HOW TO GO
What: Dali’s Illustrated ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’
When: Through Aug. 2 during normal library hours (see www.udayton.edu/libraries)
Where: First-floor gallery, University of Dayton Roesch Library
Parking: See visitor center for parking pass; use College Park entrance on Stewart Street, just east of Brown Street.
Admission: Free
For more information or special arrangements: (937) 229-4265
When the University of Dayton library hosted its amazing exhibit of 50 rare books from the collection of Dayton area businessman Stuart Rose last fall, one of the biggest attractions was “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” illustrated by Surrealist Salvador Dali.
“It was definitely one of the most popular items in the exhibit,” said Kathleen Webb, Dean of University Libraries. “Everybody is familiar with ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and to see Dali’s interpretations of those iconic images excited people’s imaginations.”
When the exhibit drew to a close in November, Stuart and Mimi Rose surprised the university by donating the Dali illustrations to the school.
“I had an idea he was going to make a donation to the library of one of his books, but had no idea what that would be,” said Webb.”He gave us a first edition King James Bible which was wonderful and obviously complements our collection, but he chose the Dali as a second gift because some of the faculty are using ‘Alice in Wonderland’ in their classrooms. It was a complete surprise and thrill and we were overwhelmed by it!”
Exhibit now open
To celebrate the Roses’ generosity as well as the 150th anniversary of the Lewis Carroll classic, the University Libraries are now displaying all 12 of the colorful Dali illustrations. Because of limited space, only one was seen during last year’s exhibit. The famous color plates can be seen through Aug. 2 in the Roesch Library’s first-floor gallery.
In researching the 1969 special edition of the book, UD librarians discovered they were printed by hand in limited quantities. In the heliogravure process employed, the image is etched on a copper plate, then placed on a hand-turned press, where special inks transfer to dampened etching paper to produce the image. Webb said these illustrations contain many of the Spanish surrealists’s signature images — a melting watch, butterflies, bifurcated crutches and objects out of proportion to one another. Alice is depicted as a girl skipping rope.
One of the UD faculty members who teaches and loves “Alice” is English professor Margaret M. Strain.
“I think the story engages the imagination,” she said. “So many adventure stories are told from a little boys’ point-of-view, and this is a little girl.”
Strain remembers getting the book when she was about 8 years old and immediately being drawn to it. “I realized Alice was someone my age,” she said. “It offers a little girl’s perspective on the world. Little girls have tea parties and play with their pets. Alice has a cat named Dinah.”
When she taught “Alice” as part of a graduate seminar, tying the class to the Rose exhibit, Strain wanted her students to see how reception to the work had changed over the years.
“For years people thought that political cartoonist John Tenniel’s renderings of Carroll’s work were the only way of reading the text,” she explained. “I read reviews written when Dali’s edition came out and most of them were unenthusiastist. Some saw it as an expensive coffee table book. What I believe is that few people were taking the opportunity to look at the integration of how Dali’s images were inviting us to reimagine the story.”
Dali, she said, was prolific in the kinds of projects he accepted — including stage sets and costuming. “The pairing of a 19th-century logician’s tale with a master of 20th-century modern art might seem, by turns, shocking and a stroke of genius,” Strain said. “And that’s precisely what makes this rare collaboration so remarkable.”
Strain said what links Carroll and Dali in the 1969 edition is their shared fascination with the fantastic, the dream world, and their respective cultures’ reliance on space and time to order human experience. “What better way to turn staid convention topsy-turvy than envision the world through the imagination of a child?” she asks. “And who better than a surrealist to express the world of unconscious desire, counter-logics and alternate realities that Alice encounters on her journey?”
Alice’s origins
The idea for “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” is said to have originated in July, 1862 on a picnic the author took with a friend’s three daughters, one of whom was Alice Liddell, then 10. At Alice’s request, Carroll, whose given name was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, compiled the story into a hand-bound, author-illustrated manuscript in 1864 and presented it to her as a gift. It was published the next year with illustrations by Tenniel.
The UD library display also will include a recently acquired first American edition of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” published in New York by Appleton in 1866. It contains the original sheets from the 1865 London first printing — an issue of 2,000 copies rejected by the author because Tenniel was dissatisfied with the printing.
More folks illustrate Alice
A project entitled “150Alice” has invited 150 noted illustrators from around the world to create a single page for a special sesquicentennial edition of the book. The hope is to encourage art and creativity among children, just the way Carroll did when he created the beloved story. Profits from the book will be donated to educating children in China and Mongolia about art and creativity.
You can view them on www.150alice.com
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