Farewell to Maurice Horn

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Maurice Horn as M’sieu Toute in a 8/26/1968 Steve Canyon strip by Milt caniff. “He was named Toute because he toots his own horn” Maurice told me. He was very proud of this REOCCURRING character.

I was sad to hear of the passing of the French comics historian Maurice Horn on 12/30/2022 in New York after a long illness. He was 97 (obit by Andrew Farago on TCJ). My essay “Maurice Horn: A Memorial,” published in the International Journal of Comic Art (Spring 2023), includes the recollections of his younger brother Pierre Horn.

He was a controversial figure and an important pioneer in comics studies and exhibitions. I interviewed him several times and visited his New York home for the 2016 article I wrote about Horn and his publications. He was always charming and helpful. The last time I saw him in person was in 2015. Danny Fingeroth, my husband Marc Greenberg and I met Maurice for dinner at a bistro in his upper West Side neighborhood. May he rest in peace.

A few of horn’s best-known books. A History of the Comic Strip helped spark a new wave of comic art exhibitions in the 1970s, including his own ny exhibit 75 Years of the Comics (1972). Long after these titles were published, I persuaded him to write a sidebar for the Routledge Handbook of the Secret Origins of Comics Studies. I think this was the last writing by him that was published.

Horn was best known for his 1976 encyclopedia. it had numerous flaws but many people say it was their first exposure to the wide world of international comics.

Horn was one of the last surviving members of the French Fan Club that produced this breakthrough 1967 exhibit. He was an important connection to US cartoonists like Milt Caniff and Byrne Hogarth. A History of the Comics Strip was the English translation from this show’s catalog.

Before Horn moved to the US and embarked on his career as a historian, he and claude moloterni wrote a series of mystery novels.under the pen name franck Sauvage (inspired by Doc Sauvage). they were so successful that they had a radio show.

My last communication with him was this pretty holiday greeting from the Central park conservancy in 2017.

del Toro's Pinocchio at MOMA NY

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In February while I was attending the College Arts Association’s national convention in midtown NY, I was able to catch Guillermo del Toro Crafting Pinocchio, MOMA’s stunning display of puppets, sets, and other production materials from del Toro’s stop-motion film. After a short intro, the exhibit began with a room of character models, video clips, and concept art. It continued with several galleries containing the actual stop-motion sets used in the film with videos of the sets in use, and other production materials. On a lower floor, there was a gallery dedicated to film scoring and some key models. The exhibit concluded with a screening room featuring posters and art from all of del Toro’s films and film clips organized around themes that reoccur in his work.

My photos don’t really do justice to the scale and detail of this exhibit, but here’s a taste. The copy that follows is a description from MOMA’s website: “No art form has influenced my life and my work more than animation and no single character in history has had as deep of a personal connection to me as Pinocchio,” the acclaimed director Guillermo del Toro has said. Guillermo del Toro: Crafting Pinocchio, an exhibition uniquely organized during the production of a feature film, focuses on Del Toro’s first stop-motion animated feature—an innovative reinterpretation of Carlo Collodi’s 1883 children’s novel, now set in Fascist-era Italy. In this exhibition, which coincides with the film’s premiere, visitors will experience being on a movie set and see first-hand how an international team of designers, craftspeople, and animation artists in Portland, Oregon, Guadalajara, Mexico, and Altrincham, England worked collaboratively to realize Del Toro’s vision.

Opening with classic and contemporary editions and interpretations of Pinocchio from around the world, the exhibition also includes production art, props, and a look at the various phases of puppet-making. Working film sets from Del Toro’s movie, motion tests, and time-lapse video installations document the complex stop-motion process that brings the story’s characters to life. The exhibition concludes with an immersive installation that brings together newly commissioned video and posters from Del Toro’s filmography, including works such as The Devil’s Backbone (2001), Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), Pacific Rim (2013), The Shape of Water (2017), and Nightmare Alley (2021).”

Mignola's Pinocchio at SOI NY

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It’s interesting that two masters of the comics/fantasy genre created new versions of the classic Pinocchio tale around the same time. Concurrently with Colleen Doran Illustrates Neil Gaiman, the Society of Illustrator’s main gallery is showing Picturing Pinocchio: Mignola Makes a Marionette. a beautiful display of art from Mike Mignola’s version of the story for Beehive Books (March -July 8, 2023). Like Doran’s Chivalry, Mignola’s Pinocchio was conceived and produced during the Covid shutdown. On the lower floor are selections from the Society’s vast collection of works on paper curated by Mignola. The text that follows is from the Society’s website:

“Deep in the midst of pandemic lockdowns, a plan was hatched: a new illuminated edition of Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio, engineered to unDisnify one of the strangest, most startling pieces of fiction ever to be beloved by generations of children worldwide.

The seed was planted by cartoonist and author Mike Mignola (Hellboy), who had been pondering his own take on the puppet for decades. With the world closed up due to COVID, he teamed up with idiosyncratic publisher Beehive Books and holed up in his studio to create a portfolio of over fifty original illustrations re-envisioning Collodi’s tale. When author Lemony Snicket (A Series of Unfortunate Events) got wind of the project, he couldn’t resist joining, offering elaborate hand-typed annotations of his own maddening encounter with this singular text.

Pinocchio, though one of the most popular literary works of all time, is somewhat paradoxically ill-remembered. Collodi originally published the story as serialized installments in a children’s magazine. The original series ended with Pinocchio hung from a tree, dead by the hands of assassins, and was continued only because of an outcry from readers who couldn’t stand to see such a beloved character reach such a dismal end.  This is the true nature of Collodi’s tale — who better than Mike Mignola to illustrate the unremitting darkness and strange whimsy that characterized this bizarre children’s classic?

This exhibition will feature his full portfolio of yet-to-be-published Pinocchio illustrations, including drawings, paintings, process work and other ephemera of Mignola’s pandemic Pinocchio project. The Land of Toys, the City of Catchfools, the Blue Fairy, Fire Eater, the feline Assassins – as seen through the eyes of a modern master of illustration and storytelling.”


Memory: Designing Home: Jews and Midcentury Modernism, CJM

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I found my old blog last week and have decided to update and restore some posts I had about interesting exhibits of the past before they are lost forever. Today’s entry is about an exhibit called Designing Home: Jews and Midcentury Modernism, which was on view at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco over the summer of 2014. It was a show about how European Jewish emigres networked together around a core of design institutions across the US, inspiring a new look for architecture, furniture, textiles, dinnerware & utensils, Judaica, and graphic design.  The institutions singled out in the show were MoMA, Walker Art Center, Institute of Design (Chicago), Black Mountain College (NC), Case Study House/Art + Architecture magazine (LA), and Pond Farm (Guerneville, CA). There were many artists included in this survey and about 200 works on display; I took a few photos of graphic design elements I found inspiring. The CJM has a page on its site with videos, press releases, and short essays.