"All of this history makes me want to embrace Lincoln and bring him into my world," Maira Kalman (Max Makes a Million) writes after she spent time examining the Abraham Lincoln Archive at the Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia. Her strong personal connection with Lincoln made her sure he would love viewing self-portraits of Frida Kahlo at New York's Museum of Modern Art before adjourning to a down-home restaurant for a bite to eat (maybe a baked potato) while they talked and talked. And that enchanting fantasy is just one entry from Kalman's month-by-month visual diary during her 2009 travels to meditate on the meaning of democracy in America's past and present.
Her journey is eclectic to say the least. When Kalman meets U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, she wants to claim her as her BFF. Ginsburg wins her over by revealing that Matisse is her favorite artist. Kalman, equally entranced by Matisse's love of color and sensuality, memorializes her visit to Ginsburg with a truly lovely Matisse-like illustration. (I want to think that she sent the original to the good Justice.) Stopping by a town meeting in Newfane, Vt., Kalman finds spiritual balm in seeing participatory democracy in action. She finds an entirely different kind of tonic for her soul in visits to Thomas Jefferson's Monticello and to George and Martha Washington's Mount Vernon. To see how these historical personages lived fills her with joy as she browses their libraries and reads that the Washingtons loved dogs, one of whom was named Sweet Lips.
By turns thoughtful, witty, whimsical, chatty, odd, charming and insightful, And the Pursuit of Happiness will tempt many to wolf it down in one sitting. The more disciplined among us will slowly savor her delightful monthly entries. As a visual artist, Kalman has some unique reactions to the places she goes: she'd love to live in the Lincoln Memorial with its stately columns; she admires George and Martha Washington for choosing rich colors for their walls; she really really feels the Pentagon could goose up its interior with a little more style. Contemplating Thomas Jefferson's inclusion of "and the pursuit of happiness" in the Declaration of Independence (he changed the wording from its earlier "and the pursuit of property"), she confides how she pursues her own happiness in our democracy: she works, walks around the city and goes to museums. The sheer joy of her perambulations through cities, towns and museums, captured here in engaging pictures and hand-printed text, is a rare pleasure to be consumed along with her delectable spread of food for thought.--John McFarland
Shelf Talker: An illustrated diary of Maira Kalman's meditation on American democracy that brims with visual pleasures and much food for thought.