But some lines pause along the way. Let's consider why.
Paul Coker Jr.'s line stops, digs down, then springs forward again.
Like Coker's line, Robert Fawcett's line here lingers at strategic spots on its walk:
Fawcett doesn't pause out of uncertainty. Rather, he punctuates his line as a way of emphasizing his commitment.
Here we see Ronald Searle's line stopping, backing up, and digging in again like successive blows by a sculptor chiseling into stone:
Searle's technique adds character and musculature to his line.
Another good example is Mort Drucker's trademark bouncing line.
Drucker's line loops back, bestowing a springiness that could never be achieved in lines that walk the shortest path between two points.
These lines all walk with a hesitation step. They're very different from the flowing, sinuous line of artists such as Hirschfeld.
The marks left at these stopping points reflect the added pressure of a wrist and the increased flow of ink. But mostly they show viewers that an active brain has chosen to renew its commitment to a line at this precise spot. They display a series of choices rather than a single choice. They are the graphic equivalent of leaving behind a trail of exclamation marks.
In the right hands, these choices can greatly increase the character and strength of a line.
25 comments:
I'm glad you added Hirschfeld -- gives context to the other examples.
I wonder how much those various line practices are due to personality versus training.
Or due to illustration fads/fashions. There was a time in the late 1950s when jerky lines were all the rage. Besides some of the artists mentioned in this post, I can think of others such as Harvey Schmidt and David Stone Martin. Not to forget Ben Shahn, whose drawings might have been the source of it all.
This is a great post! Line art has always been my passion
That great "dry-brush drag" of Fawcett is something I can look at and study for hours.
Donald is so right about the "jerky line" fad that went viral in the 50s. It was easy to do and look like you were in fashion.
I like the Klee quote David, it remains me how much geometry is at the heart of the visual.
Thanks for telling me how you got invoked with these artists on the last thread. Very interesting, I still think it would make for a good post.
I really like the Crooker and the Mort Drucker drawings wow! Lively line and such spatial clarity. The space around the figure in the Drucker drawing can be felt, the shadow from the arm onto the coat, the hand behind the watch (an pointing at the wrist watch). I feel like i could fly a little miniature plane all around the figure, Unfortunately, Drucker's drawing makes the Hirschfeld drawing look plodding and monotonous and flat in contrast.
Donald Pittenger-- I'm guessing that these distinctive lines are the product of personality more than training. To me, they suggest a personal taste for a broader line, almost a cross between a brush and a pen.
Paul Sullivan-- Me too; I'm definitely a "drawing" kind of guy. And Fawcett found a way to make more varied marks on paper than just about any other illustrator of his day.
Tom-- You and I may be the only two people in the world to rate Hirschfeld and Drucker that way, but boy do I agree with you. I like Hirschfeld, but Drucker did twenty caricatures in the time it took Hirschfeld to do one-- Drucker did them from all different angles, in all different lighting with all different expressions to satisfy the underlying story, and he combined those great faces with a far superior draftsmanship for a wide variety of subjects (from hands and figures to buildings and machines). What Hirschfeld had going for him was a long life and a more prestigious forum.
David, I like your thought about "prestigious forum."
I think it can be applied to illustrators who had the ear (eye, actually) of Saturday Evening Post editors back in its heyday. Guys who were very good and featured in Collier's, etc. could have decent careers, but often didn't have quite the degree of fame as those in the Post's stable.
Of course there were illustrators who did work for both, but making the Post gave them the gold ring.
As for the Women's mags ... I'm not so sure of the pecking order. My mother subscribed to both the Ladies' Home Journal and McCall's, but they were largely off my radar. I think LHJ was tops into the 50s, but McCall's gained steam later on. I have a folder of pages torn from the latter containing Bernie Fuchs' work, if that's sufficient evidence to prove my point.
Speaking of Fuchs, I just scrolled through my file of his work and only turned up one drawing that might be partly ink-based, though some or most was in pencil. It was a Cointreau ad in a November issue of Holiday, but I don't have the year (probably early 60s). Anyway, his style there was partly exploratory like those in your post.
I adore Drucker and agree with every ounce of praise heaped on him here. But what Hirschfeld was doing was every bit a match, qualitatively, albeit with a different emphasis.
Elaine May said, famously, that comedy comes from detailing every little thing bit by bit. It doesn't come from a wide, sweeping view of a situation or person, which is more the bag of romanticization (inuited synthesized appreciation.) Comedy therefore has a strong relationship to intellectualism; both reject (or wish to reject) induction and intuition in favor of deduction and concatenation; the strategy of building up the comprehension from many accumulated minute critical inspections.
But whereas intellection creates undramatic, circuit like truth-relationships between acutely observed facts and micro-arguments, Comedy finds the silly aspects within the acute observations and then distorts them all to hell; exaggerates them so they balloon way out of proportion. In other words comedy is inherently unfair, it only mines reality for a certain kind of substance and leaves the rest in the mountain.
Thus, if you think about it, the unfairness of comedy is actually its own kind of romanticism. The main difference, again, being that comedy finds truth in the minutiae, while Romanticism finds truth in the expanse of breadth, the larger relationships.
However, no Art (or intellectual argument actually) can do without either detail or breadth. So even the most hyper-critical comedic presentation will have an overarching truth-structure, and even the most romantic sweeping narrative will have tiny moments that border on the comical.
And this, I think, is where Drucker and Hirschfeld meet each other in comparison. Drucker builds out his larger truth from the accumulation of bunched comedic nitpicking, while Hirschfeld starts with a caricature of a larger truth, nails it down, and then lets his details fall out the sweep of composition. Each man is caricaturing reality at a different level or scale of abstraction, each equally valid.
I mean, it should be appreciated that the extraordinarily observed romantic essence of this Hirschfeld is utterly beyond Drucker’s microscopic, comic interests. Yet, there is still humor in it.
I saw a clip of HIrchfeld drawing and was surprise he was drawing in tiny line segments almost scratchy and building what look like long fluid lines from lots of tiny lines. Now to be fair this was when he was really older but the end result was the same
Kev Ferrara and Dean White-- Elaine May was a smart lady but of course William Blake said (even more famously) "All sublimity is founded on minute discriminations." Blake went further: "To generalize is to be an idiot; to particularize is the alone distinction of merit.” Fortunately we are able to appreciate the greatness in both sides.
I agree with Kev that both Hirschfeld and Drucker are excellent artists in their own way. I was as surprised as Dean when I discovered that Hirschfeld painstakingly draws those long, curly lines with a series of minute scratches. I saw him doing it before, and have heard from others that he used the same approach in earlier years. That technique is very different from the impression it leaves. We romanticize long fluid strokes, and a line that varies in width based upon the pressure applied by Hirschfeld's wrist. But Hirschfeld is not the first artist who worked hard behind the scenes to create the illusion of effortless simplicity. If we started to fault artists for that, we'd have to throw out most of the practicing artists.
Kev, I am a fan of economy in drawing and I do think Drucker sometimes cluttered his pictures to a fault. I agree with you that Drucker would never have come up with the simplified form in the example you offer. However, would you agree with me that Drucker is capable of mimicking Hirschfeld so well that most people couldn't tell the difference, but Hirschfeld is not capable of mimicking Drucker because he just doesn't have the ability?
Donald Pittenger-- Here's an interesting story about the relative prestige of Collier's and the Post: Illustrator Robert Fawcett was doing work for both magazines when the Post decided to flex its prestigious muscles and told Fawcett they didn't want him working for Collier's. Contrary to all common sense, Fawcett told the Post to get stuffed and chose to work for Collier's instead. Fawcett just didn't want anyone pushing him around. It was after that separation that Fawcett did his famous Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot series for Collier's.
I agree with you that Drucker would never have come up with the simplified form in the example you offer.
Cute wording. Simplification is lossy, David. This is poetic concision. Hirschfeld really is getting to some kind of essence here that is not achievable through intellection. Drucker constantly achieves this quality of essence with his caricatures, but never with his figures or compositions, which Hirschfeld does all the time.
I agree, of course, that Hirschfeld would probably do a poorer job of aping Drucker than Drucker would do of aping Hirschfeld. Drucker did have more technical drafting chops, for sure.
"All sublimity is founded on minute discriminations." Blake went further: "To generalize is to be an idiot; to particularize is the alone distinction of merit.”
As often, Blake confuses. I mean, Blake's art and theories are replete with generalizations. In fact "all sublimity is founded on minute discrimination" is a generalization. And a poorly considered one at that. Did you quote him just to hurt my head?
David—I have to comment on that wild story about Fawcett and the Post. That fits right in with everything I've ever heard about RF! There were very few like him!
The difference you point out between these noticeable hesitating strokes and the uninterrupted Hirschfeld lines reminds me of math homework-- some teachers just wanted the right answers and other teachers insist that students "show their work."
Hirschfeld drawings can be completely arresting, but seeing many of them together can feel repetitive with many feeling outright unsuccessful. His style is so design oriented, so familiar, and he has to get so much out of every line that if something feels out of perfect harmony to me, it becomes the thing I see most. He doesn't show his work and the risk of that is high-- small missteps weigh heavily in the final piece. When Hirschfeld gets everything right it can be mind-boggling. He achieves an impressive illusion of effortlessness. When he somehow falls short, it can feel like his style is to blame and that his pose of effortlessness has been exposed.
An approach which "shows the work" more can be just as mind-boggling when everything is right. And, if missteps are in the piece, it can still delight me if more is right than wrong. Probably because when more choices are evident overall, then more wrong choices can be dismissed by my eye. Something about Drucker's work feels effortless to me and never ever has felt to me like a pose of effortlessness.
Kev Ferrara-- Perhaps you and I have a different notion of how an artist "simplifies," but even the "lossy" part, the part that requires omission and selection, prioritization and organization, strikes me as one of the most severe tests of an artist. How many artists have we dismissed as inferior because they left in too much of the wrong stuff?
Along the same lines, when I say that Drucker could simplify the same way that Hirschfeld did, I propose that Drucker well understood how to decoct content and decorate it with curlicues, not merely trace something Hirschfeld had already done. Drucker chose not to draw that way because his personal preferences lay elsewhere, in a broader more schmaltzy humor. He would not have found it satisfying to draw the way Hirschfeld did.
As for "Did you quote him just to hurt my head?"... Well, it was worth a try.
Paul Sullivan-- Yes, apparently the Post was stunned by the way their ultimatum to Fawcett blew up in their face. Fawcett was one arrogant S.O.B.
Mark-- Yes, there is a balance to be achieved between effortless and glib, or between "showing the work" and appearing labored. I suppose every artist has to find the right compromise for him or her. I know what you mean about Drucker feeling "effortless" yet there's clearly a lot of effort there-- sometimes too much effort. He always had enough energy to stuff two or three gratuitous sight gags or likenesses into the background. In those panels, I guess I'd say that Drucker feels more "fun" and "light hearted" than effortless. Drucker never seemed to skimp on his effort, yet he conveyed that he was never going to run dry on effort. He was so generous with his time that he always gave the viewer a feeling of great bounty.
I guess I'd say that Drucker feels more "fun" and "light hearted" than effortless. Drucker never seemed to skimp on his effort, yet he conveyed that he was never going to run dry on effort. He was so generous with his time that he always gave the viewer a feeling of great bounty.
"David,"
I strongly agree here! And actually, I think this general ethic of creative ebullience is the most central, crucial quality of Mad Magazine as a whole, yet its least discussed value. Even if all the jokes were lame and the cynicism canned, the art kept dancing and partying around the page like a Delta House romp. And that guaranteed every issue the same spirit of celebratory anarchy, which was its real gift to the reader. Such that when Dave Berg's turn came, his art functioned as a palette cleanser for the rest of the issue, a droll stiff crashing a party full of hilarious slobs.
David I like the way you started the post with Klee's geometry quote and have now followed up with the William Blake quote, "To generalize is to be an idiot; to particularize is the alone distinction of merit..." because in my mind both artists are summarizing the power of geometry, which has no problem with the world of specifics or generalizations.
Drucker's drawings reflect and clear understanding of general principals which allows him to capture the specifics of reality, from the way a jacket creases, to the shape of a fingernail to a bay at sunset. I think that is way his work looks effortless like Matt said. He doesn't copy his subject he understands it. He makes difficult things look easy, which makes his work so appealing. He is not hinder by reality, he delights in reality and it is felt in his mark making. He thinks in terms of the X, Y and Z axis while Hirschfield thinks in terms of the X and Y axis.
The Fred Astaire drawing you posted Kev is wonderful, but so much of the art was already defined by Fred Astaire and the cimeaphotgraher. Anyone using that source for a drawing could not help capturing some art because it is already there.
I never feel like Hirsfield address how near or far something is from the picture plane. Which is probably why he just draws the outside contour of things. He does not address the internal planes of form that give vibrancy and energy to the outside contour of form.
Drucker's works holds my attention because of the delight my eye gets from traveling through the space he has created, not because of it's comic aspect.
The catenary curve that Hirshfield drew for the pianist arm sags under its own weight. its a dead thing only being held in placed between the two points of support, the shoulder and the hand. It has no inner motivation, no spring, no resistance to gravity it lacks the energy to strike the fret board let alone to move his hand.
Like David said. "he combined those great faces with a far superior draftsmanship for a wide variety of subjects (from hands and figures to buildings and machines)." Drawing is drawing, one only has to look at one of the greatest portrait painters, Rembrandt to find some of the best drawn landscapes.
The Fred Astaire drawing you posted Kev is wonderful, but so much of the art was already defined by Fred Astaire and the cimeaphotgraher. Anyone using that source for a drawing could not help capturing some art because it is already there.
What?
An actor's face and personality are equally "already there," aren't they?
In reality, it takes a superbly imaginative, intelligent, diligent, talented, and soulful artist to be able to extract the essentials from anything at all, and translate them into the terms of Art. Whether we are talking movement, character, nature, light, emotion, space, form, etc. It is all beyond the artistic reach of all but the most able. Character and movement are two equally ephemeral qualities, equally transient effects. It naturally takes a peculiar sensitivity and memory to achieve a expressive representation of either. That Hirschfeld makes it seem to so easy, so self-evident is a tremendous testament to his talents.
If you don't believe me, google for illustrations of Fred Astaire and see if you can find one single image that compares to Hirschfeld's. What you'll find instead is a load of clunk, which should tell you something; namely that, as per the proverb about genius, Hirschfeld nailed a target in that drawing that nobody else was even able to see.
Kev ferrara-- That's as good an account of the joy of MAD Magazine as I've ever read (right down to the role of the plodding, anachronistic Dave Berg). I feel exactly the same way. Well done.
Tom wrote: "He doesn't copy his subject he understands it." I agree. People asked Drucker how it was possible for him to capture celebrity faces from so many different angles with such different lighting without reference photos or videos (remember, this was all in the days before the internet). He responded that once he understood the face he could rotate it, change expressions, lighting, etc. Drucker's answer was very similar to the answer of another superb draftsman, Noel Sickles. Sickles would stare at a stagecoach until he understood its engineering; then he could imagine what it looked like from any angle. He'd draw a helicopter's view of a wild fight scene on a runaway stagecoach with no reference photography. Jeff MacNelly was another one who could just rotate the subject matter in his brain. I think it requires a very special kind of mind.
But as Degas said, "if a man can't define himself how do you expect me to define him."
"Whether we are talking movement, character, nature, light, emotion, space, form, etc. It is all beyond the artistic reach of all but the most able. Character and movement are two equally ephemeral qualities, equally transient effects. It naturally takes a peculiar sensitivity and memory to achieve a expressive representation of either."
I agree with what you wrote Kev, but what makes you think he used his memory? I immediately assume it was drawn from a photo. Maybe it wasn't, I don't know.
"An actor's face and personality are equally "already there," aren't they?"
Yes Kev, that's true but the gesture and the grace of the movement, the tilt of the head that the hat reflects, the symmetry and contrast of the limbs, the contraposto of the pose are well define by the dance and the dancer already. Even the viewpoint was define by the person who took the picture.
Bad drawers on the internet will do better with a delightful pose from Fred Astaire then they would with a more mundane subject. Not that I thought we where talking about bad drawers on the internet but why compare Hirshfield to people who probably really don't draw very much or do it for fun or a hobby?
What David describes in regards to Noel Sickles and Jeff MacNelly seems much more all encompassing and demanding. And it reflects a real freedom.
Bad drawers on the internet will do better with a delightful pose from Fred Astaire then they would with a more mundane subject.
Tom,
You are getting stuck on the reference issue. Hirschfeld's drawing makes you feel the movement, not just the pose. This takes tremendous imaginative/synthetic capacities. One can't simply pluck out the figural action by looking at a photo. Because the action doesn't exist in a single passing pose; cameras only capture single instances, single frames. Movement also can't be captured by drawing from the live model, for the same reason: if the dancer holds still so you can capture the anatomy, there is no action to witness. Then, if the dancer dances, no pose actually exists, no particular gesture is held for the artist to draw from. Both scenarios defy easy reference solutions. So do you see the impossibility of treating the issue as simply a matter of reference?
Point being, no matter what, the artist must use the imagination to achieve the effect of action. No matter what, to achieve action in art requires an artist to imagine the action extending and flowing through time, using emotionalized memory; and then to express that flow-idea through suggestive mark-making; through plastic form which looks like it is moving, but is in reality utterly still.
(Which is why most photo dependent artists, in general, if they are loose at all, achieve looseness through handling/drawing and creative coloring/texturing, rather than through compositional expressions of figural action. To be photo-dependent is to be inexpressive in action.)
Again, I challenge you to find any artist (good or bad at drawering) who was able to capture the full fluid movement of any dance move. As beautiful as I find, for example, Robert Heindel's dance images, only in very rare cases do I feel them actually animate a particular move. They all have aesthetic life, just because he is such a master of drawing, paint application, and design, but they generally don't express a particular figural move with any kind of effectiveness.
Hirschfeld has, with utmost elegance, captured a particular fluid movement done by a particular dancer. With absolutely minimal means, you feel the move and know the dancer. This is a heck of a feat, it seems to me. And we don't need to gainsay that achievement in order to do justice to Drucker's many excellences.
As Jonathan Swift said, "It is better to stay close to the surface of things rather than enter into the depths and return empty handed." Or something like that.
Back to RF and his dry-looking lines: A lot of Fawcett's line drawings were done fearlessly with felt pen. I believe that includes the section of his work posted here. I say "fearlessly" because in the late 50s and early 60s the felt pen was a metal barreled thing with purple-black ink. The problem was it was difficult to know just when the things were going to run low on gas and start giving you that hit-skip dry line that Fawcett loved to work with. You had to be testing them constantly on scrap paper to know what sort of line you were going to get. Maybe RF would just argue with the pen until it knew who was boss.
God, I could look at Drucker's stuff all damn day.
Ken Meyer Jr.
Ken Meyer—
I'm with you on that!
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" I agree with you that Drucker would never have come up with the simplified form in the example you offer. However, would you agree with me that Drucker is capable of mimicking Hirschfeld so well that most people couldn't tell the difference, but Hirschfeld is not capable of mimicking Drucker because he just doesn't have the ability? "
David -- I believe that you're selling Hirschfeld's technical ability too short here. Hirschfeld's very early work in the 1920s was rather staid. (The recent book "The Hirschfeld Century" is a revelation if you have not yet seen it.) It doesn't look out of place alongside most illustrators/cartoonists of that era, including the strong description of form with hatched linework typical of the early 20th century. I wouldn't have put it past him to mimic Drucker if he had cared to, since the fundamental skills were there. Like Picasso, Hirschfeld had the grasp of likeness and the technical training down by about age 18, and was ready to start doing more interesting things. It's clear from the late 1920s on that he was concerned with the project of DESIGN as opposed to illustration. His success at that project is questioned by no one.
Please check out "The Hirschfeld Century"! It's wonderful to watch Hirschfeld gradually become Hirschfeld over a period of 80 years.
David,
Your vivid comparisons are as expressive as the lines you describe.
Enjoying your rich, intriguing blog.
Sean
I have bookmarked your site.
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