0NE LOVELY DRAWING, part 38

This woodcut by Lynd Ward scared the crap out of me when I was a boy:

Ward (1905-1985) became known in the 1930s for his "wordless novels" comprised entirely of woodcuts.  (His first, Gods' Man, a powerful story about the corrupting influence of money, debuted the week of the great stockmarket crash in 1929).

I discovered a battered collection of Ward's books on my father's bookshelf.  This illustration-- one of my favorites-- was from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

At age five, I was already expert at drawing scary monsters.  I'd figured out that the two most important ingredients for a monster were 1.) a scary face, and 2.) great big muscles.  Yet, Ward's monster had neither.  Ward succeeded in unnerving me without showing a face at all. 

That gave me plenty of food for thought.

Today you see artists straining to draw scarier faces and bigger muscles.  They'd do well to linger for a moment over the work of Lynd Ward.

PRELIMINARY SKETCHES BY BERNIE FUCHS

I love the wildness in these preliminary sketches by illustrator Bernie Fuchs:

They were done quickly, and with some violence:

They look completely unfettered.  Not a traffic light in sight.

  
 Yet, these are not random spasmodic brush strokes.  If you look closely, you can see the fruits of years of discipline and technical skill.

Fuchs spent his first years out of art school working in a small studio in Detroit learning to paint tight, highly realistic car illustrations.  Eventually he left that world behind, but decades later-- working with the palette of Bonnard and using free, spontaneous brush strokes-- Fuchs still retained all that hard earned wisdom about how to convey the weight and volume of a car. 

Fuchs' apprenticeship taught him lessons about form that Bonnard was never forced to learn.  Look beneath the apparent freedom of his brushwork to the subtle treatment of those purple hubcaps (with no wheels), or his reduction of the shapes of light and shadow, or his highlight on the corner of the fender, and you'll see that Fuchs was in full control the whole time.

There are a dozen subtle choices in that "freely" painted sunset.

Similarly, Fuchs spent two years in art school learning to draw the human form.  Years later, when roughing out a human form at lightning speed, Fuchs didn't need to pause and think about the way fingers bunch together, or the way an elbow works.

Look at the way his apparently free line captures the character of those wooden chairs.  This is a line that has definite opinions about its subject matter.

Some like to think they can save time by skipping over the long hours of basic exercises and turning straight to abstraction, or to copying photo reference, or scanning material into Photoshop.

But those dues we pay, they build up equity for us.  And they pay off not just when it comes time to paint that 100th car, or that 500th elbow, but also when it comes time to paint the nameless and formless abstractions as well.

THE OLD QUESTION FINALLY ANSWERED: "WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ILLUSTRATION AND FINE ART?"

.

Over the years, many people have wrestled without progress over the difference between art and illustration.  The internet is riddled with silly theories on the subject:

The distinction lies in the fact that art is the idea (brought to life) while an illustration is a depiction (or explanation) of an idea.

Fine Art is simply art for art's sake. Even if you are doing a commission for a client, it would still be fine art.  But illustration is illustrating a story or idea.

In modern illustration the intent is most often the selling of a product.  When something noble is put to ignoble ends, there is a deterioration of value.

Even talented artists and illustrators have been tormented by the distinction. Illustrator Robert Weaver noisily agonized about the boundary line:

Until the illustrator enjoys complete independence from outside pressure and direction, complete responsibility for his own work, and complete freedom to to do whatever he deems fit-- all necessaries in the making of art-- then illustration cannot be art but only a branch of advertising.

With all due respect to Weaver's romantic illusion, it's difficult to think of a fine artist with "complete independence from outside pressure and direction" whose work was not worse off for it.  

Despite all this hand wringing about the difference between art and illustration, I think the question is a fake one, usually concerned more about social status than about the nature of art.

The real difference, it seems to me, has nothing to do with the talent of the artist, or the quality of the work, or its morality, or its intelligence.  It is far too easy to identify examples of illustration that are superior to "fine" art in each of these categories, just as it is easy to identify examples of fine art that are superior to illustration.  It hardly takes any effort to puncture categorical distinctions between the two types of work.

In my view, there is no inherent difference between art and illustration except the way in which  payment to the artist is processed.

Here's what I mean:  For the first 30,000 years of art, artists were able to earn a decent living working for kings, priests, pharaohs and popes.  Art was commissioned for temple walls and public spaces.  It adorned palaces and royal tombs and the homes of aristocrats.  Then kings began to disappear from the earth.  Popes stopped commissioning new art.  They were replaced by a new commercial class, fueled by the birth of capitalism and the invention of the corporation.  This class became the new patrons of arts.

It's important to emphasize that although art's sponsors and subject matter changed, the quality of the work did not. The same talented artists who once painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel or the walls of the Great Temple at Karnak simply migrated to the new bosses in order to feed their families.

Artists adapting to the new business realities found two paths.  The first was to produce what we now call "fine" or "gallery" art for the private moneyed class and corporate art collections.  The second path opened as a result of the newly invented printing press: rather than selling a picture to a wealthy patron,  artists could now make multiple copies of a picture and sell them for smaller amounts to larger numbers of (less-wealthy) purchasers.  If this option had existed during the golden age of Greece or the early Italian Renaissance, you can bet some of the greatest artists would have taken full advantage of it.  In fact, when this business model first began to emerge with the invention of etching, some of the greatest artists, such as Durer and Rembrandt, quickly embraced it:

Rembrandt turned to etchings as a way of selling multiple copies of a single image to Dutch merchants.

The story of that technology is the history of illustration. There would be no modern illustration without two key developments:

1.  The ability to create and distribute quality copies to large audiences; and
2.  The ability to collect small, proportional payments for that art from large audiences.

Because of these developments, the most talented artists (who we could never afford to hire individually under the old business model for art) could now create beautiful pictures to entertain and delight the public.  They are paid with a tiny fraction of the price we pay for a magazine or book or video game or movie ticket.  By aggregating tiny payments from vast audiences, we paid handsome sums to great magazine illustrators such as Norman Rockwell, Maxfield Parrish and J.C. Leyendecker, just as we pay handsome sums to the talented creators at Pixar today.   Similarly, commercial artists who design products for mass consumer markets get paid very well when a penny or two from each sale goes into the manufacturer's design or marketing budget. Michelangelo never had the option of getting paid that way.

For a snapshot of how this new opportunity opened up for artists, look at the pirate illustrations of Howard Pyle, the father of modern illustration.  As the technology for reproducing his pictures gradually improved over his career, the public became more enthusiastic and the demand increased dramatically:

The earliest Pyle pictures were printed in magazines only after wood engravers carved Pyle's images into wooden printing blocks. The engraver even signed the recreated image (see inset). 

Crude color was added to enhance the early images.

Later, audiences grew as the invention of photo engraving captured the subtler and more sensitive aspects of Pyle's originals .

Improved printing technology finally reproduced the full colors and technique of the original, leading to the golden age of illustration and a proliferation of illustrated books and magazines.

As we scan Pyle's pictures, we see how the quality of reproductions, and the newly sophisticated vehicles for delivering them to the public,  transformed the economics of art and inspired new bursts of creativity.  A handful of black and white journals, such as Scribners and Century, evolved into dozens of splashy, well designed, full color magazines.  It was the Cambrian explosion of modern illustration.

In short, the twin pillars of modern illustration are 1.) quality reproduction, and 2.) the ability to collect marginal payments from large numbers of viewers.  These two developments created a robust opportunity for talented artists.  They are the core of the economic model for illustration, and the only categorical difference between modern illustration and fine art.  

Does the method of payment affect the character of the art?  Yes, but perhaps the better question is: does it affect art for the better or worse?  It is undeniable that because of its wider audience, illustration is often broader than fine art.  But as Shakespeare proved definitively, broad appeal to a popular audience is not incompatible with greatness.  Even more importantly, the broadness of the illustration audience combined with the relentless scrubbing of the commercial marketplace seems to have inoculated illustration from much of the narcissism, decadence and irrelevance which has now infected the "fine" art model.

THE MOST SIGNIFICANT ART

Last weekend I gave a lecture at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge Massachusetts.  The following is an excerpt from what future generations shall call my NRM Manifesto (unless the NRM lawyers demand that I remove their name, which is quite possible): 

Anyone with the courage to take a fresh look at the role of art in the 20th century might reasonably conclude illustration has played a more significant role than "fine" art.

Yeah, you heard me-- more significant than Picasso, Matisse, Jackson Pollack and the great Jeff Koons combined.

Absurd?  Perhaps.  But let's explore the issue as soberly and conscientiously as we are able, and see where the facts take us.

We should start by agreeing there are many legitimate methods of measuring the importance of art.  For me, the least satisfying method seems to be the most popular: to blindly accept the conventions of our grandparents who instinctively assigned a lower social status to "commercial" illustration.

What might be a better test? I submit that four of the most relevant standards for measuring the significance of art are:

• The size of its audience
• Its economic impact
• Its effect on society
• Its impact on our individual lives

The first two tests are fairly easy to apply.  They are objectively quantifiable, and in my view there is little question that illustration has had the greater impact.

Size of the Audience: In a century when many towns did not have an art museum, a gallery, or even a public library, the average citizen has been surrounded by illustrations.  They invaded his field of vision from all sides.  The Saturday Evening Post, chock full of illustrations, was selling three million copies while its rival Colliers was selling nearly as many.  Illustrated magazines arrived in mailboxes all across America, along with illustrated brochures from car manufacturers and other advertisers.  Illustrations in storybooks, billboards, posters and animated movies found their way to every corner of the globe, driven by the mighty engine of commerce.  By comparison, attendance at museums and galleries, and the sale of fine art books and prints, was meager at best. If we judge by raw numbers, Norman Rockwell enjoyed far more viewers Picasso.

Economic Impact of the Art: A small number of fine artists such as Damien Hirst or Jeff Koons are paid huge sums for their work, far more than any illustrator has been paid.  Yet, the average illustrator probably earned more from his or her labors over the last century than the average gallery painter.  More importantly, because of the huge audience for illustration (above) it has had a far greater economic impact on the world than museum or gallery art.  The economics of the video game industry alone likely surpass the economics of the fine art market.  Illustrations have been used to sell cars, design feature films, and advertise countless products.  The economic impact of "fine" art simply cannot compare.

Impact on Society:  This is harder to gauge.  Certainly, contemporary gallery art-- from cubism to surrealism to abstract expressionism-- has had an important impact on the intellectual direction of society.  Yet, illustration has also played a major role in establishing the style, visual paradigms and iconic images of our society.  A quick trip through the annals of illustration demonstrates the impact illustrators have had in shaping the aesthetics of society.  Here is a tiny sample:

The Gibson Girl set a popular standard for beauty

The Arrow Collar Man

John Held established the flapper as an institution

Peter Max's psychedelic style became emblematic of his era

 Impact on Our Individual Lives:  The first three tests are revealing, but in my view this last test is more important than all the others combined.  In previous posts I have applauded scholar Lionello Venturi, author of the definitive treatise on the history of art criticism, who proposed what I believe to be  a very sensible standard for measuring the value of art:

What ultimately matters in art is not the canvas, the hue of oil or tempera, the anatomical structure and all the other measurable items, but its contribution to our life, its suggestions to our sensations, feeling and imagination.

If we consider the "contributions to our life" from both illustration and gallery art, we may discover some interesting facts.  It goes without saying that we have all (myself included) been thrilled by the beauty and power of fine art.  But let's keep exploring and see if we we can identify more specific litmus tests of the way art affects our "sensations, feeling and imagination."


It would be hard to find a more powerful statement of outrage against the atrocities of war than Picasso's famous Guernica:

   

Yet, if you want to inspire people to put their lives on the line, to enlist and fight against those atrocities, illustration has historically proven more persuasive than Guernica or any other fine art:

James Montgomery Flagg

Henry Raleigh

Similarly, if you want to motivate people to give up their money and buy war bonds to help fight the atrocities, Guernica could never achieve the results of Norman Rockwell's famous Four Freedoms:

Putting aside the emotions of hate and fear, and looking instead to emotions of love and lust, romantic illustrations in women's magazines played a huge role in shaping women's concepts of what love was and how it worked.

John Gannam detail: should we have sex before marriage?

Pictures such as these in Redbook, Cosmopolitan, McCall's, Ladies Home Journal and Good Housekeeping had blood racing and nostrils flaring all across the country.  (Meanwhile, husbands were developing their own concept of romance from the pinup illustrations of George Petty and Gil Elvgren.)

Romantic illustrations that shaped expectations and fleshed out our vocabulary weren't limited to fiction magazines.  The language of love was spoken in John Gannam's ads for bedsheets as well:

"My precious babykins..."

Now take a look at the kinds of statements famous fine artists have made recently regarding the subject of love:

Damien Hirst, All You Need is Love

Robert Indiana, Love

Tells you something, doesn't it?

There are plenty of other emotions besides love and hate where it might be useful to compare illustration and fine art, but a blog post is not the best place to attempt it.  But applying Venturi's test to the representative examples above, it seems clear to me that illustration has had greater significance.  

The four standards I have suggested are not the only ways to measure significance, and I would welcome any counter suggestions from readers.  In addition, I have not tried to assert which art form has the highest inherent "quality."   I have my personal views on that subject (as does everybody else) but it is far harder to devise standards for measuring quality than for measuring significance.  

In order to play this game, my only restriction is that you have to be willing to abide by Isaac Newton's famous admonition for honest scientific results: 

I frame no hypotheses; for whatever is not deduced from the phenomena is to be called a hypothesis, and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, whether of occult qualities or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy.

By looking at the phenomena, I deduce that illustration seems to have been a more significant form of visual art over the past century than "fine" or "gallery" art.  But if you have other phenomena for us to consider, or other standards to apply, I'd be interested.

LECTURE ON ILLUSTRATION: SEPTEMBER 24

For those who live near the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, the Museum was kind enough to invite me to come present my views on illustration.

The museum is one of the premier resources for promoting "the rich visual legacy of American illustration art," so you can imagine how surprised I was to receive the invitation.

My talk is scheduled for next weekend, on September 24th, from 1:30 to 2:30.  Later in the same day, illustrator David Macaulay (the Museum's 2011 Artist Laureate) will speak about his work.

CHRIS PAYNE

Detail                                                                                        

It is easy to become dazzled by Chris Payne's technique but you should resist the temptation.

Payne's tight, crisp images are certainly eye-catching, and his technical skill stands out among contemporary illustrators.

However, if you get too distracted by the skill you'll miss the larger artistry of these pictures (which is the most important part).

There are plenty of illustrators who do highly detailed, photorealistic work.  Artists such as Rowena, Boris and Elaine Duillo are meticulous technicians, but for me their results are usually leaden and uninspiring (unless you count the inspiration that comes from watching honest manual labor).  Adobe Illustrator is helping a younger generation of obsessive illustrators take pointless detail to a whole other level.

But Payne brings something more to his pictures.  His skill is exercised in the service of a larger artistic vision, which is why his pictures positively glow in comparison.

Note for example his dramatic compositions for these excellent portraits:

 

Or look at the following portrait of Yogi Berra.  Payne must have labored over the details of that car, and the expressions on those faces, and making those figures interact, and creating the jaunty angle with the car hovering mid-bounce, yet all of these complex elements come together like a snap of the fingers.

 The picture has a cohesion and liveliness that makes the hard work look easy. 

To understand what distinguishes Payne's work, it might help to focus on a few details from this picture of a man floating away (a la Renee Magritte) :

At first it appears he is wearing a conventional gray flannel suit, but a closer look reveals that Payne used a purple(!) watercolor wash, with flowing striations deliberately left exposed:

A less confident artist would have painted the suit gray, and painstakingly drawn in the pin stripes.

Those trees and bushes in the background may look realistic but up close we see they are painted very free and abstract.  Rather than make everything in the picture uniformly detailed, Payne understands how to prioritize a picture.  He understands design:

As realistic as Payne's figures may sometimes seem, he frequently elongates and distorts them for the sake of the picture. Heads are stretched and extruded (see below) and ears are pulled out asymmetrically  (see portrait of Vladmir Putin, above):
 

It takes a strong center of gravity to work like this.  It's a far tougher job than merely capturing a likeness, and it's one of the reasons why Payne's work is so admired.

ONE LOVELY DRAWING, part 37

I love this drawing by Harrison Cady of a small house standing in the way of urban progress:

from the Kelly Collection of American Illustration  (24" x  20")

Cady was famous for simple cartoons of funny animals, but this large, complex drawing is a virtuoso feat of draftsmanship.  Note how Cady maintains total control of the value scale, from those faint buildings in the distance to the dark edges of the building in the foreground.

Cady used tens of thousands of tiny hatched lines to create subtle gradations in value from the top to the bottom of that looming skyscraper:

From one point of view, the hatching on the skyscraper is mindless repetitive work.  But it is also a marvelous tightrope walk.

Pen-and-ink is an unforgiving medium; Cady would be screwed if he progressed too quickly from light to dark, or drew the lines in one area too close together-- or too far apart apart; or if he failed to maintain consistent values from left to right.   He had to keep up a steady rhythm, which is especially difficult with a drawing so large that Cady could not see the entire building as he drew.

The drudgery aspect of this kind of work was eliminated long ago by machines.  24 years after Cady's drawing,  Prometheus brought Zipatone to earth.  From that day on, a gradient tone could easily be peeled from a handy plastic backing:

Al Williamson

The stains and cuts from aging zipatone are now viewed as part of the charm of original artwork from that era:

Frank Godwin

Today the world has moved even further away from old fashioned hatch marks.  Zipatone has been replaced by Photoshop.  Cady could've created the shading on that building simply by opening a grayscale screen and customizing it with the gradiant tool.  This is a huge boon for efficiency.  It saves artists from hours of mindless work; it makes them more productive, enables them to meet shorter deadlines (and enables clients to make more changes on shorter notice). These are commercially sensible, perhaps inevitable developments.

But let's not overlook what we lose with all this efficiency.  Artists who spend hours making marks like this often let their minds wander free while their eyes and hand take over.  The rhythm of the linework can put you in a trance-like state while you go to deep places.  Those places may not help meet deadlines but they can be very valuable for an artist.

Fine artist Jasper Johns, who never had to worry about an art director's deadline, made a series of large paintings  delving into the metaphysics of the common hatch mark:  

  Cady                                           Johns

Zipatone and Photoshop are wonderful inventions that help to set artists free.  But as I look back at Harrison Cady's lovely drawing, I am reminded of the words of G.K. Chesterton:  "You may, if you like, free a tiger from his bars; but do not free him from his stripes."