ILLUSTRATOR’S NOTE

Langston Hughes: An Illustrated Edition
Author: Milton Meltzer
Illustrator: Stephen Alcorn
Publisher: The Millbrook Press

In illustrating this biography, I have attempted to give shape to the cacophony of syncopated rhythms that characterized the era in which Langston Hughes came of age as a poet. The images contained herein are permeated with distant memories of analytical and synthetic cubism (as filtered through the Harlem Renaissance), and echoes of curious musical hybrids stemming from the ragtime, the blues and jazz; in addition, they reflect my longstanding fascination with a markedly archaic and frankly whimsical stylization of form. I have chosen to work in a stream of consciousness manner, deliberately refraining from creating preliminary sketches, preferring to work directly on the panels, thus letting the images undergo numerous transformations over time before arriving at their final state.

Guided by the conviction that it is often the artist’s fanciful notions of things that are of relevance, I avoided relying too heavily on reference material, drawing instead on a confluence of remembrances of things seen and things dreamed. Executed in casein and sand on board, and in delicately gradated tones of black and white. By judiciously combining the sophistication of the post-cubist painter with the innocence and naivetè of the folk artist, I have sought to bring to the imagery in this book a bold poetic license that can be appreciated on different levels. As for the austere, two color treatment, the blue tint I have chosen for the actual reproduction of the images in this volume is, of course, a visual pun on the word blues, while the sepia tint for the collateral design elements is intended to compliment the earthy warmth that the name Langston Hughes evokes; combined, they express my fondness for the most austere of cubist palettes, while providing an oblique reference to the economy of means that is at the heart of Hughes’ artistry.

In deference to Hughes’ unique idiom, I have suppressed the purely descriptive in favor of bold symbolic statements; as a result, the idealized, deliberately iconic heads that abound in this volume are intended more as symbols of Langston Hughes rather than as descriptive likenesses. Furthermore, considerable emphasis has been placed on the inherent rhythms of the actual figures, which indeed quite often constitute the principal organ of sentiment of these images.

Most revealingly, in the process of creating these figures, I found that they resisted being enclosed in a conventional picture frame, as if possessing a will or a life of their own. Although willing to bend, stretch and even contort, they refused to limit their existence to the claustrophobic spaces they were designed to inhabit, and often transcended the boundaries I had initially intended to impose on them. With good humor I accepted this formal “intransigence” on the part of my figures, and welcomed the latent symbolism of their fanciful contortions. Indeed, by further emphasizing their elastic, twisting, and highly elongated forms, I have aimed to personify the resilience, defiance, and dignity that Langston Hughes exemplified not only in his poetry, but in his life as well.

Lastly, in an effort to contradict the stereotypical view of Hughes as solely a poet of the blues, I have created a variety of images that are decidedly playful. They are my personal tribute to the buoyant, good natured, tender, and warm hearted personality that emerges from Milton Meltzer’s loving biography.


Stephen Alcorn
Cambridge, N.Y. 1997