WARRING WITH TROLLS, part 2

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

In my view, there was no better draftsman in 20th century illustration than the great Robert Fawcett.

Some might look at this drawing for Good Housekeeping and dismiss it as "typical boring 1950's photo referenced illustration."  (Oh, don't deny it-- you know who you are).

But let's take a closer look:

Up close, the drawing reveals an extraordinary array of marks on paper, from drybrush swirls to bold, virile stripes.  Who could squeeze more character into brushwork than Fawcett?

Look over here and you'll see Fawcett's trees, like exploding miniature constellations:

 

Always, design was paramount for Fawcett.  Compare his trees above with the following "fine art" painting by the famed Adolph Gottlieb, a contemporary of Fawcett's: 

 

Here are a few more trees in the background of Fawcett's drawing, each one crackling with its own distinctive energy:

  

And it ain't just trees, buddy.  Fawcett's opinionated brush aggressively sought out the rhythm and design in buildings, cars and other geometric shapes:

Many regard Fawcett's style as too tightly controlled for today's taste.  But at the atomic level his pictures seem wilder and more abstract to me than the work of many contemporary artists who consider themselves free because they draw loosely and don't use photographs.  

For me, Fawcett is a more serious anarchist than the artist who gives himself permission to draw sloppy. 

Which brings me to the "warring with trolls" portion of this post: 

Much of the special character of Fawcett's picture was never seen or appreciated by the public because it was shrunk and mutilated by some clueless art director at Good Housekeeping: 

Good Housekeeping attempts to go trendy

To his credit, Fawcett persisted despite the fact that his work was not always understood by clients and advertisers flailing around for the latest fashion.  It took Fawcett longer to achieve the kind of result he wanted, and he knew it might not be appreciated in the end, but apparently he did not find it to be a waste of time.

He held fast in the long war with trolls.  For that reason alone, he deserves our respect.

(Thanks to Illustration House gallery for the use of their original Fawcett illustration.)

THE CHURCH DRAWINGS OF JOHN HENDRIX

Illustrator John Hendrix draws in church.  Over the years, he has has compiled an impressive collection of church sketchbooks, many of which he has posted on his web site.  Writes Hendrix:

I attend church every Sunday, and I draw during the sermon. All of these pages were done in a pew....  Simultaneous drawing and listening transforms familiar language into something new- a feedback loop of symbols, theology and wonder.

Paul Klee said, "Drawing is taking a line for a walk."  In a sketchbook, sometimes the line takes you for a walk.

When it does, it can take you to lands where client specifications rarely go.  Hendrix notes:

Drawing in my sketchbook is the very best part of my work. I love it because it is linear improvisation. Much like jazz, it is unpredictable, exciting and unfiltered.

But there's another reason I especially like Hendrix's sketchbooks.  Perhaps because of the soundtrack, his drawings often muse over great big subjects:  

 

In the words of William Blake, 

Great things are done when men and mountains meet;
This is not done by jostling in the street.

I have a special fondness in my heart for pictures that attempt big, unfashionable subjects-- life and death, injustice, war and peace. 

Artists illustrating "the place where men and mountains meet" frequently lapse into pretentiousness and melodrama, but Hendrix's sketchbooks avoid that pitfall.  His sketchbooks are not dense, linear philosophical treatises.  As a result of his stream-of-consciousness approach, cosmic words and symbols weave in and out of his designs in a light and elegant dance.  Definitely worth a look.

DELAWARE EXHIBITION: MORT DRUCKER

This post is the last in a series on the artists featured in the exhibition at the Delaware Art Museum,  State of the Art: Illustration 100 Years After Howard Pyle. 

Comic strips were still new when Howard Pyle passed away.  In the century that followed, comic strips evolved into a major part of modern illustration.  Comic books, graphic novels, webcomix and other forms of sequential art now attract serious art reviews and win cultural prizes.

So when it came to selecting a living artist to represent sequential art in the Delaware Art Museum show, there was no shortage of artists to choose from.  There are sequential artists who are innovative designers or Pulitzer prize winners or web pioneers, there are sequential artists who have written poignant personal memoirs or witty observations of the human condition.  But ultimately, for me the choice became easy.  If we focus on the actual drawing (whether with pen or stylus),  I don't know of any current sequential artist to compare with the remarkable Mort Drucker, whose 50 year career drawing parodies for MAD and covers for TIME is an astonishing accomplishment.

Drucker's uncanny ability to capture a likeness from any angle, in any lighting, with any facial expression, is enough to make him a legend in the industry.

Furthermore, the high standards that he maintained, decade after prolific decade, drawing with fresh enthusiasm and humor, is an example to us all.

  

But mostly, I am damn impressed with the drawing of it all-- how Drucker designed and constructed thousands of panels, the distinctive style with which his eyes and fingers embraced his subject, his sensitive, descriptive line which could be so exhausting in some panels and yet so incisive and selective when necessary.
 

Because some "high art" types tend to look down on MAD as slapstick, I wondered how some of the more serious gallery painters in the exhibition would react to Drucker's inclusion. But when I spoke with Phil Hale, whose large and powerful oil paintings are the opposite of slapstick, he responded "when I was younger, my dream was to work for MAD, alongside Mort Drucker."

These and other original works by Drucker are on display at the exhibition.

DELAWARE EXHIBITION: JOHN CUNEO

This post is one in a series on the artists featured in the exhibition at the Delaware Art Museum,  State of the Art: Illustration 100 Years After Howard Pyle. 


One of the major themes of the Delaware Art Exhibition is that technological innovations of the past century have enhanced the expressive power of illustration.  Even museum visitors who loved traditional oil paintings by Howard Pyle or N.C. Wyeth stood transfixed in front of video screens where Finding Nemo, Wall-E and Ice Age movies played.  The sound, the movement, the changing facial expressions and the glowing colors from an LED screen had a gravitational pull that made it difficult for traditional pictures to compete.

That's why it was important for the exhibit to demonstrate that even the simplest, most ancient media could still produce pictures as powerful as any in the show.  For this purpose, I chose the work of John Cuneo.  The newest annual from the Society of Illustrators, which documents Cuneo's Hamilton King award for the best picture of the year, says this about his work:

Using the most delicate materials-- a tremulous little line like a spider's filament and a few dabs of water color-- John Cuneo creates drawings with the atomic weight of weapons-grade plutonium.

Take for example this devastating drawing of a poacher: 


The poacher placing the horn on his head is an inspired way to symbolize the regal and priapic delusions of the man and his loathsome species;  the grin as he proudly shows off his new hat to the audience, his sagging face, the stoicism of the mutilated beast...

Note the marvelous jagged teeth on the saw

...none of these lines come from a template or anatomy book.  They are all invented fresh, with a chilling effect.  This is a beautifully orchestrated drawing.

Another example of Cuneo's dark and trenchant humor:

I like the way Cuneo's intelligence is integrated into his line, and does not coexist side by side in separate categories of picture and text (as too often happens today).  These are not diagrams or symbols, they are not linear messages that can be read like a sentence, they are organic creations which thwart our ability to dissect them with words.  But I think they are terrific, thoughtful drawings.

These and other original works by Cuneo are on display at the exhibition.

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!

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DELAWARE EXHIBITION: STERLING HUNDLEY

This post is one in a series on the artists featured in the exhibition at the Delaware Art Museum,  State of the Art: Illustration 100 Years After Howard Pyle. 

Sterling Hundley built a strong following at a young age, winning multiple gold and silver medals from the Society of Illustrators for his work in magazines such as Rolling Stone, the New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Entertainment Weekly.

Hundley likes to employ a creative friction between contrasting elements.  For example, he combines traditional, representational narrative illustration with conceptual design.  In this illustration he uses the rules of anatomy and perspective to create the illusion of three dimensional space...

Illustration of the inaugural address of President Harrison who spoke too long in bad weather, caught pneumonia and died. 

... but he also uses the design to symbolize editorial content.  Viewed vertically, the above illustration of President Harrison is the president standing at a podium.  Viewed horizontally it reveals President Harrison lying in his coffin.  The faces in the audience slip back and forth between well wishers and skeletons:

 Similarly, in this poster for the musical, Hair (in which a hippie joins the army) the top half of the picture with the hair employs psychedelic lettering and rainbow colors, while the bottom half employs uniform military lettering and olive drab colors.

Just as Hundley attempts to combine narrative illustration and conceptual design, he also attempts to bridge the gap between what he calls "blue collar" and "white collar" art, as well as the gap between digital and traditional media.  He has painted "fine" art for galleries as well as illustration for publications.  The tension between these contrasting ingredients seems to inspire much of Hundley's work.

Hundley works from a throrough knowledge of the classical traditions in illustration, which reveals itself in his pictures.  I especially like the way he combines old fashioned romantic themes with a modern style of presentation.   

These and other original works by Hundley are on display at the exhibition.

DELAWARE EXHIBITION: RALPH EGGLESTON

This post is one in a series on the artists featured in the upcoming exhibition at the Delaware Art Museum,  State of the Art: Illustration 100 Years After Howard Pyle. 

Digital animation is one of the most important aspects of modern illustration, but it was difficult to identify a single artist to represent this rich and burgeoning field in the Delaware show.  A feature animated film requires a group effort, combining the skills of hundreds of artists, sculptors, writers, computer scientists and electrical engineers, so it was a challenge to isolate an individual artist whose imprint made a conspicuous difference.

Ralph Eggleston, production designer and art director for some of the greatest films from Pixar Animation Studios, didn't make my search any easier by insisting that his own work on films such as Toy Story, Finding Nemo and Wall-E was one small part of a team effort, combined with "many talented artists and film makers at Pixar who continually challenge and inspire me...."

Some of the pioneering artists of digital animation have now taken management jobs, but the Delaware exhibition is not an exhibition of business executives, it is restricted to artists who retain the eyes and fingers to craft images of enduring value.  Eggleston frequently works in digital media but adds,  "I thoroughly enjoy working in traditional media like gouache, oil, chalk and pastel."

Pastel concept drawing for Finding Nemo

The scope, duration and movement of a digitally animated film present Eggleston with a very different set of artistic challenges than those facing great illustrators of the past.  One hundred years ago, illustrators painted a single image on canvas, illustrating a single moment from a story.  In his "color scripts" below, Eggleston plans the movement of color and mood and the change of scene throughout the movie Wall-E:

 

Howard Pyle would have been astounded by this art form and its tools.  Yet, at its heart, animation requires the same aesthetic concepts-- design, composition, balance, harmony, contrast, proportion, variety-- that Howard Pyle applied to his oil paintings. This continuity between old and new masters points us to the most important elements of picture making.

In his statement for the show, Eggleston included this insight on his role as an animation artist:

Pretty pictures are nice.  But a good idea-- clearly communicated to an audience-- is my focus.  In doing my artwork, the element of time is foremost in my thoughts... I approach visuals with the idea of burning into the audiences's retina as much information as is needed as clearly and quickly as I can so they can focus on the characters and the emotional content of the story they are being told.

These and other original works by Eggleston, as well as film clips from Finding Nemo and Wall-E, will be on display at the Delaware exhibition. 

DELAWARE EXHIBITION: PHIL HALE

This post is one in a series on the artists featured in the upcoming exhibition at the Delaware Art Museum, State of the Art: Illustration 100 Years After Howard Pyle.


Phil Hale is internationally acclaimed for his powerful illustrations.  His dark, brooding covers for the novels of Joseph Conrad brilliantly complemented Conrad's psychologically complex work.

Cover to Joseph Conrad's Nostromo

Cover to Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim

Hale's own character, Johnny Badhair, has also been the subject of a series of vivid paintings:

Hale works large (the above painting is over five feet wide) using the traditional artist materials of oil paint on stretched canvas or linen.

Hale is a prime example of an artist who can move fluidly between the fields of illustration and "fine" art or gallery painting.  In his personal Artist's Statement for the exhibition catalog, Hale writes thoughtfully:

My career in illustration stretched from 1981 to 2000 with a few later forays and lapses.... [T]he more illustration work I did, the more its necessary strictures and compromises became trouble....My unhappiness with the illustration work I was producing pushed me into portraiture and then fine art (though that is a dumb misnomer in many ways).  But as I progressed, an unexpected element that is normally associated with illustration turned out to be at the center of the newer work: narrative.  In a way I stayed true to my original and unself-conscious love of illustration.

These and other original works by Hale will be on display at the exhibition.

DELAWARE EXHIBITION: PETER DE SEVE

This post is one in a series on the artists featured in the upcoming exhibition at the Delaware Art Museum,  State of the Art: Illustration 100 Years After Howard Pyle. 

 Peter de Seve is internationally renowned for his draftsmanship in illustrations such as this one, for which he won the Hamilton King award from the Society of Illustrators:

More than draftsmanship, de Seve infuses his drawings with personality and heart which have made him a recurring favorite on the cover of the New Yorker.  This poignant cover of little children on the first Halloween following the 9/11 attacks stood out in a field of artistic responses that were mostly political, or cerebral, or anguished. 

For Howard Pyle's generation, painting magazine covers was as prestigious a career as an illustrator might hope for.  But 100 years after Howard Pyle, illustration offers all kinds of new venues for an artist's talent.  A digitally animated feature film requires the collaboration of hundreds of artists, writers and computer engineers relying on millions of dollars of corporate funding and a multinational distribution network.  But at their core, animated movies depend upon a few individual artists with a special talent for facial expressions, body types and personalities to design the characters that other artists implement.

The movie industry quickly recognized de Seve's abilities and has summoned him to work on a number of feature films as a "character designer."

He won the Emmy Award for outstanding character design on Sesame Street's Abby Cadabby's Flying Fairy School and a  Clio award for a Nike commercial. He worked on films such as Mulan and Finding Nemo, but mostly he is known for his character designs on the Ice Age series of movies:

Scrat

De Seve works out faces for his characters

De Seve once said, "I'm an old fashioned illustrator... I love strong, firm craftsmanship...  The funny thing is that for all the studios' technical expertise, I'm still the guy who is drawing on paper."

These and other original works by de Seve will be on display at the Delaware exhibition. 

DELAWARE EXHIBTION: MILTON GLASER

This is one of a series of posts on the artists featured in the upcoming exhibition at the Delaware Art Museum,  State of the Art: Illustration 100 Years After Howard Pyle. 

Prior to the 1950s, illustration was dominated by artists who visualized narrative passages from a text, employing fairly realistic styles.  But by the 1950s, that approach was running out of steam.  Traditional illustration was being battered by the rise of photography.  Fiction magazines which had been the prime market for illustration ever since Howard Pyle's day began losing circulation.  Advertising revenues were shifting to television.  In this challenging environment, a new form of illustration emerged.

In 1954, Milton Glaser co-founded the revolutionary Push Pin Studios, a graphic design and illustration firm which had a significant impact on the path of 20th century design.   In this and several other influential positions, Glaser employed graphic symbols and visual metaphors to convey ideas, choosing freely from a wide array of styles and techniques.  He observed, "It's absurd to be loyal to a style."

No artist has been more eloquent than Glaser  in articulating the merger of conceptual design and illustration. It would be difficult to overstate his importance to the field.  He has been the subject of one man shows at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Pompidou Center in Paris.

I've enjoyed making unkind remarks on this blog about "conceptual" artists who cannot draw and who have no sense of design or composition but who have become emboldened by the excuse that such factors are less relevant today.  The focus of art has shifted, we are told, from visual appearance to intellectual content, making the technical skills of yesterday obsolete.  These artists would do well to study the work of Glaser.  For all that he did to expand the role of concepts in design and move beyond Norman Rockwell's brand of realism, Glaser has never lost sight of the importance of embodying his concepts in beautiful and relevant forms.

These are ample reasons for including Glaser in the centennial exhibition at the Delaware Art Museum, but I would add on a personal note that I especially enjoy the humor and whimsy that Glaser's work has exhibited over his long and prestigious career.  Like his fellow New Yorker Saul Steinberg, Glaser (who has been described as an "intellectual designer-illustrator") manages to handle the most profound philosophical concepts with playfulness and simplicity-- a sure sign that he is on the right track.


These and other original works by Glaser will be on display at the exhibition.

DELAWARE EXHIBITION: BERNIE FUCHS

This post is one in a series on the artists featured in the upcoming exhibition at the Delaware Art Museum, State of the Art: Illustration 100 Years After Howard Pyle. 

In the 1950s, illustration began its Great Thaw from the realistic style that had dominated the field since the days of Howard Pyle. At that time, Bernie Fuchs was a precocious young illustrator painting meticulous car ads in a commercial studio in Detroit.

Detail from Oldsmobile ad (1959)

But Fuchs had the seeds of bigger things in him, and by the mid 1960s, he was a leader of the revolution in illustration, experimenting with bold new styles.

Matador

His innovations became wildly popular and helped to set the style for the second half of the 20th century.

Fearsome Foursome

These and other original works by Fuchs will be on display at the exhibition. 

8 MASTER ARTISTS

John Cuneo

By the 1950s, the conditions that led to the "golden age of American illustration" had worn thin.

The invention of halftone engraving and quality color reproduction, the rise of deluxe magazines pumped by advertising dollars and an insatiable reading public all created fertile soil for golden age illustrators such as Howard Pyle, Leyendecker, Parrish, Cornwell, Rockwell and hundreds of others.

But in the 1950s, magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post, Collier's, Liberty and Life were dying out. Tastes (and advertising revenues) shifted away from print media.  Gone were the well funded illustration campaigns for Arrow shirt collars and Ford automobiles.

As illustrator Austin Briggs recalled:

It was during the fifties that a healthy revolt against the slick, photograph-oriented illustration then in vogue really began to gather adherents.  This revolution was accelerated by the demise of several national periodicals in a losing competition with television for presentation of fictional escapism.  Other floundering publications sought salvation in acquiring a new image-- anything different and strident enough to retain the attention of a wavering public.  These conditions produced an opportunity for the illustrator to be truly creative with a freedom from the restraints of the past never before experienced.

The upcoming show at the Delaware Art Museum begins with this Great Thaw.  Initially, the field of illustration seemed to split into two main categories: illustrators who continued to portray narrative content in the tradition of Howard Pyle or Norman Rockwell, but with bold new styles, and illustrators who worked in a more symbolic and conceptual mode.

To represent this division, I have chosen the work of Bernie Fuchs to convey the first category and the work of Milton Glaser to convey the second category.

In the decades following this initial split, illustration fragmented into a wider variety of applications, functions and styles.  I have selected six great illustrators to represent some of the most important categories:

sequential art-- Mort Drucker
narrative and conceptual art-- Sterling Hundley
character design-- Peter de Seve
animation -- Ralph Eggleston
illustration and gallery painting-- Phil Hale
editorial pen and ink-- Cuneo

For each of these eight master artists, the show will present a number of splendid original works.

Ralph Eggleston was production designer on the brilliant Pixar film, Wall-E

 

ILLUSTRATION 100 YEARS AFTER HOWARD PYLE

Milton Glaser

Last year, the Delaware Art Museum put together a major centennial exhibition commemorating the life and work of Howard Pyle, the highly influential father of American Illustration.   Pyle lived in Delaware and following his death in 1911, a group of Pyle students and friends combined with prominent citizens to form the Wilmington Society of the Fine Arts.  Their collection of 100 works by Pyle served as the starting point for the Delaware Art Museum. 

To close out its centennial year, the Museum bravely invited me to serve as guest curator for an exhibition on The State of Illustration 100 years after Pyle. That exhibition will run from February 8 through June 1, 2013.

It would be impossible for any single exhibition to capture the whole noisy riot of styles, techniques and trends that has made up illustration over the past century.    My approach was to showcase the work of what I believe to be eight of the best, most important illustrators representing a cross section of today's illustration.

I have argued on this blog that a large percentage of popular illustration today is directed at information-saturated audiences with diminishing attention spans and little taste.  Much of the technical skill that previous generations of illustrators earned at a terrible price is now available to any high school student for the price of Photoshop.  Many of the periodicals that once made illustration a lucrative profession died long ago.  Yet, as the Delaware exhibition demonstrates, there remains a bold, creative core to illustration that is, for me, superior to much of what is taking place in contemporary "fine" art.

For this exhibition I tried to avoid popular illustrators who have prospered today by catering to the lowest common denominator.  I was looking instead for the true heirs to the tradition of Howard Pyle, excellent artists who create work of enduring value. 

Phil Hale

I hope you have a chance to make it to the Delaware show. I guarantee you some good art.  Between now and February 8, I am going to use this blog to highlight some of the pictures in the show and discuss the artists I chose.