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Foreword

Shaun Tan presta per la prima volta il suo immenso talento alla scultura, realizzando una collezione artistica maestosa e penetrante, che dona alle fiabe dei Fratelli Grimm una nuova vita.

t had always been my belief that, despite the multitude of beautifully illustrated editions of fairy tale collections that have piled up over the years, the best way to illustrate these little masterpieces of narrative is not to do it at all. If we look at the work of Arthur Rackham, probably the most popular and influential illustrator of all, we see delicately drawn and flawlessly rendered figures of fragile prettiness or picturesque ugliness, twigs and tendrils and elegant gowns and knobbly fingers all bearing eloquent testimony to the craftsmanship and talent of the man behind the pencil – and all quite unlike the blunt, earthy, coarse, violent and hilarious

It always seemed to me that something much simpler would fit the style and manner of the stories rather more faithfully – simple woodcuts of the sort that we used to see in books of nursery rhymes, and I mean really old books; or the vivid, dramatically exaggerated figures children used to paint and move around in the old-fashioned toy theatre. Stories like ‘Hans My Hedgehog’ or ‘The Juniper Tree’ need something simpler and bolder and stranger than the art school exquisiteness

But nothing I had imagined came close to the power and the strangeness, the sheer uncanny presence of the little sculptures Shaun Tan has created. When

Ossa che cantano trae ispirazione da una fiaba dei fratelli Grimm dove l’osso di un ragazzo ucciso, trasformato in un flauto, narra di destino e ingiustizia. Shaun Tan reinterpreta le fiabe classiche dei fratelli Grimm, creando 75 affascinanti statue di argilla, ciascuna teatralmente fotografata e accompagnata da toccanti estratti narrativi.

Un capolavoro che fonde magia, memoria e arte visiva in un’esperienza indimenticabile, in pieno stile Shaun Tan

Foreword

It had always been my belief that, despite the multitude of beautifully illustrated editions of fairy tale collections that have piled up over the years, the best way to illustrate these little masterpieces of narrative is not to do it at all. If we look at the work of Arthur Rackham, probably the most popular and influential illustrator of all, we see delicately drawn and flawlessly rendered figures of fragile prettiness or picturesque ugliness, twigs and tendrils and elegant gowns and knobbly fingers all bearing eloquent testimony to the craftsmanship and talent of the man behind the pencil – and all quite unlike the blunt, earthy, coarse, violent and hilarious

It always seemed to me that something much simpler would fit the style and manner of the stories rather more faithfully – simple woodcuts of the sort that we used to see in books of nursery rhymes, and I mean really old books; or the vivid, dramatically exaggerated figures children used to paint and move around in the old-fashioned toy theatre. Stories like ‘Hans My Hedgehog’ or ‘The Juniper Tree’ need something simpler and bolder and stranger than the art school exquisiteness

But nothing I had imagined came close to the power and the strangeness, the sheer uncanny presence of the little sculptures Shaun Tan has created. When