Jack Davis is not known for his political cartoons, but I think they represented some of his finest work.
Consider these unpublished cartoons for Time magazine, showing the outcome of an election in which the Republican party suffered losses.
Davis was a master. He drew lightning fast and with great fluidity. Once he roughed out his concept...
...he had an uncanny ability to work directly into details like the highlights on the wrinkles of the elephants butt.
The foreshortening on the patched and threadbare circus blanket, or the shadow on face looking backward are signs of a first class draftsman.
In this next (also unused) cover for Time, we see Davis once again at his brilliant best.
Thousands of artists have taken delight in drawing thousands of elephants, but has any of them ever squeezed more character and humor into their drawing than Davis? Note the wonderful sensitive line describing that wrinkled skin.
Once again, Davis laid out his cartoon in a lightning quick preliminary sketch:
Today the popular style for many political cartoons seems to be a naive, simplified drawing style, where the concept is everything, and the role of the drawing is mostly to stay out of the way.
When you go back and contrast the standards for drawing, you get quite a jolt.
9 comments:
Franquin draw delicious elephants too. You can grab some on the Web.
Davis wasn't my favortie Mad artist but he was close. These are great drawings, rendering feeling more than than icon. Modern artists just give us the standard icons, leave it as adequate, and call it a day. Shameful, really.
No one like Davis!!!! Who has NOT been influenced by him? One glance and you cant shake the fact that he is ON you and IN you for good as a draftsman.
These are wonderful drawings David, thank you for sharing.
Their contrast with that last image surely evidences the effect of the existential psychosis that is post modernism.
Jack Davis is great, but he sure doesn't have that indignation and aggressive attitude, or knowledge of politics, that a great political cartoonist has. Davis would just as soon draw an equally great drawing for TV Guide or some golf magazine, fiddling with those surfaces and that facile brush. It's evident in every interview that he's a somewhat Conservative gentleman with no great interest in politics. His artistic game plays out elsewhere.
Jack Davis is great, and has the grace and good humor to leave aside the vicious negativity and intellectual/epistemic arrogance that characterizes most political cartooning and political commentary. Lucky for us, Davis would just as soon draw an equally great drawing for TV Guide or some golf magazine, because he isn't some ego-driven rage-a-holic spending all day listening to propaganda. He was a true Gentelman and a true artist; his work brings people together.
Like Art Young, Davis understands that things or objects occupy space in the world. He therefore conceives objects as volumes that have a specific orientation to a picture plane and to the ground plane that supports all things.
A more complete understanding of relations produces a stronger art work .
He's an all-time great cartoonist, I agree, but if the drawings weren't published, they weren't successful political cartoons.
I'm going to disagree with you there, David. The last image you showed is that of Pat Bagley, one of our best editorial cartoonists. He does draw loosely but then so did the legendary Robert Osborn (one of my early inspirations). And of course, the Davis drawings are also wonderful.
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