Maira Kalman--some history filtered through an animated, sarcastic lens

I'm no expert on the world of illustration. In fact, I know next to nothing about it. But recently I stumbled across an illustrator named Maira Kalman and, without knowing how beloved her work is, fell in love with it myself. Kalman has done covers for the New Yorker, illustrated an edition of Strunk and White's Elements of Style, and more recently published an illustrated blog for the New York Times entitled "The Politics of Uncertainty."  In other words, you will likely recognize her style.

That blog became a book, one which just landed in my hands via my good friend Julia (whose parents, professors in Beijing, know Kalman well enough to dine alongside her regularly). Her artwork is a peek into a psyche, a narrative of how she turns everyday life into meaningful thoughts. The little bit that I understand about art tells me that art is always this way when it is good, but that it must also be fluid and flexible enough to be accessible. Hers is. Sketches of people doing seemingly ordinary things but with splashes of odd color and words scrawled beneath their feet. Kalman's work, to me, is about making a deeper humanity an every-second kind of thing.

Take a look at a couple of her historically-themed entries. Sarcastic, witty, an iconic face juxtaposed against modern script, but the Lincoln one also gave me goosebumps.  Because he is someone who sticks with us, redefined by every generation that reads and then writes about him (each determined to say something new, when really what they are saying is many things about themselves).

Side note--I have actually come across this very set of Henry VII chocolates before, at the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina, oddly enough.  I remember, because my sister wanted to buy them for me; she had long ago brought me a Henry VII coffee mug back from a trip to London.  I guess she thinks I'm obsessed with him and those wives for some reason.