A Muppeteer and more
Posted on Sunday, September 9, 2007
It’s a lot of fuss over a bunch of talking socks, but a coup for the Arkansas Arts Center to have snagged them first.
The new “Jim Henson’s Fantastic World” exhibit at the Arts Center is a colorful look at the teeming imagination of the man who turned felt and yarn into Kermit the Frog, the Cookie Monster, Big Bird and many other Muppets characters. He wound up being one of the most revered children’s entertainers of the 20 th century.
Put together by The Jim Henson Legacy and the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service, “Fantastic World” is making Arkansas’ premier museum its initial stop through Nov. 25 before continuing on a lengthy national tour. It offers up for viewing the lifetime of creativity by Henson, who died at age 53 in 1990. It makes an artistic case for the young man who started out in the humble field of puppets and who became a major figure thanks to the then relatively new medium of television.
The show also demonstrates the surprising range of Henson’s creative output including storyboards for TV coffee commercials, his Academy Awardnominated short film Time Piece and even his silk-screen art.
The Arts Center has enlisted its own Children’s Theatre in constructing a colorful entrance to the exhibit. There will be puppet workshops (see sidebar ) for youngsters who are interested in making their own imaginative characters come alive. Still, art patrons might wonder what exactly is so artistic about Henson’s work that it merits the star treatment given in “Fantastic World.” “ This exhibit fits so well with [the Arts Center’s ] emphasis on drawings, and the performance art aspect of Henson’s work connects to our Children’s Theatre, ” asserts executive director Nan Plummer. “You know we have an annual exhibit called ‘Toys Designed by Artists,’ and I was commenting to someone that if [the Henson show ] isn’t toys designed by artists, I don’t know what would be.”
LIVELY LEGAL PADS Henson “was our era’s Charlie Chaplin, Mae West, W. C. Fields and Marx Brothers,” said Joan Ganz Cooney, creator of Sesame Street. Public television’s lively children’s program debuted in 1969, nine years after Henson’s Muppet characters had appeared on the Today show.
“Fantastic World” is filled with drawings, some of them on lined yellow legal-pad sheets, of Muppet characters. There are very early and simple drawings of Dr. Teeth, a Muppet character based on New Orleans musician Dr. John. There is a sketch of the Big Bird costume with Henson inside having to hold his arm straight up in order to move the puppet’s mouth. Behind a Plexiglas case near the entrance of the exhibit is Kermit the Frog, the Muppet mainstay that first came to life after Henson cut up his mother’s green coat and attached table-tennis balls as eyes.
One of the innovations noted in “Fantastic World” is that Kermit was different from earlier stiff, wooden puppets.
“The nice thing about Kermit is there’s nothing in that head,” Henson once said. “I mean, the whole shape is merely just a cloth pattern... and so the whole thing is really created by your hand, which is why he’s a delightful character to operate, too.”
Henson was born in 1936 in Greenville, Miss., and spent his early childhood in nearby Leland. Though his family moved to Maryland before he graduated from high school, and while he spent much of his later life in New York, Arthur Novell, executive director of the Jim Henson Legacy, recalls the puppeteer as a “true Southern gentleman.”
“He’s wasn’t just a brilliant creative type but a savvy businessman,” Novell says. Novell met Henson in the ’ 80 s when his public relations firm was hired to do some work for the Jim Henson Co. Now Novell is making sure that new generations understand the contributions Henson made not just to entertainment but also to culture.
“We did an exhibit [of Henson’s work ] at the Smithsonian,” Novell recalls. “Over 2 million people visited the show. There isn’t a month that goes by that we don’t field requests from a library or a university somewhere in the world to screen his work.”
The Arts Center display gives viewers ample opportunities to see what Henson did before his Sesame Street TV work. There are clips from Sam and Friends, the five-minute television show that he made with Jane Nebel, the performing partner who would eventually become his wife. Henson created Sam and Friends, which included an early version of Kermit, while he was a student at the University of Maryland. It was broadcast on a local station in 1955.
There are also clips in the exhibit from TV commercials for coffee and spray fabric finisher. These ads are particularly interesting in that they incorporate Henson’s wit and penchant for fantastical characters. He made hundreds of commercials in the ’ 60 s.
“Those commercials put him on the map,” Novell says. “Those were only 30 seconds, so he had to get in and out quickly. Humor was his great tool and it served him on those spots.”
RESTLESS MIND Television made Henson famous and a lot of money, but he was also intrigued by the possibilities of film, as demonstrated by Time Piece, his experimental short subject from 1964. “Fantastic World” has Henson’s original storyboard of Time Piece next to a video clip of the film. Filled with images of clocks with spinning hands and rockets blasting off, Time Piece shows off his more ambitious artistic side.
Later Henson would venture into the world of feature films, first with 1979 ’s The Muppet Movie and then with the ambitious The Dark Crystal, a fantasy film that was compared to J. R. R. Tolkien’s novels. Henson’s last movie, 1986 ’s The Labyrinth, is another fantasy film but this time with live actors instead of puppets playing the roles. The Arts Center in conjunction with Market Street Cinema will screen all three of Henson’s feature films. (See story above. )
Novell believes that if death had not intervened, Henson would have gone on to make more movies.
“In the biography of Federico Fellini, [the late Italian director ] mentions that his favorite TV show was The Muppets,” Novell says. “I was so stunned. Jim was a big admirer of Fellini. I think if [Henson ] would have lived, he would have become an American Fellini. He would have become a major filmmaker.”
There are other pieces in the Arts Center display that don’t fit into Henson’s TV or film career. Anne Gochenour, curator of contemporary craft at the Arts Center, is particularly impressed by a sketch from 1967. Henson’s drawing is a design for an iglooshaped nightclub illuminated by psychedelic light. It appears to be rendering of a disco years before they dotted major cities.
But it was through the Muppets and TV that Henson made his greatest impression on America’s cultural landscape. Novell points out that Henson’s creations often depended upon others, whether it was building the Muppet characters that only existed as sketches or the puppeteers themselves who made Fozzie, Miss Piggy and all the rest dance and sing.
“I love the behind-the-scenes photos,” Novell says. “I was always impressed at the openness and collaboration that took place. It came from Henson and the truth of the characters, but it was an effort by many people. Why it means so much to so many is because [Henson’s ] message was always positive and heartfelt.”
Not bad for a bunch of talking socks.
Art Exhibit
“Jim Henson’s Fantastic World” Through Nov. 25, Arkansas Arts Center, Ninth and Commerce streets, Little Rock Gallery hours: 10 a. m.-5 p. m. Tuesday-Saturday, 11 a. m.-5 p. m. Sunday Admission: $ 6 adults, $ 4 children, students and seniors (501 ) 372-4000
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