EDENTULOUS

This editorial cartoon by the great Michael Ramirez was published by the Washington Post on November 7 and withdrawn the next day after complaints that the cartoon was "racist."

Ramirez combines strong opinions with strong drawing abilities-- the ideal
combination for an editorial cartoonist. 

Several forces now threaten the once-great institution of editorial cartoons.  Among them are the dwindling circulation of newspapers and the sensationalism of the 24/7 cable news cycle.   But there's an even larger issue: whether modern newspapers and their audiences still have the stomach for caricature.  

Cartoons have an important history of offending targets in ways that words cannot.  The corrupt politician "Boss" Tweed famously said he was unafraid of what newspapers wrote, but "those damned pictures" by cartoonist Thomas Nast had to stop.  Tweed was right to be concerned; cartoons toppled his regime, and as a fugitive from justice he was identified from Nast's drawings.  

When cartoonist David Low savagely depicted the Nazis on the eve of World war II, the German government formally protested to the British government.  Low explained his strategy: "To draw a hostile war lord as a horrible monster is to play his game. What he doesn't like is being shown as a silly ass."   

Hitler was reported to have personally put a price on the head of cartoonist Arthur Szyk for his cartoons lampooning the "master race."

Victims of caricature have always pressured newspapers to stop, and newspapers have had to find the courage to stand up to the pressure.  

Today, villains who are indignant about being ridiculed have found more effective ways to get editorial cartoons removed.  Experience shows that nothing can cause the Washington Post to retreat faster than an allegation of "racism," whether the allegation had any basis or not. 

Racism? Caricature by Ramirez (left) of Hamas official (right)

The same tactic was used when cartoonist Ann Telnaes drew a cartoon criticizing Senator Ted Cruz for filming his small daughters reading an attack ad against his competitor.  Telnaes drew them as performing monkeys.  

Cruz's allies shrewdly recognized that the best way to get the cartoon removed was to allege that the cartoon was "racist"-- a ridiculous charge, but The Post immediately caved and withdrew the cartoon.  

The removal of Ramirez's cartoon last week shows that the trick still works.

So what kind of editorial cartoons can safely pass muster at the Washington Post today?  Three days after withdrawing the Ramirez cartoon, the Post editorial page ran the following edentulous cartoon:  

Bland lifestyle cartoons are no threat to anyone.  But compare the draftsmanship and the content of this cartoon to the brilliant and biting humor of Ramirez.

 Newspapers shouldn't withdraw editorial cartoons just because the target feels offended.  Those newspapers that do, no longer understand the nature of caricature and might want to consider getting out of the editorial cartoon business.   

THE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE THREAT TO TRADITIONAL ART

Artists have historically performed many important functions, such as drawing pictures for young women to show what their future husband will look like naked.  

Note that the above drawing will be "hand made."  No computers involved.  The artists will "read your future by aura and tap into the source" in order to provide you with: 

The huge demand for such information has been a major source of revenue for traditional artists: 

 

You'd think such an important role for art would be safe from incursion by cold Artificial Intelligence.  After all, what kind of person would trust a machine to tell them whether their future husband will be overweight or have a tattoo on his butt?  Only a true artist could know such things.

Despite this fact, today there are numerous AI image generators offering a variety of "clothes removal functions" which you can use to learn intimate details about your potential life partner.

With the click of a button, Nudify.online will strip the clothing in a photograph in less than a minute.   And Soulgen reminds you that after you've used their software to create a NSFW image from a photo of your beloved, if you have some really detailed questions "you can reuse the image and write a text to create exactly what you want with that character."  

I can understand how people interested in a meaningful lifelong commitment would want to seize upon this information to help them make their choices.  But how can they be so easily duped into believing that AI will give them reliable information?  Better to stick with authentic art, made by a genuine artist.

ONE LOVELY DRAWING, part 70

 The great Mort Drucker drew this ad for Burger King in 1990:

There are 40 different faces in this riot of a drawing.  

Most cartoonists rely on a basic template of four or five facial expressions, but Drucker is able to conjure up an endless cavalcade of faces.  Note how he never seems to repeat the same mouth twice in this drawing.  Note all the different angles; very few people stand up straight.

Drucker packs his creative choices together densely, which gives the drawing a feeling of generosity.  His lively, bouncy line helps us feel his joy at the infinite variety of humanity.

And that's before we even begin to talk about his trademark hands.

To appreciate the sensitivity of Drucker's line, drill down on the smallest details.  

Note how he varies the thickness of his line to convey 3-dimensionality, or shadows, or conceptual emphasis.  When a feature is less significant (like the shadow on the tip of that nose) Drucker's touch can be as light as a feather.

One lovely drawing indeed!

A NEWSPAPER AD FROM 1976

In 1976 Northwestern Hospital placed an ad in a Chicago newspaper announcing the opening of two new medical facilities.  Every copy of that advertisement-- except mine-- has now been used to line bird cages, wrap dead fish or fill garbage dumps.  That leaves me as the only person left to praise its evanescent poetry.

Northwestern hired illustrator Franklin McMahon to humanize the mission of the hospital for a general newspaper audience:

Detail

Look at the lovely, graceful way McMahon portrayed the grief of families in the waiting room:

  

Look at how beautifully he portrayed the architecture:

Detail

McMahon made complex medical equipment less foreboding and more interesting.

Today an advertiser would use photographs or (horrors!) photo-illustration to handle this mission.  

Northwestern Memorial Hospital in photograph (above) and illustration (below)

What a difference illustration makes in charm and in understanding.  But in fairness, there are very few illustrators left today who are capable of McMahon's thoughtful treatment of such a subject. 

BURT SILVERMAN EXHIBITION

A major new exhibit of the work of Burt Silverman has just opened at the Salmagundi Club in Manhattan.  The exhibit-- a feast for the mind and the eye-- contains 35 significant paintings.

For many years, Silverman has been one of the premier painters in America.  He's from that generation of thoughtful painters who used realism as a vehicle for reflection and discovery.  The result, on display in the exhibition, is rich with nuance and heavy with nutritional content.  

All paintings in this review copyright Burton Silverman

A good example is this 1994 watercolor, The Machine:

Most of this painting is as loose and abstract as any Mark Rothko or Jackson Pollock painting:

Here, design reigns supreme.  These areas aren't governed by objective external references.

But in key places Silverman sharpens his focus and paints solid objects realistically.  He uses folds on clothing, treads on tires and similar hard edged details to create a composition which rescues the abstract elements from a fugue state.   

 These touches keep the picture in an objective, three dimensional reality.

The theme of this picture-- humans wrestling with machines-- is as current as this morning's headlines about coping with the complexities of artificial intelligence.  Other paintings in the exhibition invite the same kind of reflection on other themes.

Silverman's brand of realism is very different from much of the realist revival of the past 20 years, which often exalts technical skill and soulless photo-realism.  The abstract designs inherent in Silverman's painting remind us of the importance of aesthetic values neglected by so many technicians in the "realist revival."  More importantly, Silverman finds in the material world themes worthy of contemplation and extrapolation.  Their messages aren't obvious; Silverman doesn't offer us diagrams or roadmaps.  He's far too oblique for that.  This brand of realism takes time to unfold.  

For those who claim that realism is "dated" in the fast moving art world of AI, conceptual art, NFTs and indigenous futurity, the only anachronism in Silverman's art is its emphasis on humanity and depth-- important attributes that are rarely to be found in much of the contemporary art scene. 

LEYENDECKER: ANOTHER LOOK

A few weeks ago I criticized a museum exhibition and an art critic for their shabby efforts to reduce the great achievement of J.C. Leyendecker to a "gay fifth column." They claimed to see "hidden messages"(such as an erect penis) in Leyendecker's paintings, which they claimed were designed to undermine "the majority's straight erotics." I responded that Leyendecker's work is still under-appreciated, and that a rare exhibition of his originals should acknowledge his broader legacy, rather than serve as a political tool for tiresome people with a narrow agenda.  

Some readers suggested that if Leyendecker deserves broader attention, I should help give him more attention rather than whining about the people who don't.  Fair enough:

It's important to remember that most people became familiar with Leyendecker in an era when printing technology was relatively primitive and full color reproduction was rare.

So when the public is given a chance to view his original paintings, they are surprised by his acute powers of observation and his astonishing technical skills.

Images courtesy of the Kelly Collection of American Illustration

Every artist today would know enough to paint those white highlights, but how many would also notice that the reflected light on the underside of the black beads is a warm color due to her skin, or notice the proper color for the shadow of the beads on her flesh?  More importantly, how many would even care, if their picture was to be reproduced in two colors? 

In books about Leyendecker, we repeatedly see the same pictures of his stylish Arrow collar man, or Kuppenheimer ads, or sports figures.  But Leyendecker did hundreds of quality covers on a variety of topics for The Saturday Evening Post and Collier's that you rarely-- if ever-- see reproduced. 

There's still a rich lode of Leyendecker's oeuvre which has yet to be mined and appreciated.  It deserves to be taken seriously.

A NEW BOOK OF ILLUSTRATORS' SKETCHBOOKS

Bill Watterson, creator of the legendary comic strip Calvin & Hobbes, said, "Every line you draw drops your pants."

It's true. A pen nib is a better lie detector than a polygraph needle. Unlike paintings, which can be polished and refined and layered with glazes, drawing is a more direct and immediate medium.  It records initial inspirations and preliminary ambitions, and reveals every tremor or wrong move. It betrays your mistakes and displays your successful gambles. 

Perhaps for this reason, drawing was historically considered a secondary art form, a stepping stone to what Vasari described as the three primary arts: painting, sculpture, and architecture. But in the 20th century, drawing gained new respectability.   As our appreciation for spontaneity, experimentation, vitality and economy grew, classical academy paintings came to be viewed as boring.  Collections of preliminary studies and informal drawings were mined for deluxe art books and museum exhibitions. 

It’s not surprising that the spotlight has continued to move, back to the origins of drawing in the sketchbooks of artists.  Sketchbook pages by Edward Hopper and John Singer Sargent and a hundred other artists have been published.  J.M.W. Turner's watercolor sketchbooks are cherished as the moment of first inspiration for his large oil paintings. 

Now Martin Salisbury has come forward with a rich collection entitled Illustrators' Sketchbooks, showcasing the private sketchbooks of 60 well selected illustrators.  For each artist there is a thoughtful description of the illustrator with quotes, along with 5 or more pages from their sketchbooks.

Alan Cober

Remarkable entries in the sketchbook of Ronald Searle
showing how he experimented with the effects he later used in his drawings

Sketches by John Cuneo, one of my favorite contemporary illustrators

Oliver Jeffers

Charles Tunnicliffe

Kenyon Cox

The book contains several of the usual suspects such as Beatrix Potter,  Quentin Blake and Edward Gorey but I most enjoyed some of the names that were new to me, especially the examples from international illustrators.

An interesting selection of images that you won't normally see in books and magazines.