UGLY'S GOT NOTHING TO DO WITH IT

In recent weeks, I've received an increasing percentage of comments criticizing pictures for featuring  "ugly" people or "evil" themes, rather than for being "poorly drawn" or "badly painted" or "unimaginative."

• In a recent post about illustrations for the classic novel Lolita, many commenters were uninterested in the creativity or quality of the images because they didn't approve of the book's plot.  None of the images were explicit, but the underlying story was too "depraved."

• In a recent post about an illustration of President Trump, many commenters were less interested in the artistry of the image than in what they suspected were the "totalitarian" sympathies of the artist, or even my own suspected political leanings for showing such a picture  ("You are a Fabian Socialist, a hard leftist, a radical in sheep's clothing. A snooty superior commie pretending not to be, quietly and cleverly trying to undermine our constitution. You are worse than a total partisan hack. You are a Manchurian activist; a deceiver and a traitor.") 

• In a recent post about drawings by artist John Cuneo, a number of commenters criticized Cuneo's pictures for being too ugly. ("It’s hard for me to appreciate Cuneo’s illustrations because they are so damn ugly."  Cuneo is a "a psychosexual slob."  His drawings show "saggy tits" and "flab.")  Even worse, some suspected that Cuneo's admirers have "lib" leanings.

The direction of these comments surprises me; there's plenty of beautiful art about ugly subjects.  Just ask Shakespeare.

My own test for Cuneo's drawings was never, "Would I invite this woman to the prom?" Rather, I feel his drawings are beautiful because their line work is sensitive, complex, thoughtful, probing and intelligent:

Details of Cuneo drawings

Cuneo is not for everyone's taste, but as far as I'm concerned people who dismiss such drawings as "ugly" are applying criteria from a parallel universe. They are likely to miss out on some of the most rewarding material art has to offer.  

So in today's post it's probably worth considering:  what makes a drawing "ugly"?

I've previously written about how much I adore this drawing by Tom Fluharty: 

Readers who sneer at drawings of "flabby" people may be troubled by this picture, but I personally consider it a masterpiece of good drawing: well conceived and designed, with those crisp dark accents shaping and containing that billowing flesh.  Fluharty threw away the anatomy book and drew this with his eyes opened, the way good artists are supposed to.  He was never tempted to let symmetry do half of his work for him.  At the risk of further shocking readers, I would defend this drawing to anyone as "beautiful."

Next, there's artist David Levine, who walked right past the academic models to draw what he called the "shmata queens," the heavy, ungainly women who hung out on a nearby beach. Levine said he was interested in...  

a dwindling group of elderly women: Shmata Queens of Coney. The "shmata," or "rag," not only refers to the head cloth, but also to the bathing suits - faded and misshapen by molding to aged and deformed bodies that have been out under the sun....  Once, as I was finishing a drawing, my model said, "Dere is vun ting you kent ketch about us." When I inquired what that might be, she answered, "How much ve eat."

Again and again Levine drew and painted these women on the beach.  I'm sure if you asked whether he thought they were "ugly" he'd be puzzled by the question.  Certainly they aren't ugly in any sense that should be relevant here.

Still another artist with an observant eye and an interest in less idealized forms of beauty was Andrew Wyeth.  He seemed determined to record every mile that a long, harsh life had left on the faces of his subjects:

We have to be careful about judging art based on the morals of the people depicted, or whether a character has a wart on her nose, or whether the colors are pretty.   Those are all relevant considerations when it comes to deciding whether you should hang a picture in your breakfast nook, but the important aspects of art run a whole lot deeper than that.  

  

ANOTHER GREAT HORSE'S ASS (part 3)

(continuing a series) 

I love this drawing of a horseman by Rodin:

When Rodin was 16, he drew tight academic drawings:

Over the years he evolved from meticulous drawings (usually drawn from plaster casts or classical prints) to loose, fluid drawings where expressiveness was more important than anatomical proportion.  He decided that many of the details he originally labored over were trivial.  He became more interested in "large, rhythmical contours," which were often little more than wispy sketches.  As his drawings became simpler and more abstract they sometimes gained in power.

Rodin took his drawings as seriously as his famous sculptures.  He insisted, "Drawing is the key to knowledge.... Without drawing, no truth." 

For Rodin, the truth about the horseman seemed to lie in the haunches of that horse, which takes up the bulk of the drawing and which forms the base from which the movement (as well as the composition) is driven.  The gesture of the rider is more like a feather in a chapeau.  From his early labors, Rodin understood muscles and skeletal structure and weight; the drawing would not be possible without that knowledge.  But the information is buried so deeply that you'd never single it out.  

Rodin drew as simply and naturally as he was able.  Interestingly, as Rodin became more famous and his drawings became simpler, numerous counterfeiters and fakers tried to imitate his work.  There have been museum exhibitions dedicated to distinguishing Rodin's "authentic" loose, airy drawings from the numerous counterfeit loose, airy drawings-- a challenging task.

NEW BOOK FROM JOHN CUNEO (nsfw)

I just received my copy of the new book by John Cuneo, Good Intentions.

Cuneo has a unique voice in American illustration.  When you think about his work, you need a whole different vocabulary: Penetrating.  Scary.  Brave.  Upsetting.  Frank.  Epic.  Scorchingly honest.  How long has it been since such adjectives applied to illustration, or to any drawing for that matter?  

And funny, lord is he funny.

For decades, scientists have searched for a deep salt mine in a remote location where they might safely store weapons-grade plutonium.  Cuneo packages it in tiny spider web lines.

Despite his mostly dark and trenchant observations, there's even a "yes" to be found in this book.  

 Like Cuneo's other books, we get the feeling that he paid a higher price to create it than we pay to receive it.

ONE LOVELY DRAWING, part 76

This is a 1933 political cartoon by Vaughn Shoemaker.  It appeared in the Chicago Daily News, which went defunct many years ago:

Look how smart this drawing is.  Shoemaker understands the architecture of a rowboat and knows that the keel would make it tilt on dry land.  He understands the bone structure of ankles and makes those feet tilt at different angles.  He understands how the shoulders would hunch up in this position and he understands how the wrists would curl:

Shoemaker also understands the architecture of a pier.  Look at how the boards sag, how the posts in the foreground are stained by the previous waterline, how the posts in the background are mere black shadows to lend structural strength with no distracting details:

I've never seen a digital tool make marks like this

Notice how the shadow under the pier is cross hatched to stay lively; this avoids a big black blob in the center of the composition.  More importantly, it allows Shoemaker to control the value of the shadow, darkening it as it recedes in the distance: 

Notice some of Shoemaker's tactics to keep the drawing lively.  He clearly understands how a coil of rope would normally hang, but he twists the end of that rope all around.  He understands the anatomy of hands, but he gratuitously lifts that pinky finger to make it more interesting:

Drawing a political cartoon every day, Shoemaker had to work at lightning speed, which meant he had to understand all these lessons before he sat down at the drawing board.  He had no time for a field trip to study how a pier is constructed or how a receding waterline leaves marks on the shore. Yet there's a lot of confidence in his thick, fast brush strokes.

Here's my point:  In 1933 there were thousands of political cartoonists such as Shoemaker working for thousands of newspapers like the Chicago Daily News.  Often these cartoons appeared on the front page, above the fold.  Today there are fewer than 40 full time political cartoonists left, and the number of newspapers is rapidly dwindling.  Daily newspapers have turned into weekly newspapers, and many of them can no longer afford an editorial cartoonist on the payroll. 

Shoemaker was not one of the more famous cartoonists but I think his drawing is noteworthy, so I want to make a point of noting it here.

TRUNDLING TOWARD BETHLEHEM

 President John Kennedy was a passionate believer in the importance of the arts; he was a voracious reader and intellectually curious.   He invited over 150 artists, poets and writers to his inauguration.

Composer Leonard Bernstein's invitation to the Kennedy inauguration

The invited artists included Edward Hopper, Andrew Wyeth, Alexander Calder, Paul Manship, Charles Burchfield, Mark Rothko, Max Weber, William Zorach, Walter Gropius and Eugene Speicher.  He also invited authors such as W.H. Auden, Saul Bellow, Pearl Buck, John Dos Pasos, William Faulkner, Arthur Miller, Carl Sandburg, John Steinbeck, Robert Penn Warren, Thornton Wilder and Tennessee Williams. 

Kennedy knew that the government shouldn't attempt to control the arts, but he believed it was important for the president to demonstrate a high regard for cultural excellence, which he felt was one of the greatest fruits of a free society.   He said: 

 Aeschylus and Plato are remembered today long after the triumphs of imperial Athens are gone. Dante outlived the ambitions of 13th century Florence. Goethe stands serenely above the politics of Germany, and I am certain that after the dust of centuries has passed over our cities, we, too, will be remembered not for victories or defeats in battle or in politics, but for our contribution to the human spirit. 

After Kennedy was assassinated, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts was named in tribute to him.  Kennedy had been instrumental in the private fundraising for the cultural center during his lifetime.  The center was managed by a bipartisan Board of cultural figures.  The activities of the center have been paid for by private donations and ticket sales, but as part of a public/private partnership the government provides the maintenance and upkeep for the building.   This gives the government a say in its management. 

Last week President Trump fired the whole Board and got himself appointed as the new Chairman.  This is not a political blog so I offer no opinions on Trump's fitness as president; for all I know, he may go on to become a great president.  However-- limiting my comments solely to the arts-- Trump is a vulgar brute with the artistic taste of a simple minded child, pathetically attracted to all things glittery and gold.  He is proudly unlettered and can barely muster the curiosity to read more than a few bullet points out of his Presidential briefing books.

Despite his ignorance-- or more likely because of it-- Trump feels that the arts will benefit from his political supervision.

It's not surprising, then, that artists might instinctively bristle at such a natural enemy of the arts.  But what kind of responses are available?  Is the artistic community defenseless in this exchange?  

Well, for one thing, art enjoys the clarifying power of naming.  Which brings me to this dandy cover by Justin Metz for The Atlantic in 2024.  

This magazine cover was not constructed the way that Norman Rockwell used to construct magazine covers 100 years ago, combining pigments with linseed oil on a palette.  Metz curated stock images (the capitol building, the sky and the swamp) and combined them using 3d modeling and Photoshop.  He built the rest of the images, creating a hybrid of an old fashioned circus car and a victorian horse-drawn hearse.  He forced the perspective, using the legerdemain of steam from the swamp and strategic lighting, in order to squeeze in everything he felt was essential.  He crafted and refined the image, including brushing to give it a painterly feel.  He carefully designed that whip, the coachman's bulk, the clenched fist.  The result, I think, is a powerful image that rivals the best propaganda posters by the greatest illustrators of World War I.

Despite the fact that he used new tools, Metz had to make many of the same aesthetic choices required of traditional realistic painters in the past.  The grim colors, the ominous light, the foreboding landscape, the placement of symbols such as the iconic vulture in the dead tree, the pose of the coachman-- these are all the types of elements that Brueghel might have weighed for his landscape, The Triumph of Death.  The choice of how many symbols to include without overloading the picture, and how explicit to make those symbols-- again, these are all traditional aesthetic judgments.   

In developing a "sinister circus" theme, Metz drew upon childhood Disney movies such as Pinocchio and Dumbo, with their dark sequences that terrified generations of children: the coachman with the bullwhip who drove bad little boys off to Pleasure Island where they were turned into donkeys....

...or the wagon where Stromboli locked up Pinocchio and carried him away into the night...

...or the movie Dumbo where poor Mrs. Jumbo was locked in the circus train prison: 

These Disney memes still retain great subliminal power today.  

For me, much of the artistry in Metz's cover lies in his depiction of the captive Republican elephant staring out of the shadows.  His look of resignation, wondering how his past compromises could've led to this, adds an important layer of tragedy to what otherwise might have been a purely angry image.

There has been a mountain of editorials and books and articles with charts and graphs debating the political issues behind the recent election but I think this cover is a good reminder of how much more devastating a picture can be than words.   

TWO FOR THE ROAD

America loves a good "road story" about  traveling companions who encounter adventure and learn lessons along the way.  

Jack Kerouac wrote the famous beat generation classic, On The Road.  Mark Twain wrote the story of Huck Finn and Jim traveling down the Mississippi.  John Steinbeck wrote Travels With Charley.  And James Gurney and Thomas Kinkade wrote the newly re-released The Artist's Guide to Sketching.

As Gurney recounts in their book,

Before he was the painter of light, and before I was the creator of Dinotopia, Tom Kinkade and I were two unknown and penniless art students. We had grown weary of sitting in windowless classrooms, enduring lectures about art theory. We hatched an audacious plan to drop out of school for a while, hop on a freight train and discover America, documenting everything in our sketchbooks. 

I  expected (and would have welcomed) a narrative dedicated to their travels.  The few sections of the book that mention their adventures were quite tantalizing:

 We slept in graveyards and the rooftops and sketched portraits of lumberjacks and coal miners. To make money we drew two dollar portraits in bars by the light of cigarette machines.…  We boarded the freights again and rode all the way to Willard, Ohio, where we were kicked off at gunpoint by police officers, who had received reports that we were trying to fly a kite off the top of the train.

However, the book is focused instead on the art of sketching, and is organized by subject matter (such as "Materials" and "Achieving Accuracy" and "Capturing Motion") rather than chronologically or geographically. It is filled with helpful examples from their travels:

Some of the art was a revelation to me.  For example, I really like the following pile o' chains drawn by Kinkade.  The subject presents an artist with some interesting questions about economy.  Do you fake it by roughly indicating random links, or is it worth going through the hassle of connecting the links in a chain?  

I prefer Kinkade's good hearted pile o' chains to his later, finished paintings of sugary cottages.  I also enjoyed what he saw in this gas pump.

But perhaps the part of the book I enjoyed the most was the rousing essay about the value of sketching.  I like it because it starts out acknowledging how the world conspires to steer us toward more efficient enterprises:  

Many artists tell us: “I guess I should sketch more often, but I never really get the chance.” We know the feeling.  There just doesn’t seem to be enough time in the day, and when the opportunity does come up, the sketchbook is never handy.  On a vacation it seems much easier to use a camera than a sketchbook to record your experiences.

But by setting aside an entire journey dedicated to sketching "pictures of abandoned tractors and motel signs and jukeboxes," the duo learned:

The more we sketched, the more we began to realize that sketching is both the motivation and the reward for experiencing new things.

A TALE OF TWO COMIC STRIPS

 In the 1980s, there were two comic strips about the White House.  One was well written, the other was well drawn. 

Doonesbury was brilliant, witty satire.  Its caustic humor revolutionized the comics page (and in fact, some newspapers moved it from the comics page to the editorial page).  It developed a huge following.  However, the drawing in Doonesbury was always mediocre at best.  Artist Garry Trudeau could not draw a decent caricature to save his life, so he would always draw the President off screen, either with a word balloon above the White House...  

... or a word balloon from outside the panel at a press conference.

As the decades went by and Trudeau's drawing didn't improve, he compensated by drawing George H.W. Bush as a disembodied voice (to connote his lack of substance), or Dan Quayle as a talking feather or Bill Clinton as a talking waffle.  As with many artists, necessity became the mother of invention. 

Rather than draw George W. Bush's face, Trudeau drew an empty warrior's helmet.

The comic strip Benchley by Mort Drucker and Jerry Dumas had the opposite problem.  The drawings by Drucker were impeccable-- every day there were fresh caricatures of Ronald Reagan, Henry Kissinger, Tip O'Neil and many others.  

Unfortunately, the text from Jerry Dumas tended to be corny, old fashioned pablum.   Drucker described the strip as "somewhat like a mild roast....Newspapers don't want to alienate their readership, whether it's Democrat or Republican.  Therefore you have to be a bit milder....For now our intent is to do a humorous strip and possibly at some later date do more political social satire."  But the strip ended after 3 years, in 1987.  Doonesbury is now in its 55th year.

As it became clear that Benchley was not going to make it, Dumas and Drucker allowed themselves a biting remark or two about their competition:

The newspaper comic page has its finger on the pulse of America.  It seems America has voted.  Audiences no longer care about (or even recognize) bad drawing.  

The excellent comic strip artists who continue to uphold the dignity of good drawing seem to do it for the sake of their own conscience; it doesn't appear that they are particularly rewarded for it.  Comic strips are smaller, of course, so the images must be simplified.  Today quick, sloppy drawing-- even stick figures-- will do. Repetition of the same drawing in multiple panels is another common time saver.  Today it's the text that matters.