Word: hoffmann
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...Nutcracker, Hoffmann and Sendak...
...ballet. After that, Sendak's interests turned to the stage, and he designed the sets and costumes for Leos Janacek's opera The Cunning Little Vixen, as well as operatic adaptations of his own works. It is the theater that informs Sendak's illustrations for E.T.A. Hoffmann's Nutcracker (Crown; $19.95). This is not the customary sugarplum rendition. As the artist points out in his introduction, the Christmastime ballet was based on a version of the tale by Alexandre Dumas, "smoothed out, bland and utterly devoid of the weird, dark qualities that make it something...
Historically, architects have made notable contributions to domestic accessories. From 1903 to the 1930s, Vienna Visionary Josef Hoffmann and others produced jewelry, tableware and even wallpaper at his celebrated Wiener Werkstatte. Bauhaus builders made seating and sinks to furnish their functional structures, and Michigan's Cranbrook Academy of Art inspired mid-century classics like the Eames lounge chair. Frank Lloyd Wright not only fashioned lamps and dinnerware to complement his houses, but even lent his name to mass-produced furniture, carpets and fabrics...
...Hoffmann's lively imagination reflects a keen understanding of children and an ability to make this perception appeal to all readers Marie is his special creation and he makes us feel her pain as the clock is stabbed by the clockmaker's tools. Within this sugar-puff setting, we appreciate the somber purity and beauty that Hoffmann so prizes. Only a hopeless romantic could create a nutcracker who addresses his lady in "a little bell like voice: Dear sweet Marie. Protectress mine. Thou standest by me and I'll be thine." And within the bizarre tale of Marie's adventures...
...crews horses and the array of other minute depictions are both lovely and appropriate. The large illustrations however betray much too much Where The Wild Things Are and threatened to distract from the text. They're fine if you are partial to Max's dreams, but they are not Hoffmann and the distractions is unwelcome. His contribution to the revival of the Hoffmann spirits of the Nutcracker cannot be underscored enough. Yet one who claims to hold the thoughts of children so dear should not constantly disrupt their vision of something so inspiring with his own wild rumpus...