Author(s): Karen Marta

Classics

For Tales of the Brothers Grimm, thirty-six celebrated and lesser-known of the unsanitised fairy tales collected by the illustrious brothers were carefully chosen by artist Natalie Frank, re-interpreted in seventy-five gouache and chalk pastel drawings, and cast in a Surrealist dreamscape. This will be the largest collection of Grimm's Fairy Tales ever illustrated by a fine artist. Frank's irreverent palette, sophisticated use of colour and inventive depiction of these dark, far from storybook narratives, capture the original stories with a contemporary and unflinching eye. Each of the tales opens with a hand-drawn title page, is framed by a unique border and small drawings punctuate each story, all in the tradition of classic fairy tale editions. The foremost Grimm scholar, Jack Zipes, introduces the book and contextualises these stories and drawings within a history of the Brothers Grimm, its illustrations and the tradition of the fairy tale. A complex and unique world of the imagination emerges from the pairing of these tales with Frank's drawings, assembled by the celebrated designer, Marian Bantjes.
Additional texts include a conversation between the artist and director Julie Taymor, as well as essays by Feminist art historian Linda Nochlin and curator Claire Gilman. This book marks Frank's exhibitions of drawings based on the Brothers Grimm at The Drawing Center, New York, and Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas, Austin, in 2015.