Review
Although marketed as "children¹s literature," Jim
Woodring's Trosper easily transcends that category. (My four-year-old
found it eerie; my wife and my 17-year-old found it hilarious.)
In 17 wordless illustrations, Woodring tells the story of
Trosper, a sort of midget elephant with a human face and
a smile of idiot delight just this side of drooling.
Woodring¹s illustrations are fun and surrealistic.
Working with a simple palette of perhaps a dozen colors,
his backgrounds are composed of neo-Art Deco motifs that
retain the curves of Art Deco but not its angles.
Accompanying Woodring's illustrations is a song on CD by
guitarist Bill Frisell. Frisell's moody, ethereal jazz accompaniment
is at odds with the frenetic pace of the illustrations, a
tension between the two that heightens the overall effect
of the book. (Woodring contributed five illustrations to
Frisell's 1998 recording, Gone, Just
Like a Train and to his recent collaboration with Dave
Holland and Elvin Jones. If illustrations can compliment
music, why not write music to compliment illustrations?)
Collaborations between art and music have a long, venerable
past, with Picasso's set design for one of Stravinsky's ballets
and David Hockney's sets for operas being the first examples
that come to mind.
Top-notch stuff. -by Tom Bowden in E.D.
