ECSTASY UPDATED

Skeptics have long questioned whether Bernini's great sculpture, The Ecstasy of St. Teresa, is about a purely religious experience:

Teresa of Avila (1515-1582) wrote of her dream that an angel thrust his fiery golden spear into her "to pierce my very entrails." When he finally withdrew after much thrusting, her heart was attached. The experience, she reported, was "not bodily, but spiritual."

Bernini's sculpture was commissioned by the Catholic church for the Cornaro Chapel in Rome.  Regardless of Bernini's motives, it certainly attracted the crowds.  For centuries, devout housewives  sat in the church thinking, "I'll have what she's having."

350 years after Bernini, Popes and kings no longer buy art.  They have been replaced by a new commercial class of patrons, fueled by the birth of capitalism and the ascendancy of the modern corporation.  But some things never change.  Whether church or refrigerator manufacturer, they still commission artists to sell their products with promises of ecstasy.

The great illustrator John Gannam had a gift for portraying women ecstatic over a gift of new blankets or sheets

Gannam's series of watercolors for Pacific Sheets was legendary.

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Albert Dorne's illustrations lacked Gannam's poetry, but Dorne too tried to illustrate women experiencing the highest form of satisfaction from a product: 



And of course, hundred of anonymous illustrators have depicted women over the years in a state of delirium over new refrigerators, cars, jewelry or laundry detergent.  The formula is the same as Bernini's-- head tilted back, lips parted, toes curled, eyes rolling -- it's just in the service of a different sponsor.

These latter day corybants seem to be in paroxysms before the unholy shrine of Wurlitzer:

As Paul was awestruck by a flash of heavenly light on the road to Damascus, so this gentlemen seems awestruck-- his mouth agape and his eyes bulging-- at the glow from the juke box:

A lot of things have changed in the field of illustration over the centuries, but some things remain immutable.  No matter who the client or what the product, an illustrator who can harness ecstasy in the service of a client will always find work.

ONE LOVELY DRAWING, part 43

 Here is a drawing with attitude:

This working drawing by Adolph Menzel (1815 - 1905) is an astonishing ballet of hand and eye.  Look at the speed and clarity with which he captures the most telling details of a military coat:

Sharp realism combined with abstract design

These long, sweeping lines show Menzel's confidence:

But mostly I like Menzel's attitude toward this drawing.  Rather than place it on a shelf to be admired, he marks it up with notes as if he were a master carpenter plying his trade.  The notes are part of the artistry of the sketch:

Contrast Menzel's empty coat with this far more famous empty robe series by pop artist Jim Dine:

Dine's "fine art" pictures of empty robes are treated with reverence and sell at auction for over $100,000.  But I have no doubt that Menzel's working sketch is the superior work of art.

T.S. SULLIVANT

The great T.S. Sullivant (1854–1926) was hilarious from any angle.

For most artists it would be a challenge to draw a recognizable head from this odd angle:

Sullivant goes much further, fearlessly distorting the head with a comical hodge podge of bizarre shapes.  Yet, it is still persuasive.

And look at the liberties Sullivant takes with this sleeping pig, or the unorthodox perspective on the chicken's butt in the air:

In this next drawing, Sullivant doesn't need to show a face; he gives us all the information we need with that wild beard and stooped posture:

Here, we see an elephant who has inadvertently hurt the feelings of the giraffe:

This could be my very favorite drawing of a crying giraffe:

And here we see Sullivant's wicked cave boys tormenting some poor dinosaur:

We can see from the original how Sullivant shaped the dinosaur as he went along, scratching out some of the lines of the head to achieve the structure he wanted:

A stumbling, upside down dinosaur, mid-air and foreshortened-- now that's doing it the hard way!

WARRING WITH TROLLS, part 3

"To live is to war with trolls." --Ibsen 

While researching my upcoming book on illustrator Bernie Fuchs, I was amused by the imitators who encircled his ankles wherever he went.

For example, Fuchs' groundbreaking illustration for Cointreau...
 

... was imitated by some of the top illustrators of the day:

Even Bob Peak tried a version of Bernie's approach

The Cointreau drawing was blatantly copied by illustrators as far away as Korea:

I love how this imitator re-purposed Fuchs' line for the woman's hair into a dotted coupon line.

The thefts became so ridiculous that Advertising Age magazine even sponsored a competition challenging readers to send in ads that copied the Cointreau drawing.  Fuchs never tried to do anything about it, just moved on to a different approach.

He got a lot of attention with this bold new illustration for McCalls in 1964: 

Among the artists "influenced" by Fuchs' picture was Aldo Luongo, who painted the following version and sold it as a limited edition print,  advertised heavily in fine art magazines:

When Fuchs changed directions, painting with a series of thin acrylic washes...

Fuchs

...illustrations by others in the same style began popping up a few months later:

Andy Virgil

I suspect the imitators who hurt the most were the capable illustrators who did not copy a specific image but just adopted the Fuchs "look."  They were the hardest to distinguish.  More than anyone else, these images diluted the the Fuchs "brand."  But he just kept changing the brand.

When Fuchs began painting bright yellow floors... 

...bright yellow became the flavor of the month for imitators such as this anonymous artist. 

Fuchs' agent used to become indignant when people called to compliment him on a new Fuchs illustration that turned out to be by an imitator.

But when I interviewed Fuchs before he died, he never mentioned it.  One good way to fight trolls is not to notice them. 

THE BEST COLOR THEORY

In 1704, the great Isaac Newton wrote the first scientific treatise on color theory (the physics of color interaction).  Newton's color wheel began the transformation of color from the unsupported intuitions of artists to the science that it has become today.

Goethe's color wheel from 1810

Chevreul's color wheel from 1855

Today we recognize that our sensory impressions of ideal colors were unreliable.  Instead, we measure vibrational frequencies and map spectrum space, defining quality in quantitative terms.   The science of colorimetry and organizations such as the International Commission on Illumination to help us achieve the miracles that digital color accomplish today.

As Galileo said, "The book of nature is written in the language of mathematics."

Many great scientists have made valuable contributions to this growing body of knowledge.  But the most important and useful color theorist remains Elizabeth Barret Browning:

"Yes," I answered you last night;
"No," this morning, sir, I say.
Colors seen by candlelight
Will not look the same by day.

JAMES GALLAGHER

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James Gallagher takes a few meaningless scraps of paper and combines them in strong visual statements.

Such materials would be disastrous in less capable hands:  blank pages from books and magazines in a dozen muted shades of tapioca.  Random stains or wrinkles, and an occasional stray bit of text.  Fragments of old photos clipped from anonymous publications.  Yet, Gallagher glues them together in a way that creates powerful compositions:  

He even manages to imbue these primitive materials with meaning, significance and mystery:

 

Gallagher says:

I collect my source materials from such places as recycled vintage books, sex manuals, clothing catalogs and anything else that can be folded into my world. With a combination of calculated moves, and unrehearsed accidents, my scraps find each other and solidify....  This spontaneous process often generates raw, emotional images that I feel excited and personally moved by. Ultimately I hope to capture something that feels natural (or unnatural) and then leave it up to the viewer to decide its significance.

Gallagher never needs to fret about whether a brush is genuine Kolinsky sable, or whether Strathmore bristol board takes ink quite as well as it once did.  The limitation of his materials rewards him with the gift of simplicity. 

 

I recently complained about the plague of photoshop collages that have infested the field of illustration, but in my view Gallagher does collage right.