HARVEY DUNN (1884 - 1952)

Harvey Dunn was a tall, muscular prairie farmer with a rare artistic gift. He started out plowing buffalo trails into farmland on the South Dakota frontier and ended up as one of the giants of the golden age of illustration.

A teacher at an a agricultural School noticed Dunn's talent and persuaded the 17 year old to travel to Chicago to train at the Art Institute. There he came to the attention of the legendary Howard Pyle, who brought Dunn to Wilmington Delaware where Pyle ran a school for gifted young illustrators. Among all of Pyle's talented students, Dunn was the young Prometheus who became inspired by Pyle's gift of teaching and passed it along to a whole new generation of artists, from Dean Cornwell and Mead Schaeffer to Saul Tepper and Harold von Schmidt. Dunn returned regularly to his South Dakota home for inspiration later in life.

Here are examples of Dunn's lovely work:











Until this week, Harvey Dunn was the last remaining giant among the "golden age" illustrators without a book memorializing his work. Howard Pyle, Norman Rockwell, N.C. Wyeth, Maxfield Parrish, J.C. Leyendecker, Dean Cornwell and others have substantial art monographs-- some of them have several.



I am happy to report that this gap has now been filled.

Walt Reed, the world's leading authority on illustration, has completed a splendid new book, Harvey Dunn: Illustrator and Painter of the Pioneer West. The book brings together an excellent collection of Dunn's art (367 plates, 294 of them in color) often with new photographs from the original paintings. I thought I knew Dunn's work, but this book came as a revelation to me (which is, I guess, a primary reason for reading a book). The book also presents Dunn's teaching methods and demonstrates the prodigious results of that teaching, with an illustrated selection of Dunn's more successful students.

I have always enjoyed Reed's writings for the integrity of his scholarship, the clarity of his prose, and especially for his impeccable judgment.

Just as sculptor Gutzon Borglum chiseled the faces of great presidents from the granite cliffs of South Dakota's Mount Rushmore, Walt Reed has done more than anyone else to define the Mt. Rushmore of great illustrators of the 20th century. His work is as solid and reliable as granite. I highly recommend his new book to everyone interested in this field.

ART THAT OUTCLASSES ITS SUBJECT MATTER

The 1980 movie Popeye was widely panned by critics. (One of the more favorable reviews called it a "mess of a movie" and "unintelligible.") It quickly disappeared from the theaters but not before MAD Magazine artist Mort Drucker dutifully captured it in a parody.



Drucker drew many important subjects for MAD, but he was also assigned to depict much of the raw sewage of American popular culture: third rate television shows that quickly imploded and movies that should never have been made. (Remember Alf? Who's The Boss? The Flying Nun?) By the time he drew Popeye, Drucker had been slogging through such subject matter for almost 25 years.

Yet, he drew these pictures with the same loving care others might reserve for the immortal themes on ancient Greek vases. Look at Drucker's beautiful work for Popeye:









I am awed by Drucker's talent, but separately awed by his dedication and consistently high standards over many decades.

Notice in the panel below how Drucker continued his drawing beyond the panel borders. The man couldn't stop himself.



Click on these drawings for close ups of a master at work.



Look how convincingly he conveys great mass in his figures:



Notice how adroitly he controls the architecture of this complex scene, and still has the capacity left over to add a gratuitous fish climbing the stairs:



While Drucker was drawing for MAD, the other two great caricaturists of the latter half of the 20th century, David Levine and Al Hirschfeld were drawing more highbrow subjects-- great authors and composers-- for prestigious periodicals such as the New York Review of Books and the New York Times.

Many think that art is enhanced by association with prestigious subjects. They presume that a drawing of Dostoevsky must somehow be superior to a drawing of Joan Collins, or that a caricature in the New York Review of Books must be more culturally significant than a caricature in MAD. One look at Drucker's glorious drawings from Popeye tells you it ain't so. As far as I am concerned, Drucker is the best all around artist of the bunch, hands down. His prolific career is an astounding artistic accomplishment and I think more of him, rather than less, for achieving it with subject matter such as Popeye.

THE TRAINING OF JULES GUERIN

The illustrator Jules Guerin had an unusual combination of strengths. He blended the careful precision of an architectural engineer with the exaggerated, romantic colors of an impressionist.

Guerin's technical drawing skills and mastery of perspective were much in demand by architectural firms around the country.







By infusing architectural drawings with color, he made them so appealing it almost guaranteed that the design would be accepted and the project funded.





At the same time, Guerin's vivid colors and stylized designs made him a popular illustrator of books and magazines. He specialized in painting exotic subjects.













Which art school could teach Guerin two such disparate skills? Or was it just natural talent?

Actually, Guerin learned from two guys he happened to meet along the way. First, In 1889, Guerin's mother was renting out a spare room in their home when a young artist named Winsor McCay showed up at their door. McCay had just been evicted by his previous landlady and needed someplace to stay. McCay and the young Guerin soon became fast friends, and McCay taught Guerin his special techniques for drawing in perspective. McCay went on to create the revolutionary comic strip, Little Nemo In Slumberland, where he proved himself a genius with perspective indeed.



A few years later, Guerin happened to meet another artist, Maxfield Parrish, who took Guerin under his wing, introducing him to the art directors at Century Magazine and teaming with Guerin on projects. It wasn't long before Parrish was a nationally famous colorist, with Guerin following in his footsteps.

So much depends on who you happen to meet, and at what stage of your development, and under what circumstances. Perhaps if Picasso had been evicted from a room in Chicago, Guerin would have a third specialty as a cubist.

VALENTIN SEROV

These are portrait sketches by the great Russian painter, Valentin Serov (1865 - 1911)



While many of Serov's finished paintings are quite beautiful, I especially enjoy his preliminary sketches for their vitality and truthfulness.







Serov, who studied under the great Ilya Repin, was part of that astonishing Renaissance in Russia in the 19th and early 20th centuries. For centuries, Russian artists had manufactured religious icons to suit the rigid specifications of church dogma.



Icons were the opposite of western illusionist art. The church historically frowned on efforts to create physical images of the holy, so Russian artists went out of their way to avoid accurate, representational images. They stressed flat, distorted figures, inverted perspective and unnatural colors to emphasize that they were painting the ideal, dematerialized world rather than the natural world. (In 815 CE, if you tried to paint a realistic icon the troops of Leo the Armenian were likely to come along and thump you on the head). But starting in the 19th century, there was a period of sunlight and fresh air which inspired a flurry of cultural activity in Russia.

It didn't take more than a generation for the Russians to shake off the dust and produce world class artwork that was nimble and probing and insightful.





With the advent of Stalin the window closed again.

But I love these pictures by Serov, not just for the images themselves, but because they help me believe that, even after centuries of confinement, artistic abilities can be reawakened on short notice if they are given the right stimulus and the room to grow.

THE TRAINING OF ROBERT FAWCETT

This is an unpublished student drawing by illustrator Robert Fawcett at age 19.


Sketch from 1922, approximately 5" tall.

In his introduction to the upcoming book about Fawcett, Walt Reed wrote, "He'd had rigorous training in draftsmanship at the Slade School in England and learned to make it almost a science. Within the discipline of drawing the figure with a hard 4H pencil, with no erasures allowed, students learned to record proportion and perspective by eye."

The Slade School was renowned for a tough and relentless approach which quickly weeded out the unfit. Fawcett was given 10 minutes to complete this sketch, but on another occasion he was required to spend a full week drawing a single figure on a sheet of plain paper using a hard graphite pencil -- a form of torture that that forced him to focus on every nuance of the model and of drawing.

Later in life, Fawcett would entertain artist friends with horror stories about the grueling regimen of his two years at Slade. "I did nothing but draw from the model eight hours a day for two years.... They gave us discipline, discipline, discipline."

Unlike most artists, Fawcett never took a class on painting or perspective or technical drawing or any other traditional subject. Instead, he extrapolated from the powers of observation and the discipline he acquired from life drawing.

Some people believe that if you learn everything about one subject, you'll understand something about every subject.

Despite his jokes about his ordeal at Slade, Fawcett must have concluded that the process was worthwhile. Long after he arrived at the top of his profession, and for the rest of his life, he continued to set aside personal time each week to draw from the model.

WHEN AN ARTIST FALLS IN A FOREST AND NO ONE IS AROUND TO HEAR IT...

In 1923, C.B. Dodson of Richmond Virginia entered this painting in a competition for young illustrators:



Alas, he came in second and nobody ever heard of him again. Of course, nobody ever heard of the first place winner either:



C.B. and Florence took their places in that long, long line of anonymous artists who yearned for a whiff of artistic immortality.



It is easy to spot such artists. They're the ones who remain hunched over a drawing board or computer, continuing to improve a picture even after someone was willing to buy it.

For some, this dedication paid off.  Norman Rockwell traded his personal life for his art, often working twelve hours a day, six days a week on his paintings. Near the end of his life he observed, "The story of my life is, really, the story of my pictures." Rockwell may not have spent much time with his kids or lingered in bed with his wife on cold New England mornings, but future generations would remember his name and respect his achievement.

Rockwell's fame is the exception, not the rule.  For most artists,  all that hard work and the decisions that seemed so momentous at the time-- that innovative color choice or that crucial brush stroke-- will be erased forever.  When most artists arrive at their final destination, they'll understand that the extra hours they robbed from life to invest in their craft, hoping for a return on their investment, is equity that will never be repaid.

It's not as if the gods have hidden the price of glory.  Long ago, the gods explained to Achilles that if he wanted to be remembered, he would have to sacrifice his life.

From The Iliad by the Provensens

If he fought in the Trojan war, he would be killed but his name would live forever in glory. On the other hand, if he turned and sailed for home he could enjoy a long, happy life surfing internet porn in his bathrobe but no one would remember his name.

You can bet that Achilles loved surfing internet porn just as much as you or I, so he raged against the unfairness of this choice. The pain in his ancient soliloquy remains fresh today:

The same honor waits for the coward and the brave. They both go down to Death, the fighter who shirks and the one who works to exhaustion.... Two fates bear me on to the day of my death. If I hold out here and I lay siege to Troy my journey back home is gone, but my glory never dies. If I voyage back to the home I love, my pride, my glory dies, true, but the life that's left me will be long....

When his hour of decision arrived, Achilles chose to sacrifice his life on the hardscrabble soil of Troy. (If he hadn't, we wouldn't still be talking about him now).

Achilles got a better deal than poor C.B. Dodson. The gods promised Achilles that his sacrifice would be rewarded with eternal glory, but artists get no such guarantee. They must gamble their lives away like a poker chip at the Casino d'Art. There are plenty of talented, hard working artists who die anonymous deaths, and plenty of untalented hacks who hit the jackpot and become legends. Who among us would play a slot machine with such crummy odds?

Furthermore, our options are beset by human disadvantages that Achilles did not have. We are surrounded by mortality on one side, which requires us to make haste with our commitments, and total uncertainty on the other side about whether those commitments (and their accompanying sacrifices) will have any meaning.

As a result, we are forced to work harder to find solace than Achilles did. Our glory is sadder, more poignant and more fragile than the glory earned by Achilles.

Yet, I'm convinced it is no less glorious.

ONE LOVELY DRAWING, part 33

At some point-- I'm not sure when-- traditional drawing skills seem to have become unfashionable.

• Perhaps it's because artists today see no percentage in competing with 1,000 years of talented, obsessed draftsmen.

• Perhaps it's because photography and other short cuts have made the labors of drawing seem less inspiring.

• Perhaps it's because illustrators have seized the license of gallery painters who proved that you don't need traditional skills to sell a picture.

Whatever the reason, other ingredients of art (such as concept or design) have become so dominant that today many artists no longer even pretend to be able to draw. (Consider the talented cartoonist Garry Trudeau who has drawn like crap for 40 years. You'd have to try mighty hard to avoid picking up some skill in all that time.) Some contemporary artists seem to go out of their way to draw in a crude or naive style, perhaps to avoid any comparison with traditional artists.

That's one reason I take pleasure in the work of Peter de Seve, an excellent, decisive draftsman who draws with great character and imagination.



Note de Seve's eye for the small details that create personality, for body language, for animated facial expressions and revealing gestures. His drawing ability enables him to give form to his insights in a way that many other contemporary illustrators cannot. He integrates these ingredients seamlessly using a loose, energetic line.

In an era when the greatest demand for images seems to be CGI in movies or computer gaming, I find it interesting that de Seve's old fashioned pencil drawing have become an essential building block for major animated movies such as the Ice Age trilogy or a Bug's Life. He contributes the flavor to character designs which (so far) no computer has been able to simulate.