Dick Bruna (The Illustrators)
- Submitting institution
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University of Ulster
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 79760037
- Type
- A - Authored book
- DOI
-
-
- Publisher
- Thames and Hudson
- ISBN
- 9780500094136
- Open access status
- -
- Month of publication
- May
- Year of publication
- 2020
- URL
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https://ulster.sharepoint.com/:b:/s/REF2021/EUgjjcpjlhRPgPrAMBqPXLYBh2FxeJLvFQDbWMw3IYzKaQ?e=qLz7Ka
- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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1
- Research group(s)
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C - Creative Industries Institute
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Ingman met Bruna in 2004 at a publishing event, and the conversation stimulated research into his work, a gap in UK literature at the time. In 2016 when Ingman was approached by Sir Quentin Blake and Claudia Zeff to contribute to a funding proposal for the Illustrator series. Ingman was an active member of a group of creatives and academics (Sir Christopher Frayling and Sir Phillip Pullman) who devised the proposal for the series commission.
The main body of research, conducted over 18 months, contains a biography and practice exploration. The research included literature reviews, visits to the RCA Library, Thames & Hudson archives, Mercis archives and exhibition catalogues. Two site visits were made to the Mercis (Amsterdam), Miffy Museum and the Central Museum (Utrecht) where Bruna’s studio was reconstructed. Interviews were conducted with the CEO of Mercis Marja Kerkhof, Karin van Zieten, Bruna’s assistant, Irene Bruna (wife), via an intermediary (Mercis CEO). The text was approved by Serk Bruna (son). Ingman visited Bruna’s studio interviewing the, curator (Stijn van Grol) viewing unseen artwork, artist’s roughs, private archives (unpublished artefacts, personal possessions, correspondence) and recreated his working processes, interrogating the trial-and-error methodology, uncovering how he developed the distinctive black line, colour, layout, text, revealing the simple complexity and control Bruna had on his unique individual artwork.
This research unlocks new insights into Bruna’s artistic inspirations, tools and precision working methods and how he dealt with the challenge of working to a commission and illustrating a narrative. New material showing Bruna as a social activist and environmentalist, shifts the perception of his work beyond children’s books. The text, with approximately 100 illustrations, examines the book jackets Bruna designed between 1951 and 1969, he designed more than two thousand covers. Many of the covers had never been published before.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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