by Sam Juliano
You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.
-John Lennon
The Museum of Modern Art, affectionately identified as MOMA is surely the most heterogeneous all New York City art institutions. Located in midtown Manhattan on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues this expansive mecca for modernist painting, sculpture, architecture and design is just as celebrated for its film series, dance theater and performance programs and is perhaps the most resolute sponsor of extensive illustrated children’s book exhibitions. Among this cultural epicenter’s most treasured possessions are masterpieces by Van Gogh, Picasso, Monet, Matisse, Cezanne, Rosseau and Pollack. The most artistically intimate exploration of this highly influential tourist favorite ever attempted in a picture book is the prime focus of the wordless Imagine by Raul Colon, a fantastical adventure inspired by real life exploits from the artist’s childhood.
Colon, a critically-acclaimed author-illustrator, who also rates as one of the most prolific at his craft, lived in Brooklyn for a number of years after growing up in Puerto Rico. His cherished experiences of Manhattan culture are conveyed in a fictional story of a boy (the artist himself) on a skateboard who gains access to the museum and other locations via the Brooklyn Bridge, a crossing of the East River just a few blocks from the “Dumbo” section of the Big Apple’s most populated Borough. In a series of cityscape vignettes the intrepid youngster resolves to avail himself of opportunities exclusive to the region and after the proverbial hop, skip and a jump he crosses the historic steel-wire suspension bridge, eyeing the skyscraper metropolis en-route, and then scoots down the sidewalks heading to his midtown destination.
Upon arrival he checks in his skateboard and embarks on a unique interactive exploration of some of the museum’s most celebrated pictorial tenants, which include as per Colon’s admission in an afterward Pablo Picasso’s Three Musicians, Henri Rousseau’s The Sleeping Gypsy and Henri Matisse’s Icarus, works the artist feel are suffused with whimsy, engaging characters and movement, which fuel the boy’s own imaginative embers. (It is worth noting that the museum’s adored centerpiece, Van Gogh’s The Starry Night, a Colon favorite didn’t quite fit into the story’s narrative thrust, but is still passionately recommended to anyone entering MOMA’s glass doors). The boy first beholds the arresting Rousseau oil canvas of a lion musing over a sleeping woman on a moonlit night, following up with the Picasso, a synthetic Cubist styled oil depicting the three musicians adored with masks in the tradition of the Italian theater Commedia dell’arte. But it is the bold dark blue with color trim light-hearted image, a two-dimensional abstract silhouette of the visage of a man clutching his hat who appropriately becomes the first figure to depart a pictorial confine and initiate dancing movements that bring a special appreciation of art, body language and flight. Like the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz who urges Dorothy to enlist other adventurers for her journey to the Emerald City, Matisse’s creation helps the boy to enlist the musical trio, a dog, the Lion (another WOZ connection) and the no longer somnolent African woman in a real-life escapade on the streets that adult readers might compare to The Twilight Zone’s classic episode “The After Hours” when mannequins come alive for a set period of time to live among humans. Colon’s temper is festive and euphoric, and after a captivating exit marked by unbridled merriment, the artist takes off his gloves, intensifying the richness of his color palette, and injecting a buoyancy that magnificently translates art into experience.
The Times Square like samba is a glorious anarchic burst of visual resplendence enhanced by the double spread and intimated music-making with potent aural suggestiveness. Colon’s striking employment of prismacolor and lithograph pencils on Arches paper -a process he used spectacularly well in his other acclaimed wordless book Draw!- creates a detailed watercolor tapestry which is earthy, real and honest, yet there is just enough of an abstract swing to make it the stuff that memories are made of. One could surmise that the boy may not have an acute remembrance of all the details, but certainly what matters most – the sounds, the cars, the clothes and the trademark vibrancy of the steaming metropolis. Sharp-eyed readers will catch the visual reference to Draw!, the great aforementioned African-set picture book that shares more with Imagine than just the fact that Colon created both.
The F Train escorts this festive fraternity to Luna Park at the famed amusement and beach destination Coney Island in southwestern Brooklyn, home to the wooden roller coaster known as the Cyclone, which has now been designated a New York City landmark. Colon depicts these museum escapees fully exhilarated as their personal car races down a slope at the foreground of a beach encampment. The next stop is Liberty Island where this costumed entourage peer out from a windowed vantage point in Lady Liberty’s crown, which over the years has always been a difficult part of the statue to access because of seemingly never ending construction. Lunch is back in Manhattan at one of the city’s many hot dog stands where even the two canines and omnipresent pigeon partake in this always tasty option. Afternoon activities are staged in Central Park, where the boy performs as the lead singer of this makeshift band of humanoid specters in the rural hamlet appreciated for affording scenic respite for frenzied urban denizens. With a dog blowing bubbles and the lion clenching a red balloon string the scene After the day on the town, where this remarkable cast brought the artistic experience to a new level of re-enactment, the time has come for them to return to their portals, where they can plan their next interactive session of aesthetic inspiration. The budding artist accompanies them back, thanking each for instigating this lightening bolt of discovery, a defining moment that sets in motion a career path.
Almost floating on air, the boy skateboards through the exit and in a series of illustrations heads back home through the streets, over the bridge where he again beholds an inviting surface on the side of an apartment building, which he deems to bring to life with his talented hands and chalk. The orange-tan color splendidly serves as the base for his dazzling tribute to characters he’ll remember for the remainder of his life. Only the pigeon is part of the real world, perching on a wooden fence. Bedtime hearkens after the demands of this special day and under a moon and skyscrapers this newly minted young artist is greeted in his dreams by those who have given the museum experience a new level of meaning. Accentuating the natural kinship between creativity and the endless possibilities of the imagination a box of chalk sits on the ledge under Colon’s blue-tinted nocturnal double-page gem, as it does on the opening end paper before the new course is charted.
Indeed Colon candidly confesses in the author’s note “I believe that visiting the art museum and experiencing all the other countless works of art I knew only through reproductions became one of the most rewarding experiences in my development as an illustrator.” The veteran creator is hopeful that similar museum visits by others professing intrigue might induce their minds to “explode” inducing “fireworks to go off, and floodgates will go off, creating sparks that lead them to their own revelations like mine did.”
The observational Imagine! like its rural predecessor Draw! can be aptly described as a book about the creative process, yet it magnificently connects the dots between the central protagonist, the endless opportunities of a cultural mecca, and how a propensity takes hold through characters that are humanized through immersion. Colon’s spectacular dust cover portends the revelation the author-artist alludes to by showcasing ghostly images of art bursting to come alive on the stone tower entrance, and the inside cover suggests that a round trip across the bridge is a springboard to creativity. Colon has won many awards but because of the challenges of timing and competition he has yet to score with the American Library’s Caldecott committee. It is hard to imagine (pun intended) this picture book masterpiece won’t be ending this lamentable record.
Note: This is the first entry in the 2018 Caldecott Medal Contender series. The annual venture does not purport to predict what the committee will choose, rather it attempts to gauge what the writer feels should be in the running. In most instances the books that are featured in the series have been touted as contenders in various online round-ups, but for the ones that are not, the inclusions are a humble plea to the committee for consideration. It is anticipated the series will include in the neighborhood of around 25 titles; the order which they are being presented in is arbitrary, as every book in this series is a contender. Some of my top favorites of the lot will be done near the end. The awards will be announced in late January, hence the reviews will continue until around the middle of that month.