Maurice Sendak’s 1963 children’s book Where the Wild Things Are has endured because it speaks to the imagination and frustrations of youth. It’s a story about a child learning his lesson in his own way, tempering his emotions and embracing them at the same time. A young boy named Max is sent to his room without supper by his mother after he throws a tantrum. In his room, he escapes into a fantasy where he sails to the land of the wild things, a coterie of monstrous beasts who entice him with their feral displays of savagery. Max leads them on a “wild rumpus” and shows them he is king of the wild things.
Wild Rumpus, a group exhibition of art inspired by Sendak’s tale, with work by Paul Barnes, Marcus C. Farris, self-described “cartoon folk” artist Miss Mindy, and others, proves that there’s a little bit of Max in all of us. Many of the artists represented in the show have created works that stand as tributes to Sendak’s vision. Max is here, and so are the other wild things, envisioned through sculpture, paintings, and mixed media.
The work of illustrator David Ho is darkly comic, but there’s sadness and longing expressed in Missing You, in which his wild thing gazes at a small gold crown in his hand. It is a lament for childhood, for a time when kids were kings and queens of their own universe.
Miss Mindy’s Rambunctious is celebratory, and her Max-like figure has a knowing wink as she exuberantly raises her scepter into the air. Included in the exhibition is a Sendak original, King Max, which is clearly the image from which Miss Mindy took her cue. Other works express a deeper connection to Sendak’s tale, notably Alicia Stewart’s In Max’s Room as the Forest Grew. Stewart, a 14-year-old Santa Fe artist, heard about the show and asked to be included. Her work shows maturity and talent on a par with, and in some cases exceeding, that of the other artists, many of whom are trained professionals. In Stewart’s painting, a child in Max’s wild-thing costume gazes at a small tree in the palm of her hand. A woman, perhaps the child’s older self or a visiting spirit, dangles the moon and stars from strings on her fingers in front of the child. It’s a scene of magic, just like the transformation of Max’s room in the story.
Some of the artists in Wild Rumpus dare to venture into a troubling, dark side of youthful innocence. Children can get into trouble when they’re rambunctious, but their play is often real to them, and in their excitement, the rest of the world falls away. Adults may forget what that time was like.
Sendak, who died in 2012, is the author of In the Night Kitchen, Higglety, Pigglety, Pop!, and many other children’s tales. He brought brevity to his stories, relying on his talent as an illustrator to convey childhood wonder through his images. Sendak based the monsters in Where the Wild Things Are on his own relatives, and his Max is a character to whom most children could relate. Children, like Max, often defy their parents’ wishes, incurring their wrath; and many parents are faced with the pain of punishing the ones they love. It is no wonder that the artists in Wild Rumpus depict their protagonists in fantastical landscapes, filled with strange sights and creatures offering an escape from the growing pains of reality.
Upon its initial publication, Where the Wild Things Are was met with controversy, although it is difficult today to see how this could be. Perhaps school librarians felt it was inappropriate to tell a tale to children in which the main character openly defies his mother. In her book The Art of Maurice Sendak, author Selma G. Lanes writes that Sendak received letters from librarians and parents who felt the imagery would frighten small children. Lanes suggests that the book’s detractors saw themselves as “guardians of childhood innocence.” Sendak, whose parents were Polish immigrants living in Brooklyn and who had family members that died in the Holocaust, saw childhood as an often confusing, confounding, and frightening stage of life.
Max’s journey speaks to that condition, whether readers are boys or girls. Many of the works in Wild Rumpus depict girls in the role of Max — C.J. Metzger’s Sail Away, Miss Mindy’s Rambunctious, Barnes’ The Dreamer, and Stewart’s In Max’s Room as the Forest Grew among them.
Most of the works celebrate the spirit of the original story and remind us that Where the Wild Things Are is a tale with a happy ending. Arturo’s Wild Rumpus is a childlike menagerie of fanciful, whimsical creatures. The story is all about play, it tells us. Even for Sendak’s young hero, it’s all about envisioning a world where anything is possible. So, to quote Max, “Let the wild rumpus start.”
