With Shades at Times of Edward Gorey or Art Speigelman

Near Edward.

The Edward Gorey House is the former domicile of author and artist EDWARD ST. JOHN GOREY, who owned the Firm from 1979 till his death in 2000. The Firm became a museum in 2002.

Edward was a child prodigy, cartoon pictures at 18 months, and teaching himself to read by historic period three. Edward'south upbringing was chaotic with his parents constantly moving within Chicago. Edward skipped several grades, eventually ending up at the Francis Parker Schoolhouse in the ninth form. He emerged from Francis Parker an exceptional pupil, active in schoolhouse events, exhibits, schoolhouse publications, and fifty-fifty getting drawings published in Chicago newspapers. At graduation, Edward had the highest regional scores on college boards and received scholarships to Harvard and Yale and other academic institutions. Later graduation from Francis Parker, with pending draft notices at the age of 17, Gorey enrolled for some art courses at the Fine art Institute of Chicago before entering the U.South. Army. He served during World War 2 from 1943 until afterward the end of the state of war—primarily at the Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah.

In 1946 he enrolled at Harvard (majoring in French Literature) and began pursuing numerous creative interests, publishing stories, poems, designing sets, directing and writing for the influential Poets Theatre (with John Ashbery, Frank O'Hara, Alison Lurie, Violet Lang, and others). He occasionally achieved the Dean's List (and frequently was threatened with expulsion). In 1953 he was offered a position with Doubleday's new imprint Doubleday Ballast in New York City (Gorey had attended Harvard with Barbara Epstein, the wife of Doubleday Anchor publisher Jason Epstein). Gorey chop-chop became a pregnant figure in the New York design world, designing more 50 covers and, more importantly, becoming recognized as a major commercial illustrator. Gorey moved through other publishing Houses (Looking Drinking glass Library, Bobs-Merrill) before finally turning freelance in the early on 1960s—a position he maintained for the rest of his life. In that location is no firm count equally to the number of books Gorey illustrated for others, but likely well over five hundred. In addition to this massive commercial workload, Gorey began writing and illustrating his ain works (which would somewhen number 116) starting with his 1953 book, The Unstrung Harp. The book stands today as one of the early precursors to the graphic novel motion in which both text and illustration tell the story. Graham Greene declared The Unstrung Harp "the best novel e'er written about a novelist and I ought to know!" The London Times referred to it equally "a minor masterpiece." Writing in The New Yorker, America's pre-eminent literary critic Edmund Wilson gave Gorey his kickoff early critical boost. Gorey's fifty years of infrequent productivity had begun.

Soon afterwards his arrival in New York Metropolis, Gorey became a serious admirer and frequent attendee of George Balanchine's New York City Ballet (in fact, Gorey attended every performance of every product that had been choreographed by Balanchine). He oft referred to Balanchine every bit a major influence on his work. Gorey had established an early on association with New York City's Gotham Book Mart in the early 1940s while in the Regular army. As a voracious reader he started accumulating a unique library (which eventually numbered some 25,000 books by the fourth dimension of his death) many of which he had read more than one time. In New York Urban center in early 1953 he began making frequent visits to the Gotham Book Mart and became a close friend of the bookshop's founder Frances Steloff. When he launched his own individual printing imprint (The Fantod Press) in 1962, he sold many of his copies through the Gotham Volume Mart.

Gorey had begun exhibiting his art work as early as 1939 at the Francis Parker School and connected in his Harvard years at the Mandrake Bookshop and as far away every bit California. In Dec of 1967 Gotham Book Mart appear the opening of a 2nd floor art gallery in its brownstone and invited Gorey to be among its first exhibitors. He exhibited in that location for the next xxx-two years, until his death. As a result of this association, Gotham Book Mart began to occasionally publish new Gorey works and eventually arranged for Gorey publications with Samuel Beckett, John Updike and others. The theater had always interested Gorey and he was before long involved in off-Broadway productions, and eventually in summer small Cape Cod productions of Gorey experimental plays, working with local apprentice actors and even puppets, to the delight and puzzlement of the local community. In 1973 Gorey designed a product of Dracula for a small theater on Nantucket Island. Information technology attracted considerable interest and in 1977 opened on Broadway as "Edward Gorey'due south Dracula." A huge commercial success with extraordinary reviews, it garnered two Tony Awards (Best Revival and Best Costumes), ran for almost iii years and subsequently with route companies across America, in London, Australia, and elsewhere.

Gorey's writings and art began to receive serious critical reviews and praise and have been translated into xv strange languages (commencement in 1961 with his Swiss German publisher Diogenes Verlag). In 1972 he published his first anthology Amphigorey containing fifteen of his early on works. The New York Times selected it as "1 of the V Noteworthy Art Books of 1972." Three more anthologies followed (Amphigorey Too, Amphigorey Besides, and Amphigorey Again) and have now become Gorey classics and the cornerstones of his large body of work. Gorey's potent interest in book design somewhen expanded into various forms including miniatures, popular-upwards books, books with movable parts and other unusual formats.

In 1975 Gorey became involved in printmaking and for the side by side twenty-five years he explored and produced a multifariousness of express-edition prints. Through the 1980s and 90s Edward worked with Brewster, MA printmaker Emily Trevor to produce an outstanding assortment of etchings and holographs.

Gorey's family had visited and lived on Cape Cod for years and he spent virtually of his summers there. In 1979, with royalties from the New York Dracula product, he purchased a two-hundred year one-time body of water helm's home on the Yarmouth Port Common and in 1983 resolved to go out New York Urban center and live on the Cape. There Gorey became fifty-fifty more active with his small-scale experimental plays, continuing to publish widely, showroom his art, create etchings, and maintain a grueling workload of commercial projects. In February 1980 Gorey was asked to design animated introductions for Boston Public Television's Mystery! series. Working with animator Derek Lamb and his team, their collaborative result continues, over xxx years later, to exist Gorey'due south near iconic work (though it is in fact a one-half-minute distillation of several of his works).

Although Gorey avoided "explaining" his many enigmatic books, during one of his interviews he did say to an inquiring journalist, when asked most his philosophy or religion, that he was a Taoist, and perhaps a surrealist. From his early on teen art at that place are strong homages to Di Chirico, Dali, and Ernst clearly in evidence, every bit is his admiration for Sir John Tenniel, George Herriman, and James Thurber.

A longtime advocate of beast welfare, Gorey kept pets from his earliest years, and cats during his New York and Greatcoat Cod years. He left his estate to The Edward Gorey Charitable Trust which he established for the welfare of all living creatures, including non but cats, dogs, whales, and birds, but as well bats, insects, and even invertebrates. After his death in 2000, his Cape Cod home was converted into the Edward Gorey House, a museum whose profits and programs help benefit animals rights and literacy causes. Located in the park-like setting of the Yarmouth Port common on an elegant "horseshoe" of several attractive former New England homes, the Edward Gorey Business firm has become a landmark cultural attraction contributing to the community with annual exhibitions, children's events, and literary programs (for children also as adults). The Business firm is open to the public mid- April through Dec with an annually changing exhibit and permanent displays.

With a creative body of piece of work—humorous, complex, serious and provocative—Edward Gorey's diverse works take established him as an important American effigy in literature, fine art and theater.

"[Edward] Gorey's unique talent should be represented as completely equally possible in every collection of American fine art and literature."
~American Library Clan (booklist)

"An extraordinary imagination."
~Publisher'south Weekly

"A neat American illustrator… fascinating."
~London Observer

"Edward Gorey's works are equally amusing, somber, and nostalgic… I like to render to them. He is actually becoming a master."
~Edmund Wilson

"[Edward Gorey is] sublime, absurd and mystical."
~Oskar Kokoschka

"A major graphic artist… his originality is profound."
~Commentary (John Hollander)

"Night masterpieces of surreal morality…beautifully depicted."
~Vanity Off-white

"One of the groovy American artists of the 20th century."
~Volume Page

"A unique bygone world… carefully crosshatched [books], startling, superb, consummately mature."
~John Updike

"An American original… one of this century'southward foremost eccentric geniuses."
~Print Mag

"Exquisitely engraved, each picture tells a story… a masterly draughtsman'due south technique."
~London Times

"Incredibly sophisticated…stylish and inventive."
~New York Observer

"Unforgettable, magic, insightful and mysterious… as total of wisdom as of delight."
~The Baltimore Sun

"One of the most literate and sophisticated graphic masters of our time."
~UCLA Performing Arts

"Luxuriously crossed and crosshatched… marvelous drawings. A gallery of splendid gloom… matchless beauty and richly satisfying… [a] delightful entertainer."
~New York Postal service

"Non enough praise has been awarded to Gorey's superb prose. He possesses the ear of a great parodist… a distinctive vision that is nobody's but his own. Through his genius and industry, he created a whole climate of the imagination…"
~Washington Postal service

Edward Gorey published over 1-hundred of his own works and has illustrated the works of Samuel Beckett, T.South. Eliot, John Updike, Charles Dickens, Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll, Hilaire Belloc, John Ciardi, Muriel Spark, Edmund Wilson, Peter Neumeyer, Virginia Woolf, H.Grand. Wells, Florence Parry Heide, Bram Stoker, Raymond Chandler, Gilbert & Sullivan, and many others.

longtwold1986.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.edwardgoreyhouse.org/pages/edward-gorey-biography

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