3 March - 7 July 2012
Mint Museum of Craft + Design
Mint Museum Uptown at Levine Center for the Arts
To accompany the Fairytales, Fantasy, and Fear exhibition, The Mint Museum Library is celebrating the fairytale! For many of us, the first stories of memory are the fairytales that have enchanted generations. These stories have inspired countless artists to depict their characters and settings and myriad authors to use them as a catalyst for their imagination. Commemorating the 200th anniversary of the first publication of Grimm's Fairy Tales, the Resource Center adjacent to the exhibition will be featuring a wide variety of the Brothers Grimm classic tales as well as an assortment of more modern fairytale adaptations. The Mint Museum Library is also pleased to present, with the permission of the British Film Institute, continual screenings of three fairy tale films by animation pioneer Lotte Reiniger: the 1922 silent Cinderella, and from 1954, Sleeping Beauty and Hansel and Gretel.
Lotte Reiniger
Lotte Reiniger (1899-1981) created her distinctive silhouette stop-motion films from 1919 until a year before her death. The Adventures of Prince Achmed is the oldest feature-length animated film in existence, but it is her short films of fairy tales for which she is best known and acclaimed. Using a process involving the painstaking freehand cutting of paper silhouettes, Reiniger developed a style of animation that has never been duplicated. Born in Berlin, Reiniger and her husband, film historian and producer Carl Koch, immigrated to England at the start of World War II. It is there that the majority of the fairy tale films were created; many for American television.
Additional Information on Fairytale Origins and Meanings
Fairytale Selections Available in The Resource Center
Christian Lacroix and the Tale of Sleeping Beauty by Camilla Morton. Illustrations by Christian Lacroix. (2011).
A fashion spin on a timeless tale by writer Morton and fashion designer Lacroix with marvelously inventive illustrations and an unexpected plot twist
Cinderella by William Wegman. (1993).
Fay Wray and Battina, Wegman's weimeraners, star in this version of the classic tale.
The Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm Ed. by Noel Daniel. (2011).
Created to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the publication of Grimm's Fairy Tales, it features illustrations by 25 artists including Walter Crane, Wanda Gag, Kay Nielsen, and Arthur Rackham. Biographies of all the artists are provided.
Grimm's Fairy Tales by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. Illustrated by Arthur Rackham. (2010).
Selected from a 1909 translation, the stories are highlighted by Rackham's exquisite illustrations.
Lucky Hans and Other Merz Fairy Tales by Kurt Schwitters. Illustrations by Irvine Peacock. (2009).
Translated from German by Jack Zipes, one of the world's authorities on fairy tales, Dadaist Schwitters' fairy tales are absurdist and subversive; the original "fractured fairy tales."
Six Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm with Illustrations by David Hockney by David Hockney. (2011).
A very special interpretation by this major contemporary artist.
A Tale Dark & Grimm by Adam Gidwitz. (2010).
Dubbed the "true story of Hansel and Gretel," Gidwitz entices from the first line: "Once upon a time, fairy tales were awesome."
____________________________
Created by Nicole Jacobson, Volunteer for the Mint Museum Library
