NEW REFLECTIONS ON OLD COMBAT ART, part 1

One of the rich and remarkable stories of American illustration has remained buried in museum vaults for many decades. It's the story of the eight illustrators who were selected in 1917 to accompany American troops into battle in World War I.
The illustrators were selected by Charles Dana Gibson's "Pictorial Publicity Committee," under the auspices of the wartime "Committee on Public Information." They were:

Harvey Dunn
William James Aylward
Walter Jack Duncan
George Matthews Harding
Wallace Morgan
Ernest Clifford Peixotto
 J. André Smith
Harry Everett Townsend

There have been some articles and even a book written about these artists, but their artwork was exhibited at the Smithsonian in the 1920s, then placed in storage where it has remained hidden from public view. There are some 700 works in this extraordinary collection.

Now, to commemorate the anniversary of America's intervention in World War I, the Smithsonian Institution has unearthed this art and placed 65 works on exhibition. The show is a collaboration between the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum and the National Museum of American History. It will remain on display at the Air and Space Museum in Washington DC until November 2018.

Going through the exhibit, I was struck by both the talent and the resourcefulness of the artists.  Here for example is Harvey Dunn's metal sketchbox which he designed so he could store long rolls of paper inside, safe from the elements, and still have a flat surface on which to draw:

Over the next few days, I'm going to show and comment on some of my favorite pictures from the collection and offer some thoughts about the significance of the exhibition.

THE WALL OF PRESIDENTS AT THE SOCIETY OF ILLUSTRATORS, part 2

In February I wrote about the wall of portraits at the Society of Illustrators in New York, where each president of the Society was drawn by a prominent illustrator of the day.   

Unlike typical portraits which are designed to flatter subjects who know little about art, the portraits on the walls at the Society were pictures of working artists, done by working artists, to be displayed in front of a judgmental audience of working artists. 

Here is another assortment of drawings worth considering from the wall.  Which are your favorites?

Personally, I'm crazy about Victor Juhasz's lively, observant drawing of Dennis Dittrich:

Dennis Dittrich portrayed by Victor Juhasz

Juhasz drew his subject from life.  Compare the vitality of his drawing with Norman Rockwell's cautious portrait of Wesley McKeown.

Wesley McKeown by Norman Rockwell

Rockwell lent technical mastery to everything he touched, yet I think this portrait lacks the spirit of Juhasz's drawing.

Bob Peak's drawing below also strives for vitality, but I find his racing stripes an artificial way of achieving it (unlike Juhasz's drawing where every "loose" line serves a purpose). 

Walter Hortens by Bob Peak

I'm guessing that Diane Dillon's portrait by her husband and partner Leo is unadventuresome because he likes her just fine the way she is, and can't see that any experimentation or distortion is warranted.

Diane Dillon by Leo Dillon

The talented Greg Manchess employed charcoal for these drawings of Berenson and Schultz:

Richard J. Berenson by Gregg Manchess 

Eileen Hedy Schultz by Greg Manchess 

Master of the pencil Paul Calle manages to combine sharp realism with a brisk look:

Doug Cramer by Paul Calle

Last, here is a drawing of Shannon Stirnweiss by Dean Ellis:

Shannon Stirnweis by Dean Ellis 

What do you think?

MORT DRUCKER WEEK!

This week the great Mort Drucker is being inducted into the Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame. There will be a dinner and a reception at the Society in New York on June 22, 2017-- about 25 years late, as far as I'm concerned, but I'm still glad to see the 88 year old artist recognized that way.

At the same time, I'm pleased to announce that the new issue of Illustrators Quarterly, a superb international journal of illustration art, features a cover story (written by yours truly) about Drucker.

It features 32 pages of his marvelous drawings reproduced directly from the original art.

For the article, I was able to interview Drucker in his home and learn about his life and career.

Drucker's wedding picture with his wife Barbara

Drucker worked for his entire career on this same battered portable drawing board. 

It was a real treat for me, and I hope for readers.  This issue is a keeper.  It can be purchased from the publisher in the U.K. or from distributors in the US.

ONE LOVELY DRAWING, part 53

Illustrator Joe Ciardello is well known for his excellent series of drawings of jazz musicians.   My favorite is this marvelous depiction of James  Oscar Smith, who worked magic on the electric organ.

Ciardiello's picture is an art form somewhere between drawing and music.

Vesalius would not recognize the bones in those hands, but their fluidity perfectly captures Smith's music.

A higher and more insightful level of drawing than mere accuracy.

Similarly, those arms are a graphic equivalent of jazz:

Contrast the light touch of Ciardiello's sprightly linework with the dense black background and you have a powerful composition.  But Ciardiello doesn't end it there.  He energizes the solid black with little jolts of color....

...which, combined with those glowing blue shadows...

... makes the entire picture as electric as Jimmy Smith's organ.

Ciardiello does a lot of literary and cultural figures but he seems to have a special affinity for musicians.  Check out his brilliant drawings of B.B. King and Rahsaan, both of them lovely (but I can't reproduce them here because this series is about one lovely drawing).

MY FAVORITE LIGHTNING

From the perspective of a cartoonist:

If a lightning bolt's trousers came unbuckled and it slipped on a banana peel, it would look like George Herriman's marvelous, loopy version.  Plus, his black cloud and raindrops put Robert Motherwell to shame. 

From the perspective of a graphic designer:

This brilliant design is not only visually powerful but substantively strong as well: for a column about "judgement day" it effectively conveys the crack of doom.

From the perspective of a conceptual artist:

Saul Steinberg tugs a loose thread on the fabric of reality, and pulls that lightning bolt straight.  

From the perspective of an animator:

The beautiful pastoral sequence in Walt Disney's Fantasia animates the full story of lightning, beginning when Zeus appears in the clouds  during a storm.  The preliminary drawing is above, the final screenshot is below: 

A concept painting shows lightning from the fingertips of Zeus....

...but the final film shows Vulcan hammering out lightning on his celestial anvil for Zeus, with showers of sparks...

...and captures the motion of Zeus hurling his lightning bolts down on targets below.

From the perspective of an earthwork artist:

Spending the night in Walter DeMaria's Lightning Field , a network of gleaming lightning rods in a remote corner of the high desert of western New Mexico is a deeply moving aesthetic experience.

I find each of these versions of lightning brilliant in its own way,  the casual scribble in the Sunday comics as well as the epic metal sculpture luring real lightning down from the sky.   

As the great Walt Whitman said:

I do not call one greater and one smaller,
That which fills its period and place is equal to any.

Like lightning, originality only strikes once.  Or as the slightly less great Willie Tyler said:

The reason lightning doesn't strike twice in the same place is that the same place isn't there the second time.

THE OLD HOUSE ON TANGLEWOOD LANE, chapter 5

One night Bernie Fuchs awoke to noises in his studio on Tanglewood Lane.  He found his friend, the great illustrator Robert Fawcett, highly inebriated.  

It was not uncommon for illustrators who were working late to get together to paint and drink and talk about the art business.  Fawcett had stopped in for a chat (the door to the studio was always unlocked) and tipped over a chair.  Fuchs gave Fawcett coffee and sent him home in a cab. 

The following morning Fuchs discovered that Fawcett had come across Fuchs's checkbook lying out on a table and written himself a check on Bernie's account.

Fawcett drunkenly signed Bernie's name to the check, then left it behind.

Fuchs was so delighted he pinned the check to his bulletin board next to his easel.  It remained there for the rest of his life.  "Bob," he recalled fondly, "Was the first great illustrator I met when I moved to Westport."

Some nights the royalty of American illustration-- artists such as Mark English and Bob Heindel-- would sit around that Tanglewood studio, talking and working.  Heindel recalled,  "I liked hanging out with those guys.  The better your competition was, the better your own work was going to be."  He continued,  "Any time you worked on something and you knew that Bernie was involved, you knew that you had to do the very best you could possibly do. He brought that out in people.  And if you ever competed with Bernie, you knew going into it that he was going to beat the shit out of you.  But we never let the competition get in the way.  We are truly good friends."

For long years that generation of talented illustrators worked to do exciting and new things.  They got together, commented on each other's work, discussed how artists were mistreated and how to improve their profession. They transformed the direction of American illustration and changed the rights of artists for the generations that followed.

Today the studio is empty, stripped bare in preparation for the bulldozers.  Nothing left but the ghosts of what took place here. 

The local newspaper, Westport Now, considers it nothing more than "the Teardown of the Day."

But important and remarkable things happened here once.

The poet Isabel Allende urged, "write it down before it is erased by the wind."  My hope in writing down the story of Fuchs and his art is to prevent it from being erased by the wind.  

A final view of the window of Bernie Fuchs' studio, courtesy of the Westport blog, 06880

THE OLD HOUSE ON TANGLEWOOD LANE, chapter 4

As years went by, more houses were built on Tanglewood Lane.  The residents decided they merited a street sign at the entrance.   Because it was a private street, the residents would normally have to pay for their own sign. But Bernie Fuchs volunteered to paint one.

He took a board, painted it white and hand lettered the words, "Tanglewood Lane."

Fuchs' artwork may look free and spontaneous, but he started his training in the rigorous world of car illustration where he had to master technical drawing and lettering.

Fuchs' pictures had to satisfy committees of automotive engineers who inspected every hubcap and headlight to make sure they conformed to specifications.  Long after he graduated from illustrating car brochures, the skills remained and Fuchs could summon them up whenever his neighbors needed a street sign.

The only time I ever saw Fuchs look smug was when I asked who did the very impressive lettering on one of his illustrations.  He gave me a look that was downright cocky.   Fuchs was a humble man and never mentioned his many honors and awards but he was clearly proud that he had paid his dues and knew how to do his own lettering.

Today, illustrators using Photoshop Text have no need for such skills.  But it mattered that Fuchs was able to experiment from a position of strength.  He knew enough about mechanical drawing, perspective, realistic painting, lettering and other skills so that he could choose what to abandon and what to retain, rather than developing a style around his inadequacies.

For decades, visitors to Tanglewood Lane didn't realize they were driving past an original Bernie Fuchs painting.  Recently the new residents decided to replace their sign with a new, mechanically produced version.