David Stone Martin and His Scratchy Style

The 1950s and 60s saw major changes in mainstream illustration style. Conventional wisdom has it that photography began to force illustrators to move from highly representational style. For this and other reasons (advent of television, death of general-interest magazines, etc.), that's what indeed happened. And I'll suggest that part of this movement was to styles that tended to give the artist's medium increasing prominence and depiction of the subject matter less.

An artist who attained early success in this venture was David Stone (Livingstone) Martin (1913-1992) whose work was both avant-garde and a source of inspiration to art school students in the mid to late 50s. His Wikipedia entry is here and Leif Peng has a fine series of three articles about Martin at his Today's Inspiration blog dealing with early years, record jackets and general illustration.

My sense is that Martin isn't really considered an Old Master illustrator these days. Perhaps he's one of those respected borderline figures whose day will return at some point. Let's take a look at some of his stuff.

Gallery

"Jazz at the Phil" cover

Lester Young cover

Muggsy Spanier cover

Drawing of Navy medics - c.1943

Schoolboys

Time cover - 26 August 1967

My take is complicated. That's because I really liked his work when it was new and I was young. Now I'm less sure. I'm still fond of his scratchy style of penwork -- the medium business I mentioned above. Although he made use of black spots as a counterpoise from the lines, they aren't nearly in the compositional use-of-black-league of, say, cartoons by Russell Patterson (go to Google or Bing images to find examples). Another way of looking at it might be to say that Martin's works were literally lightweight, though very nicely drawn. Regardless, he was an illustrator whose work should not be ignored.

Joseph Urban: Undersung Designer-Architect

Joseph Urban (1872-1933) is ever-so-slightly edging towards the design / architecture / theater history spotlight.

For example, this book about him appeared last year in conjunction with an exhibit. And this link is to an on-line catalog for a 2000 exhibit.

Urban was Viennese and rubbed elbows with Gustav Klimt, Kolo Moser and the rest of the artsy community during those wonderfully rich decades around the turn of the 20th century when Vienna was at its artistic peak. Like Moser, he was a jack of more than one trade, doing book illustration, theatrical set design and other tasks besides architecture, in which he was trained. Urban emigrated to the United States in 1912 (great timing, that) where he at first worked in theater before edging back into other fields.

He died not long after his 61st birthday having prevailed through the Art Nouveau, Art Deco, Moderne and early International Style eras. I have little doubt that he would have done well as a modernist had he lived another 20 years and into the postwar architectural boom.

Given his immense talent and adaptability, what puzzles me is why isn't Urban treated with greater honor in the annals of architecture and design?

My off the top-of-the-head reaction is that the Modernist Establishment didn't -- and still does not -- consider him to be seriously modernist. Too showy. Too decorative. And some other issues, no doubt. If you have suggestions, please comment. (I moderate comments, so it might take a while before they appear.)

Below are examples of Urban's work.

Gallery

Joseph Urban

Esterhazy Castle, Hungary, project - 1899

Rathauskeller, Vienna - 1899

Wiener Werkstätte shop, New York City - 1922
The Viennese design group tried to establish a New York beachhead in the early 1920s, but failed. That's a Gustav Klimt painting in the center.

Metropolitan Opera House design proposal - 1926-27
A number of architects, including Urban, were called in at various times during the planning and design of New York City's Rockefeller Center. Early plans had a new opera house facing Fifth Avenue, but this concept fell by the wayside. The Metropolitan Opera had to await new digs until 1966 when its Lincoln Center facility opened.

Ziegfeld Theatre, New York City - 1927
Designed by Urban and Thomas W. Lamb, the Ziegfeld was demolished in 1966 to make room for Burlington House, one of those dull glass-and-steel Sixth Avenue office towers. The Ziegfeld was looking a bit worn back in the early 1960s when I found myself walking past it.

Roof garden murals, St. Regis Hotel, New York City - 1927-28
Theatrical, but more 1900 than 1927. Maybe that's what the St. Regis thought its clients would like.

Hearst Building, New York City - 1928

Hearst Tower, New York City - 2006
Because Urban's original structure has protected status, Norman Foster and his gang decided to drastically contrast their high-rise addition with the 1928 base. Neither building is good architecture, so far as I'm concerned. But I also think that the Urban design makes for a better pedestrian experience than a foundation-to-top Foster version might well have been.

Auditorium, New School for Social Research - New York City, 1930
Here Urban shows his "streamlined modern" stuff.

I Saw the La Quinta Arts Festival -- And Survived!

I'm in the Palm Springs, California area while my wife is watching the tennis tournament at Indian Wells. I'm not at all into that game, so I'm keeping busy writing data display programs for my former employer (as a part-time employee till the end of June).

Saturday I took a break from the J computer language to take in the La Quinta Arts Festival, an event the sponsors tout as Number Three in the USA.

I don't often do art fairs because usually I don't find much of interest. But as I mentioned, I needed some diversion, so I arrived early to find a free parking lot, grabbed a coffee and Wall Street Journal at a fine coffee house in the Old Town, then waited in line and finally plunked down the $12 admission fee to enter. I spent about an hour there and took some photos to document what I saw. A selection is below.

The artists came from as far north as Washington's San Juan Islands and as far east as Florida. I estimate that most fall into the category of having some gallery representation, yet have yet to become well-known to the art consumption public. The quality was a notch above what one might find at a local art fair, so someone with a four-figure budget wanting a nice decorative piece for the family room could do well at the La Quinta.

Gallery

This is the setting -- a park in the La Quinta Old Town near City Hall. Those white tents house each artist's wares.

There were sculpture, woodwork, photography and other items besides paintings.

Some painting was abstract. I think the ones pictured here would make a decent decoration in an appropriately furnished room.

This artist seems to be able to supply several genres, but nothing that lit my fire.

This group is cartoony and rather silly, so far as I'm concerned. I wonder who buys this stuff and, more importantly, why.

If Botero can make a mint painting fat people, others will be willing to enter that game.

On the more representational side, here in desert country paintings of Indians can sell.

The artist in this tent does it all with palette knives; I saw him at work on a new painting. Poor me, I lack the imagination to appreciate what he's doing. I understand using a knife to do bits of a painting where appropriate. But the whole thing? ... Sorta like inscribing the Lord's Prayer on the head of a pin; a marvel of sorts, but to what other purpose?

The French Impressionists made purple shadows respectable. This artist uses them a whole lot. This inspires me to write a post, but not necessarily about shadows.

Here is Michael Situ's tent. He tells me he's no relation of the increasingly famous Mian Situ, though both work out of the Laguna Beach area. That might be his wife in the foreground. The paintings are mostly plein air studies, but very nice and more finished than studies often tend to be.

General Motors Aerotrain: A Rider's Report

The photos above are of General Motors' Aerotrain, a mid-1950s attempt to put pizazz into rail travel and sell many similar locomotive-and-coaches combinations to America's ailing passenger railroads.

The Wikipedia entry here and this fuller account summarize the disappointing (to GM) tale of railroads that tried the demonstrator trains but refused to buy any production versions.

Basically, the Aerotrain was a flashy, automobile-styled locomotive pulling a string of coaches using some of the body stampings from inter-city buses GM was building at the time. By the way, that automobile reference is more real than one might think: the guy behind the design was Chuck Jordan, who many years later went on to head GM's styling operations.

The Aerotrain interests me because I actually rode one. I was a school kid at the time, and my dad bought a new DeSoto and we were traveling from Seattle by train to pick up the car at the factory. After stopping in Chicago to visit relatives, we took the New York Central to Detroit (the Wikipedia entry doesn't mention this run, the second link does), and lo! we got to ride the Aerotrain.

In retrospect, the best part of the trip was the green-uniformed, red-haired Southern stewardess who looked at totally blushing me with big blue eyes and asked if y'all needed anything.

The worst part, as both links mention, was the rough ride. An unusual suspension design is cited as the culprit. Maybe so. But I always thought the problem was that the bus-based coaches were simply too light. In any case, trying to walk while the train was at speed was difficult due to random lurching and bouncing.

Sometimes transportation concepts of the future have no future.

Robert Fawcett Biography

Robert Fawcett (1903-1967) was a highly respected illustrator who, perhaps due to his color-blindness, usually worked in black inks and compatible media. His major strengths were draftsmanship and composition supported by skill in doing the research needed to get details right.

Illustration-buff blog readers are probably already aware that a major
biography of Fawcett rolled off the presses not long ago (see cover image above). Although late to the scene owing to the fact that I got my copy only a week or so ago, this post is my brief review. (Fawcett has been getting a nice share of attention recently in addition to the book. For example, there was an exhibit of his work last year; Charley Parker mentions it here and includes some biographical information.)

Most of the biography is actually a substantial collection of Fawcett's work. There is a text supplied by the popular illustration blogger David Apatoff who mentions the book in this post.

Since Apatoff does very good work, I was pleased with what I read, but wanted more, more! I'm usually interested in human and situational factors in art almost as much as the art itself, provided such information is available. The comparatively limited amount of verbiage might have been due to (1) the publisher's desire to maximize the pictorial content within the book's page budget -- a reasonable choice -- or (2) David simply wasn't able to locate much information about Fawcett -- a real possibility given that the man died nearly 45 years ago.

As for Fawcett himself, he claimed to have studied neither anatomy nor perspective. Rather, he said that he learned to observe very carefully, and the ability to draw what he saw was sufficient for operating on the level he did. I wonder. Whereas I'm pretty sure that he couldn't name many bones and muscles, I doubt that he was naive regarding artistically important things going on "under the skin" so to speak. Moreover, I find it hard to believe that he didn't understand perspective up to and including the three-point variety. Perhaps he couldn't work out the details mechanically as an architect might, but he knew how to closely "fake" it.

Skilled as he was, Fawcett sometimes rushed his jobs. Here and there in the book I found featured male figures (usually clad in suits) that appeared stiff and simplified. The illustration below tends in that direction, but isn't as extreme as a few cases in the book.

Magazine illustration - 1958
This is not to criticize Fawcett; many of his illustrations were prodigiously detailed and superbly executed. Still, he was a busy man in the 1940s and 50s and needed to keep bread on his table, so occasionally he seems to have rushed things. It's these odd details of his thinking and work that make the book so interesting.

Early American Streamlined Locomotives, Part 2

The streamlined trains featured in Part 1 of this series were diesel powered. At the time -- the mid-1930s -- most American locomotives were steam-powered, so the easiest, cheapest means of hopping on the streamlining bandwagon was to give existing locomotives streamlined cladding. And that's what some major railroads did while waiting to convert to diesel power, a process that moved into high gear in the 1940s.

Two of America's richest and most famous railroads were the New York Central and the Pennsylvania Railroad. The key passenger run for each was New York - Chicago, linking the nation's largest and next-largest cities.

The Central ran up the Hudson Rive to Albany and then west to Buffalo along the route of the old Erie Canal -- a passage with few hill or mountain obstacles. From Buffalo, trains went near the south shore of Lake Erie through Cleveland and Toledo in Ohio before cutting across northern Indiana to Chicago.

The Pennsy's route from New York went through Philadelphia and Pittsburgh before angling northwest to the Windy City. Unlike the New York Central's route, Pennsy trains had to cut through the Alleghany mountains -- a series of sharp ridge-lines and intervening valleys -- making use of tunnels to minimize the amount of grade to surmount. Western Pennsylvania is also hilly with winding rivers, so those obstacles also had to be cleared.

Thus the Central had an easier route topographically, but the Pennsy had a shorter one -- no dog-leg up to Albany before striking west. This made the railroads competitive when hauling the rich and famous on their premier passenger trains, Central's 20th Century Limited and Pennsy's Broadway Limited.

Let's look at some photos:
Gallery

Standard New York Central J2 Hudson-type locomotive
More information regarding that line's locomotives can be found here.

New York Central "Commodore Vanderbilt" - 1935
NYC's first steam streamliner was designed by Carl Kantola (with wind tunnel testing at Cleveland's Case Institute) and fabricated as a converted Hudson in the railroad's shops near Albany. The Commodore Vanderbilt was the second-string New York - Chicago run to the premier 20th Century Limited.

New York Central "Mercury" - 1936
This Hudson was given a streamlined cover by industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss. It served on NYC's Cleveland-Detroit run.

New York Central "20th Century Limited"
Ten J2s were given streamlined skins designed by Henry Dreyfuss and ran on the New York - Chicago run starting in 1938.

Pennsylvania Railroad S1
The Raymond Loewy-designed S1 was an experimental streamlined locomotive that appeared in the late 1930s. The center photo shows Loewy posing on his creation. The lower photo compares the S1 to one of the Pennsy's regular steam locomotives.

Pennsylvania Railroad T1
The T1 was another Loewy creation, but one that saw service starting in 1942. It was a cleaned-up version of a normal steam locomotive with an aggressive "face" that looks like it was not an optimal case of streamlining, though the rounded "splitter" form in front of the boiler must have had less air resistance than a regular flat boiler section did. The T1 was the last major steam-powered streamlined locomotive type built in America.

Rene Bouche: Fashion Illustration and Beyond

Fashion illustration master René Bouché (Robert August Buchstein) was born in Prague 20 September 1905 and died in England 3 July 1963, though his career was in Paris in the mid-late 1930s and the United States thereafter. The most detailed biographical information I could find is here.

Fashion illustration is pretty much an artistic ghetto, given that it's a sub-field of illustration, itself a second-class citizen in the art world. But being a fashion artist has its advantages. Vogue and other publications could bring you a lot of money provided they accepted a lot of your work and would even put it on the cover from time to time. Also, given the well-heeled nature of its readership, a reputation as a famous fashion illustrator might lead to portrait commissions and other paid jobs.

Bouché did exactly that, as can be seen below. He even did abstract painting and rubbed elbows with New York's Abstract Expressionism grandees. I find his abstractions lightweight, but you are welcome to judge for yourself if you click on this link.

As for his portrait work, he tended to follow his fashion illustration style with pleasing results. This link to "100 Years of Illustration" has out-takes from a Life magazine feature showing Bouché painting actress Tammy Grimes; two pictures from that set are below.

What couldn't Bouché do? No one really knows because he chose to limit his subject matter. But, somehow, I wonder how well he would have done as a Pulp cover artist, portraying combat, or drawing football players for Sports Illustrated.

Here is a sampling of Bouché's work.

Gallery

Fashion illustrations

Another fashion illustration, this of Givenchy outfits - 1957

Illustration for a Schweppes advertisement

Edward R. Murrow

Jack Benny
The CBS television network commissioned Bouché to make portraits of some of its leading performers to use in advertising. At the time (the 1950s) CBS was regarded by itself and much of the general public as being the "classy" network, so it used a classy artist for these portrayals. Younger readers: Edward R. Murrow was a famous newsman and commentator, Jack Benny was one of America's top comedians.

Actress Audrey Hepburn

John F. Kennedy - Time Magazine cover, 9 June 1961
Since Bouché did Vogue covers, Time must have figured that he was good enough to do a little work for them.

Painting actress Tammy Grimes - Life Magazine, 19 May 1961
Note that the final result (below) is not the same as the initial version (above).

Self-Portrait
This was probably done in the later part of his life.