Sunday 30 June 2019

Wolf Fascism, Wolf Populism . . . big bad wolf.


I was thinking today on the wolf that is threatening; the fascist, the popularist, I thought of its smile of sharpened teeth. The wolf and little red are the iconography that comes to me when I am dealing with evil and stress, the ageless struggle between good and evil.


Saturday 29 June 2019

William W Denslow


W.W. Denslow's 1903 version of Little Red Riding Hood. In this version, the grandmother comes and beats the wolf and then red Ridinghood teaches him good manners.  I love the colour palette of this version and the blocks of red. 



William Wallace Denslow (1856-1915) was an illustrator and cartoonist, famous for his illustrations of L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. He seems to have been a very argumentative man, he was divorced three times and also fell out with Baum over the royalties for the stage production of The Wizard of Oz for which he designed the sets and costumes.
The royalties from the print and stage versions of The Wizard of Oz were sufficient to allow Denslow to purchase Bluck's Island, Bermuda and crown himself King Denslow I.





Wednesday 19 June 2019

Kiyomi Saito


The difference is night and day, two versions of Kiyomi Saito's Little Red Ridinghood.