ILLUSTRATION ART

ONE LOVELY DRAWING, part 39

2012-01-28T07:20:00.004-05:00

Howard Pyle illustrated more than 125 books.

Of those books, he wrote 24 himself.

Of those 24 books, one-- Pepper and Salt-- contained 90 of his illustrations.

Of those 90 illustrations, one was this small pen and ink headpiece of a girl with 17 geese:

Many thanks to Molly and Mary at the Delaware Art Museum for locating this drawing that I recalled seeing there 20 years ago.

The first thing you notice about these 17 geese is that Pyle treated each one differently, with its own angle or stance or personality. Each has its own dignity:

There are no stray lines to suggest geese in the background that Pyle didn't feel like drawing completely. No Photoshop. No photocopiers.

Charles Dickens wrote:

I should never have made my success in life if I had been shy of taking pains, or if I had not bestowed upon the least thing I have ever undertaken exactly the same attention and care that I have bestowed upon the greatest.

BEFORE BOB PEAK WENT HOLLYWOOD

2012-01-24T11:20:00.004-05:00

Illustrator Bob Peak was probably best known for his movie posters. As far as I am concerned, that's unfortunate.

James Bond: The Spy Who Loved Me

Peak has been described as "The Father of the Modern Hollywood Movie Poster." He created over 100 movie posters, including significant posters for blockbusters such as Apocalypse Now, Superman and the Star Trek movies.

Star Trek

Personally I find much of his movie work artistically disappointing. Opinions will differ of course, but to me these posters often seemed formulaic and uninspired. Worst of all, Peak-- or his Hollywood clients-- became enamored with a "diamond diffraction" gimmick which I find totally cheesy.

I thought about this recently when I visited the archives of the legendary Famous Artists School and came upon a lovely, neglected collection of drawings that Peak used for teaching in the early years, before he went Hollywood. I think these simple drawings have more enduring value than Peak's movie posters:

These drawings have originality and sensitivity, but most of all they have a truthfulness about them. Such qualities give humble drawings a strength and stateliness that outweigh all the budget and muscle of a Hollywood extravaganza.

Man, that's drawing!

These drawings have not had the same worldwide audience as the movie posters-- for the most part, they have only benefitted art students who pass through the Famous Artists School training-- but as far as I am concerned they are more inspirational and instructive than the movie posters for which Peak is so well known.

HOWARD PYLE'S WEEKLY DRAWING SESSIONS

2012-01-14T12:16:00.005-05:00

All images courtesy of the Delaware Art Museum

Howard Pyle, the father of modern illustration and one of America's most important painters, died just over a century ago. To commemorate the anniversary of his death, the Delaware Art Museum mounted a splendid centennial exhibition reminding us of Pyle's contribution. (You can find information on the show here and here.)

Eight years before he died, Pyle asked his art students to sketch their own concept of "The End." The Delaware show includes a selection of those drawings:

In 1903, Howard Pyle and his students gathered for weekly drawing sessions, in which Pyle assigned a subject for everyone to sketch. On the evening of March 25, 1903... sixteen members of the class created sketches of "The End."

Sitting around that room was a charmed circle of young talent. Pyle had received nearly 100 applications for every opening in his school that year. Students such as N.C. Wyeth, Frank Schoonover, Stanley Arthurs, William Aylward, and Harry Everett Townsend were at the beginning of what would turn out to be brilliant careers. But on that day in 1903 they had no idea of what lay in store for them, or what their own "End" might be.

Death would catch up with Pyle unexpectedly during a trip to Italy with his family. Who would have guessed that this most American of artists was destined to be buried in a foreign land?

It is hardly surprising that the future nautical painter W.J. Aylward chose a sinking ship for his theme.

Fifteen years later, Aylward would find himself on a ship steaming toward World War I as an artist for the Armed Expeditionary Forces (along with his fellow student Townsend). Passing through the enemy submarine zones with their constant alarms, Aylward had plenty of time to meditate on his choice of an end.

N.C. Wyeth's idea was to draw a man who succumbed to the cold:

Wyeth had a fertile imagination but even he could never have predicted that 42 years later, after a long and fruitful career, he would meet his own fate in a car stalled on the railroad tracks, with his helpless grandchild trapped by his side.

Another student in that room, Frank Schoonover, outlasted all his comrades. He met his end peacefully in the 1970s at the age of 95. He lived long enough to see the empire of modern illustration that arose from such humble origins, and to lecture to the public about those early days at the Pyle school.

Henry Jarvis Peck envisioned a prisoner's end:

Allen Tupper True, with his preference for western art, envisioned a cowboy hanging from a tree:

Samuel Palmer took a more whimsical approach, apparently viewing the End as the end of a circus performance:

Pyle's huge influence was due in part to the fact that his imagination and talent were perfectly suited for his moment in history. Pyle worked in an era of change, when technology transformed the quality of mass reproduced pictures, and economics transformed the methods of delivering those pictures to the public. His career began when a small handful of black and white journals such as Century and Scribners contained primitive wood engravings, and ended as dozens and dozens of color magazines were beginning to blossom with innovative illustrations and graphic design.

Just as Gutenberg's invention of the printing press in 1440 led to the democratization of knowledge, these changes in the 19th century led to the democratization of art.

Pyle had the vision to hitch his great talent to the technological and economic changes of his day, but the Delaware museum show makes clear that the crucial ingredient for his success remained heart, rather than technology or economics. In his excellent chapter in the Catalog accompanying the Delaware show, painter James Gurney quotes Pyle's students:

Thornton Oakley recalled "During three years with him he did not mention a word about materials, methods, mediums or techniques." Too much emphasis on technique, Pyle warned, would result in a kind of mannered overindulgence, where the means become more important than the message.

Instead, Gurney writes, for Pyle "the expression of an emotion or an idea was paramount." Rather than instructing his students on the technical applications of the new photoengraving processes, he assigned them themes such as "Coming Home From the War" or "The End." He told his students, "Project your mind into your subject until you actually live in it." He wanted them to be able to "smell the smoke" when painting a battle scene. "Throw your heart into the picture," he said, "and then jump in after it."

Then as now, improved delivery systems were not enough to change the world. Pyle could never have been a major catalyst for the Cambrian explosion of modern illustration if his pictures had a less persuasive heart.

PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST IN TIMES OF CHANGE

2011-12-31T23:54:00.020-05:00

You think you've got career problems? Russian artist Zinaida Serebriakova launched her career just as the world was starting to unravel.

Self-portrait as a young art student

Zinaida turned 21 during the Russian Revolution of 1905 when widespread violence, poverty and political upheaval did little to help the art market. Even bigger revolutions were just around the corner. In 1905, a young patent clerk named Albert Einstein published the theories that would overturn centuries of scientific beliefs and transform our understanding of space and time. That same year, Sigmund Freud published his revolutionary book describing how our "logical" behavior was really governed by subliminal compulsions and irrational urges. As if to confirm that the Age of Reason was truly dead, hostile nations were already spiraling toward World War I.

It was in this unpromising environment that Zinaida set out in search of beauty.

Zinaida brushing her hair in the mirror

During her lifetime search, Zinaida painted a remarkable series of self-portraits.

Newly married at age 22

Age 27, by candle light

Modeling a scarf

Age 30: a mother

In art as in politics, the old rules were coming apart like wet tissue paper. Zinaida had been trained traditionally by the great Russian illustrator Repin but now artists such as Picasso and Matisse were pursuing what Hilton Kramer called "a netherworld of strange gods and violent emotions." Soon the futurist painters would add their own fiery polemic:

What is the use of looking behind?... Time and Space died yesterday.... We want to glorify war — the only cure for the world — militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of the anarchists, the beautiful ideas which kill, and contempt for woman....We want to demolish museums and libraries, fight morality, feminism....

Despite all this, Zinaida steadfastly continued to pursue her own notion of beauty, lovingly painting the human body in a representational style.

During times of disintegration, revolutionaries, priests and utopian ideologues compete to fill the vacuum (usually causing widespread misery for the innocents caught in the crossfire).

Zinaida fell in love with a young engineering student but the church barred their marriage due to questions about the young man's faith. The couple got around the church's objections, married and had children shortly before politics intervened in the form of the February Revolution of 1917. Violence returned again that same year with the October Revolution, when Zinaida's lifelong home on the grounds of the Neskuchnoye estate was burned and its food supply plundered. The new Bolshevik government rejected democracy in favor of a "dictatorship of the proletariat" and threw many people in jail, including Zinaida's husband. There he contracted typhus. He was released shortly before he died in 1919.

In the words of Leon Trotsky,

"You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you."

Zinaida was left with no money, four hungry children and a sick mother.

She managed to feed her family by drawing pencil illustrations for the Kharkov Anthropological Museum.

Then in 1924 she learned of an art job in Paris. Zinaida left Russia temporarily only to find when her project was completed that hostile relations between the countries prevented her from returning to her family. With the help of the red cross, the distraught mother was able to smuggle her two smallest children out of the country. However, she remained separated from her two older children for over 30 years.

Zinaida felt relatively safe working in France until the Nazis invaded. Then her Russian citizenship was sure to get her arrested, so she became a French citizen. All the while, she continued to draw and paint.

Age 54

Age 62

Age 71

Looking over this lifetime of self-portraits, I am struck by the persistence of Zinaida's smile, and the tenderness that seems to have outlasted the forces that buffeted her.

She resisted assignments painting Soviet generals and commissars and refused to become caught up in ideological painting of her day. Instead, she turned again and again to the purity and tenderness of the naked human form. Her daughter recalled:

The female nude was mother's favourite subject. While she was in Russia young peasant women would pose for her. In Paris her friends would come over to her studio, drink a cup of tea, then they would stay and pose for her. They were not the professional models that you might find in Montparnasse and maybe this is the reason why they are so natural and graceful.

Today on the cusp of 2012, we can already see the next crop of despots aspiring to impose their solutions. They've had a century to refine Lenin's special math that justifies sacrificing individual human beings to achieve some master plan for humankind. By now, they have become positively glib at it.

But Zinaida's joyous pictures suggest that she viewed the math differently, from the side of the equation where the individual is everything. Pink cheeks here and now outweighed any blueprint for a distant utopia. Her math seems to have helped her remain indomitable during the years when artists with a more intellectual approach reacted with cynicism and despair. If you ever meet a person with such an attitude, marry them quick. It will be the best thing you can do for the quality of your day-to-day life.

I wish all of you a happy, healthy 2012.

ART BASEL MIAMI BEACH

2011-12-13T11:08:00.008-05:00

It's too early in the season for the star of Bethlehem, so that glow in the sky last week could only have been the neon lights from "the most prestigious art show in the Americas," Art Basel Miami Beach:

photo by Casey Kelbaugh, New York Times

The Miami show, we are told, brought together 250 "leading galleries" from around the world, "including the world's most respected art dealers offering exceptional pieces by both renowned artists and cutting-edge newcomers."

Photo by Casey Kelbaugh, New York Times

Don't bother looking for any crass commercial art at Art Basel Miami, jocko. This was 100% fine art, in all its finery. The New York Times described it as "a holy gathering on the annual pilgrimage route of the super rich." The number of private jets arriving at the local airport rivaled those of the Super Bowl, and a "line of quarter million dollar cars [was] idling while their owners waited for a parking valet."

You cannot attract such an audience of billionaires, socialites, celebrities and arrivistes by treating art as something functional. They would recoil at the notion of art produced on demand to satisfy a commercial objective. Instead, such buyers must be flattered into believing they are purchasing something spiritual as a measure of their sensitivity and perceptivity.

For example, in the panel convened to discuss The Future of Artistic Practice, the moderator began with a common theme:

Poetry is always what can't be sold....It has no usefulness. It is merely useful through the ethical and aesthetic awareness that results from it. Poetry.... holds out in a world where people tend to lose all their spiritual values in favor of practical, predatory goals.

This year more than 50,000 seekers of spiritual values clogged the bars and spas of Miami, buying at lavish prices.

And these weren't just your traditional tired old billionaires and hedge fund managers. A whole new generation of the artistically sensitive has emerged: Paris Hilton, of the Hilton hotel dynasty; Dasha Zhukova (daughter of a Russian oil mogul and accused international arms smuggler, wife of a multi-billionaire alleged to have made his first fortune as a ruthless gangster in Russia); Vito Schnabel (son of famous blowhard Julian Schnabel); Diana Picasso (great granddaughter of Pablo); even the tasteful Donald Trump dynasty was represented. This new generation of talent is what comes of outlawing the guillotine.

Noted performance artist Ryan ("I'm an artist so I'm not, like, an asshole") McNamara took the microphone to speak about the artistic challenge of staging "subversive" performance art at the parties of such wealthy people: "Halfway through the party I had these revolutionaries come in, run through the crowd screaming and then attack the cake with frosting... all they wanted to do was make the cake more delicious."

Also present was famed British artist Tracey Emin.

Art by Tracey Emin

The Saatchi Gallery describes this work of art as "a transient crowning glory," continuing (for the benefit of those who may have trouble recognizing glory): "Emin's triumphed over all and has money up the whazoo to boot." Emin was at Basel to share her technique: "I like to lie in bed in the morning for an hour just thinking, thinking thoughts. And that's one of my favorite things to do."

Artwork produced using Tracy Emin's patented technique of "thinking thoughts"

Other great thinkers joined in to advance the path of culture. For example, Jonas Mekas took the stage to read his poem which sheds light on the nature of beauty:

Their beauty
Was beautiful....
It was so totally somewhere else
And so far from what's on TV....

If there was ever a time when illustration was more "commercial" than fine art, that time is long gone. But more to the point, so much of the quality and seriousness of fine art seems to have been eroded by its current emetic marketing model.

A.B. FROST, BETWEEN THE LINES

2011-12-05T18:47:00.013-05:00

The great A.B. Frost (1851 - 1928) drew a story about a man who wanted to learn hypnotism. At one point, the man foolishly decides to practice on his wife:

Frost was a master at using the gaps between his drawings to imply a larger story. People normally focus on Frost's visible lines, but let's spend a little time focusing on the valuable real estate between the pictures.

Frost's line primes our imagination to fill in the empty space. When our imagination is set to work, his humble little line can become boundless.

This is a good example of how drawing can be superior to movies as an art form. A movie doesn't leave the same gaps for us to fill. At a rate of 24 pictures (or frames) per second, movies could effortlessly take up all the vacant space between Frost's first and second drawings, and give our imaginations a rest.

But that space performs an important function. As Debussy pointed out,

Music is the space between the notes.

As another example of the importance of empty space, check out the pacing of Frost's story of some local scamps who torment a homeless man looking for food:

While the dog keeps him pinned down, the boys have fun pelting the man with their slingshots

Frost carefully selects each moment to drop you to another level of the poor man's downfall. Drawings spaced too far apart or too close together would not be as effective. A movie could fill in all the details but it would likely reduce the artistry. As Kathy Sierra wrote,

Comedians say that "timing is everything." But by "timing," they almost always mean "the pause." The pause is not merely a void between Things That Matter.

In the next drawing, note how the promise of a sneeze is more effective than if Frost had explicitly drawn a sneeze:

Don't think we are talking merely about the gap between Frost's sequential pictures; it's also the gap between his pen strokes, the gap between an object and its representation, the gap between artist and viewer. Lots of important things take place in the apparently vacant parts of art.

Movies hug us close and in the future will hug us closer, invading any remaining gaps. 24 frames per second will soon become 48 frames per second. Scenes in movies are tailored in lengths that electronic brain scans show are optimal for keeping your mind from wandering. Improved IMAX screens thwart your peripheral vision from straying off the movie, and 3D effects pull you into that screen. Surround sound or earphones seal you off from distracting noises. Even smell-o-vision or scratch and sniff invade your nostrils to make the movie a "complete experience."

People who like their art administered intravenously rarely exert themselves looking for invisible things in empty spaces, but I think they miss out on a lot.

After all, dark energy occupies more than 70% of the universe but scientists haven't been able to locate it yet. We can't touch or taste or see it but we know it's out there because of its impact on our universe. NASA reports:

the nature of dark energy is probably the most important question in astronomy today. It has been called the deepest mystery in physics, and its resolution is likely to greatly advance our understanding of matter, space, and time.

NASA even proposed to form a posse called the Joint Dark Energy Mission to track down the stuff. They want to look for it in all the obvious places-- abandoned warehouses on the far side of Saturn, or hanging out with the juvies around the pillars of creation in the Eagle Nebula, smoking Camels.

But personally, I'm guessing dark energy is hiding in that empty space between us and art. That's the only place big enough.

ERICH SOKOL'S PRELIMINARY SKETCHES

2011-11-21T02:50:00.001-05:00

I have previously written about my admiration for illustrator / cartoonist Erich Sokol, whose brilliant work appeared in Playboy Magazine. A collection of his work recently published by Residenzverlag includes some of his preliminary studies.

Napoleon (preliminary study)

Napoleon (finished version)

Sokol does not wait until the final image to worry about good design and composition. They are present in the very first small fragments.

Note how strongly Sokol locates this sketch on the page...

...or how he starts out early identifying and then emphasizing the rhythm and harmony of the human forms:

Like many other artists, Sokol's building blocks contain the DNA of a finished artistic statement.

No matter how small or incomplete, details and fragments such as these can encompass the artist's genetic code and are well worth our attention.

THE SLAV EPIC

2011-11-14T10:50:00.003-05:00

I spent the past week in Prague where I was working on the World Forum on Governance. Away from my books and art materials, I resigned myself to skipping this week's post.

However, the cultural attache at the embassy shared with me the happy news that Alphonse Mucha's masterpiece, the Slav Epic, will go on display in Prague next year, just 84 years after Mucha donated it to the city.

For those who only know Mucha for his art nouveau posters, the Slav Epic was Mucha's most important and meaningful work: 20 huge patriotic murals of key moments from the history of the Slavic people.

Mucha posing in front of two of his murals

In times of trouble and uncertainty, Mucha "wanted to talk in my own way to the soul of the nation," reminding them of their proud heritage and the heroism and sacrifice of their ancestors.

The origin of the Slavic homeland around 200 - 300 AD: peaceful Slav farmers flee invading Goths (seen galloping away from the burning village with their loot). As the young Adam and Eve of the Slavs escape, a holy man with outstretched arms implores the gods for mercy.

Mucha's reference photo for the holy man

"The Celebration of Svantovit: When Gods Are At War, Salvation Is In The Arts." The earliest Slavic center of civilization from 700-900 AD was centered around the shrine of Svantovit (later destroyed by Danish warriors in the 12th century)

The Introduction of the Slavonic Liturgy: Praise The Lord in Your Native Tongue

"After the Battle of Grunwald: The Solidarity of the Northern Slavs." Here we see the first great defeat of the previously invincible Teutonic Knights, demonstrating the rising power of the Slavic empire.

"After the Battle of Vitkov: God Represents Truth, Not Power"

"Peter Chelcicky at Vodnany: Do Not Repay Evil With Evil." A famous Slavic pacifist implores the victims of a Hussite raid not to become too caught up in revenge.

"The Defense of Sziget by Nikola Zrinski: The Shield of Christendom"

Mucha presented his murals to the city of Prague in 1928, but some criticized them as old fashioned and nationalistic. By 1933 the canvases were rolled up and placed in storage, and Mucha's hopes for his native land seemed farther and farther away. In 1939 the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia and the gestapo arrested the aging artist. He died shortly after his release. The Slav Epic murals were stored away in a basement that flooded, damaging the paintings. After many years, the canvases were retrieved and restored, and were put on display in 1968 in southern Moravia. In 2012, these lovely works will return to Prague where they will be displayed with the honor and dignity they deserve.

"The Abolition of Serfdom in Russia: Work in Freedom is the Foundation of a State"

I think Mucha's accomplishment was an act of courage comparable to the accomplishments he was celebrating. He put aside his commercially successful decorative art to make a lasting statement about the spirit of his country. He originally planned to make each painting approximately 20' x 26' but war, political repression and economic hardship repeatedly forced him to change his plans. After his first few paintings, the Belgian factory which manufactured the oversized linen was occupied by the German army and converted to military use. Mucha switched to painting on sailcloth from Scotland, and later was forced to reduce the size of the last murals. Still, he persisted. The Czech avant garde artistic community ridiculed his work as a "monstrosity of spurious artistic and allegorical pathos which, if exhibited permanently could harm the taste of the public." His murals were nearly confiscated during World War I for their "Czech patriotic content" and he made plans to bury them in the woods to protect them. The work was frowned upon by Nazis in World War II and by communist occupiers in the postwar era.

Time and again, Mucha was presented with obstacles but he persisted and left behind an important work of art.

"Jan Amos Komensky: A Flicker of Hope." A religious exile dies in his chair by the sea, looking out at eternity and thinking about returning to his beloved homeland.

NEW BOOK FROM STERLING HUNDLEY

2011-11-07T06:44:00.003-05:00

Award winning illustrator Sterling Hundley has come out with a collection of his art, Blue Collar / White Collar.

The book melds Hundley's commercial illustration, his gallery art, and his thoughts on working "between the demands of Blue Collar ethic and the ambitions of a White Collar aesthetic."

Readers may recall that I admire Hundley's talent, his enthusiasm for nurturing young artists, and his thoughtful efforts to adapt to the circumstances confronting a 21st century artist. Many illustrators talk about diversifying and selling "fine" art to gallery audiences, but Hundley is one who seems to have pulled it off. I was pleased to be asked to write the introduction for his book.

This compact volume (6" x 9") includes revealing preliminary sketches for some of his better known works.

I recommend that you check it out.

EMPTY ARMS

2011-11-03T13:31:00.003-04:00

You hardly ever see pictures of men carrying women in their arms these days, but once upon a time such pictures made up 71.5932% of all illustrations in women's magazines.

John Gannam

Readers of Redbook, Good Housekeeping, Ladies Home Journal, Cosmopolitan and McCall's all seemed to love these pictures.

Then, sometime around the middle of the 20th century, such illustrations became extinct. Why?

Leonard Starr

Apparently, women figured out that they could travel faster, and usually in a better direction, by walking on their own two feet.

Of course, there could be other explanations (besides travel) for why these illustrations were so popular with women. If you accompany a man to the cave of the winds, being carried gives you deniability about your assent. In a subtler era, this ambiguity could play a significant role in your relationship with the man, or with your mother. In the second half of the 20th century, ambiguity would become less important.

Or perhaps these illustrations began to lose their charm as women looked at this same theme in men's magazine illustrations, and realized what had been going on in the heads of the lummoxes who had been carrying them:

Norman Saunders

Regardless of physical strength, women often end up doing the heavy lifting.

If you look at some of the old illustrations of men carrying women, you see that (politics aside) there was room for a lot of play and psychology and communication as a result of the fact that nature had endowed one sex with the physical strength to lift the other.

But whatever the reason, those nuances are no longer of much interest, so neither are the illustrations.

The end of the demand for such pictures (rather than the invention of photography or television) may be the real reason for the shrinkage of the illustration market.

0NE LOVELY DRAWING, part 38

2011-10-21T05:13:00.003-04:00

This woodcut by Lynd Ward scared the crap out of me when I was a boy:

Ward (1905-1985) became known in the 1930s for his "wordless novels" comprised entirely of woodcuts. (His first, Gods' Man, a powerful story about the corrupting influence of money, debuted the week of the great stockmarket crash in 1929).

I discovered a battered collection of Ward's books on my father's bookshelf. This illustration-- one of my favorites-- was from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

At age five, I was already expert at drawing scary monsters. I'd figured out that the two most important ingredients for a monster were 1.) a scary face, and 2.) great big muscles. Yet, Ward's monster had neither. Ward succeeded in unnerving me without showing a face at all.

That gave me plenty of food for thought.

Today you see artists straining to draw scarier faces and bigger muscles. They'd do well to linger for a moment over the work of Lynd Ward.

PRELIMINARY SKETCHES BY BERNIE FUCHS

2011-10-14T13:45:00.006-04:00

I love the wildness in these preliminary sketches by illustrator Bernie Fuchs:

They were done quickly, and with some violence:

They look completely unfettered. Not a traffic light in sight.

Yet, these are not random spasmodic brush strokes. If you look closely, you can see the fruits of years of discipline and technical skill.

Fuchs spent his first years out of art school working in a small studio in Detroit learning to paint tight, highly realistic car illustrations. Eventually he left that world behind, but decades later-- working with the palette of Bonnard and using free, spontaneous brush strokes-- Fuchs still retained all that hard earned wisdom about how to convey the weight and volume of a car.

Fuchs' apprenticeship taught him lessons about form that Bonnard was never forced to learn. Look beneath the apparent freedom of his brushwork to the subtle treatment of those purple hubcaps (with no wheels), or his reduction of the shapes of light and shadow, or his highlight on the corner of the fender, and you'll see that Fuchs was in full control the whole time.

There are a dozen subtle choices in that "freely" painted sunset.

Similarly, Fuchs spent two years in art school learning to draw the human form. Years later, when roughing out a human form at lightning speed, Fuchs didn't need to pause and think about the way fingers bunch together, or the way an elbow works.

Look at the way his apparently free line captures the character of those wooden chairs. This is a line that has definite opinions about its subject matter.

Some like to think they can save time by skipping over the long hours of basic exercises and turning straight to abstraction, or to copying photo reference, or scanning material into Photoshop.

But those dues we pay, they build up equity for us. And they pay off not just when it comes time to paint that 100th car, or that 500th elbow, but also when it comes time to paint the nameless and formless abstractions as well.

THE OLD QUESTION FINALLY ANSWERED: "WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ILLUSTRATION AND FINE ART?"

2011-10-05T06:52:00.018-04:00

This is the second-- and I promise, the last-- excerpt from my recent talk at the Norman Rockwell Museum. I submit the following thesis for dispute and contradiction. Next week I will go back to showing really cool pictures.

Over the years, many people have wrestled-- pointlessly I think-- with the difference between art and illustration. The internet is riddled with silly theories on the subject:

The distinction lies in the fact that art is the idea (brought to life) while an illustration is a depiction (or explanation) of an idea.

Fine Art is simply art for art's sake. Even if you are doing a commission for a client, it would still be fine art. But illustration is illustrating a story or idea.

In modern illustration the intent is most often the selling of a product. When something noble is put to ignoble ends, there is a deterioration of value.

Even talented artists and illustrators have been tormented by the distinction. Illustrator Robert Weaver noisily agonized about the boundary line:

Until the illustrator enjoys complete independence from outside pressure and direction, complete responsibility for his own work, and complete freedom to to do whatever he deems fit-- all necessaries in the making of art-- then illustration cannot be art but only a branch of advertising.

With all due respect to Weaver's romantic illusion, it's difficult to think of a fine artist with "complete independence from outside pressure and direction" whose work was not worse off for it.

Despite all this hand wringing about the difference between art and illustration, I think the question is a fake one, concerned more about social status than about the nature of art.

The real difference, it seems to me, has nothing to do with the talent of the artist, or the quality of the work, or its morality, or its intelligence. It is far too easy to identify examples of illustration that are superior to "fine" art in each of these categories, just as it is easy to identify examples of fine art that are superior to illustration. It hardly takes any effort to puncture categorical distinctions between the two types of work.

In my view, there is no inherent difference between art and illustration except the way in which payment to the artist is processed.

Here's what I mean: For the first 30,000 years of art, artists were able to earn a decent living working for kings, priests, pharaohs and popes. Art was commissioned for temple walls and public spaces. It adorned palaces and royal tombs and the homes of aristocrats. Then kings began to disappear from the earth. Popes stopped commissioning new art. They were replaced by a new commercial class, fueled by the birth of capitalism and the invention of the corporation. This class became the new patrons of arts.

It's important to emphasize that although art's sponsors and subject matter changed, the quality of the work did not. The same talented artists who once painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel or the walls of the Great Temple at Karnak simply migrated to the new bosses in order to feed their families.

Artists adapting to the new business realities found two paths. The first was to produce what we now call "fine" or "gallery" art for the private moneyed class and corporate art collections. The second path opened as a result of the newly invented printing press: rather than selling a picture to a wealthy patron, artists could now make multiple copies of a picture and sell them for smaller amounts to larger numbers of (less-wealthy) purchasers. If this option had existed during the golden age of Greece or the early Italian Renaissance, you can bet some of the greatest artists would have taken full advantage of it. In fact, when this business model first began to emerge with the invention of etching, some of the greatest artists, such as Durer and Rembrandt, quickly embraced it:

Rembrandt turned to etchings as a way of selling multiple copies of a single image to Dutch merchants.

The story of that technology is the history of illustration. There would be no modern illustration without two key developments:

The ability to create and distribute quality copies to large audiences; and
The ability to collect small, proportional payments for that art from large audiences.

Because of these developments, the most talented artists (who we could never afford to hire individually under the old business model for art) could now create beautiful pictures to entertain and delight the public. They are paid with a tiny fraction of the price we pay for a magazine or book or video game or movie ticket. By aggregating tiny payments from vast audiences, we paid handsome sums to great magazine illustrators such as Norman Rockwell, Maxfield Parrish and J.C. Leyendecker, just as we pay handsome sums to the talented creators at Pixar today. Similarly, commercial artists who design products for mass consumer markets get paid very well when a penny or two from each sale goes into the manufacturer's design or marketing budget. Michelangelo never had the option of getting paid that way.

For a snapshot of how this new opportunity opened up for artists, look at the pirate illustrations of Howard Pyle, the father of modern illustration. As the technology for reproducing his pictures gradually improved over his career, the public became more enthusiastic and the demand increased dramatically:

The earliest Pyle pictures were printed in magazines after talented wood engravers carved Pyle's images into wooden printing blocks. The engraver even signed the recreated image (see highlighted portion).

Crude color was added to enhance the early images.

Later, audiences grew as the invention of photo engraving captured the subtler and more sensitive aspects of Pyle's originals .

Improved printing technology finally reproduced the full colors and technique of the original, leading to the golden age of illustration and a proliferation of illustrated books and magazines.

As we scan Pyle's pictures, we see how the quality of reproductions, and the newly sophisticated vehicles for delivering them to the public, transformed the economics of art and inspired new bursts of creativity. A handful of black and white journals, such as Scribners and Century, evolved into dozens of splashy, well designed, full color magazines. It was the Cambrian explosion of modern illustration.

In short, the twin pillars of modern illustration are 1.) quality reproduction, and 2.) the ability to collect marginal payments from large numbers of viewers. These two developments created a robust opportunity for talented artists. They are the core of the economic model for illustration, and the only categorical difference between modern illustration and fine art.

Does the method of payment affect the character of the art? Yes, but perhaps the better question is: does it affect art for the better or worse? It is undeniable that because of its wider audience, illustration is often broader than fine art. But as Shakespeare proved definitively, broad appeal to a popular audience is not incompatible with greatness. Even more importantly, the broadness of the illustration audience combined with the relentless scrubbing of the commercial marketplace seems to have inoculated illustration from the narcissism, decadence and irrelevance which has now infected the "fine" art model.

THE MOST SIGNIFICANT ART

2011-09-27T13:33:00.015-04:00

Last weekend I gave a lecture at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge Massachusetts. The following is an excerpt from what future generations shall call my NRM Manifesto (unless the NRM lawyers demand that I remove their name, which is quite possible):

Anyone with the courage to take a fresh look at the role of art in the 20th century might reasonably conclude illustration has played a more significant role than "fine" art.

Yeah, you heard me-- more significant than Picasso, Matisse, Jackson Pollack and the great Jeff Koons combined.

Absurd? Perhaps. But let's explore the issue as soberly and conscientiously as we are able, and see where the facts take us.

We should start by agreeing there are many legitimate methods of measuring the importance of art. For me, the least satisfying method seems to be the most popular: to blindly accept the conventions of our grandparents who instinctively assigned a lower social status to "commercial" illustration.

What might be a better test? I submit that four of the most relevant standards for measuring the significance of art are:

The size of its audience
Its economic impact
Its effect on society
Its impact on our individual lives

The first two tests are fairly easy to apply. They are objectively quantifiable, and in my view there is little question that illustration has had the greater impact.

Size of the Audience: In a century when many towns did not have an art museum, a gallery, or even a public library, the average citizen has been surrounded by illustrations. They invaded his field of vision from all sides. The Saturday Evening Post, chock full of illustrations, was selling three million copies while its rival Colliers was selling nearly as many. Illustrated magazines arrived in mailboxes all across America, along with illustrated brochures from car manufacturers and other advertisers. Illustrations in storybooks, billboards, posters and animated movies found their way to every corner of the globe, driven by the mighty engine of commerce. By comparison, attendance at museums and galleries, and the sale of fine art books and prints, was meager at best. If we judge by raw numbers, Norman Rockwell enjoyed far more viewers Picasso.

Economic Impact of the Art: A small number of fine artists such as Damien Hirst or Jeff Koons are paid huge sums for their work, far more than any illustrator has been paid. Yet, the average illustrator probably earned more from his or her labors over the last century than the average gallery painter. More importantly, because of the huge audience for illustration (above) it has had a far greater economic impact on the world than museum or gallery art. The economics of the video game industry alone likely surpass the economics of the fine art market. Illustrations have been used to sell cars, design feature films, and advertise countless products. The economic impact of "fine" art simply cannot compare.

Impact on Society: This is harder to gauge. Certainly, contemporary gallery art-- from cubism to surrealism to abstract expressionism-- has had an important impact on the intellectual direction of society. Yet, illustration has also played a major role in establishing the style, visual paradigms and iconic images of our society. A quick trip through the annals of illustration demonstrates the impact illustrators have had in shaping the aesthetics of society. Here is a tiny sample:

The Gibson Girl set a popular standard for beauty

The Arrow Collar Man

John Held established the flapper as an institution

Peter Max's psychedelic style became emblematic of his era

Impact on Our Individual Lives: The first three tests are revealing, but in my view this last test is more important than all the others combined. In previous posts I have applauded scholar Lionello Venturi, author of the definitive treatise on the history of art criticism, who proposed what I believe to be a very sensible standard for measuring the value of art:

What ultimately matters in art is not the canvas, the hue of oil or tempera, the anatomical structure and all the other measurable items, but its contribution to our life, its suggestions to our sensations, feeling and imagination.

If we consider the "contributions to our life" from both illustration and gallery art, we may discover some interesting facts. It goes without saying that we have all (myself included) been thrilled by the beauty and power of fine art. But let's keep exploring and see if we we can identify more specific litmus tests of the way art affects our "sensations, feeling and imagination."

It would be hard to find a more powerful statement of outrage against the atrocities of war than Picasso's famous Guernica:

Yet, if you want to inspire people to put their lives on the line, to enlist and fight against those atrocities, illustration has historically proven more persuasive than Guernica or any other fine art:

James Montgomery Flagg

Henry Raleigh

Similarly, if you want to motivate people to give up their money and buy war bonds to help fight the atrocities, Guernica could never achieve the results of Norman Rockwell's famous Four Freedoms:

Putting aside the emotions of hate and fear, and looking instead to emotions of love and lust, romantic illustrations in women's magazines played a huge role in shaping women's concepts of what love was and how it worked.

John Gannam detail: should we have sex before marriage?

Pictures such as these in Redbook, Cosmopolitan, McCall's, Ladies Home Journal and Good Housekeeping had blood racing and nostrils flaring all across the country. (Meanwhile, husbands were developing their own concept of romance from the pinup illustrations of George Petty and Gil Elvgren.)

Romantic illustrations that shaped expectations and fleshed out our vocabulary weren't limited to fiction magazines. The language of love was spoken in John Gannam's ads for bedsheets as well:

"My precious babykins..."

Now take a look at the kinds of statements famous fine artists have made recently regarding the subject of love:

Damien Hirst, All You Need is Love

Robert Indiana, Love

Tells you something, doesn't it?

There are plenty of other emotions besides love and hate where it might be useful to compare illustration and fine art, but a blog post is not the best place to attempt it. But applying Venturi's test to the representative examples above, it seems clear to me that illustration has had greater significance.

The four standards I have suggested are not the only ways to measure significance, and I would welcome any counter suggestions from readers. In addition, I have not tried to assert which art form has the highest inherent "quality." I have my personal views on that subject (as does everybody else) but it is far harder to devise standards for measuring quality than for measuring significance.

In order to play this game, my only restriction is that you have to be willing to abide by Isaac Newton's famous admonition for honest scientific results:

I frame no hypotheses; for whatever is not deduced from the phenomena is to be called a hypothesis, and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, whether of occult qualities or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy.

By looking at the phenomena, I deduce that illustration seems to have been a more significant form of visual art over the past century than "fine" or "gallery" art. But if you have other phenomena for us to consider, or other standards to apply, I'd be interested.

LECTURE ON ILLUSTRATION: SEPTEMBER 24

2011-09-18T16:47:00.001-04:00

For those who live near the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, the Museum was kind enough to invite me to come present my views on illustration.

The museum is one of the premier resources for promoting "the rich visual legacy of American illustration art," so you can imagine how surprised I was to receive the invitation.

My talk is scheduled for next weekend, on September 24th, from 1:30 to 2:30. Later in the same day, illustrator David Macaulay (the Museum's 2011 Artist Laureate) will speak about his work.

CHRIS PAYNE

2011-09-14T16:54:00.004-04:00

Detail

It is easy to become dazzled by Chris Payne's technique but you should resist the temptation.

Payne's tight, crisp images are certainly eye-catching, and his technical skill stands out among contemporary illustrators.

However, if you get too distracted by the skill you'll miss the larger artistry of these pictures (which is the most important part).

There are plenty of illustrators who do highly detailed, photorealistic work. Artists such as Rowena, Boris and Elaine Duillo are meticulous technicians, but for me their results are usually leaden and uninspiring (unless you count the inspiration that comes from watching honest manual labor). Adobe Illustrator is helping a younger generation of obsessive illustrators take pointless detail to a whole other level.

But Payne brings something more to his pictures. His skill is exercised in the service of a larger artistic vision, which is why his pictures positively glow in comparison.

Note for example his dramatic compositions for these excellent portraits:

Or look at the following portrait of Yogi Berra. Payne must have labored over the details of that car, and the expressions on those faces, and making those figures interact, and creating the jaunty angle with the car hovering mid-bounce, yet all of these complex elements come together like a snap of the fingers.

The picture has a cohesion and liveliness that makes the hard work look easy.

To understand what distinguishes Payne's work, it might help to focus on a few details from this picture of a man floating away (a la Renee Magritte) :

At first it appears he is wearing a conventional gray flannel suit, but a closer look reveals that Payne used a purple(!) watercolor wash, with flowing striations deliberately left exposed:

A less confident artist would have painted the suit gray, and painstakingly drawn in the pin stripes.

Those trees and bushes in the background may look realistic but up close we see they are painted very free and abstract. Rather than make everything in the picture uniformly detailed, Payne understands how to prioritize a picture. He understands design:

As realistic as Payne's figures may sometimes seem, he frequently elongates and distorts them for the sake of the picture. Heads are stretched and extruded (see below) and ears are pulled out asymmetrically (see portrait of Vladmir Putin, above):

It takes a strong center of gravity to work like this. It's a far tougher job than merely capturing a likeness, and it's one of the reasons why Payne's work is so admired.

ONE LOVELY DRAWING, part 37

2011-09-05T17:04:00.003-04:00

I love this drawing by Harrison Cady of a small house standing in the way of urban progress:

from the Kelly Collection of American Illustration (24" x 20")

Cady was famous for simple cartoons of funny animals, but this large, complex drawing is a virtuoso feat of draftsmanship. Note how Cady maintains total control of the value scale, from those faint buildings in the distance to the dark edges of the building in the foreground.

Cady used tens of thousands of tiny hatched lines to create subtle gradations in value from the top to the bottom of that looming skyscraper:

From one point of view, the hatching on the skyscraper is mindless repetitive work. But it is also a marvelous tightrope walk.

Pen-and-ink is an unforgiving medium; Cady would be screwed if he progressed too quickly from light to dark, or drew the lines in one area too close together-- or too far apart apart; or if he failed to maintain consistent values from left to right. He had to keep up a steady rhythm, which is especially difficult with a drawing so large that Cady could not see the entire building as he drew.

The drudgery aspect of this kind of work was eliminated long ago by machines. 24 years after Cady's drawing, Prometheus brought Zipatone to earth. From that day on, a gradient tone could easily be peeled from a handy plastic backing:

Al Williamson

The stains and cuts from aging zipatone are now viewed as part of the charm of original artwork from that era:

Frank Godwin

Today the world has moved even further away from old fashioned hatch marks. Zipatone has been replaced by Photoshop. Cady could've created the shading on that building simply by opening a grayscale screen and customizing it with the gradiant tool. This is a huge boon for efficiency. It saves artists from hours of mindless work; it makes them more productive, enables them to meet shorter deadlines (and enables clients to make more changes on shorter notice). These are commercially sensible, perhaps inevitable developments.

But let's not overlook what we lose with all this efficiency. Artists who spend hours making marks like this often let their minds wander free while their eyes and hand take over. The rhythm of the linework can put you in a trance-like state while you go to deep places. Those places may not help meet deadlines but they can be very valuable for an artist.

Fine artist Jasper Johns, who never had to worry about an art director's deadline, made a series of large paintings delving into the metaphysics of the common hatch mark:

Cady Johns

Zipatone and Photoshop are wonderful inventions that help to set artists free. But as I look back at Harrison Cady's lovely drawing, I am reminded of the words of G.K. Chesterton: "You may, if you like, free a tiger from his bars; but do not free him from his stripes."

ROBERT RIGGS (1896 - 1970)

2011-08-25T10:48:00.004-04:00

Nobody talks much about Robert Riggs anymore, but he was once one of the nation's most highly regarded illustrators.

As Walt Reed wrote, "Robert Riggs was awarded the Gold Medal for Excellence by the New York Art Directors Club for ten consecutive years and received many additional awards." He was elected to the Society of Illustrators' Hall of Fame. His work is in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Philadelphia Museum of Fine Arts and the U.S. Library of Congress.

What made Riggs so special? If you went through a checklist of factors that normally make an illustrator stand out, Riggs seemed to have none of them. His work was not flashy or innovative or glamorous. He had no special talent for anatomy or facial expressions. His compositions and colors weren't stylish or bold. If anything, he favored basic, symmetrical compositions with conventional color schemes:

Note how frequently Riggs plants his subject right smack dab in the middle of his canvas.

Furthermore, his subject matter was hardly topical or crowd-pleasing. No one would describe his work as romantic or witty or trendy-- no pretty girls, no heart-warming family scenes, no attractive couples in passionate clinches. And Riggs didn't try to show off with a lot of details and frills. To the contrary, he simplified and stripped away unnecessary detail.

For me, the special appeal of Riggs' work is in its distinctive weight. He imbued every subject with a great feeling of solidity and substance-- what Reed calls "monumental" compositions. Riggs' figures in the following picture are made of the same granite as the mountains behind them.

Riggs didn't follow the recipe for popular illustrations of his day. He viewed the world in a powerful, muscular way and conveyed his vision as honestly as he could. That was enough to capture audiences and the respect of his peers.

Riggs had very few imitators, perhaps because other illustrators just didn't see the world through his eyes.

JAMES GURNEY GETS HIS CAR INSPECTED

2011-08-20T10:06:00.006-04:00

Illustrator James Gurney wrote:

"Yesterday I took my car to the shop because it needed an inspection. The rain was pouring down. There wasn't much space in the waiting room. So I sat under the awning out back between an old rusty engine and a forklift.

While I waited, I sketched the mud puddle beside me. The rain streamed off the corrugated roof and splashed the water, making big bubbles. The puddle was a sea of overlapping ripples."

I love this little study, not just for how it looks but for what it signifies.

Gurney is the creator of the famed Dinotopia series, whose books, calendars, posters, prints and collectibles have become a publishing sensation. He is renowned for his illustrations for National Geographic and his more than 70 book covers, as well as stamps and animated films.

Gurney working on one of his carefully researched illustrations for National Geographic,
with his parakeet on his shoulder

He authored two excellent books on art, Color and Light and Imaginative Realism and in his spare time he writes one of the best, most informative art blogs around. I get exhausted just reading about his accomplishments. Here is his work plan for the 160 illustrations he created for Dinotopia: The World Beneath:

So when Gurney finally gets a few minutes of respite from the easel to take care of routine car maintenance, what does he do? He becomes so intrigued by the effect of rain drops in a mud puddle that he pauses to produce the lovely study above.

Gurney's fans ask him about his work habits. He tells them, "I typically work from 8:30 to 5:30 five or six days a week."

Nonsense.

The problem with Gurney is that he can't distinguish between work and play. Robert Frost wrote about that state of grace, where the thing we need to do and the thing we love to do "are one."

My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future's sakes.

Some of the most successful artists are the ones whose eyes can't help but see-- and whose hand can't help but investigate-- the beauty of a rain puddle even while they are waiting in a dreary line for their car to be inspected.

41 ILLUSTRATORS AND HOW THEY WORK

2011-08-09T07:55:00.001-04:00

A superb new book about illustration, written by the well known expert Fred Taraba, has just been released by Dan Zimmer's Illustrated Press.

An instant classic, the book describes the art and the working techniques of 41 great illustrators in loving detail. It provides a wealth of information you won't find anywhere else, including preliminary sketches, reference photographs and other helpful materials.

The reproductions are beautiful, many from the originals. The production values are excellent.

Taraba wisely chose to sidestep the illustrators who have already been covered exhaustively (such as Norman Rockwell, Maxfield Parrish or N.C. Wyeth) and focus instead on brilliant but slightly lesser known illustrators who deserve greater recognition today. Austin Briggs, Joe de Mers, John Gannam, Andrew Loomis, Alice Barber Stephens, Saul Tepper, Coby Whitmore... this book is a goldmine of under-appreciated talent. I recommend it highly. It is available through the publisher.

5 ARTISTS AT COMIC-CON: CRAIG ELLIOTT

2011-08-06T16:12:00.000-04:00

Every year at Comic-Con I check in at the booth of Craig Elliott, a talented artist who works for Disney and Dreamworks on animated films such as Mulan, The Emperor's New Groove, Treasure Planet, Shark Tale, Flushed Away, Bee Movie, and Enchanted, Monsters vs. Aliens, and The Princess and the Frog.

I like the strong designs in Elliott's visual development and layout work for the movies.

But I especially like that Elliott is one of those artists with the ambition, energy and curiosity to keep growing after his day job is through. Every year when I see him, he seems to have broadened his horizons further.

His core style is in what he calls "the grand tradition of American illustration, Japanese scroll paintings and woodblock prints, fantasy illustration, and great artists of Europe." He works in both digital and traditional media, including oil paintings (for exhibition in Paris and the US), sculpture, landscape architecture, and he has now started designing jewelry as well.

Elliott is one of the artists featured in the new Flesk Prime book from Flesk Publications and is the subject of the upcoming book, The Art of Craig Elliott. If you don't know his work, it's certainly worth a look.

5 ARTISTS AT COMIC-CON: ASHLEY WOOD

2011-08-04T03:15:00.002-04:00

Ashley Wood's energetic pictures have spawned an entire industry. He went from drawing comic books to multinational production deals with development partners and global media outlets who produce video games of his characters, toys, collectibles, movies and books. Wood seems to be everywhere, from art galleries in China to movie studios in Hollywood, and shows no signs of slowing down.

In his talk at Comic-Con, Wood proved to be as energetic and blunt as his art. He said that not long ago his career "really sucked balls" but he found the right publisher who believed in him, and teamed with the right people. Mostly, he worked hard.

Sometimes Wood seems to crank out art like one of the gattling guns on his robots, spewing explosive rounds.

I work every day, it's a compulsion. People say I'm prolific, but as far as I'm concerned people who say I'm prolific are just fucking lazy."

Wood is not the most refined, cautious artist you'll ever meet. But despite an occasional misfire, Wood continues to generate large quantities of very good art. He has a strong sense of design, good color, and he knows how to draw and paint. Says Wood, "I like what I do, but I can be better. I am still trying to boil it down to its essence."

When asked where he found his inspiration, Wood responded,

I'm inspired by the fact that I'm going to die. The clock is ticking, and time is against me. You can't just wait for an opportunity to come, you have to go out and chase your dreams. Some people hang out in cafes and talk about doing something, but I'm out there working every day. I go out on weekends and take pictures of clouds I like.

He was extremely likeable and quickly won over his audience. Unlike many commercially successful artists who pull the ladder up after them, Wood displays a healthy lack of pretentiousness:

A lot of the art made in the last 30 years was kind of shit. The idea-based art gets kind of boring if you need someone to sit next to the art and explain it to you. I've never seen a "lower class" to art. When comic art becomes more valuable, that's what makes the fine art world gravitate to it.

But Wood's most endearing comments had to do with his family. He said, "The best thing about making movies is that my kids will think I'm cool." And his wife? "My wife is my muse. If the hair changes on the women in my paintings, it's because my wife changed her hair."

5 ARTISTS AT COMIC-CON: CHESTER BROWN

2011-07-31T23:41:00.004-04:00

Cartoonist Chester Brown stood in front of a room full of people at Comic-Con and described his sex with prostitutes. As he went through the details, he displayed drawings from his new book, Paying For It:

Brown belongs to that class of oddballs and misfits with a fierce compulsion to share the most scatological, sexual and personal details of their lives. After Brown showed us drawings of his penis and described how he paid women for sex because he could not obtain sex as part of a well rounded relationship, I asked whether he considered any part of his life too personal to put in a book. He responded, "Not as long as it makes for a good story."

The extreme candor of such artists, combined with their vantage point on the outskirts of society, sometimes makes for interesting reading (and occasionally provides insights we couldn't get from more conventional sources).

However, I don't think Brown's large audiences are lured by his artistic talent. Most of the time, he draws just well enough to satisfy prurient gawkers looking for unearned intimacy. Brown is at his best when he is channeling the work of the more talented Harold Gray (in work such as Louis Riel).

His writing is only a little better-- he manages some nice touches-- but his treatment of sex in Paying For It has all of the depth, profundity and imagination of a 1970s Playboy Advisor column.

If you want a sense for how truly insubstantial Brown's work is, compare his treatment of visiting prostitutes with the writings of Henry Miller or Arthur Koestler. If you want to see vastly superior explicit drawings of the dark side of the soul, check out the work of George Grosz, R. Crumb or John Cuneo. For me, Brown remains squalor lite.

5 ARTISTS AT COMIC-CON: NATHAN FOWKES

2011-07-29T22:18:00.000-04:00

I have previously written about the work of Nathan Fowkes, a talented artist for DreamWorks Animation, a fine landscape artist, and an art teacher at the Los Angeles Academy of Figurative Art.
I ran into Fowkes at Comic-Con, where he was demonstrating charcoal drawing for an enthusiastic audience.

I have always been impressed with how Fowkes works seamlessly between different media. He uses Photoshop to create wonderful concept, visual development and production art for state of the art CGI movies:

He also works in oils:

My favorites are his watercolors. he creates light and elegant landscapes, each one a tiny gem:

At Comic-Con, he displayed his approach with charcoal:

At this point in the demonstration he is saying, "I'm desperately trying to keep it simple. You've got to keep it simple."

I think one reason Fowkes is so successful with a variety of materials is his philosophy, "There are dozens of ways you can apply the medium. It's the principles of value (light and shadow), structure, edges and composition that really matter."

5 ARTISTS AT COMIC-CON: SEYMOUR CHWAST

2011-07-27T13:10:00.003-04:00

I just returned from Comic-Con in San Diego. This week I will write about five of the artists I encountered there.

One of the best things about Comic-Con is that when 43,000 teenyboppers stampede to the far side of the convention hall for a glimpse of some teenage vampire heart throb, you might be lucky enough to grab a quiet half hour with a legend such as Seymour Chwast.

Chwast is internationally renowned as one of the great innovators of 20th century graphic design:

Together with Milton Glaser and Ed Sorel, Chwast founded the famous Push Pin Studio in 1954.

He is the author of many excellent books including the bible on the history of graphic style, which he co-authored with Steve Heller. They wrote:

[T]he new movement in illustration from the mid 1950s to the present can be summed up in one word: conceptual. Illustration evolved from explicit and romantic realism to conceptual symbolism because the issues and themes covered in magazines were becoming more complex, more critical. Prior to this, illustrators rejected illusion, metaphor, and symbolism in favor of explicit vignettes. But by the late 1950s, photographers had vividly captured the surface of life, leaving the depiction of the interior, subjective world to illustrators.

As I have written before, I'm not as quick to write off art that "captures the surface of life." I'm still a sucker for artists who express their opinions about natural forms using sensitive line, perceptive colors or an insightful composition. As far as I am concerned, the melodies that arise from the perception of natural form can rival the most elaborate intellectual contrivances. (I also disagree that there is such a bright line between the "surface of life" and its underlying meanings.)

Still, you could not ask for a better exemplar of the "conceptual" point of view than Chwast, who was among the earliest and most effective exponents of this trend in the US. Here is his brilliant illustration for an article on impotence for Playboy:

Last week this blog discussed the contortions of "realistic" illustrators trying to conceal parts of human anatomy. Chwast's illustration not only solves that problem with creative symbolism, he adds an important layer of psychological insight with the tangled cord that prevents the plug from reaching its goal. Traditional illustration offered nothing to compete with this.

I have said some unkind things on this blog about illustrators in the "I'm-so-smart-I don't-have-to-draw-well" school of illustration. Too many of them ain't that smart, and the concepts they bring to the table turn out to be a poor substitute for a decent sense of design or an ability to draw. But Chwast is a conceptual illustrator who does it right. He has the same winning formula that made Saul Steinberg great: a first class mind, a spirit of playfulness that keeps him overflowing with creative ideas, and a true gift for drawing and graphic design.

Our tastes turned out to differ in several instances, but it was a privilege to spend time with him and hear his thoughts on a variety of subjects. I learned a great deal. Those who heard him at Comic-Con were fortunate indeed.

DIALOGUE WITH A FIG LEAF

2011-07-22T11:09:00.010-04:00

Ever since civilization invented modesty, the fig leaf has created special challenges for artists.

One of Denis Zilber's typically fun solutions

The awkwardness of Durer's early efforts...

...eventually gave way to more natural looking solutions by artists such as Harold von Schmidt, Al Parker and James Avati:

But the motivations remained the same: to make the censor's prohibition seem like a mere coincidence of nature. Each artist lies to us, suggesting that our view is being obstructed only by a random spoon or a fortuitous branch.

Art succeeds by directing our curiosity, and sometimes even by satisfying it, but never by thwarting it. That's why artists attempt to disguise limits imposed on them by the censor.

Below, illustrator Geoffrey Biggs tried using randomly flapping clothes to satisfy his editor's restrictions. Like most efforts to appear spontaneous, this required careful planning. Biggs studied the text of a story in which a woman impetuously removes her outfit and throws it at a man; he then carefully designed a solution which was technically compliant, but which still looked a little too natural for the editors of the Saturday Evening Post. They went back to the author and demanded that he rewrite the scene to put underwear on the woman, then returned to Biggs and instructed him to change his illustration to conform to the text:

Before After

The mere act of concealing something often attracts our attention. Viewers may devote as much creative energy to imagining what is behind the fig leaf as artists devote to concealing it. Some artists take advantage of this human reaction, deliberately playing up the fig leaf with symbolism or colors or shapes.

In the 1950s Illustrator-turned-religious-painter Harry Anderson used a lion for a fig leaf in this painting of the Garden of Eden:

Talk about attracting the viewer's attention... I don't know a single male who doesn't grow uneasy about the proximity of that lion's teeth (which certainly distracts from Anderson's original intention for the painting).

The elements of a painting don't stand still. We cannot simply place one inert shape in front of another with no visual or psychological consequences. Objects are imbued with significance, and this is part of what makes our world such a wonderful place. So we should be neither surprised nor disappointed if an object we employ to conceal something strikes up a dialogue with the thing we are concealing.

WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?

2011-07-11T12:17:00.003-04:00

Thomas Hart Benton was a serious painter whose allegorical pictures of slow country life showed skill and intellect:

Thomas Hart Benton. Persephone

So what in the world was he thinking when he tried to paint a rock n' roll party, with people dancing to "the Twist" by Chubby Checker?

The Twist (1964)

Check out those bongo drums. Benton was so clueless, you have to laugh.

N.C. Wyeth was an immensely talented artist. The range and depth of his illustrations are awe-inspiring:

But despite all his talent, he couldn't design a decent Coca-Cola ad to save his life:

Robert Fawcett was a fiercely talented draftsman who chiseled his subjects with an aggressive line. His powerful black inkwork often overwhelmed his colors:

Robert Fawcett, detail from Big Business

So who in their right mind would select Fawcett to paint a dainty watercolor advertising women's cosmetics?

Fawcett, Palmolive ad, 1935

What on earth were these artists thinking? Were they on drugs? Desperate for money? Deliberately stretching to expand their range?

Sometimes you can tell in advance that, no matter how talented or how hard they work, an artist is just not the right person to handle a particular subject. So when someone tells you an artist is "great," it doesn't hurt to ask yourself, "at what?"

A THING FOR SHOULDERS

2011-07-03T09:26:00.002-04:00

Illustrator Henry Raleigh had a thing for shoulders.

Other artists loved to draw hands. Al Dorne, Steve Ditko and Mort Drucker all emphasized hands in their pictures, building compositions around them and infusing them with significance. Amedeo Modigliani's tastes were a little different; he seemed to have a thing for necks, extruding them to achieve the effects he wanted. And Robert McGinnis consistently painted women with weirdly elongated legs. He apparently found these proportions pleasing.

But to return to our story, Raleigh had a thing for shoulders. Many artists didn't see much potential in shoulders, assuming that they were generally symmetrical and level. Raleigh looked closer and saw them swooping and dipping like languorous gulls:

When Raleigh needed a figure in the foreground, sometimes it was little more than a shoulder in the "debutante slouch."

Time and again, he placed women's shoulders at center stage, plunging and ascending to guide the viewer around his picture:

Most artists use facial expressions to convey attitude. Raleigh could convey it with shoulders:

Every chance he got, Raleigh looked for excuses to draw bare shoulders and backs (regardless of what he was being paid to illustrate). Look at his loving treatment of these women and there is no mistaking his personal tastes:

Why is one artist smitten by the lines and shapes of bare shoulders, while another lavishes attention on hands, and a third finds creative potential in necks? Some say these preferences stem from cultural conditioning or climate or endocrinology or childhood experiences or intellect or sexual desire.

Whatever the explanation, pictures highlight the features that most appeal to the artist's personal taste. You or I might walk through this world overlooking the special beauty of shoulder blades and clavicles, but it's hard to do after viewing them through Raleigh's loving eyes. We might not end up completely sharing his fetish, but we certainly have a heightened appreciation for what shoulders can be. And that's a good thing.

CONFIDENCE

2011-06-25T12:33:00.004-04:00

Artistic confidence is a valuable asset when it is warranted, but a terrible liability when not.

Unfortunately, the nature of confidence is that it blinds us to whether it is warranted or not.

Picasso's huge ego was an asset when it gave him the courage to break with a lot of traditions. On the other hand, Julien Schnabel's ego did him no favors when it led him to claim, "I'm the closest thing to Picasso that you'll see in this fucking life." Confidence can be the Jekyll or Hyde of art.

Artist Markus Lüpertz certainly had the confidence to stand up to his critics. When he erected his latest public artwork -- a creepy, 60 foot sculpture of Hercules with one arm, a big nose, blue hair and a stunted body-- the New York Times reported:

in the past his work has been, to put it kindly, misunderstood. One piece was smeared with paint and covered in feathers. Another was beaten with a hammer. Another was removed altogether after protesters demanded it be taken down. “It doesn’t matter,” said Mr. Lüpertz....“The general opinion of my art is that it is rejected. I attribute this to a lack of intelligence among the people.”

Some of Lupertz's confidence comes from avoiding nay-sayers:

I only work with students who admire me and think I am great. If I am not the one that takes their breath away, I don’t feel like working with them, because this would be a waste of time. It’s not about their individualism, it’s about my individualism. It’s not about their genius, it’s about my genius.

Lupertz shows us that confidence can transform bad art into immense, unavoidable bad art.

At Stone Mountain, Georgia, sculptors Augustus Lukeman and Walter Hancock defaced an entire mountain with a sculpture the size of three football fields.

The sculpture, which depicts heroes of the Confederate Army, was sponsored by the Ku Klux Klan and the United Daughters of the Confederacy. As a work of art, it exemplifies the struggle between a pathetic lack of talent and disgusting racism. Most artists might look for a more inconspicuous location for such a struggle-- perhaps hidden in the back pages of a personal sketchbook. But if you have unquestioning confidence, you try to assert your position bigger and bolder and more permanently than anyone else's.

The jackhammer and dynamite are apparently favored tools of the overly confident. Consider this awful sculpture of chief Crazy Horse, currently on its way to becoming the largest sculpture in the world:

The sponsors of this statue hired sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski in 1948 to begin reshaping a mountain into a figure larger than Mount Rushmore. The head of Crazy Horse alone is 87 feet tall. The scale model pictured here in front of the despoiled mountain is so bad, an artist with any judgment would have returned to the drawing board. But confidence never heard the Turkish proverb, "No matter how far you've gone down the wrong road, turn back."

Confidence has served many artists well, giving them the strength necessary to undertake difficult projects and make bold decisions. Illustrator and art teacher Sterling Hundley reports,

I've had students in the past ask me the question: "Do you think that I am good enough?"
My answer: "If anyone could say anything in that moment that would keep you from pursuing your dreams, then you should find something else to do with your life."

This is surely true. On the other hand, when writer Flannery O'Connor was asked whether college writing programs were discouraging young writers, she responded "Not enough." This is surely true too.

Distinguishing between helpful and unhelpful confidence is one of the greatest challenges facing any artist. When is it Jekyll and when is it Hyde? If there is a formula, I lack the confidence to articulate it here.

THE ERA OF CELEBRITY ILLUSTRATORS

2011-06-15T16:11:00.002-04:00

Once upon a time, the world's largest media companies bragged in full page ads about their upcoming illustrations:

From the back cover of Life Magazine. When was the last time you saw an ad like this?

Magazines urged readers to spend more time studying illustrations:

This was all driven by economics, of course. The general public followed the work of top illustrators and made purchasing decisions based on their art:

Before the invention of movies and computer videos, illustrators were the George Lucas and Steven Spielberg of their day. They created magic images that captured the public imagination and shaped public taste. They invented cultural icons:

This was the great power of stationary images in an era before people learned that pictures could also be made to move and talk.

Like the Cecile B. DeMille of his day, Gustave Dore (1832-1883) shaped the world's image of epic stories such as the Bible, Paradise Lost and Dante's Divine Comedy. His books (and his visions) were everywhere.

Celebrity illustrators were were richly paid for their contribution to the mass entertainment industry. Charles Dana Gibson, who created the popular Gibson Girl, went from being a cartoonist for Life Magazine to taking over the entire magazine. His work enabled him to retire to his own private 700 acre island. Illustrator Henry Raleigh earned enough from drawing illustrations for three or four months to spend the balance of the year traveling the world lavishly with family and friends. He spent freely, giving away thousands of dollars. He maintained a yacht, owned a mansion and kept a large studio in downtown Manhattan.

Those days are gone. Like a huge peristaltic wave, the mass entertainment market has moved beyond illustration to other media.

There is nothing surprising about this. The golden age of illustration began in the 19th century by crushing the old fashioned wood engraving industry, which could no longer retain an audience when compared to color photo-engraving. Later, silent movies could not hold out for long against sound movies. Black and white movies were similarly vanquished by color movies. It remains to be seen what will happen with 3D, or 48 frame per second movies, or the next development after that.

This evolution seems to be powered primarily by the economics of mass marketing. There will always be a significant role for still pictures, but a medium that talks (and therefore doesn't require the consumer to read text), that moves (and therefore doesn't require the consumer to imagine the implications of a moment isolated by a static drawing), a medium that completely fills our sight, sound, olfactory and other senses, allowing us to passively absorb, seems to have a natural advantage over a medium that doesn't fill in all the blanks for us.

I see no prospect of this trend reversing itself, barring a global electromagnetic pulse (EMP) from thermonuclear war that renders all electronic viewing devices useless. If nuclear winter ever comes, illustrators can look forward to returning to their historic birthright as the powerful shamans who make magic images on the cave walls.

But for now, I think it is important to emphasize that, while illustration is no longer the centerpiece of the entertainment world, and the great peristaltic wave took celebrityhood and money with it, it did leave the "art" portion behind. And that, my friends, is the most important part.

IS IT OKAY TO LIKE PULP ART?

2011-06-08T14:10:00.014-04:00

Last week the Society of Illustrators opened a wonderful exhibition of pulp magazine covers from the 1930s and 40s. The show includes nearly 90 paintings of scantily clad damsels in distress, hooded fiends with elaborate torture devices, and futuristic space heroes. This is probably the most emotionally uncomplicated art you will ever find: big, juicy paintings with the open heart (and emotional maturity) of a 14 year old boy.

Some of the paintings, such as this gem by the great Baron Leydenfrost, are executed with astonishing skill:

But most of these pictures are painted with a technique as vulgar as their content. There was no room for subtle colors and elaborate compositions on a magazine rack crowded with competing pulp magazines.

The girls on these covers always seemed to be in peril, and ripe for rescue by the proper hero.

Young male readers were tantalized by the prospect of what lay beyond those slightly parted dressing gowns or those strategically torn shirts. They pored over these illustrations for clues to what awaited them someday. It's a mark of their innocence that their best plan for winning such favors was by rescuing a girl from space monsters.

If you're looking for a holiday from moral complexity, pulp art may be just the oasis for you. In fact, the owner of this marvelous collection, Robert Lesser, calls it “escape” art. But its simple mindedness is the source of both its joyful strength and its gnawing weakness.

Which brings me to my question of the week: Is it okay to like pulp art?

Let's put aside that this stuff is politicallly incorrect. My question is focused solely on artistic merit. Is this stuff anything more than “chewing gum for the eyes”? What are we to make of art that is not particularly well painted and does not challenge us mentally or emotionally, that raises no questions and doesn't expand our vision, but is undeniably likable for nostalgic reasons?

Beryl Markham cautioned us about the temptation to look over our shoulder at simpler, bygone days:

Never turn back and never believe that an hour you remember is a better hour.... Passed years seem safe ones, vanquished ones, while the future lives in a cloud, formidable from a distance. The cloud clears as you enter it. I have learned this, but like everyone I learned it late.

This is a worthy sentiment, but I nevertheless think pulp art is a valid art form. The moral obviousness of these pictures gives them an ethical virility that you won't find in more sophisticated art. They are akin to religious paintings from the age of faith, which left no ambiguity about who was the bad guy, who was the hero, and which blonde needed to be rescued.

The fact that such ethical clarity is an illusion doesn’t mean it isn't art.

JEFFREY CATHERINE JONES (1944-2011)

2011-05-21T07:30:00.001-04:00

Jeffrey Catherine Jones struggled with battles that other painters never had to face. His fragile nervous system supported his great talent the way-- in the words of Bob Dylan-- a mattress balances on a bottle of wine.

As a boy, I loved the beauty and elegance of Jones' work but I didn't understand the true scope of his achievement. It was only after I made contact with him later in life that I began to appreciate the demands that his personal chemistry placed on his courage.

In what should have been his most productive years, Jones was stalked by the Great Sadness. His goals became more complex:

The goal was to somehow survive until morning while working my way ever upwards toward the coming morning light and the safety of the surface. I moved steadily, avoiding as much as possible, the swaying, reaching dead and the slabs of torn bologna spinning through the air.

Jones responded to his challenges with great valor. In his life, he created some glorious work at great personal cost and left a wonderful legacy for the rest of us.

ONE LOVELY DRAWING, part 36

2011-05-19T19:09:00.002-04:00

I like the combination of power and sensitivity in this lovely drawing by Kent Williams.

His composition is fearless; look at how boldly he plants that figure in the center of the page, perfectly balanced as if by a Zen master. No need to hedge his bets with wispy lines implying a background. His primeval "L" shape is a design so basic and timeless it might as well have been etched into a cave wall.

Yet, the strength of his design doesn't undermine the subtlety of his drawing.

Williams' shading starts our eyes at the model's face, but the shading is soon softened by gouache as we travel down her body. The shading disappears altogether where her sparsely drawn toes form a peninsula with his signature.

Williams' sensitive line displays the kind of clarity that only comes with genuine knowledge of the human form.

Artists have been drawing the human form since the world was new. There is certainly nothing shockingly original about this basic pose. Isn't it marvelous, then, that variations such as this one continue to delight, inspire and educate us?

"BACKGROUND" IS ONLY A TEMPORARY CONDITION

2011-05-16T10:16:00.004-04:00

Is there such a thing as background? Or is everything really foreground?

Illustrator Robert Heindel once said about his hero Bernie Fuchs, "Look at the things he does. Who else would paint a tree with the sun behind it? I would never attempt it."

But a painting of a tree with the sun behind it is also a painting of the sun with a tree in front of it. Your eye has no choice but to start with either tree or sun, but truth shimmers back and forth between them.

Winslow Homer understood this well: that the distinction between tree and sun, and between foreground and background, and between me and you, is obliterated in the fullness of time:

ARTISTS AT WAR, part 3

2011-05-11T00:57:00.007-04:00

In September 1940 Hitler began his blitz campaign of dropping incendiary bombs on the major population centers of Britain, hoping to burn the civilians into submission. Night after night for months, London was set aflame. After a particularly vicious bombing run on December 29, Winston Churchill ruefully cabled Franklin Roosevelt, "They burned a large part of the city of London last night."

Citizens risked their lives to form auxiliary fire brigades in an effort to douse the flames and save as many homes, factories and lives as possible. A number of the firemen caught in the inferno felt compelled to record their trauma in art.

The painting above is by a fireman whose comrades were rushing with sand buckets to put out an incendiary. The painting below is by fireman / artist Leonard Rosoman who witnessed two firemen buried under a collapsing wall of red hot brick. One of the two firemen had just relieved Rosoman who had been holding that hose moments before.

These painters had little equipment or resources. Firefighter W. Matvyn Wright painted the following image on the only surface available, a ping pong table top:

These artists clung to art through their desperate ordeal. Threatened with imminent invasion by the Nazis, watching their precious national heritage turn to ash, art helped them to cope. For them, art was no cultural luxury. It was serious business.

Another person who is reputed to understand the seriousness of art is private equity fund manager Stephen Schwarzman, one of Wall street's 25 Most "Serious" Art Collectors. Schwarzman, a multi-bilionaire with five mansions worth a combined $125 million, recently spent $3 million on his own birthday party. He had beautiful models parading around dressed as James Bond girls, and paid singer Rod Stewart to serenade him.

A substantial percentage of Schwarzman's immense wealth came from lobbying for favorable laws and special tax treatment. For example, Schwarzman fought the Sarbanes Oxley laws against corporate misconduct and backed special tax benefits for profits from private equity funds. Recently, when President Obama questioned whether a person worth $8 billion should continue to have a lower tax rate than the chauffer who drives him around, an outraged Schwarzman complained, "It’s a war, like when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939.”

So both Schwarzman and the firefighters of the London blitz share a common perspective: they both know the horrors of war with Hitler, and they both seek to find solace through art.

But what else do these two experiences of art have in common?

I like the paintings by the London firefighters-- they are powerful and sincere and I think that some of them (such as that first painting) are quite good. However, it is highly likely that Schwarzman, who majored in "Intensive Culture" at Yale, has more refined taste than the humble firefighters. I'm guessing his pictures by Rembrandt and Picasso qualify as superior to the paintings by firemen in the war. After all, a picture should not be downgraded for the loathsomeness of the creature who owns it.

If the firefighters' paintings are more meaningful and urgent and relevant to daily life than Schwarzman's prestigious collection, those qualities are worth taking into consideration. That still doesn't make the firefighters better artists but it reminds us that there is more than one yardstick for measuring art.

ARTISTS IN LOVE, part 18

2011-05-04T02:20:00.006-04:00

Augustus John on the cover of Time Magazine, by Boris Chaliapin

It's difficult to think of an artist, or a human being, who made a bigger, noisier mess of his love life than Augustus John.

Raised in a strict religious home, he rebelled with a life of free love and anarchy. He proudly crowed, "Without much thought I act on the impulse of the moment."

John impetuously eloped with a fellow art student, Ida Nettleship, but shortly after they were married he began courting a second art student, Dorelia McNeill. While Ida sat home tending to their new baby, John was pleading with Dorelia to pose for him in the nude ("Why not sit for me in your soft skin, and no other clothes-- Are you ashamed? Nonsense! It's not as if you were very fat.").

Sketch of Dorelia by Augustus John

Ida gradually accepted that in order to hang onto her husband, she would have to consent to living in a menage a trois with Dorelia. When Dorelia remained unconvinced, John enlisted his sister, Gwen (who was also Dorelia's art teacher) to write a remarkable letter urging Dorelia to join with John and Ida.

Gwen John by her brother Augustus

Soon they were sleeping three in a bed, with their small children sleeping in boxes scattered around their home. Having a wife and mistress did not deter Augustus from dozens of affairs with bar maids, art students and an occasional countess. He courted them with portraits, bad poetry and wildly indiscreet letters (to a secretary, Alick Schepler, he wrote, "O pray, retain the bloom till I come. Do not wash till I see you").

Alick Schepler by Augustus John

John impulsively offered to marry Schepler. His biographer, Michael Holroyd, recounts how he explained his decision to his existing wife and his mistress:

domestic life, even of the unorthodox variety with which they had experimented, smothered him; he told them of his feelings for Alick, that his painting could not advance without her, that he needed her. There was nothing too personal in all this-- but he could not be restricted....

Unfortunately, John's confession was wasted because Alick turned him down after discovering that his plan was to set up a second menage a trois with Alick and her friend, artist Frieda Bloch. All of these women gave up on a traditional fairy tale romance for a small piece of the great artist's attention.

What does the example of Augustus John teach us about "Artists in Love"? It certainly demonstrates the manipulative power of art. Alick claimed she never noticed that she was beautiful until John drew her. When he tried to lure Frieda Bloch into joining his second menage, he offered as bait his mystical artistic secrets ("I will find her a studio-- and I will show her things I'm pretty sure she never suspected.") To justify his philandering to Ida and Dorelia, he explained that freedom was essential to the greatness of his art. Everyone was willing to make exceptions for "the King of Bohemia." But for those who, like me, have trouble accepting love as a heedless thing, John offers little.

Naw, the "artists in love" I'm referring to in this post are the women John mistreated, the ones who might have gone on to become substantial artists and independent voices in a more fair era. An interesting thing happened amongst these women as they sacrificed their artistic careers, supported each other, and raised their many children communally. Some fell in love with each other, apparently with greater profundity and fidelity than John was able to offer. Ida, Dorelia and Gwen became particularly close.

Gwen's self portrait: clothed and confident

Gwen's self portrait: nude and vulnerable

Ida and Dorelia "eloped" together to Paris for a long break from John and his "nervous abberrations." John came to visit them between flings, but the two built a meaningful daily life together.

Gwen's portrait of Dorelia

Gwen and Dorelia had their own adventures. Reports Holroyd:

The source of Gwen's upsurge in happiness was Dorelia. On an impulse she proposed that the two of them should leave London and walk to Rome-- and Dorelia, once she was certain that Gwen was not joking, calmly agreed.... The two girls were as excited as if it were an elopement....Gwen brushed aside [August's] objections, would not even listen to his arguments...and they set off 'carrying a minimum of belongings and a great deal of painting equipment....' At each village they would try to earn some money by going to the inn and either singing or drawing portraits of those men who would pose.... At night they slept in the fields, under haystacks or, when they were lucky, in stables, lying on each other to feel a little warmer, covering themselves with their portfolios and waking up encircled by curious little congregations of farmers, gendarmes and stray animals. Between the villages...they would practice their singing. They lived mostly on grapes and bread, a little beer, some lemonade. There were many adventures; losing their tempers with the women, outwitting the men, dying of fright, crying with laughter.

During John's long absences, these women responded to their raw deal by developing strong, supportive passionate relationships. When Dorelia left Ida for just a few days to visit her mother, Ida wrote her: "Darling D.... Love from [Ida] to the prettiest little bitch in the world....I was bitter cold last night in bed without your burning hot, not to say, scalding body next to me."

The great naturalist author Loren Eisley wrote about one wintry evening when a street light was casting an odd shadow in his front yard. Fetching a ladder, he discovered that a spider had saved herself from her frosty environment by spinning her web next to the warmth of the streetlight:

"Good Lord" I thought, "she has found herself a kind of minor sun and is going to upset the course of nature."....There she was... a great black and yellow embodiment of the life force, not giving up to either frost or step ladders. She ignored me and went on tightening and improving her web. I stood over her on the ladder, a faint snow touching my cheeks and surveyed her universe.... a world where even a spider refuses to lie down and die if a rope can still be spun on to a star.... Here was something that ought to be passed on to those who will fight our final freezing battle with the void. I thought of setting it down carefully as a message to the future: In the days of the frost seek a minor sun.

MENE, MENE, TEKEL UPHARSIN

2011-04-22T10:03:00.004-04:00

The traditional recipe for a mural requires:

One (1) person wealthy enough to own a big wall; and
one (1) person talented enough to paint on it.

Unfortunately, these two ingredients don't always mix well.

The reason for this probably dates back to ancient Babylonia. The cruel and powerful King Belshazzar, worshipper of gold and merchandiser of the souls of men, had conquered all his neighbors. He had nothing left to fear from anyone. Yet, when he held a victory feast for a thousand of his princes and warlords, Belshazzar became rattled by markings he discovered on his palace wall:

Poet Sir Osbert Sitwell beautifully described this biblical story, and what happened when the great king saw the famous writing on the wall:

And this was the writing that was written:
"MENE, MENE, TEKEL UPHARSIN"
"THOU ARE WEIGHED IN THE BALANCE AND FOUND WANTING."
In that night was Belshazzar the King slain
And his kingdom divided.

Whatever the origins of the bad blood, trouble seems to flare up regularly when artists write on the walls of the rich and powerful. One side or the other seems to get weighed in the balance and found wanting.

British shipping magnate Frederick Leyland commissioned James Whistler to paint a mural on Leyland's wall but then refused to pay Whistler's price. Whistler returned to Leyland's house and changed the mural to portray Leyland as a vain peacock squabbling over a bag of gold.

Whistler proudly proclaimed that he had immortalized Leyland as a peacock (and in fact most people today probably remember Leyland this way).

In 1925 the great Frank Brangwyn was commissioned to paint a mural of "the British Empire" for the House of Lords.

Brangwyn put his heart and soul into what he hoped would be a great masterpiece, but after only five of the eighteen panels were completed, Brangwyn too was weighed in the balance and found wanting. the Royal Fine Art Commission, in a stunning display of bad judgment, rejected the mural. Among the excuses later offered was the fact that the panels, designed as “a profusion of motifs drawn from all over the world, a rich brightly-hued tapestry of allusions to Africa, India, Burma and Canada, teeming with humanity and exotic birds and beasts,” were not appropriate for the traditional staid English decor.

Five years later, Brangwyn became enmeshed in another controversy over his murals for Rockefeller Centre in New York. In 1934 he was selected by the fabulously wealthy Nelson Rockefeller to paint a mural on the theme “Man at the Crossroads.” Brangwyn's mural included a picture of Jesus but the Rockefellers ordered it removed, so Brangwyn ended up repainting Jesus with his back to the viewer. In the words of Bertram Wolfe, Brangwyn made Jesus turn his back “upon the Temple of the Money Changers.”

But Brangwyn had it easy compared to another muralist for Rockefeller Center. Diego Rivera's entire mural was famously destroyed by the Rockefellers because Rivera refused to paint out an image of Lenin.

Which brings us to Paul Le Page, the buffoon currently serving as Governor of the State of Maine. LePage removed a mural from the state's Department of Labor because the mural offended his "pro-business philosophy." In what must be a new low in the history of human reaction to art, Le Page cited an anonymous fax complaining that in “communist North Korea... they use these murals to brainwash the masses.”

The artist, Judy Taylor, claimed that the mural was intended to depict milestones from the state's labor history, including Rosie the Riveter at Bath Iron Works and a famous 1937 shoe worker’s strike. “There was never any intention to be pro-labor or anti-labor, it was a pure depiction of the facts.”

At the time of Diego Rivera's battle with the Rockefellers, E.B. White wrote the following poem, which appeared in the New Yorker:

Said John D's grandson, Nelson.
[T]ho your art I dislike to hamper,
I owe a little to God and Gramper,

And after all,
It's my wall.....
We'll see if it is, said Rivera.

I think that White put his finger on the heart of many of these disputes. Wall owners and muralists sometimes have different notions about who owns the wall in the more meaningful sense. There is more than one kind of property.

An ODE to CONTRAST (verse 6)

2011-04-15T19:29:00.004-04:00

Because contrast is a game of extremes, it gives an artist license to cast aside nuance and embrace all kinds of lurid and gorgeous combinations of color and form.

Frank Tenney Johnson

George Innes

Carl Spitzweig

Still, it's not true that the farther apart the elements, the greater the contrast. On the contrary, contrast has to remain confined by a common set of rules or it becomes less effective. Contrast between elements of equivalent weigh tends to create tension, while contrast between elements of unequal weight tends to create movement. Either of these relationships can be powerful, but they require the elements to be tethered together if we want to create the illusion of greatest distance between them.

If you just try to place elements as far apart as possible, without a common set of assumptions, you run the risk of punching a hole in your picture, through which all of the integrity of the image will simply drain out onto the floor:

An ODE to CONTRAST (verse 5)

2011-04-13T06:43:00.003-04:00

Contrast is like those bad boys your mother warned you to stay away from but you just couldn't help yourself.

When you first encounter a picture, your eye is irresistibly drawn to the points of greatest contrast. Other parts of the picture-- the largest shape, the prettiest color, the darkest or lightest form-- may strive for your attention but there's something about contrast that always catches our eye first.

In this painting by Motherwell, our eyes pass over the huge black shape and go right to the tiny corner with the contrast.

Milk contrasted against the shadows in N.C. Wyeth's lovely painting

Arthur Mitchell

This doesn't mean that contrast is the best or the most important part of a picture. To the contrary, pictures contain many other fine, respectable elements. As your mother told you, once you get past first impressions you may learn to appreciate subtle details and other less glamorous virtues. All it takes is patience and time.

Harvey Dunn

You can go on to enjoy a long, satisfying relationship with the less flashy components of a picture. But it seems that a mature relationship must wait its turn, until we get beyond our initial fascination with contrasts-- that rough, vulgar but sexy feature that first catches our eye.

An ODE to CONTRAST (verse 4)

2011-04-11T23:44:00.003-04:00

When Alex Raymond drew the comic strip Flash Gordon, he often used smooth, tapered lines that flowed seamlessly from light to heavy, from narrow to wide.

They were dazzling. However, as he matured as an artist, Raymond no longer worried so much about blending the two extremes. Instead, by the time he drew the strip Rip Kirby years later, he would contrast light, airy pen strokes with thick, choppy brush strokes, leaving them to co-exist on the page in sharp juxtaposition to each other.

Compare the subtlety and precision of Raymond's lacy lines forming the
head and hands with the raw brush marks on the man's shoulder

Compare the strength of the chiseled effect on the man's overalls with the more refined, mellow lines in Flash Gordon (above)

A fine, diverse assortment of line.

I promise you, this change in Raymond's approach was not because he forgot how to make smooth gradations in line.

An ODE to CONTRAST (verse 3)

2011-04-10T23:45:00.004-04:00

Artists have experimented for centuries with visual techniques for contrasting opposites. However, it is difficult to think of an example which has benefited from so much enthusiastic experimentation as the contrast of something small, pretty and vulnerable with something big, mean and scary:

Let's see if we can tiptoe around some of the murky reasons people enjoy pictures of women in peril and focus instead on the interesting contrast at the heart of this popular genre.

The pulp magazine covers of the 1930s and 40s merely continued a tradition that stretched back to medieval paintings of St. George & The Dragon (where a helpless virgin was chained to a rock, to be gobbled up by a fierce monster) or silent movies (where a helpless girl was tied to railroad tracks, to be run over by a fierce steam engine). No mere gun or knife would do; it was the enormity of the disparity that makes these works successful.

As Frazetta shows us, sometimes it heightens the excitement and dread if the pretty girl lacks even a thin layer of clothing to shield her.

But not every example uses nudity to heighten the contrast. Some heighten the contrast employing light vs. shadow, or vertical vs. supine compositions, or male lower class vs. female upper class.

Some artists believe they get more mileage from a threat that is a disembodied shadow, or by throwing a child into the mix:

Putting aside the politics of these scenarios, and regardless of whether the damsel is saved by a knight in shining armor or rescues herself, the contrast between these two extremes seems to capture the imagination.

An ODE to CONTRAST (verse 2)

2011-04-09T23:34:00.004-04:00

Saul Steinberg was an artist of insatiable intellectual curiosity. His imagination overflowed with fresh, orthogonal views of the world and he came up with so many connections and comparisons that he sometimes had to stash long lists of them in imaginary cabinets and closets.

Sometimes he went beyond words, and diagrammed the meeting of two concepts:

The juxtaposition of these concepts is plenty thought-provoking, and Steinberg's little diagrams add a nice touch of whimsy and mystery. But I confess a special fondness for Steinberg's pictures where his contrasting concepts have been integrated into the pictures, not just spelled out in words. Here, Steinberg puts a mechanical, symmetrical image in bed with a fanciful flourish and leaves us to imagine their love life:

Here, Steinberg compares two realities using a clever graphic device:

In my view, the contrast of these concepts is more successful in images than in words.

An ODE to CONTRAST (verse 1)

2011-04-08T23:47:00.005-04:00

Peripheral vision may be our greatest weapon against ignorance. Your eyes don't need to stray more than an inch before they might bump into a view of reality that is startlingly different from your own:

Matter and antimatter coexist in this catalog of classes from the Learning Annex

Of course, we can't always rely on our peripheral vision. Sometimes we have to seek out contrasting views. For example, if you were a young woman with artistic talent in the 1950s, you might find this type of ad quite persuasive:

Just look at my art director!

But unless you took the extra effort to check out what was going on in magazines for young men, you might never realize that the same art schools were wooing your male counterparts with a very different set of promises:

Do you like Art?

This may explain why some people argue that the best way to avoid unhappiness is to wear blinders. If you try to reconcile two conflicting extremes you'll only end up confused and frustrated.

But for me, I'd say that in art-- as in life-- contrast is one of your very best friends. Elements of a picture, when set in opposition to each other, can heighten the effect of the whole. The task of balancing opposing elements forces us to develop more complex and sensitive vocabularies, and to be alert for subtler shades of meaning. With these enhanced vocabularies we can flesh out a more profound range of thoughts and feelings. Contrast is the place where the enriching force is born.

By merely selecting locations between the top and the bottom of the musical scale, Beethoven composed great symphonies. By selecting places between the top and bottom of the value scale, artists compose great pictures. The aesthetic character of a line, for example, is determined by an artist's selections on the continuum between rough and smooth, or between delicate and bold.

This week will be my ode to contrast. Each day I'll post a different example of contrast in picture making. Let's see if we can have some fun.

TIME RUNS OUT

2011-03-29T12:34:00.004-04:00

The artist Pavel Korin centered his life around one grand ambition: to paint a masterpiece about the impact of the Russian Revolution.

Preliminary study for "Farewell to Rus"

Korin worked for 42 years in preparation for his painting, developing sub-themes, experimenting with various compositions and painting detailed sketches. He researched the science of art conservation to make sure his masterpiece would last for centuries without restoration. He ordered an immense canvas specially made and installed it on custom built stretchers. Then he died before he could apply his first brush stroke.

Korin's blank canvas, with preliminary studies

A tough break, but at least fate was more generous to Korin than it was to poor Masaccio, one of the most promising painters of the Renaissance. Vasari described Masaccio as "the best painter of his generation," but after he began work on his famed frescoes at the Branacci Chapel, Massaccio took a side trip to Rome and died unexpectedly at age 26. He never had a chance to finish his work, and the laurels went to Michelangelo and Raphael instead.

Many an artist has fallen short of his or her potential by miscalculating how much time they have left to complete their "best" work. So you have to admire the audacity of artists who gamble on creating one epic work, rather than a lifetime of smaller pieces. They leave themselves no margin of error; it's all or nothing.

Of course, even if an artist calculates his or her allotted time accurately, they still get no guarantees. Alexander Ivanov was another artist who built his career around one major painting (The Appearance of Christ Before The People). Ivanov was called "the master of one work." He succeeded in completing his painting after twenty years, but unfortunately the painting turned out to be second rate. And who could forget artist Bill Pappas who worked methodically for ten years, from 1993 to 2003, on a single pencil drawing of Marilyn Monroe? Pappas drew every pore on her face in excruciating detail, using 20x magnification lenses. When he finished his picture on schedule, Pappas had demonstrated a great talent for precision, but little else.

The muse, it turns out, is not always flattered by good time management skills.

Many an artist produces lesser work in order to pay the rent, secretly planning to redeem themselves later. This requires them to gamble on notoriously fickle actuarial tables. Still, it is impossible to have children and remain insensitive to some of the excellent reasons for compromise.

As philosopher Walter Kaufmann suggested,

One lives better when one expects to die, say, at forty, when one says to oneself long before one is twenty: whatever I may be able to accomplish I should be able to do by then; and what I have not done by then I am unlikely to do ever. One cannot count on living until one is forty-- or thirty-- but it makes for a better life if one has a rendezvous with death.

WORDS THAT SHOULDN'T BE ILLUSTRATED

2011-03-23T16:22:00.016-04:00

God separating light from darkness in the book of Genesis (Michelangelo)

Illustrations can enhance words, but not everyone is interested in having their words enhanced. In fact, translating words into pictures sometimes provokes people to violence. This reaction is a tribute to the power of illustration (although many illustrators, given a choice, might prefer the second prize).

Some reasons for hostile reactions to pictures are obvious. Thomas Nast's political cartoons were more effective than written articles in ending the corrupt regime of William "Boss" Tweed of New York. Tweed is reported to have cursed, "Stop them damn pictures! I don't care what the papers write about me. My constituents can't read, but they can see the pictures."

Later when Tweed was convicted of fraud, he fled to Spain where the authorities reportedly used one of Nast's cartoons to identify and capture him.

Another reason for objecting to illustrations is that they can seem more vividly offensive than the words they illustrate. Norman Lindsay's illustrations for the classic play Lysistrata were censored although Aristophanes' words were not.

Similarly, the authorities censored Aubrey Beardsley's illustrations of Oscar Wilde's play, Salome. Such pictures can cross the line even when their accompanying text does not.

Readers are free to imagine anything words describe, as long as the images remain in their heads. Once an artist puts those images in tangible form, he confirms his enemies' worst suspicisions about what goes on in his lurid mind, and provides them with evidence to use against him at trial.

Some argue that pictures are more dangerous than words because they are more accessible to young, impressionable audiences. The slightly demented Frederic Wertham urged censorship of comic books in the 1950s out of concern that pictures containing plural meanings might corrupt America's youth.

When I first read Wertham's book as a boy, I couldn't figure out what I was supposed to be seeing here. Now that I understand, he seems even crazier than he did back then.

But perhaps the most interesting argument against illustration is that certain subjects are too important to be pictured at all. That's the topic I'd like to chat about this week. According to this view, any visual form created by human imagination can only limit or debase certain subjects, no matter how talented the artist, no matter how moral, respectful or chaste the image. We get this argument most often from theological circles, where true believers argue that drawing or painting a divine subject necessarily limits something that by definition is unlimited.

The Prophet Muhammad is repeatedly quoted as saying that artists should burn in hell for painting pictures:

Verily the most grievously tormented people amongst the denizens of Hell on the Day of Resurrection would be the painters of pictures...." (Sahih Muslim vol.3, no.5271)

The painter of these pictures will be punished on the Day of Resurrection....'" (Bukhari vol.9, book 93 no.646)

Last year, gentle Seattle cartoonist Molly Norris, dismayed by growing censorship of drawings of the Prophet Muhammad, suggested a "Draw Mohammed Day." She did not urge that the drawings be disrespectful or unflattering, only that artists exercise their right to draw anything, including Muhammad, lest artists wake up one day and discover that their rights had disappeared altogether. Her impertinence earned Norris a death sentence from the thoroughly demented cleric Anwar al-Awlaki who instructed his followers, "her proper abode is Hellfire."

Pakistanis burning cartoonist Norris in effigy

While this position appears contrary to mainstream Islamic thought about pictures, the resulting threats against Norris' life were sadly real. Her employer reported that on the advice of the FBI, Norris was "moving, changing her name, and essentially wiping away her identity."

The notion that drawing an object can be a sacriligious act is not confined to Islam. This is an age old battle, spanning many religions, between cataphatic and apophatic theology. The Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:3) contain a pretty broad prohibition against creating likenesses:

Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image, nor any manner of likeness, of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.

Different versions of this prohibition recur throughout the Old Testament, where we learn that a wrathful God may go so far as to punish an artist's great grandchildren.

God creating the earth in the book of Genesis (Michelangelo)

The Commandment against making a likeness carried through to early Christianity; it's difficult to find Christian images prior to the third century, at which point many Christians seem to have accepted that illustrations of holy subjects could be an important tool in promoting the young religion. Centuries later, there were still traditionalists who feared that images could violate the second Commandment, resulting in idol worship. Others became alarmed because visual depictions sometimes exposed apparent inconsistencies in church dogma. There were repeated periods when religious leaders, believing that "misinterpretation of religious images often leads to heresy, banned all pictorial representations and began a systematic destruction of holy images."

It is easy to understand Boss Tweed's resentment toward political cartoons, but are there any thoughtful observations to be made about this more impassioned view that certain subjects are just too important to be pictured?

For me, the Book of Job is one of the most profound poems about the human condition. It speaks to both the religious fundamentalist and the dedicated atheist. Job searches for meaning from the whirlwind, looking for answers in a form that could make sense to his poor human brain. The whirlwind responds that there are no answers for Job, and that he'd better get accustomed to disappointment. Job learns that God has no intention of explaining himself to humans until we are able to create a bird or a fish, as God does. Discussing efforts by Job and his friends to understand the universe, Princeton's Michael Sugrue states, "the book of Job suggests that in a way, all theology is blasphemy because it seeks to make God comprehensible to the mind of man.... The answer to why God sent evil into the world is: don't ask."

I suspect opponents of sacred illustration are telling us, "don't ask" how divine things look. Don't try to define God as having a long white beard and a white bath robe with a gold "G" on the pocket. Divine subjects are inscrutable and need to be defended against callow and presumptuous artists who believe they can define the undefinable with glib visualizations.

But this seems a pretty shallow reaction to a pretty profound subject. By focusing on physical likenesses, they address the religious experience at its most superficial level. Artists such as Frazetta or R. Crumb have done powerful, inspirational-- some might even say divine-- work, but it certainly won't be found among their representational pictures of deities, which are so lame it is comical to think they could alter anyone's thinking.

Frazetta's "King of Kings"

R. Crumb's God of the Old Testament

There may be much that is sacred in art. (For example, some people claim that meditating on a large Rothko painting puts them in touch with sacred feelings.) And some art may be legitimately unsettling to some religions views. But those who claim to protect the sacred from physical likenesses may be more concerned with protecting the bureaucracy and infrastructure of religious institutions (and perhaps the prerogatives of clergy) than preserving the experience of the divine.

ONE LOVELY DRAWING, part 35

2011-03-06T15:03:00.015-05:00

This lovely, delicate drawing was the best way that Arthur Szyk (1894-1951) knew to kill his enemies.

After the Nazis invaded his native Poland in 1939, Szyk took refuge in the United States. There he learned that the Nazis had killed his brother, then turned their loving attention to his mother:

[M]y beloved seventy-year-old mother, Eugenia Szyk, was taken from the ghetto of Lodz to the Nazi furnaces of Maidanek. With her, voluntarily went her faithful servant the good Christian, Josefa, a Polish peasant. Together, hand in hand, they were burned alive.

In anguish, Szyk followed the evidence smuggled out of Europe that the Nazis were methodically slaughtering helpless civilian populations:

A small, balding, bookish man with weak eyes, Szyk was not much of a threat to the Nazis as a soldier. His strongest weapon was his art, and it became his purpose in life to rouse the slumbering west to the genocide taking place in Europe. He worked obsessively, attacking the Nazis with hundreds of miniature drawings.

Those drawings soon gained the attention of the public. His work appeared on the cover of Time, Colliers and other popular magazines. It became an effective tool for fundraising for war bonds, training soldiers and rousing corporate awareness for the war effort. He even gained the attention of Hitler, who put a price on Szyk's head. Eleanor Roosevelt described him as a "one man army."

(There is an old Latin maxim: "The flea, too, has wrath.")

Szyk's drawings were small (this original is approximately 5" x 6") and combined subtle gradations in tone with delicate, lacy lines. His designs were consistently beautiful:

Many artists would have reacted to Szyk's experience with a howl of pain. They might thrash around with wild, emotional brush strokes; they might make dark, bitter paintings of corpses spattered with blood. But uncontrolled rage would not have been as effective for Szyk's purposes as this lovely, painstaking drawing.

Szyk used the ornate, beautiful techniques of illuminated manuscripts, a style which projected an aura of calm civilization. This approach gave Szyk instant credibility over his barbaric foes. The careful beauty of his work lured viewers who might normally disbelieve or avert their eyes from angry propaganda. It persuaded them to linger, and to believe.

Szyk's great artistic strength was his ability to harness his powers, channeling unbearable agony and despair into millions of precise, miniature lines.

JOE DE MERS' TONSORIAL PARLOR AND ABSTRACT ART GALLERY

2011-02-27T14:00:00.001-05:00

Joe De Mers (1910-1984) illustrated women's magazines in the 1940s and 1950s, a market characterized by simplified pictures of pretty girls against plain backgrounds.

Later generations would look down on what Robert Weaver ridiculed as "candy box" illustration. Jim Silke accurately noted, "that style was derisively called the 'big head school of illustration,' a name derived from the fact that every picture was dominated by a huge close up of a beautiful woman...." Illustrator Al Parker explained the popularity of such illustrations with tasteless audiences:

Readers demand pretty people in pretty settings forming a pretty picture. The larger your audience, the more limited its taste. It prefers subject matter to design and girls to men. It wants no message other than girls are cute and men like cute girls.

At the same time De Mers was catering to popular taste, genius artists such as De Kooning, Franz Kline, Joan Mitchell and Diebenkorn were boldly experimenting with abstract paintings. Compare the freedom, vigor and originality of De Kooning's brilliant masterpiece:

...with these details from the bourgeois pablum being served up by De Mers:

Errrr.....

Umm....

See the difference?

THE BEGGARSTAFF BROTHERS

2011-02-21T07:35:00.001-05:00

In 1894, Scottish artist James Pryde teamed with English artist William Nicholson to create posters under the pseudonym "the Beggarstaff Brothers" (a name they found on a torn sack of grain in an old stable yard).

Pryde and Nicholson brought very different perspectives to their partnership. Pryde was tall and heavy, while Nicholson was short and thin. Pryde grew up in a noisy, eccentric household of "violent views" while Nicholson was raised in a "gentle, well-bred, well-mannered atmosphere." Pryde was outspoken and gregarious, while Nicholson was quiet and detached. Pryde worked very casually while Nicholson was serious and driven. Recalled Pryde, "our opinions on artistic matters differed widely."

If those weren't enough causes for friction, Nicholson fell in love with Pryde's younger sister against her mother's wishes. Colin Campbell's excellent book on the Beggarstaffs reports that "after a courtship conducted largely, it seems, among the coalsacks in the cellar of the Pryde's Bloomsbury home, the couple married in secret at Ruslip on 25 April 1893."

Who could ask for a better foundation for an artistic partnership?

Yet, their clashing perspectives seem to have stimulated them to abandon the dominant styles of their day in favor of a radical new approach. The Beggarstaffs transformed the history of poster art with a series of bold, simple designs using flat images and silhouettes.

In 1896, an arts magazine interviewed the Brothers on their technique:

One of us gets an idea, said Pryde. We talk it over, the other suggests an addition, the matter is reconsidered, perhaps shelved away for months. Finally we draw the design very roughly with charcoal on big sheets of paper, and then place the lines and masses in their places on the groundwork, which is generally of ordinary brown paper.

Like Matisse after them, the Biggerstaffs found that it helped simplify their designs if they worked with shapes cut out of colored paper.

Not surprisingly, Pryde maintained that a pen knife was best for this purpose while Nicholson favored scissors.

The Beggarstaff team only stayed together for three short years. They were a commercial failure, as clients were not sure what to make of these bold new images. But their designs became hugely influential with artists in Europe and America, and helped usher in the Early Modern era which replaced the highly ornate art nouveau and arts and crafts movements.

Pryde and Nicholson separated, turning to painting and other artistic pursuits to earn a living. They never again succeeded in achieving the quality they found during their brief but remarkable collaboration.

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY TO ALL!

2011-02-14T00:35:00.001-05:00

MARY PERKINS ON STAGE, volume 8

2011-02-10T17:15:00.002-05:00

The newest volume of the Classic Comics Press reprint of Leonard Starr's comic strip, On Stage, has just been released and publisher Charles Pelto was kind enough to invite me to write the introduction. I am a huge fan of the strip, and the period covered by this volume (1966-1967) is one of my favorite periods.

In honor of this 8th volume in the series, my introduction lists the top 8 reasons why On Stage was one of the very greatest story strips of all time. Those reasons are:

1. It was the single most literate and erudite story strip

2. Starr's mastery of light and shadow was on a par with the best comic artists

3. It was the sexiest comic strip (at least, for real adults)

4. Starr's drawings had great structural integrity

5. Its dry wit and humor were unmatched by any other story strip

6. Its pictures were beautifully designed

7. Its relationships were among the richest and most mature in comic strips

8. Starr excelled at complex facial expressions to illustrate complex story lines

Do you disagree? Do you have different reasons? Get the book if you care to read my arguments.

THE LAST COURT PAINTERS

2011-02-07T18:00:00.003-05:00

Illustrator Bernie Fuchs standing behind President Kennedy at the White House

Once upon a time, kings and pharaohs sought the most talented artists in the land to serve as court painters. In an era before photography (and often before literacy) royal patrons of the arts knew they would be remembered by the images of their accomplishments.

Akhenaten's distinctive face was immortalized by his royal artists

Goya, Van Eyck, Rubens, Titian, Velazquez, Holbein and others found steady employment as court painters; they received a regular salary, ate well, and got to live in nicer surroundings than their peers in the art guild. Sometimes they went beyond capturing the face of the king to putting an aesthetic face on the entire kingdom.

But gradually emperors stopped sponsoring artists. The Medici Popes and Dukes who had once taken such pride in being represented by brilliant artists-- Michelangelo, Leonardo, Botticelli, Fra Angelico-- ended their patronage. Corporations emerged as the new centers of economic power and became the primary sponsors of art. The types of artists who once painted military victories for nobles found work painting for shampoo companies and car manufacturers.

Even though the era of court painters is over, we still see occasional flashes where an artist's strong voice helps articulate the identity of a leader or the style of the kingdom.

Dwight Eisenhower's presidency (1952-1960) was a conservative, traditional period so it was natural that his most iconic portrait was captured by Norman Rockwell-- an artist whose work embodied the traditional American values of the first half of the 20th century.

There is no better known painting of Eisenhower than this image from the cover of the Saturday Evening Post.

But as John Kennedy became president in 1961, a warm spring thaw was spreading across the country. The culture began an exciting period of innovation and experimentation.

Note the dramatic contrast between Rockwell's portrait of Eisenhower and Bernie Fuchs' iconic portraits of Kennedy just a few years later:

Fuchs' dynamic images of Kennedy were warmly embraced by the Kennedy clan. The painting of Kennedy on his boat (above) hangs today in the home of Kennedy's sister, Ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith. Kennedy's counselor and speechwriter, Ted Sorensen, kept another painting by Fuchs on the wall of his office until the day he died, a few months ago. And when Sotheby's auctioned off the personal possessions of Kennedy's widow, Jacqueline Onassis, there were two Fuchs images among them. Accurately or not, Fuchs' artistic perspective was the way many in Camelot chose to perceive their era.

Fuchs in the White House rose garden 1962

A few years later when Fuchs returned to the White House to paint President Lyndon Johnson's portrait, he found the personality of the government had changed sharply. The artistic style which was so appropriate for Kennedy was not as warmly received by the more frosty Johnson.

Fuchs delivering his portrait of Lyndon Johnson in the oval office

Today it is difficult to imagine a leader anywhere who would turn to the arts to help establish their image . The triumph of video and the changed receptivity of the public are obviously important reasons for this transformation (although the lowered taste of rulers and the reduced ambitions of artists probably have something to do with it).

For a sense of just how far presidential portraits have sunk in our era, consider this dreadful portrait of Barack Obama:

The artist Shepard Fairey (shown here being applauded by trained seals) lifted his image from a copyrighted news photograph. When confronted with his theft, Fairey admitted that he had lied to the court and tried to destroy the evidence. Nevertheless, the fawning art critic and "postmodern poet" Peter Schjeldahl wrote an embarrassing review for the New Yorker in which he called Fairey's poster "the most efficacious American political illustration since 'Uncle Sam Wants You.'"

In such an environment, perhaps it is fitting that the era of court painters is behind us.

ARTISTS AT WAR, part two

2011-01-29T15:18:00.002-05:00

The illustrator Harry Everett Townsend (1879-1941) was born on a small farm in Illinois. As a young boy he showed early talent, painting signs for local farmers on the delivery route for his father's peddling wagon.

But farm life was too confining for Townsend. As a teenager, he struck out on his bicycle for the big city and when he got to Chicago, enrolled in the Art Institute where he studied under Lorado Taft. But Townsend remained restless and after two years he moved on to Wilmington Delaware where he trained under the famed Howard Pyle. From there he made his way to Europe to study briefly at the Academie Moderne in Paris.

When he turned 25, Townsend married and seemed to settle down as an illustrator working in New York for magazines such as Scribner's, Harper's and Century.

Century Magazine

But Townsend remained hungry to see the larger world, and when World War I flared up, Townsend volunteered to cover it. He wrote, "I had gotten drunk, as it were, with the future pictorial possibilities in what I saw, and what my imagination saw, in the warfare that was so soon to come."

Townsend was one of eight artists chosen by the U.S. government to be official "war artists" accompanying the Armed Expeditionary Forces. (Other AEF artists included two other Pyle students, Harvey Dunn and W.J. Aylward). Townsend's war diary records his excitement about his upcoming adventure:

I left New York in a blinding snow, into the submarine zone with its constant alarms, and through it. My trip through London... with an air raid thrown in.... and the nervous excitement of finding myself suddenly in the war zone, for, while one realized at all times the dangers on the sea, one really felt he had arrived when he found himself in the midst of the bursting of enemy bombs and the sight of enemy planes....

It didn't take long for Townsend to witness the effect of those "bursting enemy bombs:"

Everywhere among the blownup trenches and in the shellholes are pieces of what were once men. Here and there, a whole or a piece of bone; here and there a shoe with a foot still in it.

In addition, the incessant rain and cold spoiled many of his artistic ambitions. Yet, Townsend drew a series of powerful pictures such as this poster:

"Refugees fleeing a storm tossed area, with all the sorrow and misery and pathos that went with it...."

As brutal as his experience was, Townsend believed there was no substitute for an artist witnessing his subject personally:

In hindsight, Tragic and moving... But I knew that not to have seen it during the conflict was not to have seen it as it really was, even for pictorial reference... And I am thankful I was there and I am conscious of the opportunity I had to see and gather material and, better than the actual material, the impressions, spiritual and material, that alone can furnish the inspiration for a convincing pictorial record of what the great struggle was like.

Townsend's wartime experience seemed to have an impact on his style, replacing his light and airy drawings for Century Magazine with a bolder, darker outlook.

Don Pittenger has suggested that great war art is usually not created in the heat of battle, but only afterward, a safe distance from the fighting. Townsend seems to have agreed with this. He wrote after the war, "now I felt ready to achieve something of my ambitions, counting as of little, even ephemeral value , the things we had been able to do during the time we were so nervously, yet energetically, storing up for the future.... Perhaps the greatest pictures of the war can only come with time."

Unfortunately, the U.S. government had neither the time nor the budget nor the interest to commission "the greatest pictures of the war." One suspects that the government was never interested in "great pictures" so much as it was interested in effective pictures for the war effort. In either event, the eight war artists were quickly disbanded and sent home to their civilian lives.

In truth, Townsend seemed to have little interest in pursuing those "greatest pictures" either. He wanted nothing more than to return to normalcy. He settled down in the small town of Norwalk, Connecticut where he bought an old barn to use as a studio, painting domestic scenes and teaching art. And he never moved again.

NEW BOOK ON ROBERT FAWCETT

2011-01-23T15:08:00.003-05:00

At long last, a book devoted to the life and art of the great illustrator Robert Fawcett has been released by the art publisher, Auad Publishing.

It is a hard cover 9x12" book with a dust jacket, 182 deluxe pages, and a special foldout for Fawcett's well known Civil War panorama. The book was a labor of love for the publisher, who selected and edited the numerous color and black and white images used in the book. Those who know Mr. Auad know he spent years tracking down hard-to-find tearsheets and originals of Fawcett's art in order to make this the definitive collection of the famed draftsman's work.

The book has an introduction by Walt Reed and the text is by yours truly. For a look at sample pages, or to order the book, go to the Auad Publishing web site.

THE TASTE OF METALLIC KISSES

2011-01-19T11:11:00.006-05:00

What topic has been more intriguing for artists than the sympathy of mortal flesh for mortal flesh?

From the beginning it has been Topic A: "Always Interesting."

Prehistoric kiss, 3500BCE

Nefertiti's kiss, 1350 BCE

John Gannam, Good Housekeeping 1954

While the ballet between living organisms continues to fascinate, the more recent relationship between organisms and machines has emerged to command the attention of artists, sometimes in profound ways.

After the industrial revolution, artists began to look at engines, gears and wires (which were born with a function but no inherent design) and integrate them into nature's laws of design as if they were some new species of flower. For example, the first locomotives were raucous, clanking intruders that frightened horses and scarred the landscape but artists such as Turner and Monet began to place them in an aesthetic framework.

And consider how artists projected notions of beauty onto flying machines:

Illustrator Henry Reuterdahl imagined airships of the future for one of the earliest science fiction stories. In the following picture, a beam of light zaps an airship over the ocean at night. Reuterdahl did not strive for technical accuracy but instead depicted the machine using the same naturalistic approach he used for the sea gull.

"She falls stern first, our beam upon her; slides like a lost soul down that pitiless ladder of light, and the Atlantic takes her."

N.C. Wyeth, too, used his powerful imagination to conjure up this lyrical vision of early aircraft:

Colliers

As machines have expanded into more important and intricate roles, their relationships with human beings have become more open ended. Artists' observations have graduated beyond the external designs of machines, sometimes assigning them character and personality.

Compare French illustrator G. Dutriac's early depiction of technology from the sky, a pyramid of light triumphing over the primitive and savage Berbers fighting on horseback in North Africa...

1911

...with Picasso's pyramid of light from a later airplane (depicted as an electric light bulb placed in the fearsome eye of a wrathful machine-deity in the sky). The two beams share a similar shape, but you can tell the moral character of the machine has changed dramatically.

Guernica

Just as God is supposed to have breathed life into Adam, thereby transforming inert dust into a living being, artists imbue lifeless machines with character, meaning and even moral content. Artists "design" the character of the machine, and then take as their subject the relationship between the character of a human and the character of the machine.

For you skeptics out there saying, "yeah, but machines will never make it past first base in their relationships with humans," I refer you to the work of Ashley Wood, who has built a career on the aesthetics of juxtaposing the tender places of nubile women against giant war robots:

Or painter Phil Hale, who vividly pits human muscle and sinew against machinery in an endless, iconic struggle.

Living organisms now have no choice but to share the stage with machines. It remains to be seen whether their relationship offers artists opportunities for Shakespearean level profundity, or whether this new relationship is just the thrill of encountering something different that by the way vibrates.

Perhaps our relationships with machines only appear more profound as relationships between humans become more superficial. When mortal flesh is downgraded to the status of mere meat, interactions with machines can begin to seem pretty interesting by comparison.

WEALTH FOR THE NEW YEAR

2011-01-02T09:33:00.000-05:00

[Blogger reports that today is my 300th post. I never expected to take this blog past 50, but what started as a fun way to highlight some under-appreciated artists, tell a few truths in support of those who already know them, and share some good stories became an unexpected source of stimulating dialogues and rewarding acquaintances. Many thanks to all who have participated, and happy new year to all!]

Ralph Waldo Emerson just couldn't get over how cool a library is:

Consider what you have in the smallest chosen library. A company of the wisest and wittiest men that could be picked out of all civil countries in a thousand years have set in best order the results of their learning and wisdom. The men themselves were hid and inaccessible, solitary and impatient of interruption, fenced by etiquette; but the thought which they did not uncover to their bosom friend is here written out in transparent words for us.

Today it's even better. We not only access the "wisest and wittiest men," but women as well, and from "uncivil" countries. We don't even need to go to a library: we can access these riches from our computer.

In a year of recession and high unemployment, with economic wealth increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few at the top, I am heartened by the artists who recognize alternative kinds of wealth freely available from libraries and museums.

When the great draftsman Noel Sickles was asked where he learned to draw, he responded, "In a library." Sickles had no formal art education but was able to teach himself from images he found in the public library in Chillicothe, Ohio:

I studied not only American cartooning, but all over the world: European, particularly. I became acquainted with all of the various types of cartooning. I went back and studied Simplicissimus and Jugend [magazines] and so on, and that got me more and more into becoming aware of illustration. And I then did the same thing there. I went through, well, the entire background, as much as I could find.

Building from these examples, Sickles develop formidable artistic powers:

Imagine what he could have done if he'd had the resources of the internet.

As an impoverished child, Albert Dorne couldn't afford food, let alone art classes. At age 10, he began cutting school 3 or 4 days a week to sneak off to the Metropolitan Museum of Art where he taught himself to draw by copying the pictures. The determined little boy soon became well known to and admired by the museum staff.

After he became a famous illustrator, Dorne did everything he could to make sure that resources would be available for later generations of children.

Libraries are not relics of the past. One of today's best illustrators, Phil Hale, said:

I grew up in a town with a terrific traditional library, and a great collection of art books including many Illustrators annuals.... But also books about Brandywine and other early twentieth-century movements... The library was hugely important to me.

There's nothing dated about Hale's sensational work:

Arthur Koestler was convinced that the right book will find us in time to fulfill our destiny. He recounted how, as a depressed and impoverished failure in Paris in the 1930s, he decided to commit suicide. He turned on the gas in his apartment and lay down on his bug stained mattress. "But as I was settling down on it, a book crashed on my head from the wobbly shelf. It nearly broke my nose, so I got up [and] turned off the gas." The book turned out to be about the Nazis coming to power in Germany. Said Koestler, "a more drastic pointer to the despicableness of my antics could hardly be imagined." He regrouped and went on to became a world famous author with a huge impact on the international politics of his day.

We can't always count on the proper book landing on our nose. We need the vision to recognize value in its potential form, and the initiative to transform it into kinetic form. Those traits are not among the advantages provided by wealth and privilege. Libraries are the great equalizer.

EYES, OLD AND NEW

2010-12-27T09:55:00.000-05:00

It is a fine thing to view the world with the fresh eyes of a child.

Frankenthaler

The colors are brighter and motives are purer.

Olitski

No wonder Goethe's Faust was ready to trade his soul to recover his lost innocence:

Give me back youth's golden prime
When my own spirit too was growing
When from my heart unbidden rhymes
Gushed forth, a fount forever flowing;
The world was shrouded in a haze
The bud still promised wondrous powers
And I would cull a thousand flowers
With which all valleys were ablaze
Nothing I had, and yet profusion
The lust for truth, the pleasure in illusion.
Give back the passions unabated,
That deepest joy, alive with pain,
Love's power and the strength of hatred,
Give back my youth to me again.

But it is also a fine thing to view the world through the eyes of experience.

Raphael, the School of Athens

Experience enables us to get past the inanities of youth and start addressing the complexities of life. The world often loses charm in the process, but as James Gould Cozzens warned, it is foolish to try to hide in childish delusions too long:

Refusal to face the verities, though not without immediate satisfactions, carries penalties. There's a fool killer personifying the ancient principle, "Whom the gods would destroy..." in this world, and he has a list. And that's a good way to put yourself on it. Then the question is just one of time, of how soon he'll get around to you.

In the coming year we will receive many invitations to put aside wisdom so we can experience art through innocent eyes. This will always be a risky proposition as long as the fool killer walks, but sometimes surrendering our defenses is the only way to open ourselves to potentially worthwhile experiences.

Looking with new eyes as we travel familiar paths, we sometimes discover exits that our good taste previously prevented us from noticing. These exits may lead directly to the fool killer's prize flower garden, but they may also lead to discoveries of real value. Our challenge for 2011 will be to see with eyes both old and new.

ONE LOVELY DRAWING, part 34

2010-12-19T20:16:00.000-05:00

The National Gallery of Art reports that "For several months in the winter of 1816-1817, Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld vied with his friends, brothers Ferdinand and Friedrich Olivier, in making precise drawings of dried leaves."

Julius created this tiny pen and ink drawing as part of their competition:

What a blissful way to remain warm: rubbing your impressions of nature up against each other.

There were plenty of dried leaves in 1816, which was known as "the year without a summer." Julius and his friends, isolated from the world and immersed in their game, had no way of knowing that on the other side of the planet, the most deadly explosion in recorded history had taken place: the volcanic eruption of Mt. Tambora in Indonesia. This "super-colossal explosion" was heard over 2,000 kilometers away. It belched massive quantities of volcanic ash into the sky, blocking the sun and creating volcanic winter as far away as Europe where Julius sat peacefully drawing. Leaves died and crops failed, causing the worst famine of the 19th century.

Meanwhile, different types of explosions were taking place in the political realm. The great Napoleon Bonaparte who had shaken governments to their knees and cast Europe into turmoil had recently met his downfall in the Battle of Waterloo. In 1816, Napoleon's entire family was banished from France forever.

The epic events taking place outside while Julius and his friends focused on dry leaves were so huge and momentous, they make us stop to ponder the grand sweep of things.

Yet, if you are seeking a finite expression of the infinite you are more likely to find it in this gentle little drawing by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld.

RICHARD THOMPSON

2010-12-13T11:32:00.000-05:00

Richard Thompson's drawings make me happy, not just because he is so darn funny but because his work is a daily reminder that a beautiful line and a lively intellect are still enough to succeed in this wicked world. No software, Dolby sound or corporate financing necessary; just pure observations about human nature scratched onto bristol with a dip pen nib.

Thompson is an illustrator / cartoonist / writer in the tradition of James Thurber. If Ronald Searle and Bill Watterson got married and had a baby which was raised by Crockett Johnson, that would be Thompson.

His illustrations have appeared in the New Yorker, The National Geographic, the Atlantic Monthly and other publications. I love this smart, witty series of drawings about superstition that appeared in the Washington Post:

Look at the marvelous way he handles the horizon line in this next image:

Thompson's syndicated comic strip, cul de sac, is regularly the most delightful space on the newspaper comic page. With the demise of Calvin & Hobbes, I feared that every possible comic strip idea had been exhausted, and that we were now doomed to an endless loop of formulaic gags of the type found in Garfield, Cathy and Family Circus. (The world's leading recycling industry is not Waste Management Inc. but newspaper comic syndicates.) But cul de sac views the world with a child-like freshness and offers a new, recognizably true insight every day. This is really hard work; it requires high standards and a hyper-active conscience. But Thompson understands the importance of making the end result appear effortless, and cul de sac floats lighter than air.

In the immortal words of Jessica Rabbit, "He makes me laugh."

HARVEY DUNN (1884 - 1952)

2010-12-10T03:01:00.000-05:00

Harvey Dunn was a tall, muscular prairie farmer with a rare artistic gift. He started out plowing buffalo trails into farmland on the South Dakota frontier and ended up as one of the giants of the golden age of illustration.

A teacher at an a agricultural School noticed Dunn's talent and persuaded the 17 year old to travel to Chicago to train at the Art Institute. There he came to the attention of the legendary Howard Pyle, who brought Dunn to Wilmington Delaware where Pyle ran a school for gifted young illustrators. Among all of Pyle's talented students, Dunn was the young Prometheus who became inspired by Pyle's gift of teaching and passed it along to a whole new generation of artists, from Dean Cornwell and Mead Schaeffer to Saul Tepper and Harold von Schmidt. Dunn returned regularly to his South Dakota home for inspiration later in life.

Here are examples of Dunn's lovely work:

Until this week, Harvey Dunn was the last remaining giant among the "golden age" illustrators without a book memorializing his work. Howard Pyle, Norman Rockwell, N.C. Wyeth, Maxfield Parrish, J.C. Leyendecker, Dean Cornwell and others have substantial art monographs-- some of them have several.

I am happy to report that this gap has now been filled.

Walt Reed, the world's leading authority on illustration, has completed a splendid new book, Harvey Dunn: Illustrator and Painter of the Pioneer West. The book brings together an excellent collection of Dunn's art (367 plates, 294 of them in color) often with new photographs from the original paintings. I thought I knew Dunn's work, but this book came as a revelation to me (which is, I guess, a primary reason for reading a book). The book also presents Dunn's teaching methods and demonstrates the prodigious results of that teaching, with an illustrated selection of Dunn's more successful students.

I have always enjoyed Reed's writings for the integrity of his scholarship, the clarity of his prose, and especially for his impeccable judgment.

Just as sculptor Gutzon Borglum chiseled the faces of great presidents from the granite cliffs of South Dakota's Mount Rushmore, Walt Reed has done more than anyone else to define the Mt. Rushmore of great illustrators of the 20th century. His work is as solid and reliable as granite. I highly recommend his new book to everyone interested in this field.

ART THAT OUTCLASSES ITS SUBJECT MATTER

2010-11-30T20:40:00.000-05:00

The 1980 movie Popeye was widely panned by critics. (One of the more favorable reviews called it a "mess of a movie" and "unintelligible.") It quickly disappeared from the theaters but not before MAD Magazine artist Mort Drucker dutifully captured it in a parody.

Drucker drew many important subjects for MAD, but he was also assigned to depict much of the raw sewage of American popular culture: third rate television shows that quickly imploded and movies that should never have been made. (Remember Alf? Who's The Boss? The Flying Nun?) By the time he drew Popeye, Drucker had been slogging through such subject matter for almost 25 years.

Yet, he drew these pictures with the same loving care others might reserve for the immortal themes on ancient Greek vases. Look at Drucker's beautiful work for Popeye:

I am awed by Drucker's talent, but separately awed by his dedication and consistently high standards over many decades.

Notice in the panel below how Drucker continued his drawing beyond the panel borders. The man couldn't stop himself.

Click on these drawings for close ups of a master at work.

Look how convincingly he conveys great mass in his figures:

Notice how adroitly he controls the architecture of this complex scene, and still has the capacity left over to add a gratuitous fish climbing the stairs:

While Drucker was drawing for MAD, the other two great caricaturists of the latter half of the 20th century, David Levine and Al Hirschfeld were drawing more highbrow subjects-- great authors and composers-- for prestigious periodicals such as the New York Review of Books and the New York Times.

Many think that art is enhanced by association with prestigious subjects. They presume that a drawing of Dostoevsky must somehow be superior to a drawing of Joan Collins, or that a caricature in the New York Review of Books must be more culturally significant than a caricature in MAD. One look at Drucker's glorious drawings from Popeye tells you it ain't so. As far as I am concerned, Drucker is the best all around artist of the bunch, hands down. His prolific career is an astounding artistic accomplishment and I think more of him, rather than less, for achieving it with subject matter such as Popeye.