March 9, 2016
- Today, Kaitlynn and I went to the Tomi Ungerer Museum in Strasbourg. She had already been there and convinced me to go with her. I had low expectations, but she told me I'd like it. I didn't know who Tomi Ungerer was before this, besides a little about Flat Stanley, and frankly I had no interest in a cartoonist.
- The museum ended up blowing away my expectations. Tomi Ungerer was born in Strasbourg in 1931 and lived in various places around the world, including New York City and Ireland. He drew and used colored ink to add color and dimension to his drawings.
- To my surprise, not all of his artwork was cartoons for children (especially those in the basement!!). Tomi Ungerer created illustrations for books. For example, the photo above depicts life in Alsace, which is an illustration in a book of traditional Alsatian songs. He also created illustrations for fairy tale books. I greatly enjoyed these colorful drawings of dwarves and witches.
- I was shocked by the basement exhibit. The picture below is just one of Ungerer's MANY erotic drawings. Many of his erotic creations consisted of fairy tale creatures. For example, there's one saucy picture of Pinocchio and a woman, in which Pinocchio's nose is elongated. Creative and clever to say the least. My favorite was Das Kamasutra der Frösche: frisch, frosch, fröhlich, frei (The Kamasutra of Frogs: fresh, frog, happy, free). I was fascinated by this collection! All the pictures were so explicit and the concept was so bizarre! I've never seen anything like this. I think that Tomi Ungerer was so brave to create such explicit and different artwork, which many would frown upon. I hope to gain greater courage in my own artwork and writing, though I don't think I'll be creating a Kamasutra of frogs!
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