Between Paper Engineering and Orality: Little Red Riding Hood in the Interactive Books of Warja Lavater and Dominique Lagraula

Abstract

The fairy tale has long attracted numerous authors over the centuries. In the artist’s book, the polysemy of the fairy tale finds new fields of investigation. As an object of art, the artist’s book gives orality a new dimension, crossing the material and spatial boundaries of the page.
This analysis focuses specifically on the Little Red Riding Hood fairy tale in the works of Warja Lavater and Dominique Lagraula. The paper-engineering, mechanical structure, and iconographic choices characterizing the selected books offer the fairy tale evolving space-time narrative possibilities.
Both versions clearly demonstrate how the materiality and interactive dimension of the works, through an essential iconography, provide the reader with an experience that can enhance the development of visual literacy, constituting an important pedagogical, artistic, individual, and collective experience, in which orality becomes an immersive and conscious experience.