Edited by Karen Marta. Text by Claire Gilman, Linda Nochlin, Julie Taymor, Jack Zipes.
For Tales of the Brothers Grimm, 36 celebrated and lesser-known of the unsanitized fairy tales collected by the illustrious brothers were carefully chosen by artist Natalie Frank, reinterpreted in 75 gouache and chalk pastel drawings, and cast in a Surrealist dreamscape. This volume, designed by Marian Bantjes, is the largest collection of Grimms' Fairy Tales ever illustrated by a fine artist. Frank's irreverent palette, sophisticated use of color and inventive depiction of these dark narratives capture the original stories with a contemporary and unflinching eye. Each of the tales opens with a hand-drawn title page and is framed by a unique border; small drawings punctuate each story in the tradition of classic fairy-tale editions. The foremost Grimm scholar, Jack Zipes, introduces the book.
Featured image is reproduced from Natalie Frank: Tales of the Brothers Grimm.
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
Bloomberg News
Katya Kazakina
The lurid palette—rich in pinks, greens, blues, and yellows—creates the phantasmagoric atmosphere: part haunted house, part fun house. Animals and humans are frequently embedded within the same distorted figures. Nudity is common. Eyes, arms, and other body parts float in midair. Skeletons lounge next to the living.
Observer
Alanna Martinez
Represented by Chicago dealer Rhona Hoffman and L.A. dealers ACME, the artist has set herself apart with traditional painting techniques that she fuses with modern abstract styles and a vibrant palette. Her work often explores contemporary discourse on the body, feminism, sexuality, the grotesque, and the domestic sphere. For the Grimms, her characters are raw, at times rough, and always a study in opposites: soft and sensual flesh, with piercing realistic eyes, caught up in furious line work, contorted bodies, and violent tragedy. But like the stories themselves, all the images still contain a bit of humor.
Milk Made
Jake Boyer
When looking at the stunningly impressionistic paintings of Natalie Frank, you wouldn’t immediately guess that you’re staring into the world of Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Yet that is indeed the subject matter of her latest gallery show, aptly titled The Brothers Grimm, though not without the wildly evocative and dark touch of Frank’s lurid imagination.
ARTnews
Dan Duray
Frank’s paintings always tend to have a narrative feel to them anyway–the experience akin to reading some kind of meticulous and elegant horror comic book, with the panels stacked on top of each other, Bacon’s popes meet Guernica–but here every page dances with color and emotion.
Financial Times
Ariella Budick
Frank’s illustration — included in the ravishing book Tales from the Brothers Grimm: Drawings by Natalie Frank but unfortunately omitted from the exhibition — shows us his gruesome treasury, a bazaar of dismembered limbs and human trophy heads arranged in a room decorated with pretty stripes. A blue face with smelly-fish eyes and a dumbly open mouth lingers in the memory.
The Improbable
Hilary Lawlor
It was always a toss-up as to which was more alarming—the stories themselves or the beautiful, terrifying drawings—but I’m so excited to have this book on my shelves for a long time to come.
New York Journal of Books
Richard Rivera
Tales of the Brothers Grimm, Drawings by Natalie Frank is an impressive tome with marvelous attention to detail. Frank’s work is represented in private collections and museums in the United States. This book has all of the makings and quality to become a collector’s item for people who enjoy books that are beautifully printed and filled with commanding illustrations.
Hyperallergic
John Yau
The numinous, jarring color and attention to gleefully monstrous details is masterful. Certainly no other artist of her generation has done as much with pastel. Drawing is central to her work, and with that comes the possibility of inventiveness.
Time Out New York
Paul Laster
Frank takes the stories apart to uncover their most sinister scenes, rendering them with surreal, nightmarish flourishes. Digging into their subtexts, Frank unmasks these tales as the twisted, misogynistic fantasies they always were.
Artforum
Barry Schwabsky
In these images, everything seems to be happening at once, as if a swirl of disparate actions...were sweeping one along without allowing time to question things. As in the tales themselves, the accent is more on the wonder at strange and possibly incomprehensible events than on revulsion or regret over their often dire consequences. No one's identity is securely established, no contradiction disallowed in Frank's magical realism.
FORMAT: Hbk, 9 x 12 in. / 272 pgs / illustrated throughout. LIST PRICE: U.S. $60.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $79 ISBN: 9788862083867 PUBLISHER: Damiani AVAILABLE: 5/26/2015 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Out of stock indefinitely AVAILABILITY: Not available TERRITORY: NA LA
Published by Damiani. Edited by Karen Marta. Text by Claire Gilman, Linda Nochlin, Julie Taymor, Jack Zipes.
For Tales of the Brothers Grimm, 36 celebrated and lesser-known of the unsanitized fairy tales collected by the illustrious brothers were carefully chosen by artist Natalie Frank, reinterpreted in 75 gouache and chalk pastel drawings, and cast in a Surrealist dreamscape. This volume, designed by Marian Bantjes, is the largest collection of Grimms' Fairy Tales ever illustrated by a fine artist. Frank's irreverent palette, sophisticated use of color and inventive depiction of these dark narratives capture the original stories with a contemporary and unflinching eye. Each of the tales opens with a hand-drawn title page and is framed by a unique border; small drawings punctuate each story in the tradition of classic fairy-tale editions. The foremost Grimm scholar, Jack Zipes, introduces the book.
