Murray Tinkelman on Alex Ross: "He was vastly underrated."

In May of 2009, I interviewed Murray Tinkelman about his career. Our far-ranging discussion included many sidebars; one in particular, about Alex Ross, provides a fitting conclusion to this week's series on the artist... ~ Leif


LP: There was a guy at Cooper's who left before you got there... a guy named Alex Ross.



MT: Yeah, I knew Alex.

LP: Oh really?

MT: Yeah. He did leave before I got there. The covers he did for Good Housekeeping were wonderful.



MT: But he could also do a sexy woman...



... he was also very innovative. 



MT: He's second only to Al Parker in his innovation and experimentation.


(Above: one of eight Alex Ross illustrations from Cosmopolitan magazine, June 1956. Ross did each illustration for each story in a different style - repeating a feat previously accomplished only by Al Parker, to the best of my knowledge)

LP: I'm so happy to hear you say that, Murray - especially you - because when I look at Ross' work, I see a lot of departure from the traditional look of that period.

MT: Absolutely.



LP: And I look at that stuff and I wonder: "How come this guy isn't getting more attention?"



MT: I haven't got the slightest idea.



MT: I'm still trying to get Alex into the [Society of Illustrators] Hall of Fame. I showed a about half a dozen of his slides at our last Hall of Fame meeting.*



MT: Y'know, I was boarding an airplane in a small commuter airport about seventeen, twenty years ago... and we're on the tarmac. (There was no jetway, you just went out onto the tarmac and up two steps into the plane). And there was a guy in front of me - a very handsome guy - and he was carrying a package under his arm.



MT: ... and it looked like an illustrator's package because it was neatly taped and so on. And I kinda strained my neck and bent way over and I see a return address... and it's Alex Ross.

LP: Wow!



MT: So I tapped him on the shoulder and I said, "Mr. Ross, I'm a huge fan of yours. I've admired your work for years!" "Oh really," he says, "and what's your name?" "Murray Tinkelman," I says. "Oh, I've admired your work, too!"

LP: Very cool.

MT: Yeah. Y'know, when his illustration career ended, Alex Ross turned to painting.


MT: And he painted untold numbers of absolutely gorgeous semi-abstract floral paintings - maybe 20" x 30" acrylic - very bright, very cheerful... joyous paintings. 


MT: I don't think they were really heavyweight, but they were incredibly sellable. He'd have an annual one-man show every year for maybe six or eight years at Joe DeMers' gallery on Hiltonhead Island. He was a terrific artist, vastly underrated.



Addendum: In a 1980 speech about Ross’s achievements as an illustrator, Fred Whitaker, long-time American Artist writer and celebrated water colour painter, likening his work to such famous American illustrators as Remington, Homer and Hopper.

Whitaker said, “When the story of today’s art epoch is written, there may well be general agreement that the real art contribution of the mid-twentieth century was that of the illustrators and commercial artists. I know of no artist who experiments more than Ross in approach to the mode of presentation; in color, in the manner of applying paint, in his brushing, in the use of new angles of compositional arrangement. His one great fear is that he may become static, even afraid of copying himself.”



* To date, Alex Ross has not been inducted into the Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame.

The Norman Rockwell Museum Presents: Baseball, Rodeos, and Automobiles: The Art of Murray Tinkelman - on view through June 15, 2014

“Baseball, Rodeos, and Automobiles” celebrates over 60 years of artistic creation by Murray Tinkelman, one of the nation’s most prominent illustrators, educators, and illustration historians. The exhibition explores the artist’s interests, imagination and evolving technique, including elaborate pen-and-ink drawings that have become his trademark.

Murray Tinkelman on the New Reality of the 1970s

My wife got me the 1970 and '71 NYAD Annuals for Christmas and that lead me to ask Murray Tinkelman to clarify a few things about trends in illustration and graphic design at the time. Earlier this week Murray explained how Pushpin Studios influenced the industry during that period. Then we discussed how Herb Lubalin and other designers put greater emphasis on typography as a key component of the early '70s design aesthetic. Today we discuss the emergence of a "new reality" in illustration in the same time period... ~ Leif Peng


LP: This series of ads I posted in yesterday's part of the discussion, the ads for the Audi Fox, those were done by two artists named Don Wheland and Jerry Cosgrove. These ads were art directed by a guy named Helmut Krone... have you ever heard of him?



MT: Yes I have. As a matter of fact my high school illustration teacher was a dear friend of Helmut Krone (Murray chuckles) and in 1951, when I graduated high school, my teacher told me to look him up, show him my portfolio. Here I am, like, a seventeen-year-old kid (he chuckles again) making an appointment with Helmut Krone. He was a huge figure in art direction.

LP: Well, when I look at that series of ads - of course, they're all absolutely brilliantly designed - I see a couple of interesting things that really epitomize (for me anyway) the look of the '70s: one, that really prominent use of typography...



MT: Right...

LP: ... the other is that very realistic art treatment.



LP: This morning I sent you an email with a bunch of images attached by different illustrators from the early '70s.

(Below, Bill Nelson, 1976)


(Below, Jerome Podwil, 1973)


(Below, Alex Gnidziejko, 1974)


(Below, Doug Johnson, 1972)


(Below, Roy Carruthers, 1972)


LP: There seems to have emerged at that time, a return to realism, but it isn't the kind of painterly realism that illustrators used in the '50s, or the kind of high-energy, 'action-y' realism you saw illustrators using in the '60s, with textured gessoed board and streaky acrylic washes. This is a realism that seems very... precise... very controlled.

MT: I'm looking at the list again... Jerome Podwil, Roy Carruthers, Doug Johnson, Bill Nelson - really talented people you've got here on the list. It IS the '70s and I could easily use these examples and construct a lecture about illustration in the '70s. But the thing is, this could be likened to the story of the blind men and the elephant - you know that story?

LP: Yeah, absolutely.

MT: You can find what you want to find or you can hone in on a characteristic and it might take on more significance --

(Below, Roy Carruthers, 1974)


LP: Yeah, I do get what you're saying. This niche we're discussing isn't all-encompassing of the '70s; it's just one aspect of what was happening.

MT: Right. To me the '70s has a look that was actually three different looks: precision was certainly one of them, but you also had the rediscovery of the airbrush and that whole west coast movement by people like Charles White III and some other really brilliant airbrush people.

(Below, Charles White III, 1972)


MT: And then another really very strong style of that time was the montage, which was initially most prominently used in things like movie posters where they'd give you the whole movie in one picture. And there was a very strong convention about how to do montages.

(Below, Bob Peak, Camelot movie poster art, 1967)


MT: The other look of the '70s was a kind of rediscovery of surrealism.

(Below, Robert Giusti, 1972)


MT: So you had people like Bob Giusti, Roy Carruthers, Gil Stone and many other really good artists doing their version of 'neo-surrealism'.

(Below, Gil Stone, 1973)

MT: Incidentally, Gil Stone was a friend of mine and I always said he was the result of a shotgun marriage between Magritte and Giacometti. (We chuckle)

(Below, Gil Stone, year and publication unknown)


MT: Gil got a scholarship out of art school and went to Florence. And I think - and this is just my opinion - but, his elongated style? I think that came from his trip to Florence where he was working with the Mannerists, who elongated everything. When you see a slide of a Mannerist painting next to a Gil Stone, you see that relationship so strongly.


(Above and below, Gil Stone, year and publication unknown)


MT: So anyway, those three 'looks' really equal the '70s, for my money. And then there's another sort of ironic twist: Mark English, Bob Peak - they were not really as prominent as they'd been the previous decade, but they were working that montage routine very, very well.

(Below, Mark English, Redbook magazine, November 1972)


MT: Nobody ever did montage better than Mark English. I think he was the best montage person, ever.

(Below, Mark English, year unknown)


MT: Did I just muddy the waters there?

LP: No, not at all. In fact, I think you've helped clarify a few things for me and that's why I appreciate getting your thoughts on this. Because the thing is, despite the fact that your work is linear and more typically black and white, I connect you to this 1970s look as well; this idea of precision and realism (or surrealism to a certain degree). You know, I was looking through your book again this morning, and looking at the kind of pieces you were doing for the New York Times Op-Ed section.

(Below, Murray Tinkelman, NY Times Op-Ed page, 1972)


LP: You made a transition from your 1960s John Alcorn-influenced style, which was a cartoonier style, to a more realistic look at that same early '70s time period that I see in all these pieces, whether they're done in airbrush, or paint brush. The thing that is entirely absent in all of this work is the looseness, the sort of wild abandon, the splashing of paint that happened a decade or so earlier as a result of, I don't know - the influence of Abstract Expressionism, maybe? So my question, I guess, is what compelled all of you guys to undertake this return to realism, to a very precise sort of realism, in the early 1970s?

MT: That is a great question and I'm not sure my answer is going to fit neatly into it. When I started with the decorative style it started with Lorraine Fox and then moved up through the Pushpin people - and I loved it and I still do - but my change to the more realistic was not an aesthetic choice. It was a subject matter choice. There came a point, I guess it was around 1970, when I became less interested in technique, in style and in art, if you will, and I became much more interested in subject matter.

(Below, Murray Tinkelman, from 'Alistare Owl' by Herbert A Kenny, 1972)


MT: I was, like everybody else, very enthusiastic about materials: "Let's paint it with chicken fat on waxed paper and bake it in the oven." (laughter) But very quickly, around 1970, I became less interested in how I did it and much more interested in what I did. So current news topics... the op-ed pieces... I just felt, personally - and it was very personal - that it was more appropriate to draw these visuals in a more realistic way.

(Below, Murray Tinkelman, NY Times Op-Ed page, 1974)


MT: So the pen-and-ink crosshatch became a good vocabulary to describe the subject that I was dealing with. If we're talking about world hunger, for instance, the style of Lorraine Fox or John Alcorn really doesn't make much sense, does it?

LP: No it doesn't.



LP: So tell me if I'm completely off base about this; if the '60s saw the emergence of this wide variety of decorative stylized work that didn't really even reference the realism of the '50s, do you think that the '70s saw the beginning of an emphasis on 'concept'?

MT: Oh yes.

LP: Ok. Because I'm looking at all these illustrations for magazine covers and articles on a variety of social and political issues...

(Below, Roy Carruthers, early 1970s)


... and I'm seeing a variety of techniques, all of which reference a kind of realism or surrealism...

(Below, Jerome Podwil, 1973)


... but what I'm really looking at, what I'm really seeing now that you've pointed it out, is concept. Conceptual illustration.

(Below, Alex Gnidziejko, year unknown)


MT: Yes. the term 'conceptual illustration' has always amused me in a way. Because 'conceptual art' in the gallery world was completely different than what art directors would call conceptual illustration. In the gallery world, conceptual art would be covering a gallery floor with two inches of dirt. And that was the show. And what the illustration word considered conceptual art was "How many ways can we rip off a Magritte." (Leif laughs) And you can quote me on that because, really, that's it.

(Below, Robert Giusti, early 1970s)


LP: Well, sure, I mean look at the example I sent you by Robert Giusti; the Time magazine cover... in a different time and place, no one would doubt that Magritte might have done that piece.



MT: Exactly. And by the way, Bob Giusti is a very nice person and very accessible. I just had him as a guest speaker for my Hartford group last summer. Really a dear, sweet guy - if you ever want to speak to him...

LP: Sure! I'll tuck that away until you prod me a little more about it.

MT: (chuckles) Ok.

LP: Now, with the decline in illustration for advertising purposes, it seems to me that what emerged in it's place is a lot more of an emphasis on using illustration for these op-ed and socio-political issues. Is that something you would agree with?

MT: Yes. Sure.

LP: Ok. So do you think that's why we see so much of this kind of work being done at the time by a whole variety of artists? Was that basically where you guys could get the work, because I presume there just wasn't nearly as much work available in advertising.

MT: That's true. And the advertising was being done by illustrators that came from more traditional roots. Somebody like Bob Peak evolved through the style, the look, the approach of traditional illustration. For example; Austin Briggs. You don't have to stretch that far to go from Austin Briggs to Bob Peak, or Austin Briggs to Bernie Fuchs. Bernie's breakthroughs were in technique, in style, in quality... but not in any kind of conceptual way.

(Below, Bernie Fuchs advertising art, 1982)


LP: Right. So then returning to the group of illustrators we've been discussing, you see the sort of common theme I'm talking about? I again, I feel you need to be included in that.

MT: Yeah, I think I fit there.




* Murray Tinkelman has won Gold Medals from The Society of Illustrators, The New York Art Directors Club and The Society of Publication Designers. He has over 200 Awards of Merit from The Society of Illustrators. Murray is the director of Hartford Art School’s limited-residency Master of Fine Arts in Illustration program.

* Many thanks to Tony Gleeson for providing the scans of the Audi Fox ad series and many other scans in today's post, and to Matt Dicke for the use of his Bernie Fuchs scan.

Murray Tinkelman on Herb Lubalin: "... he was a genius."

My wife got me the 1970 and '71 NYAD Annuals for Christmas and that lead me to ask Murray Tinkelman to clarify a few things about trends in illustration and graphic design at the time. Yesterday Murray explained how Pushpin Studios influenced the industry during that period. Today we discuss the role of the typographer during the same period... ~ Leif Peng


LP: From looking through these books and from flipping through magazines from the early 1970s, it seems like often the concept or solution to almost any ad or design was entirely typographic. Can you tell me a little about Herb Lubalin? I've heard his name for a very long time - I see it again and again in these early 1970s NYAD Annuals - and I'm wondering if he was one of the people who shifted the visual landscape in commercial art.



MT: Absolutely. He was an "illustrator with type."



Herb was the most talented and best graphic designer I ever worked for. Whether it was when he was with U&lc (Upper & Lower Case) or some other client, he made every job I ever did for him look infinitely better after he got through with it.

(Below, the December 1979 issue of U&lc, art by Murray Tinkelman, design by Herb Lubalin)


MT: He would make additions - not on my art, but in the typography and design - he was a genius; a true, true genius.

(Below, from the 50th NYAD Annual, design & art direction by Herb Lubalin, 1970)


LP: And the thing is, Murray, I can't help but think that the beauty of working with type - in the manner Herb Lubalin did - is lost on most of today's designers. Do you know what I mean?

MT: Yes I do.

LP: Like, I don't think there's that same appreciation for how beautiful and vital letterforms are, the way it was when he and his fellow designers... When I look at that early '70s period in graphic arts, that typifies that period; that loving treatment of typography at that time.



MT: Yes it does. And the use of hand lettering. Tom Carnase did a lot of the hand lettering for Lubalin.

(Below, from the 50th NYAD Annual, hand lettering by Tom Carnase, design & art direction by Herb Lubalin, 1970)


LP: Right.

MT: It was, in those ways, really a golden era and I was lucky to have come on the scene at that time and work with Herb Lubalin. You know, in one of our earlier conversations I mentioned that breakthrough I had at the Saturday Evening Post... and Herb Lubalin was acting art director at the Post when that piece got published.

LP: Oh my gosh!

(Below, Saturday Evening Post DPS by Murray Tinkelman, October 1961, art direction by Herb Lubalin)


MT: Yeah. I did a painting, 18" square of this wolverine and it had a tree in the background and a little bear climbing the tree and a little collage butterfly, a pink sky... and when I picked up the magazine at a newsstand; seeing it printed for the first time ever, I thought, "My God! Where's my piece?! It's been destroyed!" And then it took about ten seconds for me to realize it was so much better now, with all that crap removed and his incredible typography surrounding what was left of my painting. (Murray chuckles)

That got in every show; it got in the Type Directors' Show (not because of my painting, because of Herb's type), it got into the Art Directors' Show (because of Herb's art direction), it got into the Illustrators' Show (that, at least, was because of my painting).

LP: Although this early '70s ad series below isn't by Herb Lubalin, I find it demonstrates in the most spectacular fashion the effectiveness of strong typography as an integral element in a powerful graphic design.













LP: Lubalin said "You can do a good ad without good typography but you can't do a great ad without good typography." I think this series proves his point.


Continued tomorrow

* Murray Tinkelman has won Gold Medals from The Society of Illustrators, The New York Art Directors Club and The Society of Publication Designers. He has over 200 Awards of Merit from The Society of Illustrators. Murray is the director of Hartford Art School’s limited-residency Master of Fine Arts in Illustration program.

* Many thanks to Tony Gleeson for providing the scans of the Audi Fox ad series