ILLUSTRATION ART

SKIN

2009-07-04T00:35:00.000-07:00

Andrew Wyeth

There may be no better test of what's inside an artist than their response to what's on our surface.

The drama of human flesh has inspired a wide variety of artistic reactions. As John Updike noted, "the menace of and the sadness of naked flesh have impressed artists as much as its grandeur and allure."

In addition to inspiring such extraordinary reactions, skin provides artists with a broad and complex language for expressing feelings, thoughts and desires. Here are just a few small samples:

Toulouse Lautrec brilliantly captures the weight of flesh

In this detail from his watercolor of a weary stripper backstage, Burt Silverman distinguishes between the color of flesh that has been exposed to the sun and flesh that has never seen the light of day.

The ultra-cool Bob Peak lowers the temperature of skin to the level of liquid nitrogen

Gustav Klimt excelled at finding mythical eroticism in flesh

Andrew Wyeth puts flesh under his microscope and finds it radiant

Contrast these rich portrayals of our mortal envelope with the abject poverty of popular technicians such as Vargas or Olivia:

The disparity between these artistic treatments of the clues, promises and temptations of skin shows that for artists with searching eyes, skin can reveal inner life and personality that are the fuel for true eroticism, but for artists whose eyes stop at the surface, skin blocks any further inquiry and leaves them with a shallow and ultimately boring caricature of sexuality.

Artists such as Vargas and Olivia excel at painting firm flesh like sausage casing, but they seem oblivious to the cosmic significance of the freckles that they thoughtlessly airbrush from a bare shoulder.

I was reminded of the artistic importance of skin last week when artist Kim Smith sent me an mpeg about the Omo river people in Africa who paint their skin in wondrously beautiful ways using natural pigments from the world around them.

If you can overlook its annoying quotes from Picasso, you may find this slide show about the Omo people as inspiring as I did:

THE ILLUSTRATION ACADEMY

2009-06-27T04:49:00.000-07:00

This week I played hooky for a few days to sit in on lectures at the Illustration Academy in Sarasota, Florida. The Academy assembles some of the most talented and successful illustrators in the country to discuss their work and teach young artists in hands-on sessions.

I had the pleasure of listening to presentations by Mark English:

Sterling Hundley:

Gary Kelley:

Anita Kunz:

and George Pratt:

If you tried to single out some distinguishing characteristic that accounted for the success of these illustrators, it was certainly not the way they marketed their services. (They had very different techniques.) Nor did they work in a common style-- they used a wide variety of approaches. It was not the stage of their careers (their ages range from 33 to 76) or the medium they used (some painted with computers and some painted with roofing tar). It was not their geographic location (they came from all around the US and Canada) or their gender or their politics. Yet, this group repeatedly won top awards and received choice assignments from the premiere publications.

So what did they all have in common?

It seemed to me that they all shared a deep curiosity about images and the interplay of form and content. Each of these illustrators had the enthusiasm and energy to cast their net again and again for fresh inspiration, exploring new themes and media. This, more than any career roadmap or promotional strategy, seemed to be their common ingredient. Not one of them lapsed into using a repetitive formula. I was surprised at how much of their work was self-generated; one persuaded a symphony orchestra to team with him in an experimental show of projected images to accompany Gustav Holst's The Planets. Another went on a pilgrimage to the backwoods of the Mississippi delta to develop a project on the blues. Their broad intellectual curiosity added a richness to their illustrations that seemed to distinguish them from illustrators who took a more perfunctory approach.

Finally, I would like to add one other observation about my experience at the Illustration Academy. I've spent enough time around the New York art gallery scene to develop an extreme distaste for the phony hocus pocus that often accompanies the creation and sale of art. Sure, I respect the mystery of the muse-- my skin has tingled at the feel of her breath on the back of my neck-- but I can't stand it when her mystery is exploited to inflate a price or glamorize a particular artist. Many artists and art galleries today operate like the high priests in ancient times who cloaked sacred activity within a mystic tabernacle to keep the uninitiated awestruck.

The artists at the Academy, on the other hand, de-mystified everything they could legitimately de-mystify. They had a healthy respect for the role of the muse in creating art, but they did not expand her role for their own self-aggrandizement. Instead, they spoke in honest and functional terms about the genesis of ideas and the ways that art communicates. It was as clean a discussion of the making of art as I've heard in a long time, by people with a sincere interest in passing along helpful information to younger artists, and it reminded me why I like illustration so damn much.

SELLING OUT

2009-06-17T21:36:00.000-07:00

Norman Rockwell recalled quite clearly the first time he sold out.

Humiliated by his family's poverty, Rockwell resolved to make money any way he could. It didn't take long for him to learn about "the depths of commercialism:"

Jack Arnold, my cousin, came home from Annapolis one holiday and offered me fifty cents to take my girl and him out in my boat. And I did it; I rowed facing the front of the boat while Jack and my girl hugged on the rear seat.

Rockwell quickly realized there were things he should not trade for money. Perhaps he was still smarting over his loss when he began sketching concepts for Saturday Evening Post covers a few years later:

Many people are quick to accuse commercial artists of selling out (unlike true artists who never compromise their art for money). Personally, I've never been very impressed by such claims. For one thing, charges of "selling out" are rarely leveled by people who have made meaningful contributions to the arts. Instead, it more often comes from gawkers and spectators with little understanding of survival in the market.

For another thing, "selling out" comes in all shapes and sizes but is rarely irreversible. I've never yet seen Mephistopheles assume the form of an art director and offer to buy a young artist's immortal soul. Illustrator Bob Heindel offered a far wiser and more practical view of how young artists start out making bad trade offs but can still redeem themselves:

We all got screwed around at the beginning. That’s how you learn. But you learn to protect yourself, and mostly, if you care about it you learn to protect your work. [An artist has to be] protective of his ability.... he [should] always want... the opportunities to do his very best.

Furthermore, even when an artist does succumb to crass commercial demands, the taint of commerce usually gets washed away by the passage of time. For example, nineteenth century symbolist painter Arnold Bocklin created a famous and haunting picture of the Isle of the Dead.

When a wealthy widow saw the painting in Bocklin's studio, she offered him good money to paint another version, but this time adding a woman and a coffin in the boat to represent the widow and her dear departed husband George. Bocklin responded with the German equivalent of "you betcha" and promptly painted the duplicate to satisfy her specifications. This version of Bocklin's painting is now on display in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York where nobody criticizes it as a "sell out."

Of course, some courageous artists never do compromise their art. For example, Monet refused to sell out. Rather than compromise his artistic principles to make his paintings more marketable, he lived off of others, begging money from his parents or anyone else he could persuade to give him a few francs. He was so principled that his family lived in abject poverty; his wife and children sometimes went without food so that Monet could be true to his art. Because he couldn't afford medical care, his wife Camille suffered through a long illness with tuberculosis before dying painfully at the age of 32. Some say she died of pelvic cancer, but others say she died of a botched abortion because she and Monet could not afford to raise a third child.

Don't think Monet's artistic dedication was compromised by Camille's tragic death; he told a friend that he was interested in the way Camille's face changed color after she died, so he recorded the change in a painting:

Now that's what I call principle.

ILLUSTRATING INFINITY

2009-06-15T06:08:00.000-07:00

"The unutterable and the formless must needs be concealed"
.................--the Pythagorean brotherhood, circa 500 BCE

Saul Steinberg

Illustration art is commonly faulted for its "low" subject matter. Critics complain that, compared to fine art, Norman Rockwell's subjects were cheap and sentimental. Illustrations for the fiction in women's magazine or for shoe advertisements could never compare with "fine" art, where the artist has the freedom to address the most profound subjects.

But of course, there is no limit to the possible subject matter for an illustration.

Michelangelo's illustration of the Book of Genesis

In fact, the subject of an illustration can be more profound than the subject of so-called "fine" art, especially in an era like ours where fine art so often gravitates toward minor themes. Here is the art of contemporary art superstar Jenny Holzer:

Holzer takes platitudes fit for a fortune cookie and converts them into art by projecting them on the sides of buildings or flashing them on electric signs. It's hard to imagine Norman Rockwell settling for such simple minded content.

When it comes to profound, challenging subject matter, you can't aim any higher than the absolute. Great writers and artists sometimes aspire to "catch a glimpse of eternity through the window of time," transcending their small vantage point in history by identifying things immutable and great. Even if the quest for universal principles and eternal truths is a hopeless one, the mere search elevates the artist because it compels him or her to step outside of the fashions and styles of their day and focus on the most permanent things they are capable of conceptualizing. It stretches an artist to create forms commensurate with great themes.

Of course, great themes can also make an artist look foolish, which is one reason most artists don't try to go there any more. If you want to transcend the limitations of your time and place, it is disastrous to get too literal:

Here are some truly lovely examples of illustrations of the origin of the cosmos. These works, which were located and described by art historians Debra Diamond and Catherine Glynn, transcend some of the limitations of their time by reaching out to abstract beauty and putting aside literal solutions:

1. A color field of gold represents "the self-luminous Absolute."

2. The first manifestation of the cosmos

3. The siddha, "exuding silvery light (jyoti) engenders the next level of cosmic light and consciousness."

Now that's what I call sequential art! The difficulty of finding shapes and colors to portray such subjects is underscored by the corresponding text from the ancient Hindu treatise, Shiva Purana:

When the present world is not in existence, the Absolute alone is present. It is incomprehensible to the mind [and] cannot be expressed by words. It has neither name nor color.... it is immeasurable, propless, unchanging, formless, without attributes, perceptible to Yogins, all pervasive and the sole cause of the universe.

This next triptych conveys "The emergence of spirit and matter at the origin of the cosmos." I think spirit is the guy on the left:

One measure of the universal adaptability of this work is that it is compatible with modern scientific theory about the big bang, where the four fundamental forces (gravity, electromagnetism, strong interaction and weak interaction) emerged from nothingness at the origin of the universe.

An artist who attempts to realize timeless ideals by making an imperfect mark on a perishable surface reminds me of the Great Gatsby preparing to kiss Daisy:

He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning-fork that had been struck upon a star.

And yet, you do it anyway. Without the commitment of that mortal kiss, what's the point of all that perfection?

.

DRAWING WITHOUT ELECTRICITY

2009-06-07T15:11:00.000-07:00

The painter Margaret Keane married a real jerk.

Early in her career, Keane created a popular style of painting children with huge, sad eyes. Although artistically dreadful, the paintings became wildly popular in the 1950s and 60s.

Keane's domineering husband Walter boasted that he painted the pictures, and he persuaded her to go along with his lie. For twelve long years, Walter took credit for Margaret's work. When their marriage dissolved and his meal ticket seemed about to disappear, Walter insisted that he owned the rights to the art, and even challenged Margaret's legal right to continue painting using the now famous "Keane" name. In court, it was his word against hers.

Then the judge came up with the ultimate test: he asked both Margaret and Walter to paint in front of the jury. Margaret successfully painted one of her trademark portraits. Walter claimed he was unable to paint due to a sore shoulder so they kicked his ass out of court.

There is no test of an artist more unambiguous than what he or she can do all alone with a pencil or brush. Again and again, people have returned to this standard as the measure of an artist.

After World War II, Han Van Meegeren was prosecuted for having sold an important cultural treasure, a Vermeer painting, to the Nazi occupiers . Faced with long imprisonment, Van Meegeren objected that he was not guilty because he personally forged the "Vermeer" he sold.

Scholars and art experts ridiculed his claim, but the court put him to the test by demanding that he paint another Vermeer in prison under observation. The testimony of Van Meegeren's brush was more persuasive than all of the art experts and scientists combined. The prosecutor dropped his charges of collaborating with Nazis (and prosecuted him instead for forgery).

Whether an artist is locked in a jail cell or isolated in a courtroom or stranded on a desert island, they always retain the crucial ingredients for their art: their eyes, fingers and mind. These are what the judges were trying to measure by eliminating interference from assistants, collaborators, photoshop, xerox machines, mechanical crutches or other such camouflage.

I sometimes think about the relevance of this test when I am enjoying the extraordinary new fruits of digital art. I have been dazzled by the brilliance of the animation art in Wall-E:

as well as the fabulous garden scene in Coraline.

These works of art are extraordinary and consuming, but they can neither be made nor viewed without the collaboration of utility companies to provide electrical power, financial institutions to provide funding, computer companies to develop software, and hundreds of animators, visual effects experts and other art professionals. None of them as an individual could "prove" their worth the way that Keane or Van Meegeren did for earlier generations. Today the creativity of electrical engineers can be as important as the creativity of the art director.

I sometimes wonder whether in the future this marvelous art form will eclipse more antiquated art forms, such as drawing and painting. And if it does, what will be the ultimate proof of an artist then?

2009-06-02T21:37:00.000-07:00

Pieter Brueghel's masterpiece, The Tower of Babel, 1563

I do not call one greater and one smaller,
That which fills its period and place is equal to any.
..................................-- Walt Whitman

John Singer Sargent attempts to work out the compositional design for his portrait of the Wyndham sisters

..

PETER MAX

2009-05-24T01:31:00.000-07:00

"Mistah Kurtz, he dead"

Like Andy Warhol and LeRoy Neiman, Peter Max was a talented, hard working illustrator before he became a pop culture phenomenon. He studied for years with the great teacher Frank Reilly at the Art Students League in New York and learned the skills of a serious artist.

In 1963, Max was selected to paint a jazz record cover. The young and ambitious artist worked hard to finish the project on time, but his art director was less than enthused. Max begged for a one day extension and started over with a totally different approach.

He dug deeper, stayed up most of the night, and produced the following cover which won a gold medal from the Society of Illustrators for the best advertising art of 1963:

One look at this lovely picture tells you that Max was an artist who had what it takes. Note how the highest contrast and the sharpest focused lines are right on that piano keyboard where he wants to direct your attention. Beautiful.

A few years later, Max hit the jackpot with his "Cosmic" art style, which became wildly successful in the 1960s. His trademark psychedelic look soon adorned everything from perfume bottles to airplanes. Max sold millions of posters and limited edition prints and became immensely wealthy.

Max enjoyed the celebrity lifestyle. His personal chauffer drove him around Manhattan in Max's custom designed Rolls Royce. He painted Ringo Starr's piano and performed exhibition painting on the white house lawn. He was featured on the cover of Life Magazine.

Max now had complete artistic freedom. No more deadlines, no more unreasonable client demands, no more unappreciative art directors. He could just look within his heart and paint whatever he found there. His fan base would buy anything with his signature on it. He began making his signature bigger and bigger.

The funny thing is, as his signature got bigger, his talent got smaller:

The artist who started out as a sharp minded and keen eyed competitor became artistically flabby. Here is his painting entitled "I love the World," depicting an angel embracing the planet.

Without the benefit of anyone to challenge or reject his work, Max sank deeper and deeper into a morass of narcissism. Here are some official facts about Max from his web site:

He loves to hear amazing facts about the universe

Peter's early childhood impressions had a profound influence on his psyche, weaving the fabric that was to become the tapestry of his full creative expression.

This new style developed as a spontaneous creative urge, following Max's meeting with Swami Satchidananda, an Indian Yoga master who taught him meditation and the spiritual teachings of the East.

In the 1970s, Max gave up his commercial pursuits and went into retreat to begin painting in earnest....

[I]n October, 1989, Max unveiled his "40 Gorbys," a colorful homage to Mikhail Gorbachev. Prophetically, a few weeks later, communism fell in Eastern Europe....

Max could be forgiven for his nutty philosophy, but when he gained the freedom to say or do anything, his art clearly suffered.

Where oh where is that art director who once told Max to go back and try again?

Artists and critics chafe at any restriction on the artist's freedom. In fact, it seems that illustration is held in lower regard than "fine" art mainly because the illustrator's vision is subject to restrictions from some client or art director. There is some truth to that criticism, but Peter Max demonstrates how the lack of restrictions can be just as hazardous to the quality of art.

In my view, Peter Max, along with Andy Warhol and Leroy Neiman, are good examples of artists whose work was spoiled and made rotten by excessive freedom. Today's fine art scene offers far more examples of artists whose self-indulgent, decadent work has little relevance or value outside their own cloistered circle. When the world provides resistance to an artist (whether in the form of a tough deadline, or a client's demands, or poverty, or totalitarian censorship) it can have a beneficial effect on the art. As the old proverb says, "the wind in a man's face makes him wise."

Artistic freedom can help or hurt art. But if great art can be produced in a prison cell or a concentration camp, it's silly for the fine art community to suggest that it can't also be produced within the constraints of a commercial art studio.

ONE LOVELY DRAWING, part 26

2009-05-16T21:37:00.000-07:00

The great Joseph Clement Coll (1881-1921) drew like he was conducting a symphony orchestra.

From the Kelly Collection of American Illustration

Note in the following close up the range of effects Coll employed-- the difference between the fine pen lines and the broad brush strokes; the difference between the accuracy of the eyelashes and the almost abstract wiping of a dry brush on the cloak; and notice how Coll achieved the value he wanted for the background by first painting it with ink, then scratching it with a blade:

Coll's line was vigorous and varied and confidently rendered. No simple, monotonous shading here. Look at how his line curls and twists and plays in ways that would not be visible to the reader of the printed page in Coll's era, but which nevertheless contributes to the overall vitality of the drawing.

James Montgomery Flagg, another talented pen and ink artist, gave a good description of his superior, Coll:

There is no doubt that he was one of the few masters of pen and ink in the world.... He found romance in a story and doubled it, lavishly, prodigally. He gave himself in his work instead of selling his signature on half-heated stencils. In short, he was a great artist.

ONE LOVELY DRAWING, part 25

2009-05-07T15:24:00.000-07:00

I got a huge kick out of Steve Brodner's version of Diogenes, the ancient philosopher who carried a lantern through the streets of Athens in broad daylight, searching for an honest man.

This drawing may appear casual, but it is razor sharp-- a highly skilled, witty execution of an intelligent concept.

Brodner's scraggly line perfectly conveys the belching smoke from the grotesque cigar, the monstrous paw holding it, the neck of the gluttonous monster, the porcine nostrils inhaling more than his fair share of oxygen; it would have been easy to overplay or underplay any of these touches but Brodner balanced them just right.

Perhaps his wisest touch of all is the vapid, uncomprehending expression on the face of the man. A heavier hand would have given him a sinister expression, but the more persuasive explanation for the man's offensiveness is his utter lack of concern.

These are the touches of a master story teller with line.

DRAWING A CROWD

2009-05-03T19:06:00.000-07:00

I have a soft spot in my heart for artists who like to draw large crowd scenes.

It's not because crowd scenes require technical skill to handle perspective, foreshortening and complex interaction.

Gluyas Williams was famous in the 1920s and 30s for his clever drawings of large groups.

And it's not because crowd scenes require the creativity to come up with a wide variety of faces and psychological relationships.

The great Albert Dorne was famous for his crowd scenes. Note how he handled the complex architecture of this mob.

No, what I like most about artists who specialize in drawing crowds is their obvious pleasure in the act of drawing.

Most artists working under a deadline look for shortcuts. They do a good job, but they want to complete a picture as efficiently as possible and get paid. But some artists just seem to love making marks on paper, and they regularly create unnecessarily grand challenges for themselves, like these ambitious crowd scenes.

In this category, I know of no better artist than the brilliant Mort Drucker.

This panel from the MAD Magazine spoof of Beverly Hills Cop is a good measure of Drucker's talent:

Despite the effort that went into this crowd scene, the drawing never looks labored.

This drawing is a complex engineering feat, but it is delivered with the spontaneity of a spring popping out of a pocket watch:

Drucker, like Dorne, Williams and other artists in this rare species, draw with great abundance and generosity. You never get the feeling they are measuring their level of effort against the pay they are receiving for the picture. These are artists who love to draw, and it shows.

ROSEBUD

2009-04-25T14:17:00.000-07:00

John Updike, one of the world's greatest and most highly regarded writers, died in January at the age of 76. From the day he graduated summa cum laude from Harvard, Updike worked tirelessly to produce (in the words of his New York Times obituary) "a body of fiction, verse, essays and criticism so vast, protean and lyrical as to place him in the first rank of American authors." It's hard to imagine a life more productive.

Here are just some of the international awards he received for his brilliant work:

1959 Guggenheim Fellow
1959 National Institute of Arts and Letters Rosenthal Award
1964 National Book Award for Fiction
1965 Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger
1966 O. Henry Prize
1981 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction
1982 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
1982 National Book Award for Fiction
1982 Union League Club Abraham Lincoln Award
1983 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism
1984 National Arts Club Medal of Honor
1987 St. Louis Literary Award
1987 Ambassador Book Award
1988 PEN/Malamud Award
1989 National Medal of Arts
1990 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction
1991 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
1991 O. Henry Prize
1992 Honorary Doctor of Letters from Harvard University
1995 William Dean Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters
1995 Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres
1997 Ambassador Book Award
1998 National Book Award Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters
2003 National Humanities Medal
2004 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction
2006 Rea Award for the Short Story
2007 American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Fiction
2008 Jefferson Lecture

Updike wrote over 60 books during his lifetime. In his last months, as he knew he was dying, he completed one last book, a final collection of poems entitled Endpoint. One reviewer wrote,

In their last years, many artists cast aside all their usual flourishes, dismiss the circus animals and simply set down, as directly as possible, the realities and inevitabilities of old age. So John Updike has done in this moving book of poems.

So putting aside all the wealth and fame and world travel, what lesson does Updike have for us about the true nature of happiness? Updike writes:

To copy comic strips, stretched prone upon the musty carpet--
Mickey's ears, the curl in Donald's bill,
The bulbous nose of Barney Google, Captain Easy's squint--
What bliss!

Seems like you can either start working on that first Guggenheim fellowship, or you can pull out your pencil.

ARTISTS AT WAR: GILBERT BUNDY

2009-04-20T06:41:00.000-07:00

Gilbert Bundy (1911-1955) painted with a light and elegant brush.

Look at the graceful way he handles the bouquet of flowers on the table:

... or the foliage and chandelier in the background:

Bundy gained fame as a cartoonist in the pages of Esquire magazine in the 1930s. He painted delightful watercolors of the leisure class at play, specializing in millionaire sportsmen and glamorous show girls.

High society photos from this period show the handsome young illustrator out on the town, dressed in his tuxedo and escorting some beautiful young chanteuse to gala parties. Here we see Bundy in his studio with yet another gorgeous model:

Bundy fell in love with the right girl, married her and had a baby daughter. Life was sweet.

But when World War II came along, Bundy decided for some reason to leave it all behind and volunteer to work as an artist in the South Pacific for Hearst newspapers.

In 1944, Bundy was accompanying the Marine invasion of Tarawa when a Japanese shell exploded in his small landing craft. Bundy survived but was trapped beneath the bodies of four Marines. The wreckage of the craft lodged on a coral reef within range of enemy gunners. For most of the day, Bundy remained pinned beneath the corpses, drenched with blood, as enemy bullets and shells strafed the remnants of the craft. When it finally turned dark, Bundy freed himself and swam away from the wreck, taking his chances spending a night alone in shark infested waters rather than endure another day under fire. The Hearst newspaper reported, "He was believed dead for three days. His reappearance startled his Marine mates."

Bundy returned to the U.S. but never recaptured the joy in his pre-war art. On the anniversary of his ordeal Bundy committed suicide, thereby rejoining his fallen comrades.

Sometimes I think about how a sensitive, observant artist such as Bundy perceived such horrors. Of course, I also wonder what lured him to leave his loving wife and daughter in order to paint war to begin with.

Arthur Koestler wrote persuasively about why artists and writers chose to immolate themselves in the flames of World War II. They were not fearless patriots or fanatical believers. To the contrary, many believed that "to love one's country is vulgar, to love God is archaic and to love mankind is sentimental." Yet, some other force drew the artists toward their doom: "there is no escape, and he feels it; so he goes on trying at least to name the nameless force that destroys him."

In trying to "name that nameless force," Koestler wrote of his friend, the young writer Richard Hillary who became a fighter pilot and was shot down in the Battle of Britain. Hillary was burned beyond recognition. After months of painful reconstructive surgery, his face was horribly disfigured and his hands resembled bird claws. Still, some of the most beautiful young women in London pursued him. Rather than embrace whatever semblance of beauty that remained in life, Hillary pressured the air force into letting him fly again and the next mission ended him. Koestler wrote that Hillary
flies like a moth into the flame; and having burned his wings crawls back into it again.... Why then, in God's name, did he go back?.... [H]e was the only one left , and he had to go on paying the tribute [to his fallen comrades]. For the survivor is always a debtor. He thought he came back [to civilization] for the fellowship with the living , while he already belonged to the fraternity of the dead.
Hillary's motives, like Bundy's, were more psychologically complex than mere patriotism. He wrote that people who feel guilt for "imaginary debts" account for many of civilization's great accomplishments:
You could not expect healthy motives to lead to the morbid act of self-sacrifice. The prosperity of the race was based on those who paid imaginary debts. Tear out the roots of their guilt and nothing will remain but the drifting sand of the desert.
Art and war together in the same petrie dish can result in situations that are not always easy to understand, but which are worth investigating. I will offer a collection of such stories in the months ahead.

MAPS

2009-04-13T11:56:00.000-07:00

Nothing is more solid and constant than the earth beneath our feet, right? It provides us with objective standards for measurement ("milestones" and "landmarks"). The physical location, dimensions and characteristics of mountains or streets or rivers can be quantified and recorded on maps that can be read and agreed upon by all.

Isn't it interesting, then, how various artists can view that same objective reality so differently?

A map of Florida from Walt Disney's Dumbo, with storks parachuting baby animals down on the circus.

The earth as a jester, with cautionary Latin maxims.

New York City as a huge penis

A map of London from the 1851 World's Fair

The earth may appear constant to a farmer or an engineer building a road. A map maker has tools and standards to depict the earth as objectively as possible. Artists look at the same object, but what a blaze of creativity in their responses!

The earth as perceived in 1940s romantic fiction, where the single most important thing on the planet is that rendezvous with your true love

A 15th century map of the earth

A 4th century map of the earth

A Hollywood map shows how California contains a microcosm of the rest of the world for purposes of filming movies.

ONE LOVELY DRAWING, part 24

2009-04-04T06:20:00.000-07:00

What is it?

A slashing tempest?

A rugged granite cliff?

A rolling river?

The tail plumage from a firebird?

Naw, it's just the way Robert Fawcett draws a face:

This intense little portrait (approximately 4 inches tall) is a virtuoso performance by a master draftsman. Look at the speed and facility with which Fawcett employs a dazzling array of marks on paper to channel the designs of nature. This is what I call drawing!

Fawcett took draftsmanship very seriously and was fiercely proud of his ability. As Roger Reed of Illustration House observed about some of the lines in this drawing, "he must have used a bamboo stick to draw with, like he searched for the most difficult-to-control tool in the box."

Do you prefer your drawings less intense? That's OK. Simplicity is another weapon in Fawcett's arsenal:

I am pleased to be working with Auad Publishing on a book about the life and work of Robert Fawcett. I hope you will keep an eye out for it.

BERNIE FUCHS

2009-03-29T09:30:00.000-07:00

In 1958, a staff artist worked patiently in a back room at the famed Cooper Studio in New York, retouching the Pepsi Cola logo on a stack of illustrations. He came to an illustration by a new, unknown artist and stopped dead in his tracks.

Illustrator Murray Tinkelman, who also worked at Coopers, remembers receiving the call: "Hey Murray, come take a look at this." Tinkelman went over to see the new picture. "It was gorgeous" he recalls. The two decided to call in the superstars of Cooper Studios, Joe Bowler and Coby Whitmore. Bowler and Whitmore arrived together to inspect the new painting. Whitmore was "speechless." Bowler said, "I don't know who the hell did this, but the business is never going to be the same."

Bowler was right.

Young Bernie Fuchs arrived in New York and quickly set the field on fire. By the time he was 30, the Artists Guild of New York had voted him "Artist of the Year"-- an unprecedented achievement. His dynamic illustrations for magazines such as McCalls made him famous and attracted dozens of imitators.

So Fuchs was feeling pretty cocky by the time Sports Illustrated called him in the early 1960s to ask him to illustrate an article. Fuchs met with the legendary art director of Sports Illustrated, Richard Gangel. A tough minded visionary, Gangel gave Fuchs an assignment, but as Fuchs was leaving, added-- "Oh-- and I don't want that shit you do for McCalls."

Fuchs could have walked off in a huff. It would have been easy for him to continue working for other clients in the successful style he had already developed. Instead, he rose to Gangel's challenge and became even bolder and more innovative:

Image courtesy of Illustration House gallery

For a later issue of Sports Illustrated, Fuchs turned a portrait of the rather dumpy looking Branch Rickey into poetry.

Fuchs left behind all the imitators who continued to exploit the formula for Fuchs' earlier approach, and instead moved forward to grapple with new challenges. As illustration styles came and went, Fuchs' work was selected each and every year for more than 40 years by different juries from the Society of Illustrators as among the very best work produced that year. No other illustrator can claim such a record.

I am convinced that in order to accomplish what Fuchs has, you need both of the qualities demonstrated in the two stories above. You have to begin with great talent, sure, but perhaps even more important, you have to be prepared to take your initial success and re-invest it in new challenges. There is no guarantee that such a gamble will pay off, but if you are really, really good, that's what artistic success is for.

BEAUTIFUL WRITINGS

2009-03-22T08:08:00.000-07:00

Artists sometimes transform sacred texts into visual art by making the words and letters into elaborate designs. The result is not intended to be read like a conventional book, but rather experienced as a visual object.

For example, many Korans from 17th-century Turkey, Iran and North India are so ornate they are virtually impossible to read except as designs. The finest artists, calligraphers and craftsmen embellished these books with gold and jewels to create glorious images befitting such holy words. The original text may be illegible, but the regal splendor of these books impresses the viewer that these words are precious, and deserve awe and respect.

When I was growing up on the south side of Chicago, a boy I knew was shot and killed on the school playground by older boys from a street gang.

Virgil White and I sang in the choir together. One night, he foolishly tried to take a short cut through the playground alone. Bleeding to death on the cold concrete, he managed to scribble the names of his killers in his school notebook: "Greg Vincent and Chap Dog killed me." Then he was gone forever, like a wisp of smoke.

They found Virgil's bloody notebook clutched in his hand. Years later, I can't look at this news photo without feeling a pang. The terrible beauty of Virgil's marks on paper still inspires and moves me more than the most lavishly decorated religious text.

Sometimes crude and hasty images are more stirring than refined ones.

Sometimes a random accident-- such as the design created by a bloodstain-- is a more powerful image than the most carefully executed schemes of a great artist.

Sometimes cheap materials can create images of deeper and more profound spiritual significance than images made from the most precious gold.

HUBERT GRAVELOT

2009-03-19T20:42:00.000-07:00

[Note: instead of writing a blog post this week, I have been playing hooky corresponding with peacay whose great blog BibliOdyssey is a marvelous source of images. Peacay dug up some rare drawings by Gravelot which he generously shared with me, and to avoid work we agreed to post our resulting exchange on our respective blogs. Peacay contributed the intelligent and classy portions. I contributed the mouthy opinions.]

**This cross-posted collaboration features an attitudinal stimulus package by David Apatoff of Illustration Art with peacay of BibliOdyssey on image wrangling and cattle prod detail.**

Hubert François (Burguignon) Gravelot 1669-1773 trained in Paris as an illustrator-engraver under François Boucher and came to London in about 1732. He was friends with William Hogarth and they both taught at the St Martin's Lane Academy, something of a precursor to the Royal Academy. Thomas Gainsborough was known to have studied under Gravelot.

From France, Gravelot brought with him the ornate styling of the rococo, which he helped promote in his thirteen year sojourn in England. He contributed designs for goldsmiths, furniture makers and the commercial print trade, but his book illustrations - for luxury editions - were particularly influential. He illustrated Gay's 'Fables,' Shakespeare and Dryden, and was one of the first artists to illustrate the novel, designing engravings for Richardson's 'Pamela' and Fielding's 'Tom Jones.'

Of the ten images below, the first eight were preparatory sketches for the 'Decameron,' the second-to-last from a Voltaire compilation and the final image is from an unnamed collection (links at the end of the post).

I've been told that one way to measure the quality of an oriental rug is to count its borders. Generally, the more borders around the rug, the more complex it is, and the higher its quality. But I usually find the opposite to be true of drawings: the more fancy borders required to make a drawing look important, the weaker the drawing tends to be. The owners of these Gravelot pictures have surrounded them with up to 14 borders and embellishments (some of them in gold) before you finally hone in on his drawing. Even then, we're not done. Gravelot encircles some of his own drawings with yet another ornate border-- a decorative wreath bedecked with the tools of the arts and sciences, or the symbols of the theatre, or fawning muses overwhelmed by the brilliance of what the reader is about to behold. By the time you finally get through to the drawing itself-- the image at the core where the artist demonstrates what his hand and eye and imagination are capable of-- the viewer has some pretty high expectations.

Unfortunately, I don't see a whole lot here to suggest that Gravelot's drawings satisfy those expectations. These are light, capable drawings. I can understand people preserving and studying them for their significance to the history of the engraving arts, or the manners and customs of his day, but not particularly for the quality of the drawing. Unfortunately, the quality of the drawing is usually the part that interests me the most.

When Gravelot was drawing these pictures, his artistic choices were limited by the fact that the drawings would have to pass through a cumbersome engraving process that was already more than 300 years old. First, the drawing would have to be transposed onto a wood block or metal plate. Next, the plate or block was turned over to an engraver who attempted to carve the image into the surface using sharp and unwieldy tools. This process effectively prevented an artist from drawing in certain styles; Gravelot could not get too spontaneous or fluid with his line, or use half tones in his picture. Finally, the printed picture ended up as a mirror image of the artist's original drawing. The result of this arduous process was a picture several stages removed from the artist's concept.

Not long after Gravelot died, photoengraving replaced engraving as the technique for reproducing art in books and magazines. The new technology set artists free and transformed the entire field of illustration. Delicate nuances in line, subtle gradations in color, detailed images were all reproduced with much greater fidelity, permitting artists to do their very best.

Gravelot may have played an historically significant role as a designer and engraver, but his drawing seems pretty anemic to me. You can see from these preliminary studies how often he has to go back to re-work simple figures he should have been able to visualize and lay out straightforwardly. [title page, outside crowd scene]. Note how tentative his line work is, and how heavily dependent he is upon mechanical tools such as the grid for his vanishing points. [kitchen scene, Imprimerie] Most capable artists could simply intuit perspective in drawings this small, with subjects this simple, but Gravelot's preliminary drawings seem to reveal a well deserved lack of confidence.

One of the purposes of an illustration is to help stretch the reader's imagination by providing an artist's vision of the story. It is ironic then, that illustrating a book as bawdy and rich as the Decameron, we are presented with such wan and lifeless drawings. It's hard to imagine that a reader could not do better on his or her own imagination. These illustrations seem to serve as a visual chastity belt, keeping our minds within legitimate boundaries rather than titillating and unleashing them. There is no commitment or emphasis here, no urgency or merriment in the art to correspond to these stories. By today's standards for illustration, this work seems like a real mismatch between form and content.

'Drawings for the illustrations of Boccaccio's Decamerone' {Rosenwald 1645} [book published in 1757].

'Théatre de Voltaire; dessins par Gravelot' {Rosenwald 1604} [book published in 1768]

'Original Drawings' {Rosenwald 1657} [undated]

Biographical material: one; two; three.

Art works: one; two; three; four; five.

SPANKING CATS

2009-03-09T07:52:00.000-07:00

Cosmic disturbances sometimes engulf our planet in violent magnetic storms, yet you can sit there calmly sipping your jasmine tea and munching cucumber sandwiches, oblivious to the vast drama going on around you because our senses can't detect magnetic storms. You'd have to look at a compass and see the needle going haywire to figure out that something was taking place.

Art can work the same way. As Goethe said, "We only see what we know." We remain oblivious to all kinds of meaning that lies beyond our personal experience.

Back when artists had less freedom to be explicit (and audiences were more sophisticated and patient) artists conveyed messages that went undetected by innocent viewers, but were understood by those viewers who had enough experience to recognize what was going on.

Here, some anonymous illustrator had great fun with an orange crate label:

Similarly, you could probably fill an entire book with the facial expressions of beautiful damsels rendered thoughtful by the size of their hero's weapon.

Howard Chandler Christy

Robert Fawcett

What can I say? Most illustrators from that era were men, and this is apparently something guys like to contemplate.

Today we can scroll through images at breakneck speed without missing much because artists no longer need to communicate in layers-- they are pretty free to put anything they want on the surface (regardless of how young the audience is, or how ill prepared they might be for extreme content). Some artists believe that unrestrained art is better art. Others believe, in the words of Gorky, "When everything is easy we quickly become stupid."

Censorship and repression aren't the only reasons to resist spelling everything out on the surface; there are purely artistic reasons as well. You can only fit so much on the surface of a drawing. After that, if you need more room you have to start working below the surface. A layered approach to art can add depth and reward reflection. Most importantly, it adds the superior freedom that only ambiguity can provide.

I love this delicious drawing by Theodore Geisl of Terwilliger Frilliger spanking a cat while the other cats skittishly await their turn.

In 1929 (long before he became famous as Dr. Seuss) Geisl mused about the pleasure of cat spankery: "the peculiar sensation of indigenous largesse one feels when he spanks a kitten given to uncontrollable outbursts of hysterical guffaws."

Multiple themes co-exist in perfect harmony in this little drawing. On one level, the drawing could fit harmlessly in any children's book. But there are different flavors here for those with the palate to taste them.

Some of the best art is a layered experience. As with magnetic storms, you only become aware of the existence of additional layers after you've developed the capability to appreciate them.

WILLIAM AYLWARD (1875-1956)

2009-02-28T03:50:00.000-08:00

William Aylward's name doesn't stand out in the annals of illustration. Yet, if you skim through old pictures in books or magazines, his work stands out from hundreds of other anonymous illustrators because he was such a master of value-- the darkness or lightness of color.

Try it yourself -- if you scroll through a hundred thumbnail images, you are likely to find that the pictures with confident use of value-- more than other artistic qualities, such as accuracy, color, detail, or technique-- are the ones that seem to pop right off the page.

Passing the line to the "Potomac" from the Dock, published in Scribners, May 1907

It is not easy to control the "value structure" of a painting, balancing blacks and whites and grays. This next picture could easily have sunken into a black hole if Aylward had not been such a virtuoso.

Night watch from the Deck, published in Scribners 1907

Very little is remembered about Aylward today. He was a student of the legendary Howard Pyle-- here he is, sitting at the great man's feet:

Aylward loved the sea and specialized in nautical themes. He illustrated very few books, primarily The Sea Wolf and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.

Most of his work appeared in magazines of the day and will never be republished, which is too bad. You won't see any coffee table books about him soon. But his work still speaks for itself with honor and dignity.

KERRY JAMES MARSHALL

2009-02-21T17:53:00.000-08:00

Artist Kerry James Marshall is a certified genius. The MacArthur Foundation confirmed it when they awarded him their $500,000 genius award.

But don't take the MacArthur Foundation's word for it. His work was also awarded places of honor in the Whitney Museum biennial, Venice Biennale, and the prestigious German Documenta show. Marshall's paintings sell for $400,000 to prominent museums and collectors.

People of great stature and prominence who pride themselves on their taste have bestowed upon Marshall almost every form of recognition that our society offers. His NY art dealer boasts, "He's kind of recession-proof." No wonder art critic Blake Gopnik writes, "Can an artist get much more successful than Kerry James Marshall?"

Marshall himself is not surprised by all these honors. He says, "Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael.... my objective is to be listed in the history among those artists."

I hope that all of you would-be Michelangelos out there who aspire to recognition, museum shows, wealth and fame are taking notes on what it takes to ascend to the top of the pyramid in our time.

A sonnet by Edna St. Vincent Millay somehow comes to mind:

Country of hunchbacks! — where the strong, straight spine,
Jeered at by crooked children, makes his way
Through by-streets at the kindest hour of the day,
Till he deplore his stature, and incline
To measure manhood with a gibbous line;
Till out of loneliness, being flawed with clay,
He stoop into his neighbor's house and say,
"Your roof is low for me — the fault is mine."
Dust in an urn long since, dispersed and dead
Is great Apollo; and the happier he;
Since who amongst you all would lift a head
At a god's radiance on the mean door-tree,
Saving to run and hide your dates and bread,
And cluck your children in about your knee?

LOOSE DELIGHTS

2009-02-18T18:13:00.000-08:00

"I am for those who believe in loose delights."
-- Walt Whitman

Some of my very favorite drawings are free and spontaneous. Unfortunately, so are a whole lot of crappy drawings.

Is it possible to distinguish good loose drawing from bad loose drawing? Or from random marks on paper? It seems to me that there is not only a distinction to be made but also a good reason for making it. Loose, spontaneous art can be fun, but Ernest Hemingway correctly spotted the potential danger: "All our words from loose using have lost their edge." When sloppy or careless drawing masquerades as loose drawing, it eventually dilutes the meaning and potency of drawing.

Consider the following examples of artists who engage in the "loose delights" of drawing but who still preserve that edge.

The great George Lichty had a line like an unraveled ball of yarn:

Nevetheless, look at how beautifully that line conveyed a head, or the indentation of a pillow, or the folds in clothing:

You can tell that a lot of looking and thinking took place before Lichty was able to dash off a drawing like this. We are the beneficiaries of that looking and thinking, no matter how loosely it is conveyed.

Note how he understands the different postures of people sitting in chairs, the anatomy of fingers wrapped around an arm, the shadow created by a fore arm resting on a table:

William Steig is another great example. For decades Steig churned out mediocre cartoons such as this one, where he labored for some semblance of visual accuracy.

Then, in the 1960s he managed to shed these constraints and began drawing marvelous, meaningful pictures with a free hand.

The looser his touch, the better his drawings became.

James Thurber is a third example. He drew wispy nonvertebrates with a simple line that was the perfect complement to his brilliant writing.

In each of these examples, a seemingly spontaneous, haphazard style is employed to convey important insights without being obvious or labored about it. Technical skill is important, but it can also rob a drawing of the freshness and intimacy we see here . These are drawings with wings on, and they occupy a blessed place in the pantheon of drawing.

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY TO ALL!

2009-02-14T05:40:00.000-08:00

AUDUBON AND THE VEILED LADY

2009-02-02T11:45:00.000-08:00

John Audubon (1785 - 1851) lived in the wilderness during the early years of the United States. He camped and hunted along the frontier as he studied birds for his illustrated masterpiece, The Birds of America. He kept a remarkable journal of his adventures along the Mississippi and down the Ohio River to western Kentucky.

After a year traveling along the Ohio river, Audubon came to New Orleans in 1821 and paused there to earn money teaching art.

One evening Audubon was approached on the street by a woman wearing a veil that hid her face. He wrote: "[She] addressed me quickly ... 'Pray sir... you are he that draws likenesses in black chalk so remarkably strong?'" When Audubon said yes, she replied that she had a task for him. He began to walk alongside her, but the woman became alarmed, saying "Do not follow me now." She wrote down her address and instructed him to wait 30 minutes before arriving. Audubon wrote:

I arrived and as I walked upstairs I saw her apparently waiting. "I am glad you have come, walk in quickly." My feeling became so agitated that I trembled like a leaf. This she perceived, shut the door with a double lock and throwing back her veil shewed me one of the most beautiful faces I ever saw.....

"Your name is Audubon?"

"Yes madam."

"Set down and be easy....I will not hurt you."

I felt such a blush and deathness through me that I could not answer...

"Will you keep my name, if you discover it, and my residence a secret?"

"If you require it."

"I do. You must promise that to me, keep it forever sacred....Have you ever drawn a full figure?"

"Yes."

"Naked?"

Had I been shot with a 48-pounder through the heart my articulating powers could not have been more suddenly stopped.... She raised, walked the room a few times and sitting again said, "I want you to draw my likeness and the whole of my form naked.... The drawing will be completed in this room...."

She drew the curtains and I heard her undress.... I eyed her, but dropped my black lead pencil....

Thus began what John Updike called "the first known nude American portrait done from life." Audubon was amazed that the veiled woman seemed "not at all afraid to disclose to my eyes her sacred beauties." Such a brazen act was unthinkable in the America of the 1820s and Audubon had to struggle to apply himself to his work. He made clumsy mistakes but she smiled and favored him with patience and eventually the picture was completed: "She gazed at [my drawing] for some moments and assured me her wish was at last gratified...."

The veiled lady and her nude portrait are lost to history. She swore him to secrecy, paid him and sent him on his way. Audubon tried to return several times to see her, but servants always told him she wasn't home.

In addition to being a cool story, the psychodrama that took place between artist and model in that candle-lit parlour long ago reminds us how much of the picture-making process is psychological.

Audubon bravely faced death in the wilderness, yet he "trembled like a leaf" at the astonishing sight of the woman unveiled before him. He could draw under the harshest physical conditions, but in the comfort of civilization, emotion and adrenalin clouded his senses and confused his fingers. He was skilled at rendering the shapes of nature, but when he tried to transfer those skills from drawing the curve of a wing to drawing the shapes of a woman, he became flustered. Clearly, all geometric shapes are not equal.

The veiled lady was of course an active partner in the psychological exchange. Audubon was bold when he left civilization behind for uncharted territory, but she was equally bold when she defied society's rules of decency to do something so unforgivable. Audubon's bird subjects came without psychological baggage: they were not hindered by human feelings of guilt or shame, but unlike humans they weren't motivated by the desire to be seen-- to be known completely through the eyes and neurons of another.

So much of this blog is dedicated to the physical mark left by the point of a pencil on the surface of the paper-- and there is certainly a lifetime's worth of discussion to be found in such marks. But every once in a while it makes sense to step back and acknowledge the psychology of art which, like undetectable dark matter in the universe, accounts for far more of the total weight of art than the physical object.

STERLING HUNDLEY

2009-01-25T07:26:00.000-08:00

I like the kind of art where you can tell that the artist has a pulse. This passionate image by Sterling Hundley for the Lyric Opera of Kansas City is a prime example:

Hundley's theatrical posters are not only impassioned, they are smart, too.

Marat Sade

Death of a Salesman

He has created posters for theatrical productions around the country. These projects give Hundley creative freedom which he uses to maximum advantage, developing his own themes and putting his human imprint on his subject. His illustrations also appear in publications such as the New Yorker and Rolling Stone, and accompany his own stories in Virginia Living magazine.

Like his theatrical posters, his illustrations tend to be emotionally complex and beautifully designed:

Hundley's pictures don't move, blink, or explode. They have no digital soundtrack or 3D glasses. Instead, they come from the tradition where the picture holds still and your brain moves. Such art is in short supply these days.

ANDREW WYETH, ABSTRACT PAINTER

2009-01-16T19:45:00.000-08:00

This week we lost Andrew Wyeth (1917 - 2009), noted abstract expressionist painter. A formidable artistic source, his work was comparable to some of the most avant garde work of the last century.

For example, contrast this painting by Wyeth...

...with this image by famed abstract expressionist Robert Motherwell:

Or, compare the shimmering effect of this painting by Wyeth...

...with this very similar painting by radical artist Jean Dubuffet:

Here, a painting by Wyeth...

...might be compared with this work by famed minimalist sculptor and video artist Richard Serra:

Some people even insist they can find realistic images hidden in Wyeth's lovely designs.

As for me, I'm not sure I see it. But I guess abstract art is kind of like a rorshach test. Everybody sees something different.