistic drawings of the 1950’s.

In this essay I propose to examine how the rebellion of the sixties extended to the illustration of children’s literature by examining the impact of key features of the cultural changes of the 1960’s such as liberalism, freedom from convention, a rejection of literalism, and the impact of changing technology with specific reference to the work of Maurice Sendak, Eric Carle, Charles Keeping and Judith Kerr.

By the time of the 1960’s, technology had been on rise, the famous quote by Harold Wilson “The Britain that is forged in the white heat of this revolution will be no place for restrictive practises or for outdated measures on either side of industry” exemplified the 1960’s belief that improvements in technology would lead to a higher standard of living. Whilst the liberals feared that Harold Wilson would be bringing on an age of the technically competent but not cultured, they too agreed with forging a new Britain that the old restrictive practises and outdated measures shouldn’t apply to. This way of thinking was brought into art and can even be recognised in children’s book illustration. It was thanks to new technology that new jobs opened up. Everything had to look clean bright and modern to appeal to the new era, leading to a rise in consumer products and the associated products required to keep things looking shiny and glossy. These new jobs led to very low unemployment and as the wages had been steadily rising there was more money about and less worry about making it from day to day. With less to be anxious about on a daily level there was more room to think of the new ideals and deviate from the norm.

It was from the technological advancements that colour printing became much easier and financially viable. In the 1950’s and pre 1950s most children’s books were heavy on the text with several small black and white illustrations inside. This was mostly because the technological restrictions and the cost made it inconceivable to have large colour pages. As it became available to use on a higher rate illustrators began to consider how colour could affect their work and the impact it would create. This coupled with the desire to break away from the literalism of the 1950’s led to some beautiful, crazy work. Charles Keeping ‘s book ‘ Charley, Charlotte and the Golden Canary’ is a glorious example of this (fig. 3). There are no black outlines and while he’ll often only use three or so colours on one page, he has used the boldest, most vibrant ink. The brightness of the ink and the fact that the colour has not just been used to fill in the lines in a conservative fashion shows the feelings of the time. It practically shouts rebellion, freedom and experimentation. The way that the ink has been overlaid on itself coupled with the colour gives a real sense of wonder and an element of magic to the book that the standard black and white or the idealistic realism of Ladybird illustrations of the 1950’s could never achieve (fig. 4&5). His choice and implementation of colour really emphasise and expose the emotion of the characters.

Another ‘60’s illustrator that has a great way with colour is Brian Wildsmith, I have been looking at his book, ‘Birds’ with this in mind. In several pages in his book he has used a multitude of different colours to create a beautiful and much more engaging scene. He has mostly kept the birds in their actual colours and they look stylistically much like they would be seen in the wild. Showing that he is beyond technically competent and making sure that the birds are recognisable, allowing his book to be both beautiful and informative. The way that he has drawn perspective and the colour he has expressed for the aspects of nature, act as their own rebellion from the standard from the 1950’s and previous, of needing to have everything look accurate. It is these rejections of realism that make the book stand out and look so wonderful. Without the illustrations subverting the sense of the norm created as standard in children’s books it couldn’t work as anything other than an insubstantial informational book as the only text included is four words per double page spread; the name for a group of birds, an unkindness of ravens etc. Like many artists and illustrators of the time Brain Wildsmith shunned drawing realistically in favour of producing work with the information you need to gain a strong idea of it without drawing the entirety of the thing and surrounding scenery like a painting or a photograph (fig. 6,7&8).

A big difference in the illustration of the 1960’s is the way they often seem to avoid the neat ordered style of drawing, illustrations are completed with an almost effortless verve as if the artist has sat down and just dashed them off. Whilst this is another example of rebellion against the fifties ideal of neat perfection, it also encapsulates the youthful exuberance of the sixties. This appearance of carelessness is of course illusory, artists in the nineteen sixties cared as much about the quality of their work as they always have, the apparent messiness is stylised.

Maurice Sendak is a brilliant example of an illustrator and an author who was in perfect harmony with the zeitgeist of the 60’s. In ethos of the time that it is better to express yourself unashamedly, freely and naturally than to repress any emotions you may have, in the vernacular of the ‘60’s “let it all hang loose, man”. This is in complete and utter opposition to the views of pre ‘60’s where the common belief was to keep a stiff upper lip, never cause a scene and to deal with unpleasant matters quietly, discreetly and tactfully. It could be summed up as “least said, soonest rendered “. This is evident in his books, ‘Where The Wild Things Are’ and ‘In The Night Kitchen’.

In’ Where The Wild Things Are’ the boy, Max, is seen to be wearing a wolf suit which already suggest that he is not a Ladybird land boy, all neatness and order, and that he has been playing at being a “wild thing”. As he misbehaves and his mother gets cross, it shows the true anger that a child can feel particularly when he is told that he will get no supper. As the no supper could be suggested to been seen as slight abandonment to the child and further angered by the confinement of his room, he decides to run away to a place where he can be a wild thing and to where there are no mothers to tell him otherwise. It is important to note here about how in the 1960’s the generational gap was at its peak and how the mother may even have been angry that her child was not appreciating what he had and that Max wasn’t a ladybird land boy (fig. 9&10).

In the story he sails away for many days and nights to show from a child’s point of view how far away from his mother and his prison of a room he was getting. When he gets to the island and meets the wild things he proves himself to be the wildest thing of all as if proving in a childish disgruntled manner that while his mother called him a wild thing he will be the wildest thing and live with the other wild things where he is wanted and they adore him for being such a wild thing (fig. 11). It is interesting here to know that originally the book was going to be Where The Wild Horses Are, The fact that it was changed from horses to wild things could be suggested that it was a signifier of the cultural change relating to the moving away from the comfortable norm and into the phantasmagorical wild things that live in the sixties. The book is also about reconciliation as the boy seems to calm down and miss his mother even amongst the company of his wild thing subjects and his mother did not stay cross with him either as she brought his supper after all (fig. 12&13). The book ends with my favourite way, the last page purely says “and it was still hot.”

While ‘In The Night Kitchen’ was technically done in the 1970’s It is influenced a lot by Sendak’s life and the lack of censorship, the controversy, the emotion and the dream state all speak of heavy ‘60’s influence. ‘ In The Night Kitchen’ starts off with the boy being cross at the noises in the night before falling into a dream. Within the dream he loses his clothes which is where the controversy lies, it’s hard to say if he’s was doing a very ‘60’s thing of trying to push boundaries or trying to do an equally 60’s notion of attacking the prudish ideas while emphasising that nakedness is a natural child like state (fig. 14). Within the book there is also a scene where the bakers try to bake the boy, it was later revealed by Sendak that they were indeed a reference to Hitler and Sendak’s Jewish heritage (fig. 15).

At first glance, Judith Kerr’s ’The Tiger Who Came to Tea’ upholds the conventions of the nineteen fifties, Sophie is at home with her mother in a nice conventional house whilst her father is out at work. However Judith Kerr uses the conventionality of Sophie’s family as the starting point for a delightfully subversive story, when the doorbell rings and Sophie finds a tiger outside. Being a polite middle class family they invite the tiger in for tea (fig.16). The tiger who could be said to represent the new forces sweeping in during the sixties, at first conforms by sitting down politely and then turns the house upside down by eating all the food in the house and drinking all the water before taking a polite goodbye (fig.17&18). This leads to the ultimate catastrophe for a nineteen fifties family, when Daddy comes home, there is nothing to give him for dinner. Whereas one imagines a Ladybird book father to be cross about this, Sophie’s father sweeps them off for dinner in a cafe further subverting the laws of correct behaviour by allowing Sophie to go out with her coat over her nightgown (fig. 19). It is possible though, that we are reading too much into this story , when Michael Rosen, the respected children’s author of ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt’ and subsequent Children’s Laureate, claimed that because Judith Kerr had been a refugee from the Nazis as a child the tiger obviously represents the way the Nazis soldiers could at any time force their way into the house and disrupt the family, Judith Kerr replied in amused tolerance that she had put a tiger in her story just because she liked tigers.

The actual illustrations in the book perfectly represent the clothes worn by a young mother and her child in the sixties, relaxed and colourful they are not in the vanguard of fashion but they have moved a long way forward from the tightly buttoned and plaited little girls of the fifties.

In ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’ Eric Carle shows the 1960’s love of colour and experimentation, using collage techniques and hand printed paper and at the same time showcases the advances in printing technology which made it possible for the book to be printed with different sized pages and with a hole in each page apparently showing how the caterpillar eats through various foods (fig. 20). The result is a funny and entertaining way of teaching young children to count and to learn the days of the week and at the same time introducing them to the life cycle of the butterfly. Published in 1969 the book has remained hugely popular and sold over 37 million copies.

In conclusion the 1960’s was an extraordinary decade in which the young achieved the ascendancy in social and cultural ideas. With the rejection of the old regime came the belief that experimentation wasn’t so much good as imperative. This willingness to try new forms of colour, design and technique fed into illustration and freed artists from the need to produce faithful drawings exactly representing the text. In the decades that followed as in the aftermath of a party, illustrators have for the most part returned to the idea that the primary job of an illustrator is to provide illustration for a story and yet the legacy of the sixties lives on in the use of bright colours, simple designs and willingness to deviate from exact realisms, all traits that can be seen in the most successful children’s illustrator of current times, Axel Scheffler (fig. 21).