‘The Ship of Fools’ (At the end of stories, 2023), with text and illustration by Ana González Lartitegui (Bilbao, 1961, resident of Aragón for more than thirty years), has been distinguished again, after having been distinguished weeks back by the Cuatrogatos Foundation of Miami. By unanimous vote of the jury, it has been awarded the VII Children’s and Young People’s Book Sample Prize organized by the libraries of the Community of Madrid. Next April 2, World Children’s and Young People’s Book Day, the presentation of the 39th LIJ Exhibition will be held and Teresa Benéitez, the editor, and the author will collect the Award at the Cardenal Cisneros Library in Alcalá de Henares at 11:00 in an event in which, in addition to the authorities of the Community of Madrid and Alcalá City Council, children from a nearby school will be present.
The author began her career in the late 80s and illustrated books such as ‘The Letter from Mrs. González, with text by Sergio Lairla, received the Best Book Award at the FIL of Mexico in 2000, and ‘The Book of the luck’, which won the 2015 Euskadi Illustration Prize. Here it answers some questions about a book that is also a dialogue with the history of art, with the grotesque and the picaresque, with the figure of Hieronymus Hieronymus and with explicit tributes to the Church of San Lorenzo de Garrapinillos, the first project of architect Ricardo Magdalena.
Explain to us how this piece was proposed?
I wrote the story many years ago, for an illustration workshop that I titled ‘The book that grows’ where the boys and girls each had to create their fool, riding on some means of transport with the tomato plant on top, traveling at full speed, in each drawing one more tomato. We assembled the illustrations like pages of an accordion book and the beginning and end pages contained the beginning and the end of the story more or less as we know it now. The core of the collective work turned out to be a most diverse and fun escape of characters. Years later I thought that this argument could lead to a book and I started to do it.
How did you approach this tribute to the history of painting, especially flamenco, with so many nods?
The story of tomato number thirteen was very well put together in its written part, but to turn it into an album it needed a powerful graphic motif. And that was where the dialogue with the carnivalesque, the literature of foolishness and the pictorial tradition of the Flanders masters began. I stumbled upon it in the first sketches. In the scene of the first fool reaching the river, I imagined my character arriving at the Styx Lagoon of Patinir and, suddenly, the idea unleashed a fascinating series of fits. One thing led me to another.
‘”The ship of fools’ for me has been the opportunity to make fun of the foolishness of the smart ones; those people who ridiculously consider themselves better than others and treat them like fools, thus degrading themselves without realizing it”
That explains the idea of the constant journey that is the book.
What was originally a tourist cruise became ‘The Ship of Fools’ and the magician on board in my book became ‘The Conjurer’, both from Hieronymus Hieronymus. From there began the investigation and this dialogue with the iconography of the grotesque from the absurdity present in many medieval miniatures to the ‘strange beings’ of François Desprez or the delirium of ‘The Funeral’ by George Grosz.
As a writer and as an illustrator, what concerns You, what do You want to tell, what is Your poetics?
‘The Ship of Fools’ for me has been the opportunity to make fun of the foolishness of the smart; those people who ridiculously consider themselves better than others and treat them like fools, thus debasing themselves without realizing it. I believe that at the core of all my works is the intention to provoke breakdowns and stimulate the need to ask questions. What if fictional stories are not useful?
That’s a question that writers try to answer in a thousand ways. How have you done it? He uses many characters: rogues, gullible peasants, envious healers, fair magicians, lost souls, angels…
People turn to fictions to see ourselves reflected with due distance in such a way that we can study and understand ourselves in our most ridiculous face without suffering for it. I’m trying to do something like that.
