Okay, so that's not the museum's real name. To celebrate Snoopy's creator's 100th birthday, Steve and I visited the Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center, whose mission is to preserve, display, and interpret the art of Charles M. Schulz.
The Museum accomplishes this mission through exhibits and programming that illustrate the scope of Schulz’s multi-faceted career, communicate the stories, inspirations, and influences of Charles M. Schulz, celebrate his life and the Peanuts characters, and build an understanding of cartoonists and cartoon art.We were here specifically for the exhibit: The Spark of Schulz: A Centennial Celebration. "Celebrate the centennial of the birth of Charles M. Schulz with an appreciative look at his creative impact. Through an array of original art from contemporaries and artists working today, we see that no one had a more significant impact on modern cartooning than Charles Schulz. Whether in comics, books, movies, animation, and more, Schulz’s influence continues to shine."Entering his biographical gallery was a thorough trip through Mr. Schulz's life, a man who grew up in Minnesota's twin cities and knew from earliest childhood that he wanted to draw comics.Like thousands of men of his generation, Charles M. "Sparky" Schulz was drafted into the army during World War II. To be able to see the letters he wrote home, clearly illustrating his evolving style, was incredible for me.The most evolved/changed of all the characters was Snoopy. Schulz created wall murals for his children featuring early versions of his characters (Running Snoopy, and Monte, below). This running Snoopy, behaves more like a real dog, as he was inclined to do in the earliest years of Peanuts.Monte, originally painted on a bedroom wall of the family home, is an early version of Charlie Brown dressed as a cowboy. His hat bears the name "Monte," the oldest of Schulz's two sons. The more true to life depiction demonstrate Schulz's belief that to cartoon something well, one should be able to draw it realistically. The shining six-shooters seen here mimic theatrical props from the wildly popular western television shows of the 1950s, like Gunsmoke, for which the Schulzes would host watch parties.Peanuts was first launched in 1950 in seven newspapers.
In the 1960s, circulation grew from 400 newspapers to over 1,000. By 2000, Peanuts appeared in more than 2,600 newspapers and was enjoyed by 355 million daily readers!I absolutely loved this Self Portrait. Many cartoon artists mine their own life experiences to make art that resonates with readers. It makes the work deeply personal, an extension of the maker. Schulz was famously reserved as a person, but he often noted, when asked about his life or feelings, "If you read the strip, you would know me. Everything I am goes into the strip- all of my fears, my anxieties, and my joys."I have also loved Schulz's penmanship. He took enormous pride in his lettering—and rightfully so! Many of his contemporaries turned over what they saw as the drudgery of lettering to assistants. Schulz did it all himself, developing his unique style and making it an extension of the drawing, achieving a higher expressiveness in his strips. Whether it’s Lucy shouting, Charlie Brown mumbling, or even Woodstock chirping, the lettering of Charles Schulz says so much.
Okay, this was the coolest. Charles Schulz’s studio was the center of his working life; a refuge, a place where he often talked with friends and fellow cartoonists … and the place where he created Peanuts.This permanent installation is a re-creation of Schulz’s working area in his studio at One Snoopy Place in Santa Rosa. It contains the drawing board he used almost from the beginning of his career and his desk. The shelves and walls include his personal books, gifts, photos, and memorabilia.It also had a documentary playing, on a groovy 1960's TV, of the man himself, talking about his artistic process and actually creating for all us fans to marvel at his talent. Wow.I felt I got to know so much more about the man, as well as the artist. I especially enjoyed the exhibit Dream a Little Dream. Linus daydreams, Snoopy sleeps atop his doghouse, Peppermint Patty falls asleep in class, and Charlie Brown lies awake at night and asks, “Why me?” Sleep was a common theme in Peanuts—so much so that over 400 strips in the Schulz Museum’s collection are devoted to the subject (not to mention some letters from concerned narcolepsy experts about Peppermint Patty).I also learned that Mr. Schulz was a cinephile. He thought of the panels of his strip as "camera angles". Schulz met the legendary film director Federico Fellini when the cartoonist was invited to Rome to receive the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic for his contributions to the arts. Fellini, known to be a Peanuts fan, was invited to attend the opening of an accompanying exhibition of Schulz's work. The two men sat down later over tea and exchanged drawings. How very, very cool.And how about this? Though Schulz was not the first person to use the phrase "security blanket" to describe an object a child carries for comfort or to ward off anxiety, Peanuts undoubtedly popularized the expression, making it into the dictionary as an example.
"In a way I suppose I'm something of a phrasemaker. Some of my things have become part of the American idiom. The most obvious is 'security blanket.' People never used to talk about security blankets, though kids have probably been dragging them around for hundreds of years. And the Red Baron, and the 'happiness is...' thing. Everyone is always defining happiness in some way. Even the name Charlie Brown has become a phrase: 'You're the Charlie Brown type."" -Charles M. Schulz
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Twenty-five years after Schulz's comic about Christo was published, Christo returned the compliment by creating Wrapped Snoopy House, a life-sized doghouse wrapped in tarpaulin, polyethylene, and ropes, and presenting it to Jean Schulz for permanent display at the Museum.
His influence continues even 22 years after Schulz's death. I loved this contemporary work by Yoshiteru Otani. The Peanuts Tile measures slightly larger than 17 x 22 feet and is composed of 3,588 Peanuts comic strip images printed on individual 2 x 8 inch ceramic tiles.I grew up with the Peanuts gang being my childhood friends. The Museum offered so many opportunities for me to 'bond' with them and feel a part of their wonderful, nostalgic world... even if just for an afternoon.Many of Schulz's Peanuts themes have become so well known, they are now cultural shorthand, readily transformed into other imagery and references but eternally tied to their beloved sources. Editorial cartoonists worldwide frequently re-contextualize Lucy pulling the football from Charlie Brown, Snoopy atop his doghouse fighting his unseen foe, Linus holding his security blanket, or Charlie Brown's kite-flying failures to express a point of view entirely their own.It is incredible that 100 years after his birth, and 72 years after Peanuts launched, Charles M. Schulz is still delighting the world with his much loved creations. Schulz once stated, "You're a good man, Charlie Brown." I'm here to reword it and say, "You're a good man, Charles M. Schulz" and we miss you.
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2 comments:
We try to go to Na ‘Aina Kai botanical gardens when we go to Kauai. It is a garden, sculpture garden and tropical tree plantation developed by Schulz’s first wife. Some jokingly say, “Its the garden that Charlie Brown made”.
What a neat museum and research center (so official). I love that people are so talented at drawing. As far as I am concerned (since I am so bad at it) it is magic.
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