ROBERT ANDREW PARKER: ILLUSTRATED BOOKS

will begin Tuesday, March 3rd, and continue through Saturday, March 28th, 2009.

ROBERT ANDREW PARKER: ILLUSTRATED BOOKS will consist of handmade books by the artist, both bound and portfolio style, containing hand-watercolored drypoint etchings and watercolors.

The sources of inspiration for the books, portfolios and illustrations by Robert Andrew Parker are as varied as the interests of the man himself. A trained aeronautical engineer in the Air Force during World War II, Parker uses military and aeronautical history as the sources for multiple portfolios, including Spies and German Humor (see above) as well as his illustrated versions of W.H. Auden’s The Airman’s Alphabet and Randall Jarrell’s poem The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner. Parker’s interest in dreams has led him to create both The Book of Dreams, Vol. II, a bound book of his own dreams, and Dreams of Gregor Samsa, a portfolio of etchings using Franz Kafka’s famous character from Metamorphosis as protagonist for Parker’ s own imagined adventures. His extensive travels inspired him to create, among others, the portfolio Nepal and India (see above). Parker’s love of movies and music resulted in the creation of the bound book Can’t We Be Friends? (Scenes From an Unmade Film) and the portfolio The Savoy, a celebration of the famous Harlem jazz venue.

Robert Andrew Parker illustrated the celebrated edition of Stendhal’s The Charterhouse of Parma (Modern Library, New York, 1999, translated by Richard Howard) and his work appears frequently in The New Yorker magazine, among others. Widely exhibited since the 1950s, Parker’s work is in the collections of many major museums, including, in New York alone, the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and The Morgan Library & Museum.