‘The
Illustrator’ ESSAY ASSIGNIMENT
Sara
Fanelli
In this essay I will investigate the artistic practice
and illustrative career of Sara Fanelli, born in Florence, Italy on 20th
July 1969 at the time of the first moon landings.[1] Fanelli came to England to do a
foundation course, and after a one year architectural degree at the University
of Florence returned for a degree in graphic design at the Camberwell College
of Art, followed by a two year MA in illustration at the Royal College of Art,
graduating in 1995.
Fanelli still lives in London and is most well-known for
her innovative children’s books, usually publishing with Walker books. She
draws from a wide range of artistic influences; from primitive art, Dadaism,
Cubism, Surrealism and Bauhaus, and also from her interest in mythology and
literature. I am attracted to Sara Fanelli’s work because her drawings are
playful and rich in imagination. She uses a range of Medias, combining the
collage of found objects and drawing over them in different Medias, delighting
in experimentation and accidents, as a consequence her work is wonderfully
weird. thought provoking, textually rich and varied in colour.
Sara Fanelli is the daughter of American and Italian
parents and is able to combine and appreciate both cultural influences in her
work. From the Italian she has an old fashioned, Mediterranean influence which
outworks itself in “very earthy colours”[2]
contrasted by “a very different sort of culture that came with bright colours
and had an impact”[3]. In
being influenced by a combination of cultures Fanelli was also exposed to a rich
artistic childhood - her mother being an art historian whilst her father taught
the history of architecture. She states that “as a child, I was always drawing,
always making little books. I knew I wanted to be an illustrator… I grew up
surrounded by unusual books; and I was intrigued by the work of Mayakovsky, Lissitsky,
Kurt Schwitters and the Bauhaus.”[4]
Fanelli was also impacted by renaissance art and architecture. Sara Fanelli moved “to London to study because
[she] felt that art schools [t]here would allow [her] to focus on a more
personal experimental approach, which … would [not] have been possible … in
Italy”[5].
Cubism and to a lesser extent, Futurism both contributed
to Dadaism, which in turn fed into the Surrealist movement. This chain of artistic
influences can be clearly seen in Sara Fanelli’s illustration, as physically
her images combine the simplified geometric effect of Cubism with the use of a
collage of found surfaces and objects as popularised by Dada. Fanelli’s work visually quotes Surrealism,
with the use of cut out eyes. Another influential art movement on Fanelli’s
work is Bauhaus. Her work, though it appears chaotic, follows compositional
rules; her pages are always well balanced.
Cubist artists created art valuing the three principles of
geometricity, simultaneity and passage. They attempted to tell the truth
through their images in a different way, based on these three values. Cubism is
realist in a conceptual sense, rather than perceptual. This means that if they
were depicting an object, or a person, they would show it from many perspectives
at once, thus introducing a fourth dimension into their work – that of the time
it would take a person to move around an object and view it from different
angles. The principle of geometricity gave Cubism a distinct look- simplifying
the shape of their subject to geometric shapes.[6]
Sara Fanelli makes use of the Cubist principle of
geometricity using the same geometric shapes in her characters and landscapes
that the movement is recognised and remembered for. The faces of her characters
are often abstracted, as she uses the simplified shapes of cubism. By creating images not based on the scene and
subject as perceived, breaking with tradition, Cubism paved the way for more
outrageous conceptual art. Dadaism drew on the Cubist movement by refusing to
be limited to creating a realistic image based on perceptions. It opened the
way for creating abstract images, making them acceptable as fine art.
The Dadaism movement formed in reaction against WW1 and
the philosophies and traditions seen as its causes. Escaping to neutral
Switzerland, the Dadaists protested the war by rejecting artistic traditions.
They created meaningless, non-art to demonstrate the meaninglessness of war.
The Dadaist sought to shock, offend and oppose the serious artistic world, by
doing something nonsensical.[7]
Almost all of Fanelli’s compositions are collages
evidencing her love of this medium. She “likes to have lots of layers in a
picture … bring[ing] together different worlds and different realities.”
Fanelli started to work in collage “in an attempt to move away from the flat
colours”[8]
she had previously used on her BA course. Fanelli usually starts making a collage
illustration by drawing the composition or layout, and then playing around with
the items she plans to collage in. she uses a variety of different found
objects, including her own prints that she cuts up. Fanelli dislikes using a
computer to create her artwork. In her planned compositions she welcomes
accidents in the creative process and each is “exploited for maximum effect, to
trigger both sensation and imagination.”[9]
This play on accidents helps to give her images a really fresh, organic feel.
Children’s book illustrator Lauren Child, creator of the
characters Charlie, Lola and Clarice Bean, like Fanelli, uses collage to create
her illustration. She vividly portrays modern life with its “bewildering
abundance of visual material that surrounds us today”[10].
Child creates chaotic interiors using “fabrics, wallpapers, photographic images
and twirling typography”. The result is “a democratic flattening of perspective
that gives equal importance to everything on the page, rather as children do in
their drawings”[11].
However where Child creates her images on the computer[12],
Fanelli’s work is “handmade” she prefers to use the computer as a tool to
process the artwork, and not to build the actual image.[13]
I believe the use of collage in children’s books has been successful because
collage images have so much depth; it takes time to absorb them, and you need
to return to look at them again. Each
piece of collage is interesting by itself, and has a history and context of its
own, and the image as a whole gives each a new story.
One
of the most famous examples of Dada art is Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain” – the
original found object art piece. I feel “Fountain” beautifully embodies all
that Dada stands for- it “stuck its tongue out” at serious art of the day, shocking
and offending people. Duchamp meant his piece as a practical joke[14].
Sara Fanelli’s work shares this humorous, nonsensical, element. Fanelli places
emphasis on having a playful attitude: “in fact, playfulness in the work (as in life!), is
so important that if there wasn’t an element of it with its surprises, I
wouldn’t enjoy making pictures as much as I do.”[15]
Though
Dada artists shared no predominant medium, assemblage, collage, photomontage
and the use of found objects became acceptable as a legitimate art form due to
their use in Dada art[16].
Fanelli makes wide use of found objects, textures and collages in her work.
Some of the artists who were so influential in the Dada movement
went on to be part of the surrealist movement. Influenced by the seemingly random
imagery of Dadaism, surrealism includes more meaningful symbolism and dream
imagery. The artists had a weighted fascination with the subconscious mind and
the meaning and display of dreams. To explore the influence of their subconscious,
surrealist artists would not plan their images, painting spontaneously or
trying to paint automatically in the same way that others practice automatic
writing[17].
Sara
Fanelli uses a similar approach in creating an image; she will plan a
composition, but give herself a lot of freedom within that frame work and then
let her images happen accidentally, this technique works giving her
illustration a very fresh, raw feel. She
shares an interest in exploring dreams and dream landscapes with the
surrealists. Exploring dreams offers a wider scope for rich imaginings.
An obvious sign of the influence of surrealism on Fanelli
is the reoccurring eye imagery, which echoes of the work of Salvador Dali.
Fanelli creates this surrealist affect by cutting out the eyes of photos from
magazines. The affect of the realistic eyes, combined with a coarser cut out
shape or an ink splodge face or a scribble is striking, maybe unsettling, but
definitely attention grabbing.
The surrealist celebrity artist Salvador Dali created the
image below, of multiple realistic eyes suspended in a curtain for a dream
sequence in Alfred Hitchcock’s film “Spellbound”. The massive curtain of eyes
creates a disturbing atmosphere, part of a key sequence in one of the first
films to use psychoanalysis, and the first film to use it to solve a murder[18].
Fanelli likes to use the effect of realistic cut out eyes combined with flat or
unrealistic painted faces and figures because “adding the eyes adds a
completely different reality… so you don’t know which one is real and which one
is fake, or are they both real”?[19]
The Bauhaus was a school of art founded by the architect
Walter Gropius in Weimar. Bauhaus formed in reaction against the soullessness
of manufacturing. Bauhaus aimed to rejuvenate design, and had a dramatically
different approach to that of old academic traditional attitude to fine art
education, being much more similar to the medieval guild system. Placing
emphasis on practical skills, crafts and techniques and placing them on an
equal level with fine art. The Bauhaus approach to art education is distinct in
that it places emphasis on learning the basic principles of design and colour
theory- also learning a range of practical skills in handling different
materials and using different processes. It aimed to bring all this together
with the intention of solving the problems of industrial society of the time.
Bauhaus had a distinct philosophy and a significant faculty- a number of
outstanding artists of the time were lecturers at the Bauhaus school, including
Paul Klee. After the Bauhaus school was closed by the Nazis in 1932, its
philosophy and house style, recognisable for its signature emphasis on
functional, simplified geometric designs that were easily compatible with mass
production, spread abroad.[20]
Paul Klee was born in 1879 in Munchenbuchsee near Bern,
Switzerland to a German father and Swiss mother, both of whom were musicians.
Encouraged musically from an early age, Paul Klee enjoyed the violin all his
life, though he did not make a career of it; moving to Munich at the age of 19
to study painting. Klee preferred to work as a fine artist, rather than as an
illustrator: “First of all, the art of
living; then as my ideal profession, poetry and philosophy, and as my real
profession, plastic arts; in the last resort, for lack of income, illustrations”[21].
I compare him to Sara Fanelli because of
their shared influences in Cubism
and Bauhaus, and she claims him as an influence, which can be seen in both
their work.
Called “one of
the most inventive artists of the 20th century”[22]
Paul Klee is known for his small abstract paintings and etchings. After
graduating in 1901Klee travelled to Italy and then lived with his parents for several
years. During this time his work was first exhibited – a series of etchings
called “inventions”. Still involved in the music world, playing violin in an
orchestra and writing concert and theatre reviews, Klee married Bavarian
pianist Lily Stumpf in 1906.
Over the next 5 years his work developed slowly as he attempted to find a new
approach to his art. In 1911 Klee first met Wassily Kandinsky and exhibited
with “Blaue Reiter”. Previously Klee had struggled with colour theory seeming
to have no natural instinct for it. The association opened his mind to modern colour theory. Klee
visited Tunisia in 1914 and experienced an artistic breakthrough in regard to colour and began
experimenting with watercolours. His
painting and process of working seemed to be linked to his musicality- he
composed his images, creating colour harmony.[23]
Like
Klee, Sara Fanelli is inspired by her experiences of traveling, collecting a
lot of observational drawing. She “likes to take [herself] away to another
city... where [she] explores the place, visiting the museums, keeping a
sketchbook, then [she’ll] put aside all these ideas until she needs them.”[24]
Klee and Fanelli both combine an eclectic interest in music and an academic
background with artistic production, Klee’s interest in music fed back into his
art, in a similar way, Fanelli takes inspiration from literature.
Sara Fanelli uses her art as a way of coping with life,
and processing her feelings about it. In her work “Sometimes I Think Sometimes
I Am”, which is a collection of quotes selected by Fanelli and her illustrated
responses to them, Steven Heller observes Fanelli is “fighting to control the
scads of cut-outs, tear ups and smudges, smears and scribbles- fighting to make
meaning out of randomness and construct stories out of amorphous bits.”[25]
Fanelli manages to use this approach to making art to work through her emotions
rather than attempt to aggressively evoke the emotions of others. “Unlike so
much contemporary art … rendered in the … cut and paste manner, which is
designed … to agitate the eyes and grate the mind- this particular work is
non-confrontational.”[26]
So Fanelli’s images are deceptively chaotic, only apparently random, in truth
they are carefully crafted.
Fanelli pays tribute to the Italian novelist Italo
Calvino, claiming him as a further influence both on her work and on outlook
and approach to life. Not wanting to take herself too seriously she mentions Calvino’s
book “Six memos for the next millennium.” It represents the combination of
lightness and heaviness, in the interaction between Medusa “the gorgon who
turns everything into stone and represents the heaviness of life”[27]
and Perseus who flies in with winged shoes. Using the example of Perseus using
a shield as a mirror to observe and conquer Medusa, as an allegory of how we can
hope to conquer the heaviness of life with lightness in life. Fanelli says she
uses her art as a mirror, like Perseus uses the shield to “deal with reality,
not pretending that there isn’t any heaviness in life, and denying the reality
that we are doomed to but by looking at it in a different way”[28]
for Fanelli this is one of the important roles of artists and writers; to
process the heaviness of life, making life palatable. Fanelli likes to do this
processing through a lightness of form and humour in her art, and not to take
herself too seriously. Her work always has this playful element, and is always
very engagingly alive. Her work is not designed to shock or to “jar the
collective senses, but neither does it sit placidly, tamely, or invisibly on
the page.”[29]
It is neither “sentimental nor prosaic”.[30]
Fanelli’s use of hand lettering is an element to her work
which makes her unique, and she uses it to the maximum, to communicate her
meaning and as an artistic image itself. “Fanelli’s eccentric lettering, randomly
alternating from hand scrawls, to scripts, to fumbled typefaces that change
from page to page, is a design play at its most eccentric.”[31]
Her drawing and her writing make her art together a “total experience”. In her
delight in method and process, Fanelli’s meaning and message is not lost.
“Fanelli uses letters, type, scrawl, scribbles and scratches whenever she can,
but whatever the method, concept is paramount.”[32]
Fanelli’s Italian upbringing and foreign influences are
an advantage in the arena of English children’s book illustration. Her style is
reminiscent of book illustrators such as “Czech Kveta Pacovska or Wolf Eribruch
in Germany”, and it is clear that “her work doesn’t have its roots in the
British traditions that have shaped so many of our finest illustrators.” So
Fanelli offers a completely different flavour to illustration than her English
counterparts. “Fanelli’s originality has brought a breath of fresh air to the
world of picture books.” From the beginning of her career Fanelli challenged
and rejected the “conventional approach to illustration, lettering and page
design”.
Along
with the rich pool of European art movements and the desire to craft her
stories to be reread and creating art as a way of coping with life. Fanelli
demonstrates an appreciation for nonsense in her work. With humour she processes
difficult subjects, but also just because nonsense is enjoyable. In this
Fanelli is carrying on a tradition of writing for children that started with
Edward Lear, and includes Lewis Carroll whom she quotes as influential “I also really enjoy and admire Lewis Carroll’s
approach to logic in his books.”[33]Edward
Lear, the “laureate of nonsense” decided to be an artist after seeing some
paintings by Turner. Apprenticed young, his career as a children’s author apparently
happened by accident, when fulfilling a commission to illustrate a menagerie
and he “unleashed a torrent of nonsensical rhymes and pictures” to entertain
the children of the house he was a guest at. Lear’s illustrations are “exuberantly
uninhibited” and express an “economy and spontaneity” that many illustrators
appropriate today. [34]
One of the compelling things in Fanelli’s storytelling is
her giving unconventional characters a voice, for instance the knife and fork
shown below from “Dear Diary”, where they relate the trauma of separation at
teatime, also given voice in “Dear Diary”: a chair, a dog, a spider, a firefly
and a ladybird. Another illustrator who makes use of anthropomorphised objects
and animals to narrate her stories and connect with her readers is Simone Lia.
“Fluffy” tells the story of the relationship between the bunny rabbit Fluffy,
and Michael, who Fluffy believes to be his daddy. Introducing the different
sections of the story is a dust particle: “overwhelmed and honoured at this
decision”. Lia and Fanelli have both had success in using strange characters to
connect with their audience and bring their narrative alive.
Fanelli’s appreciation for classic storytelling is
demonstrated in her love of Calvino’s classic literature. She believes in myths
for children “a lot of children’s stories are myths or have that kind of
structure” and wants to create stories that children will want to read over and
over again which is the signature of a myth.
For her myths are narratives that “are not dead or portentous or remote
or difficult but living breathing organisms with real energy to make you laugh
and cry and gasp and sigh and dream.” Her drawings are designed to be poured
over by children with more details to be delighted in, this element of
“repetition of it and never getting bored... is something that goes with myth”.
Her
imagination enjoys free reign in inventing stories and images. Her characters
take on a life of their own choosing the direction of the story.
Sara Fanelli’s work is significant in the arena of children’s
books because of the fresh vitality her collage technique and approach to storytelling
give her books. She does not condescend to children, though her outlook is
innocently playful. In conclusion Fanelli uses her work to make sense of life,
and to process her emotions. This is
exemplified in her book “Sometimes I Think, Sometimes I Am”, where she collected
a selection of well-known, loved quotes by writers and illustrated them. On her
webpage, and exhibited in the book is a quote from Oscar Wilde “the truth is
rarely pure and never simple”[35]
– this eloquently summaries her approach to life, and how she creates her work.
[1]
Heller 2007, p.2
[2]
Solomons 2007
[3]
Solomons 2007
[4]
Blake and Carey 2002, p.80
[5]
Blake and Carey 2002, p.80
[6]
Gersh-Nesic 2013
[7]
Esaak 2013
[8]
Blake and Carey 2002, p. 80
[9]
Fanelli 2007
[10]
Blake and Carey 2002, p. 20
[11]
Blake and Carey 2002, p. 20
[12]
Blake and Carey 2002, p. 74
[13]
Solomons 2007
[14]
Howarth 2000
[15]
Heller 2007, p. 5
[16]
Esaak 2013
[17]
Voorhies 2004
[18]
Boyes 2011
[19]
Solomons 2007
[20]
Borteh 2012
[21]
Di San Lazzaro 1957, p. 16
[22]
Alley 1981, p. 386
[23]
Alley 1981, p. 386
[24]
Blake and Carey 2002, p. 80
[25]
Fanelli 2007
[26]
Fanelli 2007
[27]
Solomons 2007
[28]
Solomons 2007
[29]
Fanelli 2007
[30]
Fanelli 2007
[31]
Fanelli 2007
[32]
Fanelli 2007
[33]
Heller 2007, p. 3
[34]
Blake and Carey 2002, p. 14, 15
[35]
Fanelli 2013
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