HAMBURG.- To celebrate Janosch’s 90th birthday, the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg is devoting a large-scale exhibition to the internationally renowned illustrator, author and bon vivant. The focus is on his lust for life, amply evident from his biography. The art of living life to the fullest is reflected in many facets of Janosch’s oeuvre and in his figures. Instead of showing us a perfect world, his world is at once tough and tender, full of beauty, hope and friendship but also replete with cruelty, lies and the risk of being devoured. The little bear, the little tiger, the mouse sheriff, Uncle Popoff, Wondrak and Luise ... Janosch’s protagonists are always on a quest for their own personal Panama. Whether intentionally or inadvertently, they leave reality and truth behind them, experiencing familiar situations in a new and unusual guise, learning and teaching others to see what is normal as something extraordinary and what is extraordinary as something completely normal. The exhibition features around 150 original drawings and prints from many phases of Janosch’s artistic career. Images we have been familiar with for years suddenly look fresh and new when viewed in the original, and motifs we may not have encountered before will now seem like old friends. Janosch’s stories have something to say to people of all ages, whether or not they have personally faced the challenges addressed. They convey a clear message, but in a quiet, unobtrusive manner. The exhibition demonstrates how the artist succeeds at this sleight of hand by bringing together multiple perspectives and approaches, all juxtaposed in a single space on several different literal and figurative levels. Across five galleries, visitors can experience a kaleidoscope of impressions of Janosch’s art of living. The exhibition has plenty to offer for both young and old, for readers and viewers, for writers and gymnasts, for onlookers as well as for those who like to be the centre of attention.

REAL AND FANTASY WORLDS: JANOSCH’S IMAGERY

Opening the show is a gallery where visitors can immerse themselves in Janosch’s universe. Around one hundred original drawings from many different phases of the artist’s oeuvre invite viewers to discover facets of his biography and the fantasy worlds he has created. Well-known picture book illustrations can be seen here as well as early works. They all bring to light aspects of the art of living: various ideas and ways for coping with daily life – friendship and music, cosy domesticity and travel, dining and cooking, lying and flying. Noticeable here is that in Janosch’s universe everyone, whether human or animal, has their own unique qualities and characteristics. There is no norm that applies to all: instead, each character has their own endearing quirks, weaknesses and also strengths. Just like in real life.

NEW WORDS AND RARE NAMES

According to Janosch, life is “a damned fine thing”, despite all the dangers and challenges it brings. He has created a language all his own to underscore this attitude, flinging around light-hearted phrases that nonetheless go against the grain, grousing, grumbling, whispering. Woven into his drawings, these words open up new and unexplored philosophical realms of thought. An entire exhibition area is therefore dedicated to Janosch’s unusual formulations, neologisms and invented names. Visitors can listen to celebrities from Hamburg and northern Germany reading aloud short stories that were specially selected for this exhibition. The voices belong, among many others, to the presenter Bettina Tietjen, the actress Anneke Kim Sarnau, the TV journalist and musician Reinhold Beckmann, the HOCHBAHN voice Anke Harnack and the musicians Florian Sump and Lukas Nimscheck from the band Deine Freunde. In addition, visitors can also make up their own new stories using magnets on the wall with Janosch’s phrases and neologisms. Designed as a swimming pool, this gallery relates directly to Janosch’s philosophy: “Life is like this: You’re thrown into the cold water without being asked, whether you like it or not. You won’t get out alive. So you can: a) be miserable and drown; b) listlessly keep your head above water, shivering the whole time until it’s over; c) seek and demand some meaning and then grieve when it never reveals itself; or you can: d) joyfully cavort like a fish and say: ‘I wanted to get in the water anyway, I just love cold water. (...)’ And that is the art we are talking about here. The art of living.”




NEWS FROM THE POSTCARD FOREST

Letters and postcards play an essential role in many of Janosch’s books. We need only think of “A Letter for Tiger” or the “Hare with the Speedy Shoes” whose work as a letter carrier is never done. Postcards are also an important genre in their own right – and Janosch has designed hundreds of them in the course of his long career, a number of which are on view in the exhibition. In the Postcard Forest, visitors are welcome to jot down, paint and design their own personal art-of-living messages and send them via the exhibition post office.

IN THE OFFICE WITH WONDRAK

A true bon vivant in Janosch’s cosmos is undoubtedly the character Wondrak, a moustachioed gentleman in a tiger-striped overall and slippers who is a self-proclaimed “superstar”. From 2013 to 2019, Wondrak gave the readers of the German Zeit magazine weekly advice on a variety of life situations. He has his own office in the show, where he naturally doesn’t work in classical pencil-pusher fashion but instead shows visitors how to discover for themselves the art of living. Wondrak invites people to stand on their heads so they can see things from a new point of view, to make simple decisions by rolling the dice, to look at themselves carefully in the mirror, or to bring order to their love lives with the help of little notes.

TAKING TIME TO DREAM

Wrapping up the exhibition, a screening room enables viewers to experience Janosch’s art of living in moving images and sound. Three episodes of the popular “Traumstunde” show spirit the audience away on a journey in which they accompany Tiger and Bear as they search for a remedy for loneliness and, along the way, invent the post office and the telephone network with their forest friends. They show Schnuddel and the horse Schnuddelpferdchen how to build castles in the air – which eventually collapse, because even a house in the clouds only lasts for as long as you don’t wish for too much. Viewers can also take a flying lesson with Uncle Popoff, so that they can look down on mundane reality from far, far away. All the stories tell of the importance of dreaming and also of how to stay strong and be brave against all odds.