Also this issue: Model Image The fragmented personae of Veruschka. -Robin Rice Tere O'Connor Dance -Janet Anderson Shut Up and Dance 11 -A.D. Amorosi Macbeth -David Shengold Line Dance -Deni Kasrel The Game Is Ova Heredity fashions an engaging tale from the ethics of reproductive science. -Justin Bauer The Crucible -Toby Zinman The Fever -Toby Zinman

March 13-19, 2003

artpicks

Monsters, Mickey and Mozart

by Juliet Fletcher

For over 40 years, Maurice Sendak has sketched, shaded and inked the fantastical. An acclaimed illustrator who started out as a window-display designer for FAO Schwarz, Sendak was introduced to children's illustration by editor Ursula Nordstrom, and by 1952 had completed his first commissions for two children's books. Yet his eventual acclaim for a trilogy of books -- including the modern childhood staple, Where the Wild Things Are -- was balanced by distinctly quirky choices: a summer job shading backgrounds for the Mutt and Jeff comic strip; a stint designing storyboards for animated cartoons about Jell-O. Perhaps these explain the eventual tone of books such as In the Night Kitchen, a flight of doughy fancy where a young boy, Mickey, finds his way into a bakery and then is mistaken for a bottle of milk.

This week, Brandywine River Museum opens the first of two exhibitions of Sendak's work: Its title, Monsters, Mickey and Mozart, refers to the trilogy comprising Wild Things, Night Kitchen and Outside over There. (This last one, concerning a young girl whose sister is kidnapped by goblins, was originally envisioned as a "visual opera" in the style of Mozart, and later inspired the movie Labyrinth, where Sendak's goblins were recreated by Jim Henson and led by David Bowie.) This exhibit concentrates on Night Kitchen and Outside; the second exhibit, opening in April at the Rosenbach Library, focuses on Wild Things. Both shows have amassed extant sketches as well as final watercolors to delve fully into Sendak's process and style. For anyone still haunted by these early tales of human fearfulness, there will still be important questions to be answered: For example, how the Wild Things possessed blades for fingers, an underbite of tusks yet curiously human feet?

Monsters, Mickey and Mozart, March 15 - May 18, Brandywine River Museum, U.S. Route 1, Chadds Ford, 610-388-2700; Let the Wild Rumpus Start!, April 6 -June 29, Rosenbach Museum & Library, 2010 DeLancey Place, 215-732-1600./em>