Form and Fantasy: The Block Prints of Walter Anderson

by Mary Anderson Pickard (Editor), Patricia Pinson (Editor)

Walter Anderson (1903-1965), an artist known for his vibrant watercolors, murals, pottery, and sculpture, also carved more than 300 linocuts. Among these were the first monumental block prints in American art. When Picasso produced his first large prints in 1952, Anderson\'s six-foot fairy tale linocuts were already hanging in museums in Memphis and New York.

Between 1933 and 1950, when American printmakers were restricted by the size of paper and competition rules, Anderson was carving blocks ranging in size from 6" x 4" to 6' x 4'. Gulf Coast flora and fauna, and myths, fairy tales, and legends inspired the images which he offered as affordable art to an uninterested public.

"Form and Fantasy: The Block Prints of Walter Anderson" features full-color and black-and-white reproductions of over 250 of the artist\'s prints. Timeless, dynamic syntheses of natural form or folklore, they have earned recognition in the United States and abroad.

The volume includes essays by Mary Anderson Pickard, the artist's elder daughter, and by Patricia Pinson, curator of the Walter Anderson Museum of Art, with a chronology by Christopher Maurer, author of "Fortune's Favorite Child: The Uneasy Life of Walter Anderson" (University Press of Mississippi).

Mary Anderson Pickard lives and paints in Ocean Springs, Mississippi. Patricia Pinson is the editor of "The Art of Walter Anderson" (University Press of Mississippi).

127 pages, Hardcover

First published October 10, 2007

Reviews

[Teresa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been obsessed with the art of Walter Anderson since the start of 2005 when I saw an exhibit at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art that expanded on a 2003 Smithsonian exhibit. He lived in New Orleans and on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, but I hadn't heard of him until I saw the spread in the newspaper detailing the exhibit. Even after just seeing the reproductions in the newspaper, I was hooked. We then made the short trip to Ocean Springs, MS, to the museum bearing his name that same year, in April, just over four months before Hurricane Katrina hit.

Anderson was prolific in just about any medium you can think of, and this book focuses on more than 250 of his block prints, especially the huge ones he carved on linoleum and printed on rolls of wallpaper. Though Leonard Baskin apparently is famous for being the first to make large block prints, Anderson had done larger ones long before. Some of his blocks were exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in 1948 and many prints were sold.

The two longish essays take us through his life; put him in the context of his time; describe his linocut process; and his legacy, ending with the aftermath of Katrina, and the rescue and painstaking restoration of at least 175 blocks that were submerged under floodwater. The restoration was ongoing in 2007 when this book was published, as I was able to see when we visited for the second time the museum and the Anderson family's Shearwater showrooms and workshops in September 2006.

I've been to the museum once more (June 2011) and I know I will visit again. It's newly expanded, just this year, and a gala was held yesterday, though I didn't realize that as I was finishing this book last night.

[Jane Barber]

hmm. don't remember this book...it looks good. Must have seen an exhibit...