WASTED TIME ON THE PATH TO BECOMING AN ARTIST

Before Jean Dubuffet became an artist, he served in the French army.  He was stationed high atop the Eiffel tower.  Instead of developing his art, he spent long months staring down at the winding streets and tiny buildings below.

What a waste!  Think of what he might have accomplished if he'd spent that time at art school.

Years later when Dubuffet became a world famous artist, no one could figure out where his radical new vision came from:

Before Alberto Burri ever dreamed of becoming an artist, he was drafted into the Italian Army in World War II.  He was quickly captured in Tunisia and shipped off to a POW camp in Texas.  There he spent two long years doing drudge work surrounded by burlap and canvas tents, gunny sacks, sandbags and camouflage netting. What a waste!

After the war he became world famous for his innovative art working with the textures and colors of burlap.

I can't imagine where Burri came up with such a radical idea.  Art schools certainly weren't teaching anything like that.

Illustrator Harold Von Schmidt never had the advantages of art school.  Orphaned at five, he kicked around the Old West working as a cow hand, and then on dam construction.  In this brawny world he broke his neck twice, and suffered other broken bones, dislocated shoulders and numerous bruises but he learned to understand cattle and horses as a working cowboy on trail drives.  Then one day he met the western artist Maynard Dixon who was looking for models and a studio assistant, and it changed Von Schmidt's life.

He eventually became famous for his muscular, authoritative paintings of horses and the wild west.  He painted with the forcefulness of someone who had hit the ground hard-- a forcefulness that eluded his peers who had refined their skills in art school.

Von Schmidt was esteemed by his fellow illustrators and went on to become the President of the Society of Illustrators.  Here is his portrait by James Montgomery Flagg from the Society of Illustrators' Wall of Presidents:

Returning to where we started, with Jean Dubuffet, the author Frank O'Hara wrote a  poem on the subject of Dubuffet's transition from a soldier on the Eiffel Tower to a world famous artist:

Ah Jean Dubuffet

when you think of him

doing his military service in the Eiffel Tower

as a meterologist

in 1922

you know how wonderful the 20th century

can be

Again and again, events that seem to be a delay or distraction from art training turn out to be central to an artist's achievement.  It all seems to be a matter of keeping your eyes open.

THE WALL OF PRESIDENTS AT THE SOCIETY OF ILLUSTRATORS

Let's face it-- when you visit New York you won't always find one of John Singer Sargent's charcoal portraits on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  Sometimes they're in storage.

So what's an art lover to do?

Well, you could walk a few blocks to the Society of Illustrators to see another first rate collection of charcoal portraits.  Over the 115 year history of the Society, each president has been drawn by a prominent illustrator of the day.   These remarkable drawings now line the walls for any visitor to see. Here are some that particularly struck my fancy:

Albert Sterner by William Oberhardt

Charlie Williams by James Montgomery Flagg

Charles Dana Gibson by William Oberhardt

Arthur Keller by George Brehm

Wallace Morgan by William Oberhardt

Howard Munce by Austin Briggs

Albert Beck Wenzell by Adolf Treidler 

Barye Phillips by Paul Calle

Unlike Sargent's society portraits of business moguls and dowagers who just wanted to be flattered, the portraits on the walls at the Society were pictures of working artists, done by working artists, to be displayed in front of a highly judgmental audience of working artists.  That had to change the dynamics of the art dramatically.  I'm sure each of these portrait artists wanted to show off in front of their peers.

Many of these names went on to become legends in the field of illustration.

A 1943 photo of past presidents along with the members who drew them. Note Martha Sawyers in the front row, the only woman in the room.  No African American or Asians whatsoever.

It's also interesting to note how the styles of the portraits changed over the years.  The great illustrator William Oberhardt would recoil at the thought of using a photograph for reference, but it's clear from the hard edged illustration of Paul Calle that times changed.

I'll be showing more of these drawings in future posts.

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!

All the best to you and yours!  

DA

ONE LOVELY DRAWING, part 52

Last week I showed combat art from World War I by illustrator Kerr Eby.  Back in the US, Eby illustrated books and worked for magazines such as Life and Century.

I like this tiny drawing by Eby of a town square.  The original is scarcely over 2 inches tall, but it is filled with dozens of people-- an exercise in artistic crowd control.  

The townsfolk are crowded around an automobile, which was big news in those days.  Many of the figures are little more than abstract designs of blacks and whites: 

But other figures have been given their own character, such as the unfazed old timer who has seen it all and can't find the motivation to stand up and walk over to the car:

Others are defined by their distinctive hats:

Eby's style seems like a precursor to R. Crumb and other strongly opinionated illustrators of the 60s

Another stand out: the guy who walks away:

Eby could've drawn this picture two or three times as large and given himself more room to maneuver.  Instead he chose to make a dense little jewel of a drawing.

I like the way he used line and judgment to infuse character and personality in this scene.    

WHAT KERR EBY UNDERSTOOD ABOUT THE HIDDEN GOD

Kerr Eby (1889-1946) was a combat artist on the front lines of two major wars.
 

He witnessed a lot of death, and his literal drawing style strained-- often unsuccessfully-- to convey the enormity of the tragedy.

Eby's most powerful picture was one where he abandoned some of his literal approach.  In September 1918 an immense dark cloud hung over the blood soaked battlefields of St. Mihiel in France.  It lingered there for three days.  As the French, German and Americans nervously prepared for battle the cloud seemed eerie and foreboding.  The skittish Germans called it "the cloud of blood."


Rather than focus on heroic expressions or  straining muscles or corpses, Eby made the human element tiny and inconsequential at the bottom of his picture.  He abandoned  his trademark details which gave his previous pictures such authenticity.  Instead, the immense, symbolic cloud dominated the picture as a flat, simplified shape.

 

This image, called "The Great Black Cloud" was widely regarded as Eby's most profound, moving picture.

The poet W.H. Auden wrote that it was folly to attempt to capture absolute things directly: 

We have to regard the universe etsi deus non daretur: God must be a hidden deity, veiled by His creation.

An artist who attempts to look directly into the face of death and accurately record what he or she sees is destined to fail.  The result will always come out shrill or confused or just plain inadequate.  The enormity of the subject will never be captured by its details.


Absolute and universal forces are hidden behind their own creations... for example, a cloud.  The best artists seem to focus on those creations, implying what is behind them.

HENRY RALEIGH

I've previously written about Henry Raleigh (1880-1944), the famed illustrator best known for his pictures of the frothy lifestyle of high society in the Gatsby era.

Raleigh was so successful he became a swinging participant in the fashionable life himself.   He traveled lavishly, treating groups of friends to ocean cruises.  He also maintained a yacht, owned a mansion and kept a large studio in downtown Manhattan.

    

But until I read the new book about Raleigh by his grandson, I was unaware of Raleigh's art of social conscience.

In keeping with our recent conversations about illustrators who responded to politically troubled times with pictures about social injustice , it turns out that Christopher Raleigh's new book contains a whole chapter devoted to Raleigh's lithographs and posters dealing with war, famine and social injustice.

To be certain, most of the chapters of the new book are devoted to themes such as, "High Society: The Gatsby Era," "Romantic Interlude" and "Youthful Innocence."  But Raleigh turns out to be equally effective with war posters and art designed to raise public consciousness.

I was pleased to see that Raleigh's grandson had access to numerous original Raleigh works for reproduction.  Many of these images were not well reproduced in the magazines of the 1920s, and it's a treat to see for the first time what Raleigh really intended.

EXCITEMENT, VICTORIAN STYLE

Victorian illustrator William Hatherell worked in a simpler time, using simpler materials and painting simpler subjects.  Instead of colorful digital images of race cars or women in corsets,  he was assigned subjects like "The Signing of the Documents," in which a lawyer goes through documentation with a witness.

Pretty dry stuff, huh?

But wait.  

If you pay attention to what Hatherell was doing, you might even find energy, excitement and imagination in his approach.

Look at the lightning bolt shading skittering down that sleeve to that vividly highlighted hand:

...or how powerfully Hatherell depicts the structure of the lawyer's face...

( Contrast the subtlety of the lawyer's eyeglasses with the loose rapidity of his neck jabot; this is an illustrator with a broad range of tools and a clear set of priorities.  )

The woman poised to sign the document believes it is false and is looking at the lawyer to understand whether he knowingly wants her to sign it:

Hatherell conveys this with a single raised eyebrow, located strategically at the center of the picture.   Such subtlety would be lost on today's audiences.  Illustrators today would be forced to spotlight that face and exaggerate the expression and body language to get our attention.  In my opinion, our insensitivity is nothing to be proud of.

John Lubbock wrote, "What we see depends mainly on what we look for." Before we conclude that 19th century illustrations lacked strength and boldness, we need to understand what to look for.

THE END OF 2016

I love the work of Denis Zilber.  His drawing ability, vivid imagination and
fun attitude make him one of my favorite digital illustrators.

Wishing you all a happy 2017, one that I hope will generate a little more love than what we experienced in 2016.

Thanks to all of you for your interesting comments and suggestions throughout the year.  You have broadened my experience and sharpened my vocabulary, and I appreciate it.

THE "WITNESS ART" OF VICTOR JUHASZ

I've argued on this blog that "fine" art tends to become silly and less relevant as investment bankers and auction houses distort the market, and critics shy away from normative statements about new art.  In my view, fine art today is often more commercial than so-called commercial illustration.

Following the election of Donald Trump, we've begun discussing art with a social conscience by artists such as Ben Shahn or Alan Cober.  What can it accomplish?  How meaningful is it today?

In my view, one of the most striking collections of such art in the past fifty years was a project by Victor Juhasz which was posted by GQ.   Juhasz spent three weeks with an army medevac unit in Kandahar, Afghanistan to witness first hand what was happening on the front lines.

He took his expedition solo, and on his own initiative.  His journal recounts several extraordinary moments, such as this effort by a Black Hawk helicopter to rescue casualties from an armored vehicle (MRAP) had been turned into a "crushed toy" by an explosive device.  Trying to avoid Taliban snipers, the helicopter with Juhasz came swooping to the rescue at about 160 miles per hour for a "hot zone" landing:

Foul-smelling smoke and ash from the burning MRAP, some of it still quite hot, poured in through the open windows of our Black Hawk, swirling and landing everywhere in the cabin as we drew closer. Bitter-tasting cinders filled my accidentally opened mouth. Edstrom banked the Black Hawk hard and almost on its side as he slowed to make a landing. A spot had been designated in advance, and Edstrom lowered the bird, but the ubiquitous red-clay "moon dust" kicked up by the rotor blades created a brownout. Edstrom lost all visuals and, unable to see where he was landing, aborted the attempt, doing another accelerating loop around the village and fields, in effect another roller-coaster ride, to come in for another try.

But the truly extraordinary thing about Juhasz's drawings and paintings was not the high speed or the explosions which dominate the art of "armchair" war artists.  It was the humanity of the individuals he captured in extreme situations.

Juhasz wrote, "A good drawing walks an interesting tightrope of being in the moment and reflecting on that moment, from the visual impact of a subtle gesture to the energetic desperation of concentrated activity."

I find his drawings beautiful and devastating.

His impressions showed me a side of the war that I never got from photographs.

Juhasz took his responsibilities as a witness seriously.  He wrote:"I leave with far more butterflies about my skills than over concerns about safety or injury."

You can find his poignant art from Afghanistan and from Juhasz's other military excursions on his website.

So what is the potential for such witness art today?  It is certainly a fitting tribute to the soldiers whose sacrifices might otherwise go unnoticed.  But beyond that, such images could be important for a culture that seems quick to pull the trigger but reluctant to do the hard reading about the causes and effects of conflicts.  A president elect who says he doesn't like to read details, and who says his equivalent of military service in Vietnam was avoiding STDs back home, could certainly benefit from studying these pictures.