I love Mark Borgions' picture of a gorilla:
At first it looks like it's all about the design: the simple, flat geometric shapes, the bold colors, that striking composition-from-above-- yup, this has the kind of power you can achieve with pure, uncompromised design.
Yet, underneath these abstract shapes there's a great deal of observation about the forms being captured. That head seemingly so reckless and unbridled perfectly captures the prognathic shape of a gorilla skull. The powerful turned wrists and curled fingers are an excellent observation about a knuckle walking simian; Borgions even highlight the opposable thumbs. The immense forearms which dominate the picture reflect the perfect prioritization for an animal with all its strength and size in its arms, and comparatively little in its small hindquarters. The hindquarters, you'll note, have been omitted altogether.
Many people view abstract design as being at odds with representational image making, but Borgions shows how a smart, talented artist can make a strong image accommodating both.
35 comments:
To me it looks like it's all about the design. I miss a characteristic brow ridge and a massive jaw. There should be a large jawline that creates wide boxy face that reinforces the gorilla's physical strength. But here we have a mouth dangling from the cheekbones that reminds me of some strange deep sea fish.
Gorillas hands are supposed to act as stable, supportive "pillars" while moving, where the hand, wrist, and arm alignment forms a relatively straight line when viewed from the side, so the force of the gorilla's body weight travels efficiently through the knuckles, wrist, and forearm to the shoulder. When I look at those fingers curling under the arm here I sense no weight distribution, no robust stabilization of the joints (the hand also doesn't seem to thrust forward), my intuitive reaction is the memory of my grandmother's vintage garden fork/claw that I used to play with as a child.
The fur texture doesn’t read as long gorilla hair, it looks like old, worn out fleece. I like the contrast between the massive forearm and the fingers of the other arm, that part of the illustration looks the most gorilla to me.
I'm not an illustrator, but I made a few crude lines to show the direction I would go:
https://i.ibb.co/kx0p5T7/gorilla.jpg
When great comedians tackle a subject they mine the mountain well – fruitfully and diligently - unearthing ever more gold the more they hunt. Their comic insights proliferate about every conceivable aspect of the subject until the effort has been practically exhausted. So when they finally present the bit, structured, edited down and perfected it has a kind of definitive iconic finality to it. A complete essay has been written on the subject in comic form. Wherein the full reality - or at least a sufficient amount of reality to suggest that the full reality has been comprehended - is addressed.
Lesser comedians are lucky if they can mine two solid jokes on any particular subject. Usually only one comes. Then they pad it with prefab material, hand-me-downs from the zeitgeist, or generic blather. So when they finally present the bit it is disjoint. It is an incomplete comprehension; an incomplete presentation of both subject and sensibility. A would-be essay abandoned early due to insufficient generative capacity. Which yet was “finished” by taking the few good thoughts that came to mind and linking them together by whatever malleable inherited dogma - intellectual pink slime - was most ready to hand and applicable. Any listener with any brains would note or sense that there was no justification for all the filler, either intellectual or artistic. So they weren’t really being entertained and informed by some kind of expert act.
In parallel with the great comics there are the great poetic-naturalistic artists. They depict or somehow suggest in their narratives a great comprehension of the subject; the total event, the full setting and its mood, the moment in all its narrative and social complexity and the characters involved in all their complexity and dramatic dynamics. Everything in the real life case is either brought under artistic control and used to support the pictorial idea or has been edited out with justification. Thus a sufficient pictorial essay has been presented.
Most cartooning – which is the visual version of conventional symbol intellectualism – has a few good ideas then fills in blanks with mentally idle rote placeholder symbols. Which have no justifications whatsoever. Visual ellipses standing in for visual elisions. The very reason why the end product is disposable.
Happy New Year everybody!
Your changes, while well thought out, make for a less dynamic illustration.
Well said, Kev!
Rick, that might be true, but I would still want a good illustrator to pursue an expression of dynamism through my line of thinking, because David presented the criteria that it shouldnt be about simple, flat geometric shapes, it should be about “a great deal of observation” underneath those abstract shapes. But sadly I don’t sense an attacking, roaring, dynamic animal here, I don’t sense the truth of a gorilla, all I see are decoratively arranged flat basic shapes that do evoke a sense of dynamism, but it’s all about superficial patterns and eye catching stylization that floods the senses with high energy visuals. Which obviously works in today's attention economy, where immediacy, saturation and intense stimulation tend to overshadow depth and contemplation. But this kind of alienating graphic depictions lack many layers of meaning, so I don’t think Borgions' picture teaches us anything about a dynamic charge of a gorilla. He could depict a cityscape with a red moon or anything else using this stylized manner and it would work the same.
Looks like a graphic from Molly Bang's How Pictures Work.
~ FV
I prefer Ales' improvement over the original...
Walkin' the walk!
It's funny to see Mark Borgions' name popping up here. I've been familiar with his work for some time now, as he's the illustrator on the books accompanying a delightful series of audioplays for children (but really for every age) published in Belgium since 2006. These productions are very good (i'd describe them as being in the same vein of Jim Henson's Muppets). I've never been particularly enamored of the illustration's though (https://www.handmademonsters.com/books/). I admire the fact that he established a signature house style for the series far away from other existing work in the world of children books. But the stylisation feels at times a bit... I don't know... conventional? (https://naboekov.com/postkaarten/het-geluidshuis-klinkende-kaart-hoera). If I had to pick two artists who I think manage to communicate truth through this kind of geometrical interpretation I'd go for Marc Hempel or Pablo Lobato.
But I agree that this particular gorilla is quite good.
PS: since we are all big fans of the "heerlijke hoorspelen" series in my family (these CDs are a staple during our long vacation trips) we visited Borgions' stand at a local Con and took a picture with him.
Mark Borgions is one of the best Illustrators that I admired! I like the contrast of this art.
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Kev I think I like what you wrote but how does that connect to this picture?
JSL
Kev Ferrara-- An excellent exposition of a Platonic ideal for comedy or art, but of course Plato wasn't working on deadlines like comic artists, who often tend to revert to Wally Wood's 22 sure fire panels, if not your "mentally idle rote placeholder symbols."
In this case, I'm not sure how much "narrative and social complexity" there is to be mined in a picture of a gorilla against a flat background. But sometimes images are intended to focus primarily on abstract design rather than an underlying narrative.
Aleš-- Very cool that you were able to modify the image to show us exactly what features concern you. I'd like to see more of that here; it would certainly aid the clarity of the comments.
Having said that, here is why I disagree with your choices: from my perspective, your "stable, supportive pillars" and "relatively straight lines" rob the gorilla of much of his dynamism and vitality-- your composition is closer to 3 parallel lines. I miss the opposable thumb and the spread knuckles that gave the gorilla the option of pivoting toward me, and that added a frenetic jabbering simian flavor to the image. I see that you've added a brow, which is fine, but I miss Borgions' jagged angles shaping the head, making it less blocky than your version. And as for the arms, I think Borgions already emphasized them in the most important way by eliminating the torso and the hind legs, so there was no competition with the arms as the largest, highest contrast part of the picture. Your preference for hair I accept as a matter of personal taste; the hair adds something but Borgion's choice doesn't bother me so much. The. more of that forearm that's attributable to fur, the less that's attributable to muscle.
Mostly, in my opinion the composition is superior in the original, and worth the loss of marginal realism.
Rick-- I agree, and I apologize for not being as succinct as you.
chris bennett-- "walkin' the walk" in a knuckle walking way?
Anonymous / FV-- How do you feel about Molly Bang? There's a whole school of design-centric art (the animated feature film Klaus, Sister Corita Kent, the excellent children's book illustrator Christian Robinson, Ellsworth Kelly, etc.) which we've largely ignored here.
Gianmaria Caschetto-- Thanks for the background on Borgions. I agree that this gorilla is one of the nicer pictures I've seen by him.
David, the opposable thumb and the spread knuckles are missing on my image because I wasn’t doing an actual illustration (and I have no experience in creating graphic stylizations), I was just blocking in a basic idea, I used flat shapes to indicate where elements should go. Clearly visible fingers should of course be added to my version of the image (and all other elements should be rearranged to reestablish harmonies and tensions among them). Everything I added, in the hands of a good illustrator, should be better integrated into the original design structure that established the stylistic rules of original visualization. That's also one of the reasons why my things look a bit like they don’t belong, for example my forearm looks too naturalistic.
If you are going to talk about the composition, I should point out something that Kev keeps explaining throughout the years: composition means a preconceived way of structuring with the aim of poetically summarizing experiences (composing/arranging sensations for the sake of narrative argument), while he considers designs as essentially conventionalized reductions of expressively wide ranging principles of composition. Is Borgion really composing?
Video of a gorilla walking:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Khlzm0D49A
The purpose/intention of my crude correction of the hand was to introduce the idea of gorilla moving forward and establishing at least a little bit of sense of weight distribution. I would consider this to be among the important experiences that the artist must poetically summarize to express the idea of a moving gorilla. The suggestion of movement forward, towards the viewer, better evokes the authenticity of the depicted event, than the mere existence of a flat, static shape of a hand, where we can perhaps only conclude by inference that a moving gorilla was the author's idea. Weight distribution through the arm is another important experience that we get when we observe apes outside in the real world, that is one of the reasons that we are impressed by the running of a large animal in the zoo, we sense its overwhelming mass and strength in our stomach. Squeezed joints are also one of the truths that evoke the authenticity of such event/animal. Is Borgion really composing any of that or is he just rearranging squares, paralelograms, triangles and circles until they look like a cityscape, a basket of kitchen cleaners or a gorilla in this case?
“Stable, supportive pillars” might “rob the gorilla of much of his dynamism and vitality” in my version, but that doesn’t mean that the truth of gorilla’s hands, where they act as stable, supportive pillars stands in opposition to the formation of an energetic composition. We just need a better artist here, my intention was merely to show the line of thinking. Frazetta drew gorillas all his life, you can see that characteristic straight hand in many of them (I didn't even straighten the gorilla's arm much, I’m sure a completely straight arm would also be useful to achieve a very dynamic design, as long as the other elements were properly rearranged). I know you wrote that fingers “gave the gorilla the option of pivoting toward me”, but I’m not sure what that means, I understand your statement as if you are drawing a logical conclusion from those fingers that the gorilla could make a move/pivot towards you from it’s current position, but I wouldn’t consider such mental processing as an intuitive perception of aesthetic content.
“I see that you've added a brow, which is fine, but I miss Borgions' jagged angles shaping the head, making it less blocky than your version. “
OK, but your criteria was “underneath these abstract shapes there's a great deal of observation”. What kind of observations did you have in mind? I thought you were talking about some sort of a defining quality, some features/traits that make the head distinct and recognizable, some visual things that capture the essence, highlighting what makes it different or unique, something intrinsic and authentic to the subject, rather than superficial or imposed. That’s what it is supposed to be “underneath” stuff, right?
So, gorillas have a pronounced ridge along the top of the skull, which makes that powerful, domed silhouette, they have a large, square jaw and a wide compact skull and short forehead that create a robust boxy shape, they have a wide, flat nostrils and their eyes are deeply set under a brow ridge. They have a blocky head on a thick, muscular neck, which are one of the characteristics that build an impression of a singular, unified mass, which amplifies the gorilla’s aura of indomitable power. So how do “jagged angles shaping the head” express what is “underneath these abstract shapes“ better than a blocky version of a head? (again, maybe my blocky version isn’t good, but there should be blockiness)
Borgion's version of the head is without wide lower jaws, the mouth gets the characteristic of hanging from the head, or being attached to the head like a speaker on a streetlamp, which causes to me, as I said, an association with some fish, like pelican eel:
https://i.ibb.co/R2jtxjG/eel.jpg
“Your preference for hair I accept as a matter of personal taste; the hair adds something but Borgion's choice doesn't bother me so much. The. more of that forearm that's attributable to fur, the less that's attributable to muscle.”
I don't really care much about the arm hair either, but it is useful for validating the general criticism that the author didn’t approach the visual decisions through experience. There is probably a reason why gorillas arms don't have a soft fur of an owl monkey, their longer hair may act as a form of physical protection when moving through dense vegetation, branches and thorns, so longer arm hair provides a buffer to minimize scratches or abrasions, so the coarse, shaggy quality of their hair aligns with the perception of gorillas as raw and untamed. If you watch gorillas you see that that hair makes the impression of greater bulk and mass, enhancing their physique, the flowing arm hair also accentuates their movements. And so on. If an illustrator ignores all that and makes the gorilla look like it is made of old fleece because, I don’t know, he thought it was a nice visual contrast, then we are witnessing a designer, not an artist trying to express some meaningful observations.
"An excellent exposition of a Platonic ideal for comedy or art, but of course Plato wasn't working on deadlines like comic artists, who often tend to revert to Wally Wood's 22 sure fire panels, if not your "mentally idle rote placeholder symbols."
In this case, I'm not sure how much "narrative and social complexity" there is to be mined in a picture of a gorilla against a flat background. But sometimes images are intended to focus primarily on abstract design rather than an underlying narrative."
Great artists notice and remember the visual world with exceptional sensitivity and retention. And then turn it into poetry reflexively; poetry being insights expressed aesthetically. The artist speaks in visual cues normal people don’t even notice. And a lot of them. Enough to build an imagined world, in fact.
When T.S. Sullivant draws an animal funny, the entire animal is built of his comic insights; comic insights that are never just about animals.
The entire space and setting; the whole silly drama of the events Sullivant depicts (under time constraints) and all its participants, and all his implied commentary, are expressed via his hand-mined and milled comic pigments.
But if one’s only scraped together two minor raw comic insights about a subject - not nearly enough to build out an imagination-transfigured aesthetic experience - the rest of the space becomes merely organized as a jewelry setting – a design scheme to present the few tiny baubles mined to best advantage.
There’s an obvious unnaturalness to such decorative design (used in otherwise narrative art) that is akin to an oafish conversationalists trying to steer a group discussion around to a single pre-loaded joke. It is forced funneling, which is bad comedy. Or Aaron Sorkin dialogue.
A work gives its own evidence. Deadlines, like “intentions”, don’t transform what has been set down and offered out into the zeitgeist. Talk neither excuses nor explains anything in art. Never has, never will. Different language. Noel Sickles, Harold Von Schmidt, Alex Toth, and Neal Adams were on deadline all the time. As the saying goes, “If you want a job done (quickly and well), give it to a busy person.”
Okay, this piece has a nice dynamic design. But as far as "there's a great deal of observation about the forms being captured", sorry, no way. I spent a year animating on Peter Jackson's King Kong, so I know a little bit about gorillas. This artwork bears very little resemblance to how gorilla's look or move, even taking stylization into account . It's almost childlike in that regard.
Ales,
I also prefer your re-jig, and agree that the narrow gap between the cranium and jaw in the original is the main problem which breaks the gorilla likeness. I'm also annoyed by the small triangle breaking out of the silhouette at the top right.
>>>>>>>How do you feel about Molly Bang? There's a whole school of design-centric art (the animated feature film Klaus, Sister Corita Kent, the excellent children's book illustrator Christian Robinson, Ellsworth Kelly, etc.) which we've largely ignored here.
Stuff for kids looks like stuff for kids. As an adult I can understand and appreciate that it is serving a function, communicating to kids in simple, appealing ways they can understand. But what am I supposed to say about it? Ask one of those middle aged dudes that collects Funko Pop dolls.
~ FV
Anonymous/FV-- is it really that simple? Many years ago on this blog I offered examples of very simplified, design oriented, semi-abstract art by thoughtful, talented, intellectuals searching in good faith for new paths. Those include ancient yogic art by devout practitioners who spent their lives seeking sacred levels of purity and simplicity (https://illustrationart.blogspot.com/2006/10/more-about-abstraction.html) and extremely erudite abstract expressionists such as Robert Motherwell who weren't content to join the mule train of artists refining renaissance era traditions, but rather risked ridicule to try to make art responsive to 20th century conditions (https://illustrationart.blogspot.com/2006/10/art-to-make-you-yodel.html ).
I assumed I had persuaded everybody because the death threats stopped coming in. Maybe commenters just got tired.
You might argue that artists such as Matisse, who started out doing technically skillful representational work and ended up doing bold, simplified designs, or philosopher artists such as Kandinsky or Klee or Dubuffet who made playful images, got off on the wrong track, but the one thing I don't believe you can legitimately argue is that their simple designs are "stuff for kids" even though they could be enjoyed by kids.
Kev Ferrara-- the great ones seem to agree that if they enjoy what they're doing it's not really "work." And the great ones prove their greatness with a high level of quality over many years. However, I think you're still living in the land of Platonic forms when you talk about deadlines in this line of work.
Neal Adams famously booted his deadline for Savage Sword of Conan #12, then #13, and when it looked like he was going to miss #14 as well, the exasperated editors wrote, "we took the art assignment [ "Shadow-God of Zamboula"] away from Neal and asked Tony DeZuniga and friends to bail us out." Jeffrey Jones turned in an admittedly horrible job for a comic book (I believe it was a Charlton Flash Gordon) because he ran out of time and mistakenly believed it would never be published. Stan Drake and Leonard Starr did brilliant work for decades but as the size of their strips diminished, newspaper audiences declined, they couldn't afford models anymore, and the quality of their work dropped off. Mort Drucker hated the job he did on the poster for American Graffitti, and when he didn't have time to do it over, he refused to sign the one he turned in. Bob Heindel and Bernie Fuchs spoke uneasily about the times they were up against the clock and did less than their best. They literally winced as they talked. When John Prentice took over the strip Rip Kirby after Alex Raymond's death, he spent three days working on the first strip. Starr told him, "Johnny, I'm afraid you're going to starve."
I would amend your aphorism to say, "A body of work gives its own evidence." If Noel Sickles is assigned to be the ghost artist on Scorchy Smith and has to mimic that terrible art, or Frazetta takes a job as the ghost artist on Li'l Abner, the only evidence that the resulting art gives is that we live in a wicked world where you get paid by the page, which sometimes forces artists to do things to pay for their children's orthodonture.
Neal Adams writes from beyond the grave: "After I had done the first Conan story (that would be Conan The Barbarian #37), I told Roy I need to be able to have the time to do this (story). We agreed it wasn't going to be on schedule until I finished the whole job (for the first time of my career). I laid out a book completely, so that I would be satisfied with the whole project. These layouts were done so tight that you could almost ink them.
How this unscheduled book got put on the schedule, and what happened subsequently to that book, is something that I don't really know or understand and consider a real tragedy in my professional life. Roy suddenly sent copies of my layouts to the Philippines, where they were finished up by Filipino artists who obviously didn't understand them.
To make matters worse, I had been drawn voluntarily into a battle to find some justice for Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster (the creators of Superman), and it absorbed much of my time. While I was out of the studio, someone from Marvel came to the studio and asked for the pages and in a spirit of cooperation they were handed over. When I returned to the studio, I was dumb-founded, but I was too involved with "The Boys" to respond to this unfortunate event. The rest is... as they say...
There are a certain number of pages here that I carried through exactly the way I wanted to see them done. In the panel that I inked, you can clearly see the sincerity of what I was doing. To have this thing treated this way was just so very, very disheartening. To have layouts taken away and done by other people is not something that should be done to anybody, for any reason. I really wanted to finish the story; I felt this would be my definitive Conan story. The thumbnails alone show the potential of that story. You can see the devotion I gave to these.
That was pretty much the last positive project I did for Marvel at the time." ~ Neal Adams, Comic Book Artist #3
>>>>>is it really that simple?
Like Kev says, Modern Art and graphics and cartoons are really the same movement. Impressive verbiage and big time museum shows about one but not the other doesn't change that. It was all new a long time ago. Now it's old. I think the time where everybody thinks it's revelatory or smart is coming to a close. Everybody still likes cartoons and bold graphics, but nobody is going to pretend it's some big deal anymore.
I agree with Joel Fletcher above about the Gorilla. Dynamic design, but that's about it. Not well researched in terms of anatomy. Which, I think, is what Kev was saying in more detail. Laurence John also pointed out how sloppily done it is, even as basic as it is. With the triangle poking out the back and the distracting shapes around the head. The Molly Bang point I was making is that she was using this kind of basic cut out design style to teach basic composition. Because it's basic.
~ FV
Joel Fletcher-- Bravo! I love reading comments from people with specialized expertise on the subject. How very unexpected! Do you happen to know Alain Gauthier? He ran the "Ape School" for Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, and did (I thought) a great job distinguishing the movement of gorillas from chimps and orangutans for actors. I saw his talk and a performance at Comic-Con. Terrific. Another person with gorilla expertise was Terry Notary (Rise of the Planet of the Apes). There seems to be a real demand for gorilla knowledge these days. Maybe we need a separate post on the differences between portraying gorillas with live action in 3D and portraying them flat and static with geometric shapes.
Anonymous-- Yes, I'd read Neal Adams' side of the story too, and gave the debate as much time as I was willing to give it.
I'm sure the truth is somewhere in between, but based on experience living in the world, my view is that when you have a fight between two seasoned pros with strong reputations (Adams and Roy Thomas), it's unlikely to be just a matter of miscommunication as Adams suggests. I can see a story slipping one issue, but two? Or three??? Somebody dropped the ball.
This doesn't mean I don't love Adams' work. It simply means, as i was trying to suggest to Kev Ferrara, that even excellent artists sometimes have to make compromises as they move through time and space, displacing atoms. Frazetta sometimes raced up to Warren Magazines with the oil paint still wet, and sometimes (not often) the art suffered for it. Thus deadlines doth make cowards of us all!
FV-- I'm not sure where all these adjectives are taking you. You say, "It was all new a long time ago. Now it's old." Everything was new a long time ago, and now it's old (including us). Is your point that something old is lesser? Tell that to Michelangelo or Rembrandt. In addition, I'm not clear why something that is old (or no longer novel, which is I think your real point) ceases to be "revelatory or smart." Tell that to the Bible.
I totally agree that "Impressive verbiage and big time museum shows about one but not the other doesn't change" the merits of modern art, graphics and cartoons (or any other form of art). That has been one of the central themes of this blog since it began. But surely you must realize that's a double edged sword; if Kev really did say that "Modern Art and graphics and cartoons are really the same movement," his own impressive verbiage can't disguise a hilariously totalitarian view of art. The varieties of art speak for themselves, and all kinds of chipmunks, squirrels and sparrows scamper out between the bars of the cast iron cage that Kev posits.
One last adjective that could benefit from clarification: you say that "nobody is going to pretend it's some big deal anymore," but I have to wonder, "big deal to whom?" Last week a mediocre Spiderman cover drawn by Al Milgrom in 1979 sold for over a million dollars.
( https://comics.ha.com/itm/original-comic-art/covers/al-milgrom-the-amazing-spider-man-194-cover-black-cat-first-appearance-original-art-marvel-1979-/a/7399-92010.s?ic4=GalleryView-ShortDescription-071515 ). That suggests that it remains a "big deal" to at least two people: the successful bidder and the under bidder. I may disagree with their taste (or their criteria for valuing art). You may too, just as they may disagree with yours. But this kind of variety of responses should at least discourage sweeping generalizations and impose a higher burden on name callers to up their game.
David- I was not aware of either Alan Gauthier or Terry Notary. I looked them up, and as you noted they both worked for New Zealand's Weta Digital to coach the movement of motion capture actors on the recent Planet of the Apes films. Which had incredible VFX, as usual from Weta! I am not a motion capture guy, and only worked at Weta as a key-frame character animator for the King Kong project 20 years ago, so I don't know them.
Since this thread got on the tangent of getting great art done on a deadline, I will add this about my experience on the Kong movie. Weta Digital is famous for expecting long work hours on their projects, especially in the months close to deadline, known as "crunch time". I knew this going in, but really wanted to work on Kong, being a fan of the original 1933 film. But man, it was brutal working long hours 7 days a week, which took a toll on my health and well being. After that I vowed to set boundaries about work hours and never get abused like that again. It is extremely unhealthy for artists of any discipline to burn the midnight oil for a deadline. The quality of the art will definitely suffer as well! Once in a while for a week or so, sure. But not on a regular basis.
Back to the original topic- Mark Borgion has a cool interesting style with the angles and flat planes and all that. But I reiterate that this particular piece is barely recognizable as a gorilla. However, if you consider it an ape-like monster, it is a success.
"I would amend your aphorism to say, "A body of work gives its own evidence." If Noel Sickles is assigned to be the ghost artist on Scorchy Smith and has to mimic that terrible art, or Frazetta takes a job as the ghost artist on Li'l Abner, the only evidence that the resulting art gives is that we live in a wicked world where you get paid by the page, which sometimes forces artists to do things to pay for their children's orthodonture."
As Howard Pyle put it, "You simply cannot go to every newsstand in America and explain your pictures."
Nor can anybody else. This is self-evident. You can't be there to defend your works, you can't hype them, you can't excuse them, you can't plead on behalf of yourself or other creators or their troubles. You can't tilt pictures so people see them in the best light. Or recalibrate each viewer's computer screen, so the brightness is correct. You can't point to a nice bit of color here, or a well drawn hand there, or a bit of detail that is easily overlooked.
Artworks are traveling salesmen. Stalwart, stoic, and orphaned. Every picture will defend itself whether we like it or not. Because there is no second option. And it may very well die out there on the road, unloved and unsung.
"if Kev really did say that "Modern Art and graphics and cartoons are really the same movement," his own impressive verbiage can't disguise a hilariously totalitarian view of art."
Your judgements are loving, freeing, and obvious. Mine are totalitarian and risible. Your vocabulary displays erudition and contemplation. Mine disguises ulterior motives and a malign nature.
You do like your cartoons.
>>>>Is your point that something old is lesser?
That's your point. You always say that about realistic 19th C. artwork when you're trying to promote basic Modern Art graphics. That realistic painting has Renaissance-era or Victorian old-world artistic values that were displaced by the Moderns. But then you reference some ancient graphics pre-Renaissance and pre-naturalism which is inconsistent with that newer-is-better argument.
That makes it seem like your overarching view is the supremacy of primitive graphic art. But then you tout photography as important art, which is (obviously) photorealistic.
I think you ultimately see all this stuff politically. As elevating "humble art" as your masthead says. You don't like Art Renewal-type artists or the artists those types like.
~ FV
FV-- One of the best comments I've ever heard in debates about whether some period of art is greater or lesser came from Neal Adams at Comic-Con. A group was arguing about whether comic art had gone downhill from the "good old days." They were rattling off names of artists, inkers and stories in favor of one side or the other. Adams said (paraphrasing): "Look, 95% of all art produced at any given time is pure shit. As the centuries go by, most of the shitty art is forgotten or ignored, so when we look back we see a stronger concentration of the 5%. But that doesn't mean the art back then was any better as a whole. The challenge with art produced during your lifetime is to be able to recognize the 5% from amongst that 100%."
I think that's wise, and if there's any value to a blog like this, it's about doing the hard work to locate, appreciate and explore the 5% in a world where art is being pre-digested by promoters, press agents and worst of all, by tasteless groupies on social media who swoon over pictures for fatuous reasons.
To help identify the 5%, the people who convene here have to be able to back up their opinions using a sensible, comprehensible vocabulary. I love it when people contribute the names of new artists or provide examples of good new pictures, from whatever period. I love it when people here speak from actual experience ( such as saying, "I spent a year animating on Peter Jackson's King Kong, so I know a little bit about gorillas." That's how we all benefit from experience).
Implicit in what I've said is that we'll never wade through the 95% if we can't speak candidly when we think the emperor has no clothes. This can be a tough crowd, so people who get their feelings hurt easily rarely hand around long.
Returning to your point that "[I] always say that realistic 19th C. artwork [is lesser] when [I'm] trying to promote basic Modern Art graphics. That realistic painting has Renaissance-era or Victorian old-world artistic values that were displaced by the Moderns." I do think that 95% of today's "Art-renewal type work" is shit, but that just means I draw a distinction between realists in the good 5% such as Burt Silverman or Jeremy Lipking, and realists in the 95% like Nelson Shanks, who I consider to be a hollow technocrat. That doesn't mean that I dislike realism, it just means I'm doing my job.
Kev Ferrara-- I've been a tireless advocate here for the notion that a work of art must speak for itself, and have had many unkind things to say about pictures that come with a manifesto attached. I like (and agree with) your catchy phrase that "Artworks are traveling salesmen."
However, even I have to acknowledge the chinks in the armor of that philosophy. It makes a big difference whether that traveling salesman knocks on the door of a kindergarten class, an art museum, a mental institution or a farmhouse with three beautiful daughters. The art object remains physically identical, but whether it is perceived as great and moving and profound or as a boring puzzlement depends in large part on the qualifications and the receptivity of the audience. (Ironically, the most universal element of a picture, the one most appreciated cross-cultures, is the graphic design, rather than the form/content poesis which you insist is central to all higher art forms. It's the graphics that enable the traveling salesman to get his foot in the door.)
Speaking of doors, the Dogon tribe in Mali was famous for its beautifully decorated and symbolic doors. Italian Renaissance sculptor Ghiberti also made beautifully decorated and symbolic doors (about the life of Jesus). A traveling salesman making cold calls to sell doors to either of those cultures might, as you put it, "die out there on the road, unloved and unsung." But by doing the background reading and educating ourselves we are able to appreciate and be enriched by, the different beauty from two very different cultures. I don't view this curiosity as a favor to the art, I view it as a favor to ourselves.
In Pyle’s 1894 class notes, the very first directive of his very first lecture is listed as “Freedom of Conception/Graphic Imagination.” Pyle also mantra’d to his flock; “After the first half-hour of work, your lay-in should kill at a hundred yards.”
So Pyle & Co. understood the Wall Power issue (or Page Power Problem as it were) from (as the Jazzers had it) jump street. Long before Franz Kline decided to lay out his layabout layouts with a barn brush.
But there is a distinction to be drawn between graphics that are born as design, and those that are the result of a Pylean (or Böcklinean, Innessian, Waterhousian, or Mucha-delic) process of aestheticization, poeticization, and composition. In the latter cases, the end products only seem like graphic designs per se from a distance.* But, in fact, they are encoded with a great deal more information - layers and weaves of effects - than the flat graphic born as flat graphic. Orders of magnitude more.
It is a mistake to assume people – in the general range of aesthetic sensitivity - don’t sense the difference. They do.
You posted up a generic Gorilla graphic. If you will hold the line, I can show you a hundred and thirty seven Bezier curve artisans who could have made the same design. You can’t tell one from the next. Adobe Incorporated their souls. Without personality, without handwriting, without uniqueness of thought - what do we praise?
Yes, graphics will get you in the door, but what do they have to sell? Stimulants aren’t meals. Hyperpalatability isn't nourishment.
Even as Pyle understood the poster effect to be foundational, even as he understood poetics to be essential, he also wrote this...
"My own thought has always been that the true interest of a picture is in careful and conscientious finish. Of course that which first catches the eye is the broad general feeling and effect. But in a little while the mind grows used to that and then seeks for something beyond. If it finds well-studied detail it always returns refreshed to seek for something further; if not, the work soon becomes flat and stale." --Howard Pyle to Albert Munford Lindsay, January 28, 1890
*Dunn recommended thirty feet as the proper scouting range for poster-testing one’s images.
What makes Nelson Shanks a technocrat? That he expects people who claim to be artists to know how to draw or paint? Does that make him Hitler?
I agree that 95 percent of all art is shit. But 95 percent of all Modern/Postmodern art is both Shit AND Bullshit.
~ FV
FV-- No, Nelson Shanks is welcome to say anything he wants about "people who claim to be artists" and that wouldn't affect the quality of his own art in my view. I've written about his work here before, with examples, and said that I view him as a technical virtuoso whose work is hollow and insubstantial. (https://illustrationart.blogspot.com/2015/03/nelson-shanks.html ). He is what others here have called a "meat camera." In an era of widespread photography a painter needs more than a fanatical literalism to justify calling himself an artist; he needs some grace and beauty and charm. If you compare Shanks with with some of the realists I've lauded, such as Silverman or Lipking, or Adrian Gottlieb or Norman Rockwell or Fechin or Sargent or Dinnerstein or 50 other realists, I think you'd see the difference. You'd also see, I think, that I love good realistic painting.
Your work is brilliant, using geometric shapes and turning them into gorillas. Wolverine Port of Long Beach Damage Inspections
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