UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII AT
MANOA
Department of Art & Art
History
University of Hawaii Art
Gallery
PRESS INFORMATION: FOR IMMEDIATE
RELEASE
July 23,
2010
CONTACT: Lisa Yoshihara, Director; or Sharon
Tasaka, Associate Director
(808)
956-6888, <gallery@hawaii.edu>, http://hawaii.edu/artgallery
ART
EXHIBITION
Musings of Mystery
and Alphabets of Agony: The Work of Edward Gorey
The University of Hawaii Art Gallery in
collaboration with the University of Hawaii Library presents work by celebrated,
prolific American author and artist Edward Gorey (1925-2000), revered for his
distinctly elegant, enigmatic, and eerie black and white illustrations. This
exhibition features over 700 books, book jackets, prints, posters, drawings,
postcards, handmade dolls, and other ephemera from the John A. Carollo - Edward
Gorey Collection in the University of Hawaii at Manoa Library's Special Research
Collections, with special loans courtesy of The Edward Gorey Charitable Trust,
New York City and the Edward Gorey House, Yarmouthport,
Massachusetts.
LOCATION
University
of Hawaii Art Gallery
Art
Building, University of Hawaii at Manoa
DATES
September
26 - December 10, 2010
SPONSORS
Sponsored
by the University of Hawaii Department of Art and Art History and the College of
Arts and Humanities and University of Hawaii at Manoa Library; and supported by
grants from the Hawaii Council for the Humanities and by the "We the People"
initiative of the National Endowment for the Humanities; Rianna Williams;
anonymous donors; and Manoa Arts & Minds, a partnership that cultivates the
mind and spotlights the best of art, music, theater, dance and special
performances at UH Manoa.
http://www.manoa.hawaii.edu/chancellor/arts_minds/
OPENING
PROGRAM
Sunday, September 26, from
2:00-3:00
Keynote speaker Andreas Brown,
Co-Trustee, The Edward Gorey Charitable Trust, will talk about Edward Gorey, his
career and relationship with the famed Manhattan bookstore and cultural landmark
Gotham Book Mart in New York City.
OPENING
RECEPTION
Sunday, September 26,
from 3:00-5:00 p.m.
The public is
invited.
HOURS &
ADMISSION
Monday - Friday
10:30-5:00; Sunday
12:00-5:00.
Closed Saturdays;
November 11, Veterans Day; and November 25 & 26, Thanksgiving
Day.
Admission is free. Donations
are appreciated.
Parking fees may
apply.
PANEL
DISCUSSION
Thursday, November 4,
from 7:00-8:00 p.m.
A panel discussion
with Rick Jones, Director of the Edward Gorey House, collector John A. Carollo,
and University of Hawaii at Manoa humanities scholar Dr. Joseph
Stanton.
FREE
TOURS
Sundays, October 3 -
December 5, 2:00-3:00 p.m.
HALLOWEEN
EVENT
Sunday, October 31,
12:00-7:30 p.m.
Miss D. Awdrey-Gore
presents An Edward Gorey Haunted Mystery Family Soirée, a
fun day of hands-on art activities, films, and costume contests for children and
adults.
EDUCATIONAL SPECIAL
EVENTS (Details
forthcoming.)
The UH Art Gallery is
collaborating with the University of Hawaii at Manoa Library, the Hawaii State
Public Libraries, and Barnes & Noble Booksellers to organize special events
in conjunction with this exhibition. Specific information for educational
sessions featuring Gorey's alphabet book genre, film series, children's story
time and activities, Gorey-inspired drawing demonstrations by artists will be
announced soon.
EXHIBITION
SUMMARY
In homage to the unique
vision of Edward Gorey (1925-2000) and in honor of the tenth anniversary of the
artist's death, the University of Hawaii Art Gallery in collaboration with the
University of Hawaii Library presents Musings of Mystery and Alphabets of
Agony: The Work of Edward Gorey. This exhibition showcases the
John A. Carollo - Edward Gorey Collection from the University of Hawaii at Manoa
Library's Special Research Collections and features a selection of more than 700
of the over 1000 Edward Gorey books (many signed and first editions), fine art
books, original prints, posters, note cards, handmade toys and other curious
objects collected by John Carollo, Honolulu composer and dedicated Goreyphile
for over 35 years. Special loans of rarely seen original drawings and personal
items from The Edward Gorey Charitable Trust and the Edward Gorey House will
also be featured.
Known for its excellence in exhibition
design, the University of Hawaii Art Gallery will create a unique "Gorey-esque"
environment that includes a library and reading room and signature architectural
elements and characters, where Gorey's life and imaginary world will come alive.
Themes that will be explored include mystery and murder, creatures and objects,
children's books and menaced children, Gorey alphabets and poetical play,
Surrealism, theater and ballet, and Gorey as a fine artist with international
fame. Created in deference to Gorey's iconic alphabet book The Gashlycrumb
Tinies, a scavenger hunt for its 26 young characters in unlucky and
disastrous circumstances is a special aspect of the exhibition that will appeal
to visitors of all ages.
"This exhibition honors the timeless,
remarkable talent of Edward Gorey," said Lisa Yoshihara, director of the
University of Hawaii Art Gallery. "This collaboration between the University of
Hawaii at Manoa Library and the UH Art Gallery is an opportunity to celebrate
and share the rich holdings of our campus for the educational enjoyment and
enrichment of our students and the community. The exhibition will please Gorey
fans with an interpretative look to his intellect and artistic talents and
introduce a whole new generation to this internationally acclaimed American
genius. Many will find his mixture of whimsy and mystery darkly humorous, his
word craft incredible, and his elegantly drawn depictions just divine. This is
a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see such as vast range of Gorey's
works."
THE WORK OF EDWARD
GOREY
Edward Gorey invented a gothic
world that spanned from the Victorian/Edwardian era to the Roaring Twenties.
Settings of desolate mansions and remote landscapes are filled with menacing
objects, threatening topiaries, falling masonry, gloomy large-scale urns, and
carnivorous plants. Through witty writing and illustrations Gorey depicts
hapless children and elegantly dressed women and men entangled in tales of
mystery and peril. Books that are sometimes wordless, sometimes deftly rhymed,
display ingenious narratives of evil adults, mischievous children, and
incredible creatures. With a worldwide cult following, Gorey's signature
obsessively crosshatched pen and ink drawings illustrate comically bizarre dark
tales that have amused, delighted, and provoked generations of readers for over
50 years. His well-known anthologies: Amphigorey, Amphigorey Too,
Amphigorey Also, and Amphigorey Again brought his work to
a larger audience.
One of America's most eclectic and eccentric
artists, Gorey is a master of visual and literary ambiguities where provocative
imageries are created and unspeakable conclusions are left to the reader's
imagination. With a satirical dry humor, Gorey places his protagonists in
situations of perceived peril or horror. He provides ominous clues to tease the
reader-outstretched legs of the recently deceased, inanimate objects that
terrorize, and alphabets of caution and demise. In The Awdrey-Gore
Legacy, Gorey spoofs Agatha Christie's detective novels with all the
traditional makings of an English mystery. Maps, characters, murder weapons are
provided as clues, however, the reader soon realizes that the open-ended array
of mysterious materials oddly leads to no solution.
The best of Gorey's clever, woeful, devious,
and delirious tales appeal to young and old and have become classics of American
culture. Upon opening the cover of one of Gorey's books a reader is drawn into
a ghastly chain of events where characters are mysteriously abducted,
sacrificed, or lost through chance meetings with strange creatures or bizarre
twists of fate. For instance, The Gashlycrumb Tinies, his
renowned primer of alphabetical angst, chronicles the ill-fated mishaps of 26
excessively unfortunate children:
A is for AMY who fell down the
stairs
B is for BASIL assaulted by
bears
C is for CLARA who wasted
away
D is for DESMOND thrown out of a
sleigh
ABOUT THE
ARTIST
Born in Chicago in 1925,
Edward St. John Gorey taught himself to read at about the age of
three-and-a-half. Between the ages of five to seven he had read Lewis
Carroll's Alice and Bram Stoker's Dracula. He began to draw
before the age of four and considers himself mainly self-taught as his only
formal training consisted of a few classes at the Art Institute of Chicago.
After a short stint in the U.S. Army (1944-1946) Gorey enrolled in Harvard
University, earning a B.A. in French in 1950.
Gorey's career spanned work as a graphic
designer, illustrator, typographer, playwright, set designer, costume designer,
and toymaker. In his lifetime Gorey wrote more than 100 books and illustrated
more than 60 books by other authors including Samuel Beckett, Edward Lear, John
Bellairs, H.G. Wells, Alain-Fournier, Hilaire Belloc, Muriel Spark, Florence
Parry Heide and John Ciardi. With delicate control and sensitivity to the
nuances of calligraphy, Gorey filled his volumes with time-consuming
hand-lettered type that provided a distinctly elegant style for his fine art
books. His illustrated version of T.S. Eliot's Old Possum's Book of
Practical Cats is a perennial best seller widely appreciated for Gorey's
whimsical depictions of his favorite pets.
Gorey was commissioned to design the sets and
costumes for the Broadway production of Dracula, for which he won
a Tony Award for his costumes in 1978. A great fan of Agatha Christie, Gorey is
perhaps most recognized for his animated cartoon introduction to the
long-running television series Mystery! that featured a fainting
woman and sleuthing trench-coated detectives with flashlights. Both his words
and images have inspired many writers, visual artists, musicians, and filmmakers
to create compositions, interpretive theatrical productions, graphic design, and
animations. Gorey has influenced various Goth subcultures and numerous
communities host annual Edwardian costume parties dedicated to his style. He
has garnered an international fan base and his works have been translated into
Japanese, German, Italian, Dutch, and French.
Extremely erudite, Gorey was a voracious
reader who owned more than 25,000 books, including many by nineteenth century
British writers. His personal library ranged from his favorite Japanese
classic The Tale of Genji by Lady Murasaki Shikibu to volumes by Jane
Austen. Other interests and genres that informed his work included Surrealism;
black and white silent films; an avid dedication to George Balanchine's New York
City Ballet, where he never missed a performance; weekend yard sales to fuel his
eclectic collection of objects; and television pop-culture.
UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII LIBRARY'S SPECIAL
RESEARCH COLLECTIONS
The University
of Hawaii Library's Special Research Collections includes a number of separate
collections of materials that are rare, unique, or otherwise extraordinary. All
of them require distinct, often unique, policies and procedures for acquisition,
processing, storage, and patron use to preserve them for future generations.
The John A. Carollo-Edward Gorey Collection began in 1998 when John Carollo
donated the first of his books authored by or illustrated by Edward Gorey. A
Gorey fan and collector since his youth, Carollo has increased the collection's
holdings to more than 1000 items over the last 12 years to shape this strong and
significant collection. Through Musings of Mystery and Alphabets of
Agony: The Work of Edward Gorey the public has an exceptional
opportunity to see and learn from large number of works that are not always
readily available.
PUBLICATION
A
full-color catalogue will feature an essay by Dr. Joseph Stanton, humanities
scholar and specialist in art history and American studies at the University of
Hawaii at Manoa.
PUBLICITY
PHOTOS
High-resolution digital
images are available upon request.
WEBSITE
An
educational website will be developed for Musing of Mystery and Alphabets
of Agony: The Work of Edward Gorey. Please visit the University of
Hawaii Art Gallery website http://www.hawaii.edu/artgallery for more
information.
University of Hawaii
System
Established in 1907 and fully
accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, the University of
Hawaii is the state's sole public system of higher education. The UH System
provides an array of undergraduate, graduate, and professional degrees and
community programs on 10 campuses and through educational, training, and
research centers across the state. UH enrolls more than 50,000 students from
Hawaii, the U.S. mainland, and around the world. For more information visit
www.hawaii.edu.
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