LOLITA'S LITMUS TEST

It's hard to think of a more challenging test for realistic illustration than Vladimir Nabokov's book, Lolita.  Nabokov emphasized to his publisher that any illustrator who attempted a representational image of the character would be missing the point.  He wrote: "There is one subject which I am emphatically opposed to: any kind of representation of a little girl."

The difficulty of illustrating Lolita has been widely recognized.  The (excellent) book, Lolita; The Story of a Cover Girl contains essays and dozens of images on "Vladimir Nabokov's novel in art and design." Lit Hub compiled a (useless) survey, The 60 Best and Worst International Covers of Lolita .  In 2016 The Folio Society produced what they called the First-Ever Illustrated Version of Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita." 

Many artists and art editors have tried coming up with realistic illustrations for Nabokov's psychologically complex novel but the results have been pretty worthless:

Illustration for the recent Folio edition

You may not think much of the talents of these particular illustrators, but replace them in your imagination with your favorite representational illustrator.  Is there a facial expression or a pose or a color scheme that you think would be more successful?

Now contrast the representational images above with the conceptual illustrations below, often using photography or graphics.  

In my view, these conceptual illustrations are far more impressive;  they get closer to the meaning of the book; they engage the viewer and inspire deeper thought.  The sheet of notebook paper shockingly reminding us of what a 12 year old girl is. The broken lollipop or the crumpled clean white page conveying besmirched innocence.   The repetitive writing of Lolita's name giving us insight into Humbert Humbert's obsessive brain.

The following photographic illustration (one of my favorites in this series)  could be the view of the deranged  Humbert lying in bed staring at the ceiling, and it could also be the panties of a 12 year old girl. A very powerful use of imagery by Jamie Keenan.  

Could this image have been as effective if it was painted by a talented artist?  I doubt it.  Crimped by the intent of the artist, a painting would look too much like either panties or a ceiling.  The objectivity of the camera gives this image its double entendre, and it gives us the shock when we realize what our mind is seeing. 

If anyone can suggest more effective representational paintings or drawings of this book, I would welcome them.  Absent that,  I think these images are strong evidence for the argument that the end justifies the means in illustration, and that excellence can extend beyond hand drawn or painted images, to encompass some kinds of photography, graphics and digital imagery. 

DID SOMEBODY STEP ON A BUTTERFLY 62 MILLION YEARS AGO?

I'm taking a 24 hour break from our series on digital art to observe election day in the United States. 

Here are a few panels from a classic Al Williamson story for EC, written by the prophet Ray Bradbury. 

For any youngsters out there who may need a little more of the background:

All right, who stepped off the path?

MAKING THE BEST USE OF "THE ONLY TIME WE'VE GOT"

Following up on last week's discussion of artists who are challenged to make the best use of the new technologies in our era of illustration:

Horrible New Yorker cover drawn on an iPad by famous artist David Hockney

French painter Paul Delaroche saw the handwriting on the wall back in 1839.  When he spotted his first photograph, he proclaimed, “From today, painting is dead!” Delaroche may have been a little premature, but he was right to be alarmed.  

In the following years, technology continued its inexorable incursions into art.  Photography improved and became more accessible, then morphed into moving images, then moving images with sound.  When photography went digital, it became possible for even the most untalented to manipulate images, simulate the act of drawing, and cut and paste moving images to create visual collages. In recent years generative AI has made that process interactive.

These technological changes put new creative freedom in the hands of the lumpenproletariat and introduced undeniable economy and efficiency into the production of images.  What are we to make of all this?  It does no good to avert our eyes.  These are the forces that pushed illustration out of most magazines and then pushed most magazines out of business.  Today they have breached the barricades of the most distinguished art museums.

 

For a while, we could take comfort from the fact that most digital art, even digital art by accomplished artists such as David Hockney (above) was so laughable that it didn't warrant serious consideration.  But today talented artists are creating first class images digitally, and first class images are always self-legitimizing.  If the image is excellent, I reject objections to its pedigree. 

Exhibit A for discussion is the work of the brilliant Nathan Fowkes.  Born and bred on traditional art media, he nurtured his talents honestly, spending years doing lovely, honest plein air paintings.  In recent years he has also become a virtuoso with digital media:

I think these paintings are admirable.  When I first saw them I couldn't distinguish them from traditional media, so it would be dishonest to think less of them just because they were produced digitally. 

Instead, I salute the open mind with which Fowkes embraced the new tools and the honesty with which he explores their potential.  I'm happy to say that both are hallmarks of Fowkes' work.  

 

THE ONLY TIME YOU'VE GOT

 

" I don't know whether this is the best of times or the worst of times, but I assure you it's the only time you've got."    

                                                --  Art Buchwald

I recently attended a talk at the Society of Illustrators where the speaker declared that the 1960s were "the golden age of illustration." 

But in the 1960s, illustrators believed the golden age was already over.  The Society's Annual asked, "Is illustration over the hill?...  I don't think illustration will ever regain the popularity it once had."  Illustration historian Walt Reed explained why the 60s were actually wretched for illustration: "Television had stolen the fiction magazines audience and illustration's former position as a pace setter for popular culture was usurped....Illustration's role became more incidental and decorative."

It seems that every generation of illustrators is convinced they missed out on the good times.

Back in 1927 a prominent art critic insisted that the golden age of illustration occurred in the late 19th century, and that the field went downhill at the start of the 20th century.  In his essay on the decline of illustration, he asserted: 

 [Illustration] soon departed from the decent standards of the old school, and so debased drawing into the cheapest form of mechanical ingenuity —slippery, sentimental stuff.... As connecting links between the old and the new orders, I may mention Charles Dana Gibson and Howard Pyle. 

Gibson, he complained, "was limited and mediocre, and despite the most valiant efforts was unable to learn the first principles of draftsmanship."  Pyle, he claimed, was a "prolific hack."   He mourned that by 1915 the field of illustration was disintegrating because "the leading American magazines have discarded illustration."  

In the following generation, another great historian-- Henry Pitz-- had a different view of the golden age.  He claimed that the era of Gibson and Pyle had been the true golden age.  He insisted that it was the next generation of illustrators in the 30s and 40s who had gone astray; they became obsessed with mere design.  For these callow youngsters, "momentary impact was to be of more importance than leisurely scrutiny of content.  Character delineation slips away from us-- no one over 21 has much right to appear on a double spread."  

Yet, later generations would look back on the 30s and 40s as "the glamour years."  By the 1950s, according to the Society of Illustrators Annual, "the glamour years of illustration had passed.  The reading public was diminishing....The role of the illustrator as a means of enticing readership was dwindling." Gone were the big budgets and generous deadlines for illustrations painted in oil on big canvases.  Gone were the deluxe illustrated books and the magazines filled with costumed adventure stories.  Illustrators were painting in smaller scale on illustration board using fast drying paints. 

Later generations saw things differently.  They would look back jealously on the bountiful 1950s, the era of The Famous Artists School, with talented artists such as Rockwell, Briggs, Dorne, Fawcett, Ludekens, Parker,  von Schmidt, Helck, Gannam, Sickles and others.   Al Dorne drove a custom Mercedes with a burled walnut dashboard and a pull-out bar. His steering wheel had Dorne's initials engraved on a silver plate below a star sapphire.  That sounded pretty good to later generations.

And so it went, on and on.  The good years were always yesterday.  The current market had always become terrible.  

Scholar Walt Reed described the dire condition of illustration in the 1990s:

Recycling already-published images inexpensively through huge image banks is changing the financial foundation of the field.... [Illustrators] are increasingly replaced by a novice with Photoshop....the bread-and-butter work is vanishing.

Artists tried to keep up with the changing times.  Pioneers of technology thought the future belonged to "internet art" but artists have already been warned that post-Internet art is the "new aesthetic era."

So what lies ahead?  This cycle of destruction and renewal over the past 125 years of illustration should make us cautious about predicting the end of illustration.  But can this history teach us anything about survival as illustration enters the brave new world of generative Artificial Intelligence?

John Cuneo

In the next few days I'd like to offer you some examples and pose some questions regarding whether this is really the end of the road for illustration as we know it.  But even before we start, the one thing we can be certain of is that Art Buchwald was right:

 "I assure you it's the only time you've got."

ONE LOVELY DRAWING, part 75

 Once upon a time, a single line drawing could dominate a full page of the New York Times.

They took a pen and ink drawing by the great Ronald Searle, enlarged it several times and cleared the decks.  The result was the most compelling page in the entire newspaper on March 1, 1970.  Probably the whole month of March.

What art director today has the courage to rely on a line drawing to fill such a role?  What illustrator today has the talent to fill such a role? 

Searle was such a pro-- look at the way he claims that real estate.  He confidently captures the height by stretching those legs, one flung high and one flung low.  All he needed was a single crude line.  He captures the width with a long cane on one side and flapping coattails on the other side.   He's in full command, and no one could dare push back against his use of that space. 

Fearless!

LEARNING TO DRAW IN THE 4TH DIMENSION

  

Michelangelo wrote:

Drawing constitutes the fountainhead and substance of painting and sculpture and architecture... and is the root of all sciences.  Let him who has attained the possession of this be assured that he possesses a great treasure.

Is this still true?  

Lately, drawing seems beleaguered by new technologies that changed our artistic priorities, shortened our attention span, devalued our skills, and drowned us in billions of images all barking for our attention.  To view these images we now depend on search terms for the efficient extraction and curation of information; the days of Mussorgsky's leisurely stroll contemplating Pictures at an Exhibition are over. 

Even worse, artificial intelligence suggests that the future role of the artist may be to create prompts that will be embodied digitally.

Nevertheless, keep in mind that art has been adapting to technology for a long time.  100 years ago, when animation changed the job description of an artist, it's inspiring to see how human creativity responded.

For thousands of years, artists had been staging drawings to lead the eye around a stationary image.  Now they were working with the 4th dimension, time.  The artists at Disney needed to apply traditional qualities, such as balance, proportion and composition to the movement of  a camera instead.  

I love the following combination of drawing and engineering that mapped the movement of Pluto in Mickey's Kangaroo (1935).  It's a good example of Michelangelo's point that drawing is the root of all sciences."

"Drawing is thinking." -- Fred Ludekens

In the following example from Snow White, Disney artists move the camera from the evil queen walking away to a close up of the lock on the dungeon door behind her.

This is not the way a conventional pencil drawing would be staged for a magazine illustration,
but it's just as creative, and well suited for its new purpose.

In the following dramatic drawing, we see three different versions of the queen running down the staircase at three different stages, as the artist imagines the camera swirling around.

Disney's artists were terrific at drawing dungeons just as N.C. Wyeth or Howard Pyle might have, but  those painters would have staged the picture to lead the eye from one priority to the next.  The animators had to adapt their prison creatively to the challenges of the new technology.  

Note how the queen's hand casts a shadow against the wall as she descends the vertiginous staircase in the following example.  These animators really understood traditional drawing but applied it to a new purpose.  

There's no doubt that the role of creativity will need to continue to adapt to changing tefhnologies, but looking over our shoulder at how art has proven so resilient in the past, I can't help but feel a certain confidence and pride about our prospects.

LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE AFTER 100 YEARS

This week marks the 100th anniversary of the start of the comic strip Little Orphan Annie-- a prodigious cultural achievement that lasted over 40 years.  Such milestones should not pass by unnoticed.

The creator, Harold Gray, was a combination of Charles Dickens, Raymond Chandler and Scheherazade. His gritty, spellbinding tales of life during the Depression and World War II kept a huge segment of the population transfixed; his characters inflamed the emotions of his readers as he led them through one winding story after another. 

Gray was a consummate storyteller

Gray's weird art was the perfect complement to his stories.  Viewed in a vacuum, his linework might seem crude but his drawings were exactly what the art form called for. His overworked cross hatching, distorted figures and heavy line would later serve as a precedent for popular artists such as R. Crumb, Art Spiegelman and Chester Brown, but in my view Gray was better than all of them.  

His political views sometimes bordered on loony, but that only contributed to the powerful noir feel of his strip, and the ominous tone that pervaded many of his stories.

More prescience from Gray, 80 years ago

Mr. Gray, I salute your accomplishment and your marvelous contribution to American culture.