Babar as inspired by the masters - Museums Today - "Babar's Museum of Art" - interpretation of art by Laurent de Brunhof, writer of children's books - Brief Article

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), Dec, 2003

Laurent de Brunhoff credits his mother Cecile with creating the first Babar tale of a little elephant who seeks solace in the big city after a hunter shoots his parents. She mentioned the story to her husband Jean who used it as inspiration for his first Babar book. Jean de Brunhoff died in 1937 after writing and illustrating seven Babar volumes. "I never thought I would go on with Babar after my father passed away," recalls Laurent. "I wanted to be a painter, but I could not live without Babar."

Laurent and Jean trained at the Academy of the Grande Chaumiere in Paris. Laurent emigrated to the U.S. in 1985, where he continued delighting children with his tales of Babar, Celeste, Alexander, Pom, Flora, Isabelle, Cornelius, and Zephir. These characters are the subject of an innovative exhibition in which de Brunhoff reinterprets many of the great masterworks throughout art history. A particular favorite of his is "A Sunday Afternoon on La Grand Jatte," (1884) by Georges Seurat. "The Seurat painting ... has always fascinated me," he declares. "All of the works ... are paintings that I have studied and that I love."

They include "Mona Lisa" (1503-06) by Leonardo da Vinci; "The Harvesters" (1565) by Pieter Brueghel; "The Scream" (1893) by Edvard Munch; "Apparition of Face and Fruit Dish on a Beach" (1938) by Salvador Dali; and "One" (1950) by Jackson Pollack. De Brunhoff also pays tribute to the legendary artists Paul Cezanne, Mary Cassatt, Pablo Picasso, Peter Paul Rubens, Henri Rousseau, Francisco de Goya, Edgar Degas, and John Singer Sargent.

"Babar's Museum of Art" is on view at the Art Institute of Chicago until Feb. 1, 2004. It travels to the New York Public Library from Feb. 28 through March 30, 2004.