In the Beginning: Kasimir Malevich

Kasimir Malevich or maybe Kazimierz Malewicz, given that his parents were ethnic Poles living in the Ukraine when he was born in 1878 (well, it now seems he was born in 1879, according to this Wikipedia entry which offers a Ukrainian version of his name along with the others), founded the modernist abstract movement of Suprematism. Oh, and we're still pretty sure he died in 1935.

Examples of his Suprematist painting can be found here, but I offer the following to give you a sense of it:

Black Square - 1923, concept from 1913
The black square was the symbol of the Suprematist movement.

Supremus No. 58 - 1916

The Knife Grinder - 1912
Not Suprematist, but showing his awareness of Cubism and perhaps the work of Duchamp.

As the Wikipedia entry indicates, Malevich had little exposure to art when young, beginning drawing training in his mid-teens and not getting formal schooling in painting until he was in his mid-20s living in Moscow. That city had important collectors of impressionist and modernist art, so this quickly rubbed off on Malevich who felt comfortable enough with the new ideology to begin his Suprematist variation.

Along with many modernists he supported the Communist takeover and was able to assume leadership roles in the Soviet art world. For a while. Eventually he found himself on the margins and finally had to face the Stalinist imposition of Socialist Realism, moving a number of his paintings to the relative safety of Germany in anticipation of the change of wind.

Below are examples of his work showing varying degrees of realism.

Apple Trees in Blossom - 1904

Unemployed Girl - 1904
These two painting date from the year he entered painting school.

This is a portrait, probably of a family member -- ca.1906

Self-Portrait - ca.1910

Self-Portrait - 1933

Based on what is shown above, Malevich strikes me as having the ability to have been a very good representational painter had he followed that path instead of abstraction. But given his background and times, his career makes sense. After all, Golden Age Modernism (perhaps 1900-1960) was an experiment that needed to be undertaken eventually. And as I mention from time to time, my gripe with it is that it became a religion and an Establishment, both hostile to non-modernism (despite lip-service to the contrary).

Combat Art: Worthwhile?

An art genre that has been virtually invisible for decades is Combat Art or War Art -- there's no definitive name for it. In the broadest sense, it can be any art where war is the subject. But for the purposes of this post, I'll narrow things down so that it means works by artists sent into war zones by military organizations for the purpose of recording events they encounter. For background, check out the links here, here and here.

Why combat art? The first link noted above offers a justification by Brigadier General Robert L. Denig, Director of Public Relations for the United States Marine Corps about the time America entered World War 2:

The combat photographer must snap his picture of an action as it happens. If he is busy taking part in the action, as he so often is; if it happens so fast he is unable to adjust his camera in time; if conditions are not good, the action is never recorded- and the picture is never made.

The artist, on the other hand, with his photographic eye, can take part in the action, and then paint any moment of it from memory at his leisure.

The painter can provide his own lighting; he can give a picture any degree of intensity he desires. He can reconstruct a scene from whatever angle he considers most dramatic, centering attention wherever he wishes.

I disagree, for the most part.

The most famous war paintings created before 1850 tended to be done by artists who were seldom witnesses to the events depicted. By mid-19th century, photography had been invented and improved to the point where cameras could be brought to scenes of battles (siege sites, aftermaths of combat), but were too cumbersome to record combat itself. This remained the case up to the time of the Great War. For example, the turn of the century Boer and Spanish-American wars were mostly recorded by sketch artists hired by newspapers and other publications. The Great War marks a transition where photographers and sketch artists coexisted. And by the time of World War 2, photography became the best means of recording warfare visually.

My disagreement with General Denig? I base it on the combat art I've encountered over the years. Nearly all the on-the-spot sort of work is no better than contemporary photography. Most often, the scenes were not actually combat -- instead, they showed the often dull daily life in the military. Furthermore, in my judgment, the really fine depictions of combat from, say, 1940 on have been done after the fact, often by artists who were not on the scene. No change, really, from pre-1850 times.

Although I'm sure I missed a really outstanding example or two, below are examples of Combat Art I found on the Web to document my case:

La Mitrailleuse - Christopher Nevinson, 1915
This is perhaps Nevinson's best-known painting. It abstracts what he possibly viewed in more ways than one.

Self Portrait - Sir William Orpen, 1917
Orpen was a top portrait painter who went to France to depict the Great War. Unfortunately, he totally botched the image of the British "tin plate" helmet; see below for a more accurate treatment.

Marines in France by Harvey Dunn
Although famed illustrator Dunn was in France for the war, I doubt he captured this image on the spot even in sketch form; if this was real combat he stood a good chance of being killed in such a setting and viewpoint.

Gassed - John Singer Sargent - 1919
This mural can be seen at the Imperial War Museum in London. Sargent witnessed this behind-the-trenches event and worked it into the painting, adding details to a quick sketch to make an interesting composition.

Sighting the sun by McClelland Barclay, 1941
Barclay was a successful illustrator in the 1920s and 30s who entered the U.S. Navy as a commissioned officer and war artist. The ships in the background of this painting are not realistically portrayed and the perspective is off. Some of Barclay's painting were used in Navy recruiting posters. Unfortunately, he payed a high price, being lost when his ship was sunk in the Pacific.

Mission briefing by Alex Raymond
Raymond was yet another famous artist before he joined the Marines. Although he did some commercial illustration, he was best known for his comic strips Secret Agent X-9, Jungle Jim and -- especially -- Flash Gordon. The non-combat scene shown here is typical of World War 2 combat art.

Moving Up - Howard Brodie
This Brodie scene, like much WW2 combat art, could just as easily been photographed.

Landing at Saipan - William Draper
Yet another case where the artist probably would have been killed if he actually was in the position suggested by his painting. The marines shown are clearly part of the initial attack wave. Draper would have to have been in a Japanese slit trench or bunker to capture this in person.

Ambush at Saipan - Theo Hios
Here is a sad example of both modernist sensibility and likely absence from the fight shown.

Surprise Attack in the Suburbs of Metz - Alphonse de Neuville
This depicts an event from the Franco-Prussian war. De Neuville was not there. But nevertheless, it is probably the best combat scene in the set of images above.

To summarize, in the era beginning with the development of the compact Leica camera, just about anything a combat artist might have captured directly, a photographer could have done an equally good or better job of recording the event. War paintings of superior artistic quality seem to be generally done much later by men who were not on the scene (though they might have been exposed to war or military life otherwise).

Styling Discontinuities: Chrysler

Some car makes stick to styling themes or detail cues for decades while other brands toss away the past when launching a total redesign.

I'll be touching on this choice from time to time in future posts because it's an interesting subject, given the huge financial risk taken when retooling a car line.

The continuity school of thought holds that, since a good deal of money has been invested in establishing a brand image and if sales have been satisfactory, it's best to build on that widely recognized image. Luxury makes such as Mercedes, Rolls-Royce and (at one time) Packard also did not want loyal customers left in the lurch in the form of a total makeover.

The change-everything rationale is less clear. Where an existing design is a sales failure, it makes sense to wipe the styling slate clean to eradicate a bad image. The case for clean-slating a successful design is harder for me to grasp. Perhaps the thinking is that Brand X already has the image of being progressive/innovative, and something different is what buyers have come to expect. Or maybe corporate management doesn't accept or perhaps even understand the logic of continuity.

I bring this up because Chrysler is expected to offer a major facelift for its once-popular 300 series sedan for the 2012 model year. If the company could afford to create a new "platform" this might be really interesting: To what degree should a successful design be tampered with?

Chrysler's styling history tends toward the clean-slate school. Consider these designs from the past 20 or so years:

Chrysler New Yorker - 1988
This is a version of the famous "K" platform of the early 1980s that helped save Chrysler Corporation under the helm of Lee Iacocca.

Chrysler Concorde - 1993
By the early 1990s, the K line was becoming old-hat and in need of replacement. Tom Gale, Chrysler styling supremo 1985-2000, was instrumental in creating a totally different replacement.The new styling concept was called "cab-forward" where the driving position was sited closer to the front of the car and the boxy K lines were replaced by a more rounded, more aerodynamic shape. This design was risky because it deviated somewhat from the competition, but it resulted in better sales than in the declining years of the K styling.

Chrysler Concorde - 2001
The 1998 model year saw a new (or perhaps extremely-heavily facelifted) cab-forward design. The previous image was continued, but in even more rounded form. As this style began to age, Chrysler was faced with the choice of continuing the cab-forward look or trying something different.

Chrysler 300 - 2006
Chrysler came up with something radically different for the 2005 model year -- the almost instantly-iconic 300 styling mated to rear-wheel drive (the other cars shown above had front-wheel drive). A sort of continuity was effected by using the traditional Chrysler "medal" insignia and a grille treatment that echoed the "woven" look of late-1940s Chrysler grilles. But these touches were minor in the context of the at-the-time shocking styling. I suspect the change happened because the cab-forward theme had been pushed about as far as possible and had been in production in one form or another for more than a decade; another round of it would have meant seriously stale styling.

Based on photos I saw recently of the facelifted 2012 Dodge version of the 300, windows likely will be enlarged. To what extent the style character of the car is to be changed remains to be seen. I'll provide a styling analysis when the 2012 models are announced.

In The Beginning: Georges Braque

Georges Braque (1882-1963) is famed for being the co-creator, with Pablo Picasso, of Cubism. The most detailed biography of him that I could find on the Web is here. It mentions that he destroyed much of his early, student-period work.

This is not a nice thing with respect to this series of posts about the stylistic roots of modernist painters. That is, I have yet to find any painting by the young Braque that are uninfluenced by modernism in one form or another. Nor could I find any late works suggesting serious movement to representational art.

The result of this frustration is that I have no way of telling if Braque might have been capable of painting in a realistic manner at all, let alone how well he might have done so had he persisted. In this respect, Braque might well be the earliest of many artists whose post-art school work is uniformly modernist.

For what it's worth, then, are some examples of his paintings made when in his mid-twenties.

Gallery

Harbor at Estaque - 1906

Landscape at Estaque - 1906

Le port d'Anvers - 1906

Olive Tree Near Estaque - 1906
(Stolen from Paris' Musée de l'Art Moderne in 2010.)

Le viaduc de l'Estaque - 1907-08

Le viaduc a l'Estaque - summer, 1908
This version shows hints of Cézanne.

Huge, Unsuccessful Transport Planes

There's something about size that appeals to the rational, technically-oriented mind. In certain circumstances, that is. Circumstances where economies of scale seem applicable. The problem is, size cannot become infinitely large or even "seriously large" without the object in question becoming unaffordably expensive or key components demanding features beyond the state of their engineering art.

An instance of the first case is the "paper battleship." Naval planners during the period, say, 1910-1940 would prepare concepts of future battleships. This might begin with the idea of using really large main armament -- an 18- or even a 20-inch shell, perhaps. But the rest of the vessel would have to be scaled to support such armament. And the price of such a ship might consume much of the navy's construction budget; a class of three or four ships would be prohibitive, not to mention the tactical and strategic consequences if one of those super-battleships was sunk. The Japanese Yamato class came close to this potential overkill and the United States planned, then cancelled, its Montana class which was more a super Iowa than a Yamato.

For aircraft, there are several problems related to large scale. The Boeing 747 in its early days and the new Airbus 380 forced upgrading of various airport facilities and earlier, relatively large aircraft such as the DC-3 airliner led to the replacement of grass landing fields with airports with concrete runways.

A more serious problem has been that aircraft engines weren't capable of reliably supplying the power required by huge (for the times) airframes. This problem became acute by the early 1940s when piston engines became increasingly complex and unreliable as power requirements grew. In short, their technology was reaching its natural limits. The solution was gas turbine engines, but it took 10 or 15 years for their technology to reach the point where power, fuel economy and reliability converged to where they could be used on commercial aircraft.

Just for fun, below is a gallery featuring ultra-large transport or cargo aircraft from the period centered on the late 1940s. Some were powered by those maxed-out piston engines and one used the new, trouble-prone turbine technology. I also dealt with large aircraft a while ago in this 2Blowhards post.

Gallery

Douglas C-74 Globemaster
Several aircraft have sported the "Globemaster" name: this was the first. Only a few were built as it was succeeded by the pudgy, double-deck C-124 that saw considerable use. I once flew in one of the latter from Kimpo airport near Seoul to Tachikawa airbase in Japan many years ago. An interesting feature seen on the C-74 that must have caught the fancy of Douglas designers is the double bubble pilot / copilot canopy arrangement that gives the plane a bug-eyed look. This was also used on Douglas' XB-43 "Mixmaster" prototype bomber. All very futuristic, but impractical for cockpit operational coordination.

Convair XC-99
The XC-99 was derived from the B-36 bomber. Pan American even considered ordering some, but decided to stick with more practical planes such as the DC-6 and Boeing Stratocruiser (which itself had engines that weren't paragons of reliability). Only one XC-99 ever flew.

Lockheed R6V Constitution
This was a Navy job. As the link notes, hardly any were built.

Martin JRM Mars
Another Navy transport, this a seaplane. The original Mars had twin tails. A few were built and saw service. If World War 2 had lasted another year in the Pacific, there might have been more in service.

Bristol Brabazon
Britain's Brabazon was spawned by a government committee, as were several other prototypes and minimal-production airliners (the main exception was the Vickers Viscount) that seemed nifty at the time but didn't even match the needs of government-controlled airlines. The Brabazon's development was long and it had no real chance of seeing airline service.

Saunders-Roe Princess
Flying boat airliners had pretty well seen their day by the end of World War 2, but that didn't prevent the British giving the concept one last stab in the form of the Princess. One more instance of too much, too late.

Arts and Crafts Disneyland

Most folks expect noontime at Disneyland to be bright and sunny, I suppose. Alas for them, Southern California does have a rainy season during the winter months. The weekend before Christmas and early Christmas week this year, Los Angeles experienced days of rainfall that at times was very heavy. And we were there.

Given that I get to Disneyland about once per decade and further given that things in the park change slowly, I was able to skip most of the rides and focus on something really important: staying as dry as possible.

It turned out that a nice place to avoid the rain is the ten year-old Grand Californian Hotel in the Downtown Disney area just west of the Disneyland and Disney California Adventure Park entrances.

There are other Disney hotels nearby that are basically near-generic, nondescript modernist style with Disney touches and shops to brighten things up. Not so the Grand Californian. It's based on those fine Arts & Crafts style National Park lodges at Yosemite in California and here and there elsewhere in the West. Here are some photos I took while drying off.

These views are of the registration desk area and the main lobby.

This was taken from a seat in one of the hotel's restaurants, one with a story-telling theme.

One corner of the lobby has a children's diversion area: note the scaled-down Adirondack-like chairs and rockers.

Grownups are not forgotten. This is a lounge where one can get coffee and beverages of increasing hardness. Those little white spots near the rim of the ceiling light fixture are three-circle Mickey Mouse symbols (head and two round ears): there's no escaping the mouse on Disney property, even in a lounge mostly for adults. Also note the painting on the left-hand wall. This room has several paintings with a circa-1900 feeling, including:

The latter image is slightly cropped.

These are slightly cropped images of some of the California Impressionist style painting located along corridors in the hotel.

All those paintings shown above bear no artist signature. My guess is that they were done by Disney art staffers, many of whom are no slouches and fully capable of creating works with a 1900 cast.

Coastal Calm: Jerry Van Megert

A contemporary artist whose work impresses me is Jerry Van Megert. Last year I posted about him here on the 2Blowhards blog, and two of the photos below are from that article.

As I mentioned on 2Blowhards, I could find little about Van Megert himself, and that remains the case. He was born in Oregon in 1938 and educated there. His main work is portraiture, but I haven't yet found any example of this on the Web.

If you want to view actual Van Megert paintings, a good place is the lounge at The Lodge at Pebble Beach. That's a Van Megert painting on the far wall.

Here is a slightly cropped view of that painting.

Further detail: click to enlarge and examine Van Megert's technique.

A view of the coast between Big Sur and Carmel. This is also in the lounge and on the same wall as the previous painting.

The Lone Cypress
This image of the Pebble Beach landmark is from the web site of Coast Galleries, which offers Van Megert's paintings and prints.

Van Megert's color scheme -- can I call it "clay-like"? -- isn't exactly locked into what an artist or even an ordinary viewer is likely to see when visiting the stretch of the California coast running for 60 or so miles south of Carmel. This frees Van Megert from the iron grip of the powerful California scenery that usually forces California landscape paintings to look somewhat alike no matter who does the painting. So what we see above is definitely California and equally definitely Jerry Van Megert.