New History of Illustration Challenges Genre's Second-Class Status

D.B. Dowd's 'Reading Pictures: A History of Illustration' (Princeton University Press, $60/£50, published 21 April) argues that illustrations should be read, not admired like paintings. The 400-page volume spans from the Diamond Sutra frontispiece (AD868, Tan China) to Molly Crabapple's 2015 Gaza reports. Dowd, a professor at Washington University in St Louis, traces the genre's evolution through Jules Chéret's 1891 poster for the Alcazar d'Été Club in Paris, Stuart Davis's caustic 1913 cover for The Masses, and Duong Ngoc Canh's 1966 Vietnamese propaganda poster 'Look after the Land, Look after the Youth'. The book examines how illustrations served propaganda, as in a 1938 Nazi picture book teaching children to identify Jews by comparing them to mushrooms, and consumerism, like Mitsukoshi Kimono Store's 1920 advertisement tower. Dowd highlights continuities across cultures, noting Chéret's debt to Japanese 17th-century xylography. The review criticizes the omission of natural history illustration, such as John James Audubon's 'The Birds of America' (1826-38) and Ernst Haeckel's 'Art Forms in Nature' (1899-1904). Reviewer Christoph Irmscher praises Dowd's quirky captions but notes simplification due to the vast material.