How Oscar-winning filmmaker Shaun Tan found Grimm satisfaction in clay models
Tan was struggling to illustrate Philip Pullman’s version of the Brothers Grimm until he chanced upon Native American sculptures, which inspired him to make and photograph his own figurines
Two centuries and a world apart, the Brothers Grimm and Shaun Tan share an ability to confound those who attempt to categorise them.
When the German Grimm siblings released the first edition of their tales in 1812, it was under the name Kinder- und Hausmärchen, or Children’s and Household Tales, a title that belied the incest, infanticide and cannibalism found within. It didn’t sell.
Even after they spent 45 years making increasingly child-friendly revisions over seven editions, their tales of princesses and princes, stepmothers and witches remained controversial; after the second world war, Allied forces briefly banned the publication of the Grimm tales in Germany, believing that their violence and nationalism had fuelled Nazi savagery, while around the same time, Disney was hijacking them for saccharine retellings of Cinderella (featuring less eye-plucking) and Snow White (less death by dancing).
Tan also ostensibly writes books for children, but has a history of confusing adults with his surreal, often political picture books. The Australian artist quickly became famous for his intricately illustrated and laconic stories. He picked at the scabs of Australian history in books including The Rabbits (1998), a surreal allegory about colonisation, and The Arrival (2006), an entirely wordless graphic novel about refugees, and he pulled apart mental illness and depression in his picture book, The Red Tree (2001).
Tan was dismissed by some on Australia’s right for producing “politically correct propaganda”; for those who loved him, the greatest criticism could be that his books “would almost rather be looked at than read”, as The New York Times once wrote .