Abraham Remy Charlip (January 10, 1929 – August 14, 2012) was an American artist, writer, choreographer, theatre director, theatrical designer, and teacher. He wrote or illustrated more than 40 children's books.[1]
Life and career
Charlip was raised in the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn by Lithuanian Jewish parents.[2]
He studied textile design at Straubenmuller Textile High School in Manhattan, and fine arts at Cooper Union in New York, graduating in 1949. In 1951, he began attending Black Mountain College in North Carolina at the encouragement of Lou Harrison, arriving on Thanksgiving 1951 together with composer David Tudor and writer and potter M.C. Richards.[3] At Black Mountain College, he collaborated with composer John Cage, participated in Theatre Piece No. 1, and became a founding member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, for which he also designed sets and costumes.[2] He remained a member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company for 11 years.[4] He also met others with whom he would later collaborate, including Robert Rauschenberg, Nicholas Cernovich, and Vera Baker Williams.[1]
In the 1960s Charlip created a unique form of choreography, which he called "Air Mail Dances." He would send a set of drawings to a dance company, and the dancers would then order the positions and create transitions and context, without Charlip's further participation.[5]
As a children's book illustrator and author, he became known for his unique use of line and color, fanciful prose, and postmodern use of narrative sequence and continuity.[1] He won three New York Times Best Illustrated Book of the Year citations, and was awarded a six-month residency in Kyoto, Japan from the Japan/U.S. Commission on the Arts.
