WHAT KERR EBY UNDERSTOOD ABOUT THE HIDDEN GOD

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

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

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


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

 

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

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

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

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


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

HENRY RALEIGH

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

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

    

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

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

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

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

EXCITEMENT, VICTORIAN STYLE

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

Pretty dry stuff, huh?

But wait.  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE END OF 2016

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

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

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

THE "WITNESS ART" OF VICTOR JUHASZ

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I find his drawings beautiful and devastating.

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

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

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

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

SUCH STRENGTHS AS A MAN HAS

The New York Times asked Alan Cober to illustrate an article on the conditions at the Willowbrook Home For The Mentally Disabled.  They commissioned two drawings.  He stayed at Willowbrook to make fifty.  

Cober didn't wait for a client to send him to homes for the aged.  He went there on his own.

He also visited prisons and drew what he found there.

A series of Cober's drawings from mental institutions, prisons, and homes for the aged were published as a book about abandoned people called The Forgotten Society.  

What did Cober hope to accomplish?  If he was a lawyer he might have filed a lawsuit.  If he was a politician he might have passed a law.  If he was a TV journalist he could have reported the facts.  Instead, he was an artist.  As the ancient philosopher Cicero wrote:

"Such strengths as a man has, he should use."

So, what strengths did Cober have?  Look at the way he presented this scene:

The faces and personalities of the human subjects have vanished into dehumanizing machines, with only a few pathetic limbs dangling out:

Lawyers or politicians could never convey the story of humans caught in the machine this way.

In this next drawing, Cober focuses on a person in a wheel chair to show us how different the reality is from our shorthand recollections:

You don't learn anatomy like this in an art class.

In the following drawing, Cober identifies a small point of irony...

... then prioritizes it by stripping away the rest of the world's clutter and placing the irony at the juncture of a long horizontal and a long vertical:

These are the strengths of an artist.  And such strengths as a person has, they should use.

AUSTIN BRIGGS RETURNS TO WHERE HE STARTED

Austin Briggs was 19 and still in art school when he sold his first drawing to Collier's magazine. 

Briggs soon decided he didn't need more school.  He was making good money from Collier's imitating the popular artists of the day.  But after a couple of years Briggs realized that he was faking it.  Many of his lines were just random squiggles with little understanding of what went on beneath the surface.  He was borrowing solutions he hadn't earned, and his shortcuts began to betray him.

His assignments started to dry up.  He'd never learned to paint.  Desperate for money, he quit the field of illustration.  He took other jobs, but all the while he was determined to go back and do it right: "I set about learning to draw, which I never could do before."

Briggs' son described this turning point in his father's life:

I see how correct he was in his mature assessment of his early work: he could not really draw, but with sheer vitality he faked his way to renderings that conveyed power and authority.  When the new demand for color illustration left my father in the Depression virtually without work and with a wife and two small children to support, he would not quit.  Taking his easel and sketch pad out of the studio, he began to look at the world-- to really see it.  Over God knows how many long hours of work, he taught himself until he eventually developed great skill as a colorist and as a draftsman....

Looking back, Briggs recalled:

These were experimental years; I explored new compositional approaches, new techniques or variations of old techniques and new manners of working with limited means. The fees I received from my drawings were largely plowed back into my work.... This was my chance to learn, and I worked over drawings until they were as good as I thought I could make them.  

Briggs learned to draw and to paint with great skill:

Then his art got looser...

And even looser:

Briggs became a dominant force in American illustration of the 20th century.  His strong, opinionated work covered the full gamut of the illustration field, from pulps and comic strips to the movie industry to the covers of books, records and top magazines.  

But the thing that interests me most about this story was that, at the height of his powers, having invested years in mastering painting and color theory, Briggs returned to simple drawing where he started.  As he became more fearless, he no longer needed fancy paints or even inks.  He simplified down to a pencil or a litho crayon.  Art directors for prestigious magazines were happy to accept a drawing from Briggs where once a full color oil painting would've been expected.  Briggs became famous in the industry for a remarkable series of drawings that he did for TV Guide, which were cited when he was inducted into the Illustration Hall of Fame:

Image courtesy of Taraba Illustration Art

If you compare Briggs' later drawings with his early random squiggles, you get a sense for how much he learned.   In the words of T.S. Eliot:

We shall not cease from exploration.  And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.