The Cartoon Art Museum hosts Gorey Elephants on Parade, an exhibit of rare prints created by celebrated author and artist Edward Gorey, on display from August 5 through January 6, 2025 (Extended)

Gorey's successful turn as the designer of the Broadway production of Dracula in the late 1970s allowed him the financial security and the clout to choose his own artistic projects for the first time in his career, and he used his creative freedom to produce experimental and eccentric books through his own Fantod Press and to explore the challenge of fine art printmaking.

Throughout the 1980s, at the Cape Cod Conservatory and later at the Atelier Emily Trevor, Gorey developed his skills in the arts of etching, engraving and collagraphy, a process of collaging various textures and materials to the paper on which a print will be taken.

Although several of Gorey's fine art prints reflect the elegance of his meticulous book illustrations, most display a looser, sweeping energy and a dark, forceful stand. Although we do not know what led to Gorey's fascination with elephants, we do know that he favored printmaking, especially the various states that could only be obtained through the arts of etching and engraving, "because you never know what you're going to get."

Featured artwork selected by Cartoon Art Museum founder and Gorey enthusiast Malcolm Whyte includes the etchings and lithographs Pink Elephant in Handstand, Swimming Elephant in Green Water, Elephant in Sea Foam, Elephant with Prostate Passenger, and Departing Elephant on One Leg, rarities that showcase the talent and the uninhibited spirit of Edward Gorey.

About Edward Gorey

A truly prodigious and original artist, Edward St. John Gorey (1925-2000), gave to the world over one hundred works, including The Gashlycrumb Tinies, The Doubtful Guest and The Wuggly Ump; prize-winning set and costume designs for innumerable theater productions from Cape Cod to Broadway; a remarkable number of illustrations in publications such as The New Yorker and The NewYork Times, and in books by a wide array of authors from Charles Dickens to Edward Lear, Samuel Beckett, John Updike, Virginia Woolf, H.G. Wells, Florence Heide and many others. His well known animated credits for the PBS Mystery! series have introduced him to millions of television viewers. Gorey's masterful pen and ink illustrations and his ironic, offbeat humor have brought him critical acclaim and an avid following throughout the world.