Artist:
Charles Addams
(American, 1912 - 1988)
Masterpiece Theater
Medium: Pen and ink and ink wash on board, en grisaille
Date: 1984
Dimensions:
12 1/4 × 15 1/4 in. (31.1 × 38.7 cm)
Accession number: 2001.8.2
Copyright: © 1955 Charles Addams with permission from Tee and Charles Addams Foundation
Label Copy:
In Masterpiece Theater, a play on the popular PBS series of the same name, Charles Addams gathers a distinguished audience of well-known artistic masterpieces around a television set. Released from their frames and pedestals, Addams’s imagined collection includes Leonardo’s Mona Lisa, Hans Holbein’s Henry VIII, Whistler’s mother, Piero della Francescsa’s Federico da Montefeltro, and Rodin’s The Thinker all tuning in for the broadcast.
Beginning in 1932, Addams’s longstanding relationship with The New Yorker—where this and the majority of his thousands of drawings were published—brought his quirky, strange, and at times macabre, style to a broad national audience. The beloved characters of his "Addams Family" persist in popular culture well after the television series featuring them went off the air in 1966. Images of Morticia, Gomez, Pugsley, and Wednesday Addams may even be more familiar to contemporary viewers than some of the art referenced in Masterpiece Theater.
In Masterpiece Theater, a play on the popular PBS series of the same name, Charles Addams gathers a distinguished audience of well-known artistic masterpieces around a television set. Released from their frames and pedestals, Addams’s imagined collection includes Leonardo’s Mona Lisa, Hans Holbein’s Henry VIII, Whistler’s mother, Piero della Francescsa’s Federico da Montefeltro, and Rodin’s The Thinker all tuning in for the broadcast.
Beginning in 1932, Addams’s longstanding relationship with The New Yorker—where this and the majority of his thousands of drawings were published—brought his quirky, strange, and at times macabre, style to a broad national audience. The beloved characters of his "Addams Family" persist in popular culture well after the television series featuring them went off the air in 1966. Images of Morticia, Gomez, Pugsley, and Wednesday Addams may even be more familiar to contemporary viewers than some of the art referenced in Masterpiece Theater.
Curatorial RemarksAccompanied by a full copy of the magazine, as well as two signed 1985 letters, on New Yorker stationery, from Addams to a former owner.