How To Draw Alice In Wonderland Rabbit

The children's book that'south really for adults

(Epitome credit:

Kristjana S Williams

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For more than 150 years, Lewis Carroll's Alice stories take captured the imaginations of readers, artists, filmmakers and designers. Holly Williams finds out why.

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For books that are all most surprising transformations, it should maybe exist no existent surprise that Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass are amongst the most frequently adapted and reinterpreted stories ever written. Alice falls down a rabbit hole, and steps through a mirror, into worlds where annihilation can happen, where fifty-fifty the sense of self is transformed: where a beverage can make you compress and a mushroom can make you grow; where babies turn into pigs and a little girl tin become queen; where flowers and animals and playing cards all speak but logic and learning sideslip out of grasp.

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No wonder then, actually, that reinventing Lewis Carroll'south fantastical, nonsensical creations into new forms has always proved irresistible. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, published in 1866, and its equally delightful 1871 sequel, Through the Looking-Drinking glass, have inspired generations of artists working in all sorts of media, from film to theatre, fine art to pop music. And information technology's this ongoing legacy that forms the basis for the latest blockbuster museum testify virtually Carroll's cosmos. Alice: Curiouser and Curiouser opens at the V&A in London this calendar month, having been much delayed by Covid-nineteen.

A photograph of the "real" Alice Liddell, 1872 by Julia Margaret Cameron (Credit: V&A)

"The starting point for an exhibition is usually 'why' – why has Alice triggered and so many unlike artistic responses?" says Kate Bailey, the curator. "I started past looking at the affect of Alice, and thinking about the broader cultural, socio-political contexts – why and when it's had these different interpretations and activations. You lot're looking for those trigger moments, that move information technology on in our collective consciousness."

Alice and Wonderland doesvery muchlive in our collective consciousness. Nosotros all know what a Mad Hatter's tea political party looks like, tin can liken hapless pairs to Tweedledum and Tweedledee, or a big grin to a Cheshire cat. The prototype of a little blonde girl in a blue dress and an Alice ring is always and inevitably, well, Alice. (Yes, the headband is named after her).

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland began, so the story goes, when Charles Lutwidge Dodgson – aka Lewis Carroll – wove a yarn to entertain a real child named Alice Liddell and her sisters one summertime's afternoon in 1862. And yet for many readers, neither Alice nor Wonderland are ever actually consigned to childhood, simply rather carried affectionately into adulthood. I have a Queen Alice T-shirt; I know more people with tattoos inspired by the tale, from "Drink me" bottles to smoking caterpillars, than from any other single source. Lines are re-interpreted in the modern historic period as Instagrammable inspirational quotes ("Sometimes I've believed as many as half-dozen incommunicable things earlier breakfast"), and some adaptations are distinctly for adults but, equally we shall come across, with artists finding potent metaphors in Carroll'due south tale.

Merely from its very first publication, Alice bankrupt the bounds of "children's literature", to the extent that The Nation newspaper was able to suggest the book was more than for adults than children, really. Carroll knew what he was doing here: he'd fabricated the canny decision to have it illustrated by John Tenniel, who was not associated with children's books – rather, he was famous equally a Dial cartoonist, sending upwards political figures. Tenniel was the more powerful in the relationship – he was so unhappy with the quality of the initial print run that he insisted it exist redone at peachy cost. The publication of Through the Looking-Drinking glass, meanwhile, took so long because Carroll had to await for his schedule.

Alice at the Mad Hatter's Tea Party, 1865, illustrated past John Tenniel, who was known for sending up politicians every bit a Punch cartoonist (Credit: 5&A)

"There was a sense of 'is this book just for children or is information technology for adults?'" says Bailey. "Going with the illustrator from Punch and the appeal to the adult audience was obviously partly in Carroll's heed. It was very strategic."

Tenniel's distinctive, ofttimes beautiful, ofttimes slightly-unnerving black-and-white wood engravings were instantly – and enduringly – popular. Perhaps he would be surprised at the number of items on Etsy today that bear his images, merely maybe not: very quickly after publication, Tenniel'south images were widely used in Victorian trade. The Five&A show features examples of original Alice "branding", from biscuit tins to playing cards.

Adapting Alice

From the very beginning, and so, the paradigmof "Alice" has always been central. Tenniel certainly set an extremely high bar for illustrations – and he established many of the Wonderland tropes that endure beyond every medium, from her pinafore dress to the Hatter'south meridian hat. Office of the reason Alice is then easily re-imagined is considering she is so codified in the first place – something artists both use and subvert.

Some things we think of as distinctly Alice in Wonderland don't come up from Tenniel, yet. The procedure of adapting Alice began apace – the beginning stage version was mounted in 1876 – only Bailey points out that the tradition of having a blonde Alice "didn't take effect till Hollywood, when there was a definitive extra 'blazon'". Ruth Gilbert, Charlotte Henry and Carol Marsh played ultra-feminine Alices with long flowing locks in alive-action films, released in the 30s and 40s.

But it was surely the total-colour 1951 Disney animation that gear up the trend for blonde hair in stone, and it was besides Disney that established Alice wears a blue dress (the first colour version of the book actually used yellow). And if you think the Cheshire cat "should" exist pink and purple, or expect the White Rabbit to say "I'm late! I'one thousand late! For a very important date!"… that's Walt besides.

The total-colour 1951 Disney adaptation ready the trend for a blonde-haired, bluish clothes-wearing Alice (Credit: Disney)

The Alice we expect today may accept had the Hollywood treatment forth the way, then, merely one of the nearly striking things about the characters of Wonderland is how very easily they morph and bend to an artist's vision, while nonetheless remaining recognisable.

More than than 300 illustrators have offered their Alices: from Arthur Rackham's whimsical fairy-kid vision in 1905 to Moomins' writer and illustrator Tove Jansson's softer, more impressionistic have in 1966 to political cartoonist and children's illustrator Chris Riddell'southward version published last year, where the heroine looks a practiced deal more similar the actual Alice Liddell. Some artists bring their own styles, irrepressibly, to bear: Salvador Dalí's series features his iconic floppy clock; Ralph Steadman's Mad Hatter and March Hare expect similar they've come straight out of his infamous illustrations for Hunter Due south Thompson's Fright and Loathing in Las Vegas, while Yayoi Kusama'due south 2012 book features more of her trademark polka dots and pumpkins than most Wonderlands.

Despite the original stories' reliance on wordplay, puns, and nonsense, Alice has become such an icon that she is often used every bit a touchstone even inside primarily visualmedia. When Christopher Wheeldon first suggested a ballet version, his designer Bob Crowley reportedly thought he was "completely insane" to brand a wordless Wonderland. Simply the Imperial Ballet's 2011 show was a huge hit – not least because of Crowley's designs, which combined familiar Alice shorthands with classical tutus and cutting-border stagecraft, from op-fine art projections to a multi-part Cheshire cat puppet. The Queen of Hearts stepped out of an intimidatingly huge crinoline-cum-throne-cum-tank, to dance a parody of a sequence from the ballet Sleeping Dazzler: both very Lewis Carroll, and very ballet.

'Magic and mystery'

Alice has long been a touchstone for fashion, besides. Vivienne Westwood, Zac Posen, Viktor & Rolf, and John Galliano have all sent looks down the runway inspired by Caroll's characters and Tenniel'southward drawings, while the transformative, otherworldly possibilities of Wonderland hold appeal for fashion shoots.

"I think a lot of people are inspired past the magic and mystery and the craziness of the story of Alice," said legendary Vogue artistic director Grace Coddington in a recent online talk. In 2003, she directed a shoot past Annie Leibovitz for Vogue, in which style designers were assigned Wonderland characters. "There was Stephen Jones as a Mad Hatter; Viktor and Rolf as Tweedledee and Tweedledum. John Paul Gaultier was the Cheshire cat because he's always smiling and always wearing stripes," recalled Coddington.

Reinventing Alice isn't only a visual affair however: the deed of reinterpreting inevitably brings wider cultural and social preoccupations into play. In 2018, Tim Walker shot a Wonderland series for the Pirelli agenda using an entirely blackness cast, including model Duckie Thot equally Alice, RuPaul as the Queen of Hearts, and Whoopi Goldberg every bit the Duchess. The shoot took its power from the unfamiliarity of having a blackness cast inhabiting the extremely familiar Alice in Wonderland archetypes.

In 2018 Tim Walker shot a Wonderland serial for the Pirelli calendar with an entirely black cast (Credit: Tim Walker Studio courtesy of Pirelli)

"I had never seen a black Alice, and then I wanted to button how fictional fantasy figures can exist represented and explore evolving ideas of beauty," Walker is quoted equally proverb in the V&A's catalogue.

Alice has often become a site or symbol of broader societal change. Bailey points out that one of the primeval co-optings was by the Suffragettes; she establish the 1911 play Alice in Ganderland in the V&A's archive, "which showed how Alice became a heroine for the new century's new adult female". The production was part of a campaign for equal pay.

In the 30s and 40s, Carroll's story became a foundational text for a new artistic movement. The Surrealists, drawing on Freud's theories of the unconscious, were unsurprisingly also drawn to Carroll's illogical dream narratives. A Guardian review of the first Surrealist show in the Great britain in 1936 fifty-fifty used Alice to explicate their paintings: "If a Lewis Carroll can create a world of hookah-smoking caterpillars, mimsy borogroves, and gimbling toves, why should non a Max Ernst or a Joan Miró find the equivalent of such a world in paint?"

Paintings by Ernst, Edward Burra, Leonora Carrington, and Dorothea Tanning are probably the interpretations that take u.s.a. furthest away from the Tenniel/Disney centrality, amping up the sinister or unsettling aspects of Wonderland by playing with scale and uncertainty. Here are cavernous corridors, looming outsized faces, creepy little girls with their hair standing on end. This is the treacly sludge of the subconscious, rather than Victorian whimsy – but re-read Carroll's stories, and in that location is enough of frustration, fearfulness, and genuine danger amongst the silliness.

Salvador Dalí'south watery, bathetic illustrations of Alice in Wonderland came after, in 1969 – by which time, Alice was enjoying another cultural "moment". Wonderland was roundly co-opted as a psychedelic experience: a listen-expanding hallucination, where creatures talk and your body changes and y'all feel compelled to question who you even really are.

More 300 artists and illustrators' versions of Alice appear in the exhibition – Dalí's features his iconic floppy clock (Credit: Salvador Dali / Dallas Museum of Art)

Alice interpretations abound in this era. Adrian Piper and Joseph McHugh fabricated Alice-inspired works in the characteristic swirling hot pinks and oranges of psychedelic art. Musicians got in on the act, from Jefferson Airplane's delicious, droning 1967 hit White Rabbit though to The Beatles' I am the Walrus, with John Lennon inspired by the poem The Walrus and the Carpenter from Through the Looking-Drinking glass. Ralph Steadman'southward illustrations duly depict Lennon himself every bit the caterpillar, while High german artist Sigmar Polke collaged Tenniel's original caterpillar into his trippy, polka-dotted works. There's more dottiness in Yayoi Kusama's 1968 "happening", where naked, spot-painted performers cavorted effectually the Alice statue in Fundamental Park. "Alice was the grandmother of hippies. When she was low, Alice was the first to take pills to brand her loftier," Kusama stated, spelling information technology out somewhat.

Downwards the rabbit hole

All this enduringly transformed our understanding of Alice, to the extent that originally innocent elements are at present often used as references to mind-altering substances: the smoking caterpillar, the mushrooms, chasing the white rabbit… Indeed, in 1971 a US government educational moving picture, Curious Alice, depicted characters from Wonderland as unlike drug addicts: the caterpillar hooked on weed; the March Hare on amphetamines; the dormouse on barbiturates. It was intended to warn children away, only instead achieved cult status for existence an appealingly trippy, swirling piece of psychedelia in its own right.

Not all Alices of the era were cracking, even so – Peter Blake's illustrations from 1970 may palpitate with colourful flowers and pattern, but their overall mood is sombre. Alice stares down the viewer rather mournfully; the Mad Hatter looks sorry for himself in jail. Despite their colour, they feel of a world with Jonathan Miller's foreign 1966 BBC adaptation. Filmed in sober black and white, with all characters played as recognisable (unremarkably upper-class) "types" rather than animals, of all the Alice adaptations it nearly truly feels like a dream. Merely unless yous know the original very well, it would be incomprehensible, and is unlikely to entreatment much to children.

Jonathan Miller's 1966 BBC adaptation was filmed in sober blackness and white, with all characters played equally "types" rather than animals (Credit: BBC)

Miller brings a foreboding temper to proceedings, and homes in on the thought of Wonderland equally an illogical adult globe that a child struggles to navigate. Still, every bit a satire of a society leap by pointless conventions imposed by the ruling classes, it does experience similar a distinctly 1960s estimation – every bit does the sitar soundtrack from Ravi Shankar.

And Alice in Wonderland as coming-of-age story is something frequently brought out in narrative adaptations on stage and screen, or even on record – Picayune Simz'southward 2017 concept anthology Stillness in Wonderland used Alice as a framework for self-discovery.

But Alice's potential equally a symbol for puberty (all those actual changes!) or incipient womanhood is as well something that'southward attracted more troubling perspectives. Anna Gaskell'south series of photographs of young Alice-a-likes – sometimes bullying each other, or their bodies physically entangling – disturb and disrupt the idea of the innocent girl child.

Anna Gaskell's photographs of young Alice-a-likes disturb and disrupt the thought of the innocent girl child (Credit: Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, courtesy Galerie Gisela Capitain)

The most recent Alice interpretations continue to reverberate the times she's read in – and then it's no wonder she's gone digital in the 21st Century. American McGee's night computer game casts Alice as a traumatised action heroine, contesting villains such as the Jabberwock and the Queen of Hearts in her dark unconscious. In Damon Albarn'southward musical wonder.land, going down the rabbit pigsty transformed into existence sucked into a digital globe, with a lonely teenager adopting Alice every bit an avatar in an online game.

"Wonderland is always a powerful metaphor or idea to piece of work with," says Bailey. And that'due south what the V&A show is interested in: how one man's nonsensical story, fabricated upwardly to entertain a picayune girl, has immune so many generations of readers then many restlessly reinventing artists to go down the rabbit pigsty of their ain imagination.

"The book has such a phenomenal number of ideas and concepts in it, but it creates space for the creativity too," says Bailey. "Information technology actually is this Bible for the imagination."

Alice: Curiouser and Curiouser is at the V&A from 22 May

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Source: https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20210511-why-alice-is-the-ultimate-icon-of-childrens-books

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