ABSTRACT
The technological improvements that made possible mass distribution of good quality color illustrations for children's books, as well as fine art and natural science reproductions, created a milestone. Picturebook illustration is inevitably influenced by the fashion or movements in art of the time in which it is executed. In art history, caricatures conveyed in line drawings can be seen as harbingers of modernism. The interest in illustration as an art historical study, however, appears more difficult to engage when the work is for children. Artists' books usually are intended for an adult audience, but in their twentieth-century iteration they also were concerned with educating children. The social and educational revolutions of the 1960s and 1970s changed the picturebook in ways that are evident. An allied art form, the artists' book, was reintroduced in the early 1960s. Children's picturebooks give children familiarity with artists and artistic language.
