Sendak on Sendak & Nike on Assignment

by Nike Desis
There's a Mystery There: Sendak on Sendak
@ the Rosenbach Museum & Library

In the Night Kitchen? Yes, definitely a mystery there. Likely a trace of that story lingers in your mind. If you need a refresher, it is worth a refresher. A dreaming boy named Mickey floats around a night kitchen, shedding his clothes as he enters a realm populated by three giant man bakers who bake boys. He escapes being mixed in with the milk and baked in with the bread dough. Sendak hoped to evoke “the lusciousness of cooking, of kneading with your hands, of undressing and floating in the sensuality of milk… thus driving every librarian crazy.” Aside from the narratives, there is a naughty quality and crassness to his dark and scratchy images. They seem to circle the offensive, without coming critically close to offending. He doesn’t deal with innocent and wistful fantasy and avoids the cloying and condescending qualities that fantasies can sometimes have.

If you go to the Rosenbach in the next year, you will find for yourself the smooth display of illustrative work and heavy flow of information through many well designed medias: original illustrations, accompanying print material, multiple touch screens, additional artifacts and objects. You won’t find the stories themselves in the exhibition because in a collection this comprehensive you’ve come to see what’s beyond the book. The book/gift store doesn’t miss a beat, and there I spent a good time rereading the hits. (I didn’t, but I recommend reading before viewing.)

The preliminarily and final drawings on display at the Rosenbach were pretty dreamy to think about as an actual artifact and a unique piece of work. Where the Wild Things Are was published in 1963. The two-page spread of prancing beasts and Max under a full moon are so iconic that it sort of knocks the wind out of you to see a preliminary drawing. It’s like pulling back the Wizard’s curtain once you’ve reached Emerald City. That is what is very useful about surveys like the Rosenbach has presented.

Behind Sendak’s curtain we can also see him border innocence and adult themes. It is all the more transgressive when Sendak plays it out in books intended for children, as he does in work after work. Not that storybooks need necessarily to be transgressive. However, there is some simplicity of surface associated with kid things like gummy bears or coloring books. Those materials and media can be maturely co-opted to dramatic effect with the littlest hints of anything not so innocent.* Monsters and naked kitchens are hardly candy coated, but naughty boys sent to bed with out dinner are naughty boys we can identify with. Once the characters start floating naked in milk and dough, we continue to follow Sendak, but only on his fantastical terms. He says: “There have to be elements of anxiety and mystery in truthful children’s books, or, at least, there have to be in mine. What I don’t like are formless floating fantasies. Fantasy makes sense only if it is rooted ten feet deep in reality.”

I think the following factoid is an interesting, I guess, twist on Sendak's above quote about reality and fantasy. One of the original attractions at the now totally defunct Metreon entertainment shopping center in San Francisco was an In the Night Kitchen themed restaurant, which served diner-style food. Within the same shopping center was also a children's play area, with toys modeled on Sendak's children's books.

I wish I could have been at the Metreon for the super simulation. I mean, to think that In the Night Kitchen was a beginning concept for a restaurant! Food is a basic thing, especially bread with boys narrowly and nakedly escaping from the dough. I’m going to find Baulldriard's famous essay, now that the Rosenbach exhibition, is sending me tangentially, via night kitchens and Metreon malls, straight into simulacra’s lap. For whatever reasons you like things as a child, I especially liked In the Night Kitchen and it turns out it is still deep enough to dig into as an adult.

*** I love those super sour candies, like sour powers and warheads. I relish in the suckering pain, eating them until my tongue is craterous. The experience might be like the eating equivalent of laughing. I’m making a guess that Sendak is a black licorice eater: dark and mature, yet a cavity causing sweet all the same. My own illustrations often rest on the metaphorical and literal idea of the candy coated with a sour puckering adult theme. Similarly, I think some of us make work with the idea that every one thinks kittens are cute. Some can make it go far and some of us fall flat on their kitten loving faces.

[Nike Desis is a published writer/illustrator, whose "Crayon Couture" is an adult-themed activity book chock full of connect-the-dot satire. Desis is also an artist living and working in Philadelphia]


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