Lesser Known or Forgotten Biographies
This is the first in a new series of biographies on various artists that have a "claim to fame" that may not be widely known in the mainstream or by the art loving public… Or… they've been forgotten a bit… But when we tell you about them, you'll then remember what these artists brought to our world. Some of them impacted our culture far more than most people realize.
Everyone knows about the infamous artists that are household names… the Dali's, the Monet's, and DaVinci's of the world… But we're going to bring you the stories of others who you may or may not have ever heard of before… We trust you'll find these "lesser known or forgotten biographies" interesting and informative. And if you've got any great suggestions on who you think we should also do a bio on, let us know!
HINT: Do you remember the Addams Family?
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Artist/Cartoonist — Charles Samuel Addams (1912 - 1988) |
A prolific artist, Charles Addams offered our world a view of life and death that is still surprising and hilarious today.
Contrary to what one might think, Charles Addams, whose creepy cartoons were the inspiration for hugely popular TV series, The Addams Family, didn't live in a scary old mansion surrounded by gnarly trees and watched over by spooky owls.
Charles Addams grew up in a regular house in suburbia, with a regular family. Born on January 7, 1912, Charles Addams, or 'Chill' as his friends called him, or 'Chas', as he signed his cartoons, was raised in Westfield, New Jersey. From an early age he enjoyed drawing, particularly, trains and vehicles. Addams' preoccupation with frightful monsters and everything spooky came later on.
His attraction to all things scary and ghoulish was primarily inspired by books that he read as a child; some of his favorite authors being, Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle. Even in his early years, he enjoyed the more ghoulish aspects of life and enjoyed playing tricks on people. He told of one occasion where he climbed into a dumb waiter (a pulley-operated service lift used to transport food or small objects between floors in a building) and quietly pulled himself up to his grandmother's floor, then knocked on the hatch door, waiting for his grandmother to open the hatch before he jumped out at her and scared her half to death.
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As a child, Addams was known to wander the local graveyard and play in an old Victorian mansion. The youthful Charles Addams was caught breaking into that old house, which was the inspiration for the Addams Family house. On the wall in a room located above the garage, there is still a chalk drawing of a skeleton, believed to be drawn by the young artist. (1912 - 1988) |
In his later years, after he had become an established cartoonist, he lived in a penthouse in Manhattan and sometimes at his beach house on Long Island that housed his large collection of vintage sports cars, "the faster, the better", as well as his medieval crossbows, along with two suits of armor.
As a young adult, Addams was in and out of schools. He attended Colgate University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Grand Central School of Art in New York. His greatest ambition was to work as a cartoonist for The New Yorker magazine. Charles Addams made his first appearance in The New Yorker magazine in 1932 and by 1935 his cartoons developed into a unique and easily recognizable style. His darkly comedic images of death and the macabre lasted until 1988, and spawned The Addams Family hit television show which ran from 1964 to 1966, and more recently, two very successful movies… in 1991, The Addams Family, and in 1993, its sequel, Addams Family Values. Hanna and Barbera also produced two cartoon series based on the Addams Family. Although some of his cartoons were occasionally published elsewhere, the majority of Addams' 1,300 darkly humorous cartoons were published in The New Yorker. He remained with the magazine up until his death in 1988….quite the legacy.
After having already made a name for himself as a regular contributor to the magazine, Addams began a series of cartoons that featured the ever-popular grotesque and morbid Addams Family characters. Charles' first book Drawn and Quartered was published with great success in 1942. It is in this book that the characters, which later become The Addams Family, began to develop. With the second book Addams and Evil, published in 1947, the characters were fully integrated into what we now know as The Addams Family. Addams went on to publish eight more volumes about The Addams Family. In total, he published 13 books or anthologies of his cartoons and drawings, many of them best sellers. In 1991, three years after his death, another book was released entitled, The World of Charles Addams. His work has been exhibited at several museums including Fogg Art in Rhode Island, School of Design in New York, the University of Pennsylvania Museum and the Museum of the City of New York. Having hosted a retrospective in 1994, the New York Public Library continues to show a small rotating group of his works. Addams received a special award by the Mystery Writers as well as the Yale Humor Award.
By his own admission, he was a constant daydreamer, and generally quite lazy. But Charles Samuel Addams became one of North America's most famous cartoonists. New York Art Critic John Russell said,
"He is an American landmark, one of the few by which one and all have learned to steer."
Famous horror movie actor, Boris Karloff, who wrote the forward to Addams first compilation of drawings, wrote this:
"He has the extraordinary faculty of making the normal appear idiotic when confronted by the abnormal, as in his scenes of cannibals, skiers and skaters. I hope I will not be accused of undue vanity if I publicly thank Mr. Addams for immortalizing me in the person of the witch's butler."
Though his friends would surely attest to his charming, friendly and gentle nature, Addams revelled in his notoriety as someone to be worried by. A story circulated about him that he'd once drawn a cartoon of an alley-way with a door open ajar. Through the door, a nurse is shown holding a baby, standing in front of a shady-looking man, saying 'Don't wrap it, I'll eat it on the way home.' The story goes that the cartoon was rejected by every editor he ever worked for as being 'a little too much'. Whether or not the tale was true, Addams never dissuaded anyone from believing it; he felt anything so dark could only enhance his reputation as an artist prepared to go farther than most. He was known to frequently reply to fan-mail on notepaper headed 'The Gotham Rest Home for Mental Defectives'? Why else did he allow people to claim that the inspiration for some of his best work often came to him during periods where he was burnt out and close to mental breakdown; that he would reach the edge of mania and when he recovered a new idea would be in his head? What else could be expected from a man who married his third and last wife, Tee, in a pet cemetery?
In 2002, Charles Addams Mother Goose, was republished with a forward by his wife, Tee Addams. She said of Charles,
"In all of his work, Charlie found humor in every character and situation he drew, no matter how wicked or eccentric they were. In some cases, he softened the fright, while in others he gave it an edge, both of which made us laugh."
Editor's Comment:
If you ever saw The Addams Family t.v. series or the subsequent movies that resulted, or any of his published cartoons, you'll agree that he definitely had a knack for that…
Charles Samuel Addams — a truly unique artist, a cartoonist who had a sophisticated style of humour, all of his own, a creative individual who brought much to the world — His macabre wit could make his audience laugh at the truly grotesque and sometimes appalling and unnerving. It might be said that it's the essence of some of Addams' work that can be seen in cartoons such as Bill Watterson's, Calvin and Hobbes, or in Gary Larson's, The Far Side, both of which have brought odd views on life to millions through the powerful medium of the cartoon.
Credits:
www.newyorker.com
www.westfieldnj.com/addams/
www.illustration-house.com/bios/addams_bio.html
www.addamsfamily.com/addams02.html
www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/alabaster/A713891
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