When not reduced to a still pile of bones, dinosaurs appear to us as skeletons trapped in glass cases. In two colors, usually: dark brown or white.
This summer, for three months, we can see them like never before. They play games, dance, sing, have their own alphabet and brush their teeth. They come in all colors: light and dark browns, grays, pinks.
Dinotopia: The Fantastical Art of James Gurney, running now through Sept. 5 at the Norton Museum in West Palm Beach, consists of more than 50 original oil paintings from Gurney’s illustrated books Dinotopia: A Land Apart From Time (1992), Dinotopia: The World Beneath (1995), and Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara (2007).
“It’s great for the kids and their imagination, but the quality of the works is so high it appeals to adults,” said Brianna Anderson-Guthrie, 24. Dinotopia is her first official show as main curator.
The storyline behind the pictures follows the experiences of Professor Arthur Denison and his son Will on a mysterious island where dinosaurs and shipwrecked travelers from all over the world live in harmony. The three rooms housing this exhibit show us dinosaurs that are very much alive and still evolving, in an artist’s mind.
An apatosaurus is a yellow school bus that stops at each house while officials use red-tasseled poles to stop ongoing traffic. A brachiosaurus’s long neck is used by firefighters as a ladder. A ceratosaurus with a big ego attempts to walk on stilts.
The struggle of convincing adults to dig his picture books, which are actually not children-level reading, are nothing compared to the kid-adult struggle inside us as we walk this show. We know none of this is real, but then again, why not? We rationalize it. We find it soothing, like a familiar lullaby.
Pieces such as Tuggle, featured on page 59 of the Chandara book, is one of many that steal that smile from us despite our conviction that this is a show for kids. In this game, where the first to fall to the ground loses, neither strength nor weight is a determining factor. Psychology is. A smaller player (in this piece, a blonde girl) can win by tricking a larger player (a dinosaur) into predicting a strong tug. Then a sudden release of tension will make the other fall backward. But in Gurney’s Tuggle, both players still look very determined to win. We can guess.
In the third room we find a nurturing oviraptor – once mistakenly thought by scientists to be egg thieves – cradling a dinosaur egg that needs to stay warm. A gentle and very warm piece, this is Outside the Hatchery (Warming the Eggs), an illustration from the Land Apart from Time book. In Dinotopia, most dinosaurs are born in the hatchery, where females go to lay their eggs in indoor nests.
Then there is Convoy Surrounded, an illustration for Dinotopia: The World Beneath. This is perhaps the most violent in the show, or at least less sweet than the other pictures. Turns out danger exists in Dinotopia, where going through tyrannosaurus lands is not exactly a picnic, hence the armor protecting the brachiosaur bus depicted here.
If bright abundant colors, slow movements and dreamy-like light reigned before, here everything changes. The light is quite dramatic and bright colors nonexistent, except for a touch of red on the left. The dinosaurs’ aggressive stance tells us a battle is inevitable. We can move on to happier pieces or imagine the outcome in our minds.
Even if drama lives here, it is still an ideal world, given to us by an idealizing artist.
“There are many places in Dinotopia I haven’t been to,” says Gurney, who lives in New York with his family.
He loves heading outside with a portable kit to observe the behavior of living things. He listens to classical music when painting skies and water. That mystical striking sky in the Waterfall City illustrations is probably connected to Mozart and Bach, two of Gurney’s favorite composers. Family members and neighbors play a role as his models. Sketching trips, such as the ones to Niagara Falls, Venice and the Grand Canyon, give illustrations like Dream Canyon a powerful realism and majestic presence. In Dinotopia, young pilots go to Dream Canyon to train to fly on gigantic winged pterosaurs, which are closely depicted in another fine piece titled Skybax Ryder.
Pterosaurs, known as skybax in Dinotopia, were the largest creatures ever to fly. Depicted in this 1992 illustration is young Will doing what many young pilots on the island dream of: flying. For us it’s great because of the simple atmospheric perspective it offers. The images in the distance appear blurred, which only makes Will appear scarily high up.
Light, however, is the hardest thing to invent for this California-born author/artist. His new book, which discusses color and light, will be released in the fall. To study forms and the effects of light from all points of view, he builds models and maquettes, one of which has never been shown before. Making its debut here is a model of Bix, the parrot-beaked protoceratops in Dinotopia that speaks many languages and is one of the main characters.
As Bix, Gurney’s creations do unimaginable things but look scientifically accurate.
As if to reinforce this point, the museum has borrowed fossil specimens from the Broward College Graves Museum Collection. An allosaurus claw cast, an anatotitan skull cast and a coelophysis skeleton cast share the first room with eight of his illustrations.
How do they compare to us? The fossils seem to be asking.
Well, those dinosaurs seem to be having more fun, for one. They come in all colors. They listen and move slowly and even cry.
Detailed enough to impress, light enough to entertain, Gurney has given the Norton what every museum might want to show, and not just in the summer: a visual lullaby for grown-ups, masked as a children’s attraction.
Dinotopia: The Fantastical Art of James Gurney runs through Sept. 5 at the Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach. Tickets: $12 adults; $5 ages 13-21; free 13 and under. Hours: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday. Also 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. second Thursday of each month. Closed Mondays and holidays. Call 832-5196 for more information or visit www.norton.org.
