sir_guinglain

I've admired Maira Kalman's work when I have seen it, but haven't owned any of her books until this Christmas when I found this among my presents. Kalman's sensitivity towards her subjects was always evident and it's right that a volume should concentrate on her dogs, now needy, now loving, sometimes furious, often content. The original content which frames the book demonstrates relationship with dogs interwoven with her family background - which treated dogs with suspicion - and her marriage to Tibor Kalman, whose terminal illness led to her acquiring her 'beloved dog' Pete. I wasn't familiar with her series of children's books about the dog poet Max Stravinsky, but now know something of his flight to Paris to be a poet and his subsequent adventures among mondes belle and demi-. as well as many of the other dogs Kalman has depicted, curious, furious, studious or just stupidly happy in an endearing canine way. Pete's connection with death is never far away - prose accompanying the last painting of Pete compares her longing to hear a word from him to 'asking to hear one word from a loved one who has died' - but Kalman's art celebrates life in all its diversity, with dogs enjoying their own careers as well as offering mirrors to human souls.

I visited the Cartoon Museum in London today with

gervase_fen to see the Target Doctor Who covers exhibition, which

gervase_fen has written up here. I have little to add other than say that Chris Achilleos's new cover for Vengeance on Varos works better with a noose around Colin Baker's neck as originally intended, and that among the details cropped out of Roy Knipe's artwork is a well-turned button on the fourth Doctor's cuff for Doctor Who and the Invisible Enemy. So much detail on the work is lost during reproduction, and was further eroded by cheap reprint methods as the books migrated methods and printers during the 1980s. The ebb and flow of the ink on what appears as a solid purple border on Achilleos's Doctor Who and the Pyramids of Mars is visible, as is the technique of his inking of the cosmic objects on his first three covers, ...and the Daleks, ...and the Zarbi and ...and the Crusaders. More impenetrable are the smooth washes of his early multi-coloured Daleks (very much based on the work of the last of the TV 21 Dalek artists, Ron Turner) and the methods by which he painted the incredibly smooth features of Tom Baker on ...and the Genesis of the Daleks and ...and the Ark in Space.

The exhibition draws attention to the lost art of the book cover, but could have made more of the links between the book covers and comic strip art. Chris Achilleos's covers were initially intended as patterned after the style of Frank Bellamy, too expensive a comics artist for budget-conscious Universal-Tandem to avoid, and he drew not only on Turner but on Marvel's Jack Kirby. A notable absence from the exhibition was Peter Brookes, who drew four mould-breaking but mould-defining covers in 1975. At a time when the BBC Books reprint programme is associating the Target series exclusively with Chris Achilleos, it's a reminder that there were many other artists with the 'family friendly' image BBC Books have cited as their reason for using the Achilleos covers. I think a case exists for a Peter Brookes set of reprints, a Jeff Cummins set and a Roy Knipe set.

Christmas Book Notes 2: Beloved Dog, by Maira Kalman

Howard's End, or Achilleos's Heel: Doctor Who at the Cartoon Museum

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