Fastback Comeback

A rose may be a rose even if we call it a tulip. Nevertheless, be it by politicians or public relations flaks, there exists the practice of renaming things in order to affect how they are perceived.

Normally the hoped-for change is targeted at outsiders, but from time to time it's insiders who are intended to change perceptions with the change of name. Consider "garbage man" as opposed to "sanitation engineer."

A more art/design related case might be General Motors' renaming its Art and Colour Section as Styling Section and, later on, Design Staff. Of course work went on as before, regardless of the monicker.

I'm particularly amused by the last change because it implies that the staffers actually design an automobile from the tires up. This is clearly not so. Creating cars, like creating movies, is a team effort. In the early-stages mix for a totally new model are market researchers, product planners, engineers and the aesthetic specialists. In recent decades, even production specialists have been included to keep an eye on cost and ease of assembly. So there is no single "designer" in the sense of a 1903-vintage Henry Ford. Instead, we have a committee tasked with coming up with something as little camel-like as possible.

To me, "Styling Section" was the most descriptive name of the lot. That's because the guys with the Prismacolor pencils, airbrushes and (nowadays) interactive software systems are mostly playing around with visual themes rather than creating a vehicle from total scratch, unaided by non-aesthetic considerations. To be called "designers" is a means of improving self-esteem, the term "stylist" seeming oh-so-superficial.

Sorry guys, but fashion it is. Consider:

Above is an advertisement for a 1947 Pontiac. Note that it's a "fastback" model, a style popular from the end of the 1930s into the early 1950s. The concept was that the shape was more streamlined, or aerodynamically efficient, than alternatives -- the Platonic such shape being the so-called "teardrop" with a rounded front end that tapered to a point at the rear. More recent wind tunnel testing indicates that the taper isn't as important as first thought. But fastback cars were considered Hot Stuff for a few years until buyers began to realize that trunk space was limited compared to "notch-back" designs and sales dropped to the point where it wasn't worth the cost of tooling new fastback models.

Still, fastback cars have a certain stylishness, so from time to time one appears. In recent years, two major German car builders introduced such models.

First was Mercedes with its CLS (above). I recall some critics pooh-poohing its looks, but it looked plenty sleek and desirable to enough buyers for the car to be a marketing success. Recently Volkswagen got into the fastback act with its Passat CC which basically plops the CLS roofline and windowing scheme onto a Passat lower body as can be seen below.

Is all this Design or is it Fashion pure-and-simple where an innovation is imitated by sales-hungry competitors trying to grab a piece of the pie. I give you one guess as to where I place my bet.

Irwin Caplan Playing Shakespeare

Irwin Caplan (1919-2007) was a well-known magazine cartoonist during the final glory years of the "slick" general-interest magazines. As his Wikipedia entry indicates, Caplan practiced a good deal more art and design than those cartoons. But it was the cartoons that most people knew about.

In the pre-Internet age it wasn't so easy to locate information about people, so that's why I was surprised regarding all his non-cartooning accomplishments when reading the link above. You see, I encountered him Way Back When.

I was majoring in commercial art at the University of Washington and one of the classes in that field was Fashion Illustration. And our instructor was ... Irwin Caplan, of all people: the famous cartoonist.

A slight problem I had with that was a lack of credibility: What did he know about fashion illustration? Perhaps sensing this, one day he brought in a newspaper clipping of a small advertisement for a blouse where the illustration was a wash drawing by Himself. He told us that even though the illustration was small, it was his and it got published, so he was proud of that.

That helped some, but we were most pleased when he brought in his buddy (and well-known local fashion and general-purpose illustrator) Ted Rand and his lovely wife for a demonstration. Oh, how jaded and snobbish we were in our student days!

Two Steps Removed from Sorolla

While on my gallery crawl along Palm Desert's El Paseo I came across some paintings that seemed very like the work of Joaquin Sorolla. But they weren't, of course.

Information on the plaque indicated that the artist was Giner Bueno (1935 - ). And a little Internet digging revealed (click on the link) that he, like Sorolla, was born in the Valencia area. This link notes that his father, Luis Giner Vallas, was a protege of Sorolla.

Below are some examples of Giner Bueno's work.

Gallery

Al Mediodia

Maternidad

La Pesca

El Regreso
Scenes similar to Sorolla's along with minor theme variation.

En Chelva
Giner didn't spend all his time on the shore.

Las Zapatillas Rosa
And not everything he does are outdoors scenes.


[Scratches head, rubs chin] Oh dear. What to make of this. Well, the Giner Bueno paintings I saw were small compared to Sorolla's -- the latter's canvases could have propelled half the Spanish Armada.

Giner's paintings are competently done, and I'm pleased that a representational painter of his generation has made a successful career in the teeth of modernism. On the other hand, his work is just too similar to that of Sorolla for my taste; I see Giner and think Sorolla.

Then there is the Valencia factor, if indeed there is one, that might be called in Giner's support. I've never visited that corner of Spain, but can believe in the possibility that the scene is such that it can dominate any artist who attempts to depict it. Such is the case for California, where painters for the past 120-odd years have been producing paintings that are similar thanks to the subjects. (Though there is no California Impressionist whose work is dominant, unlike the case of Sorolla in Valencia.)

Asiatic Faces of the Fifties

Automobile styling has become considerably internationalized in recent decades. In the 1930s, 40s, 50s and even the 1960s American, English, French, German and Italian cars tended to have a national "look" or flavor. (Yes, I can cite exceptions, but I hope you can see my point.)

Nowadays young people from automobile-building countries can attend design schools in the USA, England and the continent, receiving comparable training. That is, the outcome is approximately the same regardless of country of origin or country of school. If a car design turns up with a strong national character, that's because it was the stylist's intention. A case in point was the original version of the Audi TT sports car which was styled by an American, yet somehow evokes German racing cars of the late 1930s.

National character was apparent in Asiatic vehicles of the late 1950s. Since few were exported to America and Europe, readers might not be aware of that was going on at that time and place, hence this post.

The Japanese automobile industry didn't begin taking off until the mid-1950s. Its cars were often derived from English models, and the designers were probably mostly home-grown. The result for a few years was cars with curiously fussy front ends. I say "curiously" because traditional Japanese architecture and painting tends to be rather spare and simple.

But -- who knows? -- I might well be totally wrong about all this. So give the pictures below a peek and decide for yourself.

Gallery

Korean buses at Hongcheon, 1960
I found this image someplace on the web and was glad I did because it shows Korean buses as I remember them from my army days. Note that each one has a fussy grille that differs from the others. These grilles were probably cobbled together at the assembly point without the input of a trained designer.

Toyopet Crown
This is a Toyota from the mid-late 1950s. Whereas the grille design in general isn't greatly at odds with European or American styling practice of the time, its proportioning and execution are awkward and a tad fussy.

Toyopet Crown from the same era
The front end of this Toyota is tidier, but the design elements strike me as over-detailed for a car of its small size.

Nissan Prince Skyline ALSI-2 from around 1958
Another awkward design. Here we find round and rectangular elements that fight each other -- in particular, these round lights at the outer edges of the grille butting up against rectangular lights.

Dialing It Back

I posted recently about my visit to the Arts Festival at La Quinta, California and mentioned that an artist's work gave enough food for thought to inspire a future article. Well, the future is now.

The artist was Beverly Wilson who paints bright California scenes that often include strong purple shadows, as can be seen in the picture below.

As mentioned in the earlier post, I thought the art show had an above-average quality level for that kind of event. And I'll add that I think Wilson was among the better painters there. However, I also think she goes a little too heavy when it comes to those purple shadows. Yes, it's a means to distinguish her paintings from the rest of the crowd, but the effect detracts a little from what her paintings might have been had she dialed back on the purple.

Sometimes an artist with a distinctive -- even highly marketable -- style should consider dialing back in the name of improved quality.

One artist who recently tried this is Michael Carson. Below are examples of his career-building style and recent works, a few of which I noticed in a gallery in Palm Desert, California about the same time I took in the Arts Festival.

Gallery

Many of Carson's early paintings were party scenes containing people with exaggerated expressions.

Most of his paintings feature women. These are typical of his previous style: mural-style outlining, skin painted richly with occasional highlight spots as if the subjects had a slightly greasy surface.

I'm not sure of this, but these two paintings strike me as being transitional between the style seen above and his new style, below.

Recent Carsons have lost the bright, shiny skin surfaces. The brightness has faded towards gray. Highlight areas remain, but their impact is reduced thanks to the change of color key.

This painting is similar to what I saw in the Palm Desert gallery. More subtle skin color offset by stark blacks of the subject's clothing.

Carson's recent paintings are becoming a far cry from those early party scenes: he's done a lot of dialing back. To his benefit, I think.

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.