In Denver Art Museum’s “Wild Things: The Art of Maurice Sendak,” one gets the sense of the author and illustrator as a whole person, from an oft-bedridden childhood gazing out his Brooklyn window to his global success and forays into stage and screen.
That’s worth noting, since some exhibits promise a peek inside an artist’s brain, but just as often fail to provide a thoughtful push-back on the decades of myth-making that made them a household name.
“Wild Things” resists tropes and plays with audience expectations while still offering the blockbuster imagery promised in the title. So much so, in fact, that this is the largest retrospective of his work to date, according to the museum.
Glimpses of “Where the Wild Things Are” are visible through a panel at the new Maurice Sendak exhibition at the Denver Art Museum, in Denver on Oct. 9, 2024. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post)
Passion courses through the bilingual texts about Sendak’s work, known the world over from books such as “Where the Wild Things Are,” “In the Night Kitchen” and “Outside Over There.” It emphasizes how a self-taught Jewish boy from New York connected with hundreds of millions of people through “the magic and all the beauty and mischief he generated over his six-decade career,” according to exhibit signage.
In partnership with the Columbus Museum of Art, where a smaller version of this debuted, and the Maurice Sendak Foundation, “Wild Things: The Art of Maurice Sendak” presents a staggeringly complete portrait of the artist, who died in 2012. It unites for the first time all the original paintings for “Where the Wild Things Are,” plus hundreds more published and unpublished drawings, sketches and artifacts of his diverse creative life.
Running Oct. 13-Feb. 17, 2025, it’s a major effort for the museum, which advertises it with a billboard-sized sign on the second floor of its Hamilton Building in downtown Denver. “Wild Things” is not included with admission, but it’s entirely worth the $27-$32 extra ticket (see denverartmuseum.org for tickets and discounts).
Denver Art Museum staff puts the finishing touches on a new exhibit featuring children’s author and illustrator Maurice Sendak in Denver on Oct. 9, 2024. Here, books printed in different languages from around the world are on display. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post)
Highlights include early drawings from familiar books, as well as detailed sketches of personal whimsy. Sendak would challenge himself by starting a self-contained sketch in the upper-right-hand side of a page, then make sure to finish the unfolding, improvised story before a piece of classical music had finished playing (Mozart was his No. 1 musical hero).
That would be merely cute if not for the mind-blowingly sharp aesthetic and creativity of the dashed-off exercises, which often satirized high society.
Denver Art Museum staff prepares to put the finishing touches on a new exhibit featuring children’s author and illustrator Maurice Sendak in Denver on Oct. 9, 2024. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post)
Seeing these drawings and paintings up close proves just how singular they are, as each square-inch bursts with mischievous detail and personality. Sendak resisted a signature style, but one gets a strong sense of his disregard for the boring adult world at every stage. His first exposure to Disney and Mickey Mouse was life-changing (in 1940’s “Fantasia”) and his talking animals were basically self-portraits, he admits in a quote emblazoned across one gallery wall.
“He seemed to create a new visual style for every project, like Madonna,” said Christoph Heinrich, DAM’s director, at an opening event last week.
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Sendak was as prolific as he was boundary-pushing, and yet his incredible, cross-hatched attention to detail seems to defy the pace of output — which includes not just illustrations but sets for operas and theatrical productions, and traditional portraits. Oversized props from the productions, and from Spike Jonze’s 2009 adaptation of “Where the Wild Things Are,” offer a kid-friendly element, as does the Reading Room. That mid-exhibition stop features out-of-print books by the author and recreates a virtual view from his house.
Children’s author and illustrator Maurice Sendak’s sketches and paintings are on display at the Denver Art Museum through Feb. 17, 2025. Pictured here during set-up on Oct. 9, 2024. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post)
Even if you grew up during Sendak’s mid-to-late 20th-century heyday, you’re unlikely to be familiar with the breadth here, including cartoons and collaborations with artists across TV and film. He certainly didn’t hoard his genius, even if the particular project failed to get the same attention as other works.
It’s a lot of text and small, densely hung frames, to be sure. But it brilliantly evokes the humanity Sendak injected into his work, tracing the uncertainty of life and the looming finale of death, as well as the joy of discovery, the childlike nature of happiness, and the slippery, wordless emotion we feel when confronted with all of it.