Congratulations to The New Yorker for its compassion in supporting people with disabilities. The art direction responsibilities of the magazine are now being performed by the blind.
Artistic selections are now being made using braille.
57 comments:
Anonymous
said...
Genius. Once again I agree with you whole heartedly.
Do these editors know Dan Adel? Do they know Thomas Fluharty? Nicholas Uribe, in particular, would be amazing at this if they wanted a caricature both excellent and edgy.
One presumes these former cultural strongholds are getting increasingly insular, less like busy thoroughfares for renegade talents, and more like prim activity clubs for in-group members. I think the whole high cultural intellectual mindset is dying from myopia, introversion, and postmodern degradation. And maybe poor office ventilation.
And now, seriously. I don't understand the modern world. Or perhaps my tastes simply don't align with what's being done these days. I genuinely think the "ugly" won out a long time ago, but I don't want to fall into the trap of disparaging others' work. I believe that behind every creative endeavor, there is serious effort and a love for the craft on the part of the artist. Whether or not I personally like it is a different matter; respect must always come first.
Albert Campillo Lastra wrote: "I don't want to fall into the trap of disparaging others' work. I believe that behind every creative endeavor, there is serious effort and a love for the craft on the part of the artist. Whether or not I personally like it is a different matter; respect must always come first."
I agree that's a healthy sentiment in approaching all art, and I try to start out with that as a (rebuttable) presumption.
However, I don't agree that "behind every creative endeavor, there is serious effort." Behind many creative endeavors there is fraud, sloth, mendacity and chicanery. (See, for example, https://illustrationart.blogspot.com/2015/06/recent-developments-in-parasitology.html or https://illustrationart.blogspot.com/2010/04/three-things-i-like-about-jeff-koons.html)
The harder case is where there is an abundance of "serious effort," accompanied by a serious lack of talent. I make special allowances for young talent just starting out, or for the exceptionally well intentioned and pure of heart. But I don't believe we can permit that to eliminate high standards, especially in the precincts of the highly privileged. We live in a time of disintegration, of dumbing down and outsourcing our critical faculties and I believe it is imperative that we resist the beginnings wherever we encounter them (or as Ovid wrote, "principiis obsta!")
Why do I feel compelled to speak up? I have no dog in this fight. I'm not competing for a job doing New Yorker covers. But I've often quoted on this blog the words of William Blake: "When I tell any truth, it is not for the sake of convincing those who do not know it, but for the sake of defending those who do."
>>>>>>>>"This is not even ugly. It's just flat, uninteresting and without viewpoint. Lifted from a 1998 clip art CD-ROM."
Maybe that's the idea. To postmodern shitheads, everybody is as depressed, fraudulent, and nondescript as they are. Talent is a cheat code, beauty is undeserved, smiles are fake, wealth is scammed. The great leveling of the lazy jealous postmodern shithead against the talented and charismatic is to blow a hole in that image via controlled media. So we get the glamorous ultra-talented hardworking superstar as bland and fake and covered by a thin chintzy veneer. (These are bad people, ugly in their hearts.)
Well, it’s true that there are always opportunists who know how to take advantage of things, and if there’s someone willing to open the door for them, the damage can be irreversible. That said, my comment was also meant to remind myself how easy it is to fall into mocking or looking down on others—even though I’m just one of the crowd (albeit with better intentions than actual skill). And finally, please keep speaking your truth; I’m learning a lot from it, which is very important, the way I see it.
I see the aesthetic as more from alternative design magazines. Deliberately undesigned and brutalist, with flown in distressed textures and halftone dots.
You can watch a process video - linear fingerpainting all the way through - of Miss Rifkin in action here: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/nicole-rifkin-62bb9964_happy-friday-heres-process-video-activity-7032373860058501120-ZNnT?trk=public_profile_like_view
Incidentally, she indicated she was given 24 hours to do this cover.
I’m not qualified to attempt a judgement, but I gather from the comments here from others who presumably *are* that this work is… what? Statement-free and lacking whatever element elevates graphics to true design or even art? Is its main sin being hacky-throwbacky, the wrong kind of retro? Any chance at all that was the intent—to reflect the mass appeal of its subject, a woman who made her own “cheap” aesthetic the punchline of a joke she told for decades? Could it be that this particular cover was meant to speak to (existing, and, importantly, potential) readers more likely to holiday at Dollywood than the French Riviera? Is it possible any discussion regarding its merits sort of misses the point?
You think there's an overlap between Dollywood patrons and New Yorker readers?
I'm not "qualified" either. But this cover has a chintzy vibe. Yet Dolly Parton wasn't like that. Dolly Parton was a rock-solid sweetheart with real singing talent. The cover fails to capture Dolly's spirit, her character, her culture, her style, or her looks. It belongs to Lena Dunham's culture of urban unfit white girl ennui.
Speaking as someone who has both offered and received lots of opinions about art on this blog, I've come to believe that being "qualified" to judge is not a matter of credentials or training or appearing in prestigious publications. As far as I'm concerned, any art criticism has to be self-legitimizing; its validity depends solely on the persuasiveness and meaningfulness of its observations. It doesn't matter whether those observations come from a homeless man or a connoisseur with an aristocratic accent.
I'm not getting all the negativity here. This is a good drawing, no matter if it's traditionally or digitally accomplished. Traced? Maybe. Flat? Sure, it's an illustration. But it is a very good likeness and has a good "Dolly Parton" feel to it. Well drawn.
In response to "Anonymous" who requested that I specify why I'm unimpressed with this drawing under the standards I tried to articulate-- that's certainly a fair demand, although I've tried to shy away from being mean about this.
For me, this is the kind of faux drawing that results from too much dependence on machines and not enough hard time spent on observational drawing. There are 3 or 4 elements in this picture that have been pasted together in a way that I think doesn't cohere.
Start with that hand and book in the lower left corner-- the book has no weight or structure, it floats unpersuasively over that amateurishly drawn hand, the kind of hand I might expect from a high school student drawing. The bone structure doesn't work, the shadows seem silly, but the artist has devoted her time to the sparkles on the fingernail polish-- the kind of misallocation of priorities one might expect from one who hasn't labored over making drawings that hang together.
A second element is the hair, which is drawn and colored in a way that disconnects it from the shape of the head or the color of the background. I should start by saying that I view those thousands of lines for individual hairs to be an act of artistic cowardice. It is not productive. People who can draw lots of fine lines sometimes turn to that skill as a safe refuge from the harder decisions required by real drawing. Even if the artist deliberately wanted to emphasize the artificiality Parton's wig (which I doubt), the washed out color of the hair on top of those fine lines seems a mistreatment of one of the subject's most prominent features: The hair seems oblivious to the laws of physics and to the ultra saturated pink sparkly background. The hair might have a better chance if it could team up with the head or the hand or the background, but unfortunately it's just another free floating object.
Third, for me the face is given a treatment we often see from artists who've traced a lot of faces from photographs, but who have very little understanding of how the muscles and skin wrap around the skull. In such work the eyes often don't align quite the way they should structurally, and the cheekbone shadows are often a cliché. This type of drawing may be acceptable for some types of comic books, but they aren't what one would expect for the cover of the NYer... at least, not in previous years.
Please let me emphasize that my comments here have nothing to do with "realism." I like plenty of abstract and impressionistic and expressionistic and loose and casual drawings. I intended these comments to address the overall integrity of the image. It has to do with the successful prioritization of a drawing, and the kinds of lessons in coordination that artists learn from paying dues. I think a lot of artists today believe that digital tools excuse them from paying those dues, and that may be true for a lot of work but, I believe we can still tell the difference, and that difference matters.
It was done in Procreate, executed via tablet. All the "ink" lines come out "perfectly" stroked, made-to-order in Procreate. If they're in the wrong spot, you keep double-tapping to erase as many prior lines as you want to dispense with. Which is to say, if the line-work is the big "draw" here - all else failing - the whole thing is a con job; pretending at non-existent technical expertise.
But even if the lines were execute in real life, they're still bad artistically. They are perfectly blandly executed. They show no life, no verve or authority, no love, no thought, no sensitivity, no observational skills. Nothin'.
The textures - denim, halftone dots, etc. - are also dropped on the picture from Procreate menus.
It's a toy program. It is used to pretend with, like a Karaoke machine with pitch-correct.
To critique this drawing in full measure would take hours. It would be a cruelty on all counts to attempt it.
The nose in perspective looks like it was drawn from a 2d original, without any understanding of the 3d form. Like a kid intensely trying to replicate the shapes of the marks used to describe the face in his comic. Same with the hands. The eyes are bizarre, even allowing for liner made run counter to the form it's painted on. Weird reflections, on the eyes, looks slightly cross-eyed. This is from a different anonymous who agrees with his verdict in the picture. I have no reason to accuse anyone of 'white-knighting', but I found an online resource (something called ''reddit") which offers 'A white knight is someone who tries to protect the princess ... Saying someone is "white knighting" is an accusation that they are inserting themselves into an argument or situation for the sole purpose of trying to look good and win points with people. It's saying that they are just "trying to play knight in shining armor." '
Not sure if you realised it David, but you've critiqued this artist's work before: https://illustrationart.blogspot.com/2022/04/the-difference.html
David: "...the kind of hand I might expect from a high school student drawing."
Given that her work is flat, graphically coloured, and has a hip, retro, ironic, trendy, fashion-y feel to it, I do have to wonder whether the '16 year old, slightly wonky, over-rendered drawing of their favourite pop star' look is a deliberate stylistic choice.
Laurence John-- Yes, I was aware but I wasn't trying to build a cumulative case against any particular artist, I just wanted to discuss the elements of a specific work, and what makes that work successful or unsuccessful.
If there is a cumulative case to be made, it's not against an individual artist so much as against the general lowering of standards and the incredible self-satisfaction in the midst of cheapening taste. As I've previously tried to point out ( https://illustrationart.blogspot.com/2023/01/tough-guys.html ) when illustration was a more robust and important field, the artists were tougher on themselves. The kind of critical language being used today on this blog was being openly used at the Society of Illustrators by artists who stood by their opinions and didn't go by the name "anonymous."
Well, ok then. I'm just not seeing what everyone else is seeing. I've seen the photo that's been posted here as the source material. But so what, a lack of exactitude doesn't make it a bad drawing. I still see a very good likeness. It's certainly not Philip Castle level (even his "Dolly" illustration is a little wonky here and there) but it's not a kid tracing his comic...in my opinion. There isn't much more to be said except I stand with my opinion.
Ouch. After looking at the possible reference photo, I must agree with the detractors and with David's very articulate critique. Very generally speaking, I tend to find a drawing or an illustration more interesting to look at than a photo. I have attempted, with little success, to understand why. When confronted with two pictures of the same subject, especially if they share the same vantage point, I can look at the painted or drawn version for hours, while the photo does not invite the same kind of savoring.
Is it because of the skill involved? Is it the "patina" of a handcrafted image that is engrossing? Is it because something of the artist is always present and adds meaning or value to the image? I honestly don't know.
But in this case, the reference photo possesses nuance and insight that the illustration totally misses (not to mention the illustration's inability to illuminate the subject or make a point about Parton).
David, I'd like to know: would you lay this one at the feet of the Art Director rather than the artist?
What I see is, once again, proof that the linear-minded literalist simply cannot deal with the breadth of treatment that comes with truthful abstraction. Not to mention the even-more-invisible truths of proportion. You teach drawing. What say you?
Interesting question. If a student's proportions are off, particularly if they are way off, I can effect some improvement in their efforts by showing them the technique of comparative measurements from an imagined vertical and horizontal axis by way of sticking one's arm out, closing one eye, holding a pencil in the plane, and marking a bit off it with the thumb. There's also the technique of equating lines of direction in the motif as equivalent to the position of a clock's hands, or building the drawing part by part by shape area comparisons. Etc etc.
However.
Whilst these techniques help the 'linear-minded literalist' part of us to put things more proximately 'in the right place' they do not help much with facilitating poetics. In musical terms it could be seen as the difference between improvising on-the-fly over chord changes and actually composing a song. So I'd say that the relationships between parts is distinct from the relationship of the parts to the whole - a distinction between the march of equivalence and the dance of meaning. For instance, I can furnish students with techniques all day, but until they recognise what essence those techniques are in the service of, nothing much happens.
Okay, but where would you locate the problem of the artist in question attempting to drop a dimple on the face without actually appreciating, understanding, or suggestively setting down the anatomy that causes that dimple? Whither the role of physiognomic anatomy to the expression of character?
I'd have to say it is to do with love. The position of the dimple in relation to the corner of the mouth, say, has to go beyond a Cartesian X and Y coordinate and be informed by, or possess something like a gravitational attraction between the two, or more precisely, a sense of the relation between them being held in place by what I can only describe as meaningfulness. I'd say it's the same thing as whatever it is that compels the picnic party to settle down near the river just where they do.
I hope this goes some way to answering your question Kev. I may of course misunderstood your question. I'm aware that what I'm saying sounds whimsical but, as I know you are aware, this stuff constantly eludes our framing in wordy expression. Which is why it is so difficult to teach without extensive recourse to analogy - a stumbling block for those with left-brain bias who therefore have real difficulty in comprehending it.
Long ago - 1917 or thereabouts - the illustrator Thornton Oakley took over Walter Everett's illustration classes in Pennsylvania . Both were Pyle students, but Oakley was reverent of Pyle to the point of idolatry. One of Pyle's precepts (that we only know second-hand) was that every thought, mood, or whim that possessed the artist as they were working would find its way into the art. A related teaching was encouraging students to be positive in spirit, towards one's self as well as one's art. Particularly an acute matter while at the easel and working.
Anyway, Oakley had codified many of Pyle's principles into something like commandments, one of which was to create art with love above all.
Unfortunately Oakley had many students who, no matter how much love they implemented, simply couldn't draw or paint (or imagine). And there came a rift in the class between the older Everett-trained students, and the younger love bunch who struggled under the burden of impractical advice.
My feeling is that crafting a work of art with care, attentiveness and integrity is itself a labor of love; the ghostly presence of love in the work being a byproduct of the creative act.
Gianmaria Caschetto asked: "would you lay this one at the feet of the Art Director rather than the artist?"
I think the track record of the New Yorker art has become so spotty in recent years, it can't be the fault of one particular artist.
The general dumbing down of public taste surely deserves much of the credit. Magazines publish the art that readers have demonstrated they are willing to buy, and no magazine wants to try to educate them or stretch their taste.
Also, as I understand it, editor David Remnick micromanages the choices for both the covers and the cartoons, so it's difficult to know who at the NYer is to blame for a cover like this. Remnick is obviously a brilliant guy, but he just as obviously lacks artistic judgment. In the past, magazines wouldn't put a brilliant poet or a rocket scientist in charge of art direction. Everyone recognized that those strengths didn't necessarily transfer to aesthetics. For example, no magazine would've made Albert Einstein its art director.
Today it's different. We live in an era where conceptual art dominates, and that has emboldened otherwise smart people to think that the concept part of art is everything. The form creating part has been devalued. (I've previously referred to this as the "I'm so smart I don't have to draw well" syndrome.). Remnick may believe, "I'm a smart guy so I'm qualified to pass judgment on the pictures" But as this Dolly Parton cover demonstrates, he is very wrong.
It's a shame. Somewhere between the NYer editor and the NYer art director, what was once a valuable platform for art has become a wasted opportunity.
chris bennett and kev ferrara-- I agree with chris that there's a certain essential ingredient (which he chooses to call "love") that makes all the difference. Without it, even the most meticulous tracing of a photograph lies flat and lifeless.
But "love" is probably the one concept even more amorphous than "art" so I'm not sure the term adds much rigor to our thinking. There are many kinds of love, and one of them that is particularly relevant here, is "unrequited love." I would never be presumptuous enough to claim that an artist does or does not "love" the art, but in this case I feel pretty comfortable opining that the love is unrequited.
What does the word "love" tell us about art? There is false love and immature love and lazy love, and art, too, comes in all these flavors. So while I agree with the sentiment, I'm still left thinking of the ingredient as "that certain something."
David, we only know what love is when we feel it. It's as simple as that, and trying to frame it within conceptualisations is just semantic sophistry after the fact. It's like believing that knowing the Latin name for the species and genus of a particular oak standing before us is the same thing as our experience of the tree itself.
Well then, I'll expand on my take a bit, I guess. As I enjoy spinning out via neutral drops where angels fear to tread.
In all great art we find there is great tenderness and care coming through a properly authorial personality. By which I mean somebody keen of mind and trained in body toward an expressive telling purpose. The nature of the great author is somebody worth admiring for his or her integrated and dedicated prowesses; body, mind and spirit in unison. All three must be hard at play. How can we sense an artist worth admiring where one is absent as the nature of the work is felt.
Tenderness comes through in the sensitivity, in the subtlety; the naturalness, the quiet emotional tells observed, appreciated, remembered, and re-expressed - as a parallel visual world for our benefit. The care comes through in the attention paid in all the many aspects of the creation; too numerous to name, at all locations, scales and depths.
These qualitative features imprint themselves through the work, suffusing what we experience when we give great works our deserving attention.
There are also the artifacts of the struggle to make the work imprinted in the plastic material used to make the work. Which we also intuit. The feeling of joy felt by the artist in the making of great work is imprinted as well. Along with the artful aesthetic thoughts developed in the state of joy and implemented with virtuosic panache.
The way aesthetics works - as well as poetics - is through implication. Through the effect.
The sense of "love" would seemingly be a mood aesthetically implied as a field-effect in all these multitude of ways, only some of which can be articulated.
What is an expression of love? An effort made, a deeply personal one, a generous sharing on our behalf; a gentle but firm parental guidance; to remind us quietly of the subtle and truthful beauties of life; to teach us to notice more deeply just such things, with the ghost of grace and a smile sensed but not seen.
Shitty posts like this, followed by the fawning logorrhea of fart sniffers (looking at you, Kev! Do you do anything else with your time???), are exactly why I stopped reading your goddamn blog, David. I don't even read the intros you've written in the books I adore because you're such a petty bitch.
57 comments:
Genius. Once again I agree with you whole heartedly.
So true, so true!
I’m always gobsmacked by the artwork the NYT finds fit to print.
Well, I like it,
as an act of destruction.
- - -
Postmodern Anonymouse
yikes!
ps. she loved her yellow handbook
It all comes down to bad drawing. Machines can only do so much to cover it up.
JSL
Do these editors know Dan Adel? Do they know Thomas Fluharty? Nicholas Uribe, in particular, would be amazing at this if they wanted a caricature both excellent and edgy.
One presumes these former cultural strongholds are getting increasingly insular, less like busy thoroughfares for renegade talents, and more like prim activity clubs for in-group members. I think the whole high cultural intellectual mindset is dying from myopia, introversion, and postmodern degradation. And maybe poor office ventilation.
Well, this way, even I might end up illustrating a *New Yorker* cover.
And now, seriously. I don't understand the modern world. Or perhaps my tastes simply don't align with what's being done these days. I genuinely think the "ugly" won out a long time ago, but I don't want to fall into the trap of disparaging others' work. I believe that behind every creative endeavor, there is serious effort and a love for the craft on the part of the artist. Whether or not I personally like it is a different matter; respect must always come first.
Albert Campillo Lastra wrote: "I don't want to fall into the trap of disparaging others' work. I believe that behind every creative endeavor, there is serious effort and a love for the craft on the part of the artist. Whether or not I personally like it is a different matter; respect must always come first."
I agree that's a healthy sentiment in approaching all art, and I try to start out with that as a (rebuttable) presumption.
However, I don't agree that "behind every creative endeavor, there is serious effort." Behind many creative endeavors there is fraud, sloth, mendacity and chicanery. (See, for example, https://illustrationart.blogspot.com/2015/06/recent-developments-in-parasitology.html or https://illustrationart.blogspot.com/2010/04/three-things-i-like-about-jeff-koons.html)
The harder case is where there is an abundance of "serious effort," accompanied by a serious lack of talent. I make special allowances for young talent just starting out, or for the exceptionally well intentioned and pure of heart. But I don't believe we can permit that to eliminate high standards, especially in the precincts of the highly privileged. We live in a time of disintegration, of dumbing down and outsourcing our critical faculties and I believe it is imperative that we resist the beginnings wherever we encounter them (or as Ovid wrote, "principiis obsta!")
Why do I feel compelled to speak up? I have no dog in this fight. I'm not competing for a job doing New Yorker covers. But I've often quoted on this blog the words of William Blake: "When I tell any truth, it is not for the sake of convincing those who do not know it, but for the sake of defending those who do."
This is not even ugly. It's just flat, uninteresting and without viewpoint. Lifted from a 1998 clip art CD-ROM.
>>>>>>>>"This is not even ugly. It's just flat, uninteresting and without viewpoint. Lifted from a 1998 clip art CD-ROM."
Maybe that's the idea. To postmodern shitheads, everybody is as depressed, fraudulent, and nondescript as they are. Talent is a cheat code, beauty is undeserved, smiles are fake, wealth is scammed. The great leveling of the lazy jealous postmodern shithead against the talented and charismatic is to blow a hole in that image via controlled media. So we get the glamorous ultra-talented hardworking superstar as bland and fake and covered by a thin chintzy veneer. (These are bad people, ugly in their hearts.)
~ FV
Well, it’s true that there are always opportunists who know how to take advantage of things, and if there’s someone willing to open the door for them, the damage can be irreversible. That said, my comment was also meant to remind myself how easy it is to fall into mocking or looking down on others—even though I’m just one of the crowd (albeit with better intentions than actual skill). And finally, please keep speaking your truth; I’m learning a lot from it, which is very important, the way I see it.
One word… DrawingisHard.
Is it Françoise Mouly doing the Art Direction for the cover? Because that would explain why it looks like a page out of Raw.
That's ableism.
I see the aesthetic as more from alternative design magazines. Deliberately undesigned and brutalist, with flown in distressed textures and halftone dots.
You can watch a process video - linear fingerpainting all the way through - of Miss Rifkin in action here: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/nicole-rifkin-62bb9964_happy-friday-heres-process-video-activity-7032373860058501120-ZNnT?trk=public_profile_like_view
Incidentally, she indicated she was given 24 hours to do this cover.
The New Yorker should have saved their money and published a photo from the AP.
She spent 23 of those hours drawing individual hairs.
Post-modern shitheads just became my new favorite term
I’m not qualified to attempt a judgement, but I gather from the comments here from others who presumably *are* that this work is… what? Statement-free and lacking whatever element elevates graphics to true design or even art? Is its main sin being hacky-throwbacky, the wrong kind of retro? Any chance at all that was the intent—to reflect the mass appeal of its subject, a woman who made her own “cheap” aesthetic the punchline of a joke she told for decades? Could it be that this particular cover was meant to speak to (existing, and, importantly, potential) readers more likely to holiday at Dollywood than the French Riviera? Is it possible any discussion regarding its merits sort of misses the point?
You think there's an overlap between Dollywood patrons and New Yorker readers?
I'm not "qualified" either. But this cover has a chintzy vibe. Yet Dolly Parton wasn't like that. Dolly Parton was a rock-solid sweetheart with real singing talent. The cover fails to capture Dolly's spirit, her character, her culture, her style, or her looks. It belongs to Lena Dunham's culture of urban unfit white girl ennui.
~ FV
Speaking as someone who has both offered and received lots of opinions about art on this blog, I've come to believe that being "qualified" to judge is not a matter of credentials or training or appearing in prestigious publications. As far as I'm concerned, any art criticism has to be self-legitimizing; its validity depends solely on the persuasiveness and meaningfulness of its observations. It doesn't matter whether those observations come from a homeless man or a connoisseur with an aristocratic accent.
OK say something persuasive about your view of this cover.
That is one crappy drawing. It looks as though it were traced left handed by a right handed person from a really poor photocopy, possibly on a dare..
"It takes a lot of money to look this cheap."
I'm not getting all the negativity here. This is a good drawing, no matter if it's traditionally or digitally accomplished. Traced? Maybe. Flat? Sure, it's an illustration. But it is a very good likeness and has a good "Dolly Parton" feel to it. Well drawn.
No. None of that is true. You're either white knighting here, or you aren't a good judge of drawing quality.
To Anonymous: I don't know what white knighting is and I am a pretty good judge of good drawing.
In response to "Anonymous" who requested that I specify why I'm unimpressed with this drawing under the standards I tried to articulate-- that's certainly a fair demand, although I've tried to shy away from being mean about this.
For me, this is the kind of faux drawing that results from too much dependence on machines and not enough hard time spent on observational drawing. There are 3 or 4 elements in this picture that have been pasted together in a way that I think doesn't cohere.
Start with that hand and book in the lower left corner-- the book has no weight or structure, it floats unpersuasively over that amateurishly drawn hand, the kind of hand I might expect from a high school student drawing. The bone structure doesn't work, the shadows seem silly, but the artist has devoted her time to the sparkles on the fingernail polish-- the kind of misallocation of priorities one might expect from one who hasn't labored over making drawings that hang together.
A second element is the hair, which is drawn and colored in a way that disconnects it from the shape of the head or the color of the background. I should start by saying that I view those thousands of lines for individual hairs to be an act of artistic cowardice. It is not productive. People who can draw lots of fine lines sometimes turn to that skill as a safe refuge from the harder decisions required by real drawing. Even if the artist deliberately wanted to emphasize the artificiality Parton's wig (which I doubt), the washed out color of the hair on top of those fine lines seems a mistreatment of one of the subject's most prominent features: The hair seems oblivious to the laws of physics and to the ultra saturated pink sparkly background. The hair might have a better chance if it could team up with the head or the hand or the background, but unfortunately it's just another free floating object.
Third, for me the face is given a treatment we often see from artists who've traced a lot of faces from photographs, but who have very little understanding of how the muscles and skin wrap around the skull. In such work the eyes often don't align quite the way they should structurally, and the cheekbone shadows are often a cliché. This type of drawing may be acceptable for some types of comic books, but they aren't what one would expect for the cover of the NYer... at least, not in previous years.
Please let me emphasize that my comments here have nothing to do with "realism." I like plenty of abstract and impressionistic and expressionistic and loose and casual drawings. I intended these comments to address the overall integrity of the image. It has to do with the successful prioritization of a drawing, and the kinds of lessons in coordination that artists learn from paying dues. I think a lot of artists today believe that digital tools excuse them from paying those dues, and that may be true for a lot of work but, I believe we can still tell the difference, and that difference matters.
It was done in Procreate, executed via tablet. All the "ink" lines come out "perfectly" stroked, made-to-order in Procreate. If they're in the wrong spot, you keep double-tapping to erase as many prior lines as you want to dispense with. Which is to say, if the line-work is the big "draw" here - all else failing - the whole thing is a con job; pretending at non-existent technical expertise.
But even if the lines were execute in real life, they're still bad artistically. They are perfectly blandly executed. They show no life, no verve or authority, no love, no thought, no sensitivity, no observational skills. Nothin'.
The textures - denim, halftone dots, etc. - are also dropped on the picture from Procreate menus.
It's a toy program. It is used to pretend with, like a Karaoke machine with pitch-correct.
To critique this drawing in full measure would take hours. It would be a cruelty on all counts to attempt it.
The nose in perspective looks like it was drawn from a 2d original, without any understanding of the 3d form. Like a kid intensely trying to replicate the shapes of the marks used to describe the face in his comic. Same with the hands.
The eyes are bizarre, even allowing for liner made run counter to the form it's painted on. Weird reflections, on the eyes, looks slightly cross-eyed.
This is from a different anonymous who agrees with his verdict in the picture. I have no reason to accuse anyone of 'white-knighting', but I found an online resource (something called ''reddit") which offers 'A white knight is someone who tries to protect the princess ... Saying someone is "white knighting" is an accusation that they are inserting themselves into an argument or situation for the sole purpose of trying to look good and win points with people. It's saying that they are just "trying to play knight in shining armor." '
Thank you. This blog is one of the last honest places in illustration today. It's why I keep coming back.
JSL
Not sure if you realised it David, but you've critiqued this artist's work before: https://illustrationart.blogspot.com/2022/04/the-difference.html
David: "...the kind of hand I might expect from a high school student drawing."
Given that her work is flat, graphically coloured, and has a hip, retro, ironic, trendy, fashion-y feel to it, I do have to wonder whether the '16 year old, slightly wonky, over-rendered drawing of their favourite pop star' look is a deliberate stylistic choice.
Laurence John-- Yes, I was aware but I wasn't trying to build a cumulative case against any particular artist, I just wanted to discuss the elements of a specific work, and what makes that work successful or unsuccessful.
If there is a cumulative case to be made, it's not against an individual artist so much as against the general lowering of standards and the incredible self-satisfaction in the midst of cheapening taste. As I've previously tried to point out ( https://illustrationart.blogspot.com/2023/01/tough-guys.html ) when illustration was a more robust and important field, the artists were tougher on themselves. The kind of critical language being used today on this blog was being openly used at the Society of Illustrators by artists who stood by their opinions and didn't go by the name "anonymous."
I believe that this is the main reference image.
Note the two highlights in the eye on the right.
Well, ok then. I'm just not seeing what everyone else is seeing. I've seen the photo that's been posted here as the source material. But so what, a lack of exactitude doesn't make it a bad drawing. I still see a very good likeness. It's certainly not Philip Castle level (even his "Dolly" illustration is a little wonky here and there) but it's not a kid tracing his comic...in my opinion. There isn't much more to be said except I stand with my opinion.
>>>>>>>>>"I still see a very good likeness. It's certainly not Philip Castle level"
Yep. You know good drawing when you see it.
~ FV
Well, Dolly probably would've liked it.
Ouch. After looking at the possible reference photo, I must agree with the detractors and with David's very articulate critique. Very generally speaking, I tend to find a drawing or an illustration more interesting to look at than a photo. I have attempted, with little success, to understand why. When confronted with two pictures of the same subject, especially if they share the same vantage point, I can look at the painted or drawn version for hours, while the photo does not invite the same kind of savoring.
Is it because of the skill involved? Is it the "patina" of a handcrafted image that is engrossing? Is it because something of the artist is always present and adds meaning or value to the image? I honestly don't know.
But in this case, the reference photo possesses nuance and insight that the illustration totally misses (not to mention the illustration's inability to illuminate the subject or make a point about Parton).
David, I'd like to know: would you lay this one at the feet of the Art Director rather than the artist?
"Well, Dolly probably would've liked it."
Posthumous spokespeople are the worst.
I think you're right Kev. Thanks for the link. The comparison exposes the high degree of incompetence and what not to do on every level.
What I see is, once again, proof that the linear-minded literalist simply cannot deal with the breadth of treatment that comes with truthful abstraction. Not to mention the even-more-invisible truths of proportion. You teach drawing. What say you?
Interesting question. If a student's proportions are off, particularly if they are way off, I can effect some improvement in their efforts by showing them the technique of comparative measurements from an imagined vertical and horizontal axis by way of sticking one's arm out, closing one eye, holding a pencil in the plane, and marking a bit off it with the thumb. There's also the technique of equating lines of direction in the motif as equivalent to the position of a clock's hands, or building the drawing part by part by shape area comparisons. Etc etc.
However.
Whilst these techniques help the 'linear-minded literalist' part of us to put things more proximately 'in the right place' they do not help much with facilitating poetics. In musical terms it could be seen as the difference between improvising on-the-fly over chord changes and actually composing a song. So I'd say that the relationships between parts is distinct from the relationship of the parts to the whole - a distinction between the march of equivalence and the dance of meaning. For instance, I can furnish students with techniques all day, but until they recognise what essence those techniques are in the service of, nothing much happens.
Okay, but where would you locate the problem of the artist in question attempting to drop a dimple on the face without actually appreciating, understanding, or suggestively setting down the anatomy that causes that dimple? Whither the role of physiognomic anatomy to the expression of character?
I'd have to say it is to do with love. The position of the dimple in relation to the corner of the mouth, say, has to go beyond a Cartesian X and Y coordinate and be informed by, or possess something like a gravitational attraction between the two, or more precisely, a sense of the relation between them being held in place by what I can only describe as meaningfulness. I'd say it's the same thing as whatever it is that compels the picnic party to settle down near the river just where they do.
I hope this goes some way to answering your question Kev. I may of course misunderstood your question. I'm aware that what I'm saying sounds whimsical but, as I know you are aware, this stuff constantly eludes our framing in wordy expression. Which is why it is so difficult to teach without extensive recourse to analogy - a stumbling block for those with left-brain bias who therefore have real difficulty in comprehending it.
Long ago - 1917 or thereabouts - the illustrator Thornton Oakley took over Walter Everett's illustration classes in Pennsylvania . Both were Pyle students, but Oakley was reverent of Pyle to the point of idolatry. One of Pyle's precepts (that we only know second-hand) was that every thought, mood, or whim that possessed the artist as they were working would find its way into the art. A related teaching was encouraging students to be positive in spirit, towards one's self as well as one's art. Particularly an acute matter while at the easel and working.
Anyway, Oakley had codified many of Pyle's principles into something like commandments, one of which was to create art with love above all.
Unfortunately Oakley had many students who, no matter how much love they implemented, simply couldn't draw or paint (or imagine). And there came a rift in the class between the older Everett-trained students, and the younger love bunch who struggled under the burden of impractical advice.
My feeling is that crafting a work of art with care, attentiveness and integrity is itself a labor of love; the ghostly presence of love in the work being a byproduct of the creative act.
Gianmaria Caschetto asked: "would you lay this one at the feet of the Art Director rather than the artist?"
I think the track record of the New Yorker art has become so spotty in recent years, it can't be the fault of one particular artist.
The general dumbing down of public taste surely deserves much of the credit. Magazines publish the art that readers have demonstrated they are willing to buy, and no magazine wants to try to educate them or stretch their taste.
Also, as I understand it, editor David Remnick micromanages the choices for both the covers and the cartoons, so it's difficult to know who at the NYer is to blame for a cover like this. Remnick is obviously a brilliant guy, but he just as obviously lacks artistic judgment. In the past, magazines wouldn't put a brilliant poet or a rocket scientist in charge of art direction. Everyone recognized that those strengths didn't necessarily transfer to aesthetics. For example, no magazine would've made Albert Einstein its art director.
Today it's different. We live in an era where conceptual art dominates, and that has emboldened otherwise smart people to think that the concept part of art is everything. The form creating part has been devalued. (I've previously referred to this as the "I'm so smart I don't have to draw well" syndrome.). Remnick may believe, "I'm a smart guy so I'm qualified to pass judgment on the pictures" But as this Dolly Parton cover demonstrates, he is very wrong.
It's a shame. Somewhere between the NYer editor and the NYer art director, what was once a valuable platform for art has become a wasted opportunity.
chris bennett and kev ferrara-- I agree with chris that there's a certain essential ingredient (which he chooses to call "love") that makes all the difference. Without it, even the most meticulous tracing of a photograph lies flat and lifeless.
But "love" is probably the one concept even more amorphous than "art" so I'm not sure the term adds much rigor to our thinking. There are many kinds of love, and one of them that is particularly relevant here, is "unrequited love." I would never be presumptuous enough to claim that an artist does or does not "love" the art, but in this case I feel pretty comfortable opining that the love is unrequited.
What does the word "love" tell us about art? There is false love and immature love and lazy love, and art, too, comes in all these flavors. So while I agree with the sentiment, I'm still left thinking of the ingredient as "that certain something."
David, we only know what love is when we feel it. It's as simple as that, and trying to frame it within conceptualisations is just semantic sophistry after the fact. It's like believing that knowing the Latin name for the species and genus of a particular oak standing before us is the same thing as our experience of the tree itself.
Well then, I'll expand on my take a bit, I guess. As I enjoy spinning out via neutral drops where angels fear to tread.
In all great art we find there is great tenderness and care coming through a properly authorial personality. By which I mean somebody keen of mind and trained in body toward an expressive telling purpose. The nature of the great author is somebody worth admiring for his or her integrated and dedicated prowesses; body, mind and spirit in unison. All three must be hard at play. How can we sense an artist worth admiring where one is absent as the nature of the work is felt.
Tenderness comes through in the sensitivity, in the subtlety; the naturalness, the quiet emotional tells observed, appreciated, remembered, and re-expressed - as a parallel visual world for our benefit. The care comes through in the attention paid in all the many aspects of the creation; too numerous to name, at all locations, scales and depths.
These qualitative features imprint themselves through the work, suffusing what we experience when we give great works our deserving attention.
There are also the artifacts of the struggle to make the work imprinted in the plastic material used to make the work. Which we also intuit. The feeling of joy felt by the artist in the making of great work is imprinted as well. Along with the artful aesthetic thoughts developed in the state of joy and implemented with virtuosic panache.
The way aesthetics works - as well as poetics - is through implication. Through the effect.
The sense of "love" would seemingly be a mood aesthetically implied as a field-effect in all these multitude of ways, only some of which can be articulated.
What is an expression of love? An effort made, a deeply personal one, a generous sharing on our behalf; a gentle but firm parental guidance; to remind us quietly of the subtle and truthful beauties of life; to teach us to notice more deeply just such things, with the ghost of grace and a smile sensed but not seen.
Thanks Kev
Shitty posts like this, followed by the fawning logorrhea of fart sniffers (looking at you, Kev! Do you do anything else with your time???), are exactly why I stopped reading your goddamn blog, David. I don't even read the intros you've written in the books I adore because you're such a petty bitch.
Bro. Take your meds.
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