Charles Blackman's Paris Dreaming: A Celebration of a City of the Imagination - The Paris Drawings of Charles Blackman

143, [1] pp. A collection of drawings inspired by travels to Paris, drawn by the painter of the Antipodean school in Australia, most well-known for his Alice in Wonderland series. "Paris Dreaming is both an entertainment and a celebration of Paris -- city of dreams and imagination, and all things to all men. It is also a celebration of French literature from those poets and writers who have lived in the Paris of yesterday and have known the dream of Paris within their blood. Charles Blackman left the isolation of Australia in 1961 and made the first of his many visits to Paris. He went to see and feel its life and later spent long periods working there. This book is a direct result of those times. 'In Australia,' Blackman says, 'we missed out on the Renaissance. When you finally get to Paris -- it is your own dream of Paris you are experiencing.' In these drawings he has taken the wit, imagination, and touch of surreal one finds in his paintings to a new and fine point. There is the gasp of The Nightmare, a swift, plunging attack on the senses; the fantasy of Paris Opera, which, within the deeply satisfying balance of its forms, contains a lusty and buoyant humour. The loving mockery so essential in sketchbook material comes across with a pointed yet gentle clarity and often opens the doors to a new sympathy of observation. These Paris drawings evoke the flavour of the times when Paris was the centre of all creative and 'alternative' life... times that, seemingly, all Parisians loved and all foreigners wanted to share. It seemed then that Paris was the centre of the whole civilised world and that, in writings and imaginations the world over, that fact could never change. In that sense, Charles Blackman's delightful drawings coupled to this book provide a homage to the Parisian golden age... to Paris of the forever-mind and of the perpetual Springtime."