AliceDali’s Alice figure hovers between child and adult. She is seen in a long dress as a teen or woman (in the 19th century) but she is skipping rope, which “suggests both the carefree nature of childhood and the child’s self-absorbtion in her own private world.” (Lockwood, 46). She is sometimes very small, appearing on the side of the main picture. Other than her arm reaching out of the house when she has grown too large, she doesn’t interact with the Wonderland characters, remaining a bystander (Lockwood, 46). Her appearance in various unexpected places echoes the textual Alice dropping through a rabbit hole or opening a door to find the “beautiful garden” at the end of the Mad Tea-Party. As Thomas Banchoff notes in his introduction to the 150th anniversary edition, Dali was posting this figure “from various viewpoints with shadows of various lengths cast from several different virtual light sources” which “resonates well with his experiments in exaggerated perspective,” (xviii) and, of course with Alice’s exaggerated large (or small) sizes.
Time & ClocksTime is a motif in both the text of Alice and in Dali’s paintings. At the White Rabbit’s first appearance, he is taking out a pocket watch to check the time, fretting about being late. Watches are famously associated with Dali; whose melting watch faces adorn more than one of his paintings (since 1931’s “Persistence of Memory”). His use of the bent, flexible, clock face for the chapter “A Mad Tea Party” both alludes to his body of works, but implies the flexibility of time in a dream world. The Mad Hatter and his friends may indeed be in a “time warp” of their own choosing. (Hiltz, 3)
Details & DreamsDali’s illustrations mix realistic detail with expressive washes of color. The detail, however, is not where the reader would expect it to be. The large caterpillar in the chapter “Advice from a Caterpillar” is much more detailed than the Alice figure. In his illustration for “The Rabbit Sends in a Little Bill,” (where Alice’s oversize arm extends from a window), the caterpillar crawling up the stairs is more detailed that the simply drawn arm, or the separate figure of Alice (and her shadow) that looks on from the right. These reversals of reader expectations marry well with Carroll’s language play, changing the lyrics of popular tunes of the time, as in “You are old, father William” or “Turtle Soup,” (see Christopher, 148-149). Dali’s mix of detail and his expressive, dream, washes of color are also typical of these illustrations, showing “the dichotomy” between the dream world and the waking “real” world, while mixing the two. (Hilz, 3) There is no better representation of Carroll’s manipulation of language, and the expectations of realistic character (Alice) and reader expectations to represent a dream world. Alice’s friend, the metamorphosing Cheshire Cat, who appears and disappears from nowhere, would approve.
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As Brown notes, “Illustrations, far from reducing or undermining the imaginative work of reading…compound it.” (“The Metamorphic Book,” 355) As a work which supremely exercises the reader’s imagination, Alice has drawn illustrators of all kinds. There have been far too many to list here. By the time Graham Ovenden assessed the situation in 1972’s Illustrators of Alice in Wonderland, there were “well over a hundred artists.” (Brooker, 105) Each generation makes their own version of Alice, and of Alice. However, the following are examples chosen for their relation to a particular art movement, reflection of the culture, or fame of the illustrator. (Taken from Brooker’s list in Alice’s Adventures: Lewis Carroll in popular culture). Lewis Carroll was the first illustrator, producing a manuscript version titled Alice’s Adventures Underground (1864) which he wrote and illustrated by hand as a gift for the Liddell sisters. His illustrations are soft, dreamy and reflect his connections to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and their aesthetic. Next, the first and still arguably the most influential, Sir John Tenniel, 1895, who used the realistic drawing skills of his “Punch” political cartoonist background to reveal the unreal and unnatural conditions of Wonderland. Next, (in order of appearance): Arthur Rackham, 1907, Christian Yandell (Pre-Raphaelite motifs in a school edition, 1924), Wily Pogany (Art Deco, 1929), Mervyn Peake (author of the “Gormenghast Trilogy,” 1946), Ralph Steadman (Op-Art influences, 1967), Peter Blake (photorealism grotesquery, 1970), Greg Hidebrandt (of the Hildebrandt Brothers, album and poster art, 1990), and a picture book by Lisbeth Zwerger (1999). There are far more illustrators and editions, including many since 2000, but that would be another website. As you can see, each generation and new artistic movement or style, wants its own version of Alice.
NOTE: Pictures are used in this page for educational purposes, and thus support fair use. The pictures (of illustrations and text) are from Lewis Carroll and Salvador Dali's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland housed in the Eloise Ramsey Collection at Wayne State University. The work was originally published by Maecenas Press-Random House, New York in 1969.