Saturday, October 26, 2024

THE ONLY TIME YOU'VE GOT

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

John Cuneo

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

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


29 comments:

Movieac said...

Your site has introduced me to many of the illustrators you feature, and I must admit that the golden age of illustration feels like a bygone era. Today's work, doesn't capture the brilliance and depth that defined the classics of the past.

Anonymous said...

yes but some artists are certainly trying. If only just to emulate it. We can't let it die out!

MORAN said...

If the work isn't there anymore, it doesn't matter how good the illustrator is. They will still starve.

Kev Ferrara said...

Thanks for the link to the Thomas Craven essay. One positive note on the critics of that era; the erudition and eloquence they brought to bear to justify their shit-posting was quite something; baubled battle bars as superficially distracting as Ricky Jay's elaborate and antiquated patter, but without any of the winking fun.

As I've said before, a critic is someone who stands in front of a painting that you're tying to look at, frantically waving his arms. Eventually you say, "Yes? What is it?" And the critic says, "Ah, now I have you!" The attention economy before it was named.

Michael Thomson said...

Great article, I feel the reason we see the past as great is because only the good ever floats up. All the bad things seem to sink and be forgotten.

cFonseca said...

The decontextualized past always shines through the mist of memory...
One thing is certain, the budget paid to illustrators today is just a fraction of what it used to be.
Excellent reflection, as always!

Anonymous said...

«No longer imminent, the End is immanent», as Frank Kermode put it. The psychological projection of existential anguish onto, rather into history seems to be a foundational mechanism of Western culture. Men in their middest seem forever eager to make their personal nostalgia for childhood (the Golden Age) and fear of death (The End of the World) apply as communal truth.

Corollarily, as Douglas Adams put it,

1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.

2. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.

3. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.

- - -
Postmodern Anonymouse

Anonymous said...

Anyone cognisant can neutrally recognise deterioration, in ability to make, & in audience's ability to recognise ability.
Relativism is older than thirty-five

xopxe said...

Partially related to the fact that people develop a taste for illustration in a given era, but then have to actually produce in a different one.

Donald Pittenger said...

While waiting to see what David comes up with (it's 3:20 pm PDT as I write this), I'll toss in a tuppence of half-baked notions.

First, there's the media where illustrations appear. What they are in general, and how they technically present illustration.

Those earlier Golden Age eras David cited were when printed magazines were in flower. But printing technology changed. What was done 1925-1955 was technically virtually unheard of in, say, 1890. Might it be better to think of Golden Examples within an era, rather than comparing eras? We actually seem to do that here. Is there much of a reason to compare, say, Howard Pyle with Edwin Georgi and "prove" one was generally better than the other?

Another thought: Are/were some eras more conducive to good illustration than others? I'm kinda out of the current loop because I'm no longer "with it" media-wise. Don't read the New York Times, New Yorker and such. For what it's worth, lots of what I do notice seems to be designy/cartoony/simplified stuff. By my generational accident and self-knowledge that I'm not talented, I enjoy realistic depictions of people --- the 1930s John La Gatta, the 1925-1930 Dean Cornwell, the circa-1960 (and later) Bernie Fuchs. It's hard to image that returning.

Which is not so say our current or near future era won't toss up some truly great stuff.

All this is sorta like trying to define "art." Lotsa talk, never a definitive solution.

Okay, David: Over to you.

Anonymous said...

We are in a golden age right now, you just need to know where to look. There are countless gifted artists right at your fingertips. Too many instagram accounts to list. If you go to the critics and historians you will never find them.

Michael Thomson said...

That's true. But I do think some make an effort to find hidden gems.

Laurence John said...

Anon: "We are in a golden age right now, you just need to know where to look”

The average person didn’t have to seek out Leyendecker and Rockwell in the 1920s-50s. They were on the front cover of the Saturday Evening Post.

Illustration is a niche interest now, and the audience for obscure contemporary illustrators (on Instagram or elsewhere) is mainly other illustrators. To the general public illustration is largely irrelevant.

That is the difference between the 1920-50s ‘golden age’ and now.

Anonymous said...

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Whenever I view art, be it illustration, contemporary painting, sculpture, etc - I think about the process of creating it and much of my enjoyment of the work comes from that. I can't imagine what it's like to process art so differently that you don't value the human aspect of art.

I have no idea how commercial artists will survive the age of generative AI, but I do appreciate your insights, as always.

Anonymous said...

That Cuneo drawing marvelously expresses the heartbreaking fracture that is deepening in our world: between those who believe we are machines and those who know we are not.

chris bennett said...

That Cuneo drawing marvelously expresses the heartbreaking fracture that is deepening in our world: between those who believe we are machines and those who know we are not.

(Repeated because I did not want my comment to be anonymous...)

kev ferrara said...

I didn't think the boorish lady in the cartoon believed that "we are machines." I think she was just a crummy person who had found someone to put down. The "twist" for me was that she was technically literate enough about AI to use what she knew in the slight. So my take on the depth of the cartoon is that it is making a commentary about modern technical literacy having nothing to do with cultural literacy, let alone one's humanity. (Which gets to the kind of people who would make such a pastiching/thieving device in the first place.)

David Apatoff said...

I agree. Of course, we could probably point to three or four "golden eras," each with its own distinctive forms of beauty. With any luck, we'll experience another (but what will it look like?)

David Apatoff said...

Leif Peng's excellent blog, Today's Inspiration, did a heart-rending biography of illustrator Andy Virgil trying to earn a living as the work dried up. (https://todaysinspiration-andyvirgil.blogspot.com/2007/02/part-5-something-wrong.html ). Leif interviewed Virgil's wife about the struggles of illustrators desperate to find assignments that had once been so plentiful. Strongly recommended.

David Apatoff said...

I mostly agree with your description of a critic, and to some extent that even applies to artists pontificating about their own work. However, there are a few useful functions left to perform: to spread the word and help under-appreciated artists, and to puncture the hubris of villains.

What did you think about Craven's judgment about the illustrators of his day?

David Apatoff said...

Ah, but what's the ratio of good work to bad work?

Do you see good works floating up during the current era? Who are your favorites today?

David Apatoff said...

Agreed! At one time illustrators were the highest paid people in the United States-- the image makers of their generation and the pace setters of popular culture. Today that compensation has now migrated to the image makers of the present, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas.

David Apatoff said...

I loved Kermode's book on The Sense of an Ending, and it influenced my drawing, back when I drew. Douglas Adams less so. But when we were putting together the exhibition of the history of MAD magazine for the Norman Rockwell Museum, Adams' theory was proven true: there were raging disputes about when the high point of MAD occurred. Art editor Sam Viviano, who had been listening to the debate for years, said that everyone believes the best period of MAD was the period when they discovered it as a child.

David Apatoff said...

Although people can develop a taste for illustration from several different eras, and cannibalize it for use in a new one. Bob Peak developed a taste for the drawing style of Egon Schiele, and re-tooled it with fluorescent colors to come up with the trendiest style of the 1960s.

David Apatoff said...

I take your point; there's no objective, quantifiable way to compare artists across styles and generations. Even so, I wold be prepared to argue that Howard Pyle was generally better than Georgi.

For sure some eras were more conducive to good illustration than others. Keep your eye out for the "truly great stuff" of this era. All submittals welcome!

David Apatoff said...

As I suggested to Don Pittenger above, I would really love to hear about the countless (or even a few) gifted artists ("hidden gems") make this a golden age. The main thrust of this series is going to be contemporary artists I admire who have been fearless about exploring the new media. Any suggestions?

David Apatoff said...

You've put your finger on a key distinction, IMO: The question of whether a painting is good is different from the question of who deserves the credit-- an artist or a computer program? I am looking forward to the thoughts of commenters on this issue.

David Apatoff said...

The Saturday Evening Post had a circulation of 6 million at its peak, and each issue was passed around and read by multiple family members throughout the week. People lingered over the images in the Post because there was no television or internet. It was a "general interest" magazine, carefully edited to make sure it wouldn't offend audiences in Texas as well as New York, Alabama as well as California. As I've mentioned here, Spielberg and Lucas have said that they learned to tell stories by studying the way Norman Rockwell structured his covers for the Post. The Post used judgment in hiring artists and helped shape the taste of the nation. Today, there is no "general interest" magazine, periodicals are fragmented to cater to very specific sub-groups. None of them could pay as well as the Post did.

chris bennett said...

That's a fair point Kev, and you're right. I guess I saw what I wanted to see, or made the slip of projecting something onto it that has been on my mind in recent weeks.