Scribbles, scrawls, and scratches: Graphic play as subtext in the picture books of Ezra Jack Keats

Conclusion

Although Keats works in a two-dimensional medium, his illustrations are fully three-dimensional in both geometric perspective and narrative intentionality. Using collage technique that floats planes of color on a sea of textural richness, Keats is able to maximize his voice, or “voices,” as he speaks to us through multiple images—personalities—embedded within his illustrative frame. Keats's technique, paradoxically, runs counter to the historical development of collage as a form of antiaesthetic criticism used by early surrealist painters. Whereas such painters as Duchamp, Arp, Schwitters, and Ernst strike out against traditional aesthetic categories, Keats embraces them, focusing upon the achievement of a certain “rhythmic unity” in his work. In this sense, he achieves the height of picture book art by dissolving the thin line between text and illustration, and he does so primarily by “playing” with various graphic images as subtexts that both clarify and extend his main narrative intentions.