Whether gallivanting in the company of the Man with the Yellow Hat, clasping the long neck of Raffy, an exceedingly tall, very accommodating giraffe whose head reaches above the clouds (and whose body doubles as a sailboat and mast), or hanging out with penguins and polar bears, Curious George puts the monkey in monkey business.
The playful, adventurous star of the beloved children's books, whose antics have delighted readers for more than half a century, is such a sunny, gentle figure that it comes as something of a shock to learn that his German-born, Jewish creators, Margret and H.A. Rey, faced down a harrowing fate. They fled Paris on their bicycles only hours before the Nazis marched into the City of Light, barely escaping with their lives and a sheaf of drawings for their children's stories, a prototype for the mischievous monkey among them.
Curious George Saves the Day: The Art of Margret and H.A. Rey, a new show at the Contemporary Jewish Museum, presents 80 original drawings, vivid watercolors, charming decoupages and dummy books that chronicle George's development, and laid the groundwork for other animal characters who populated the artists' illustrated menagerie. It also includes travel documents, excerpts from journals and vintage photographs that chart the Reys' itinerant existence during their four-month flight from Nazi-occupied Europe, a perilous sojourn that took them through France, Spain, Portugal and Brazil before they finally settled in New York in the fall of 1940.
Illustrator H.A. Rey and his wife, author and artist Margret Rey, who were born in Hamburg and resided in Paris from 1936-40, produced a total of some 30 books, seven of which showcased George, who began life as Fifi. (Somehow the name Curious George portends literary mortality, while Fifi, which sounds like a wayward chorus girl, does not.) But, as the exhibition points out, the Reys had a life and a sense of humor before giving birth to George. On the couple's wedding invitation, Margret, the photographer, is represented as a camera, and her husband-to-be, a painter, is depicted as an easel.
In addition to the George canon that made them famous, they produced works such as the enchanting watercolor illustrations that accompany the scores in Au Clair de la Lune and Other French Nursery Songs (1941). In one that graces the back cover, a turquoise twilight falls over a village street, and a luminous crescent moon hangs overhead. We spy a white cat slinking its way into town and a red clown walking ahead of it across the street. It's a bowl-like image, as if viewed through a wide-angle camera lens. In an unpublished illustration for Tit for Tat (1942), which previously appeared as one of a dozen cartoons that H. A. planned to rework for a book and was thought lost, a fetching black feline regards its reflection in a vanity mirror; a sinewy woman in gingham is wrapped around its neck like a feather boa.
Complete with a reading room, cushy, kid-friendly seating and a painted archway over cobbled streets that announces the cheerful entry to the Hotel de L'Europe, this is a perfect exhibition for young children. The sweet misadventures of George are nowhere near as threatening as the night terrors and cranky monsters of Maurice Sendak, displayed at CJM last year, but the illustrations on view here also don't possess the intensity, mastery or beauty of Sendak's dark fantasies. In contrast, George's exploits are marked by a buoyant optimism that must have been an antidote to the fear and anxiety that haunted the Reys. After all, George always managed to save the day and elude capture. Forced to seek safety in the countryside, the Reys set up their studio in the towers of an old castle, Chateau Feuga, in Southern France. The French authorities, suspicious that the visitors were making bombs on the premises, raided the place, only to find dear George, in nascent form, adorning the drawing boards.
Perpetually in trouble, George's narrow escapes, whether from the zoo, jail or the authorities, and his experiences of being snatched from the jaws of calamity after falling overboard when attempting to fly like a seagull, for instance, or being carried aloft high above Paris by a cluster of balloons, are a benign reflection of the real dangers and obstacles the Reys encountered. George's stories also provided the Reys with an outlet for wish-fulfillment without their having to leave the confines of the studio; George scores an acting job as soon as he rolls into Hollywood (but of course), contributes to human progress by boldly voyaging into the unknown frontiers of outer space - he's pretty adept with a parachute, too - and achieves instant fame when he lands on the front page of the newspaper. How great is that?
Curious George Saves the Day: The Art of Margret and H.A. Rey, at the Contemporary Jewish Museum through March 13, 2011. Info: (415) 655-7800 or www.thecjm.org.