Reality Amidst the Abstraction

The painting shown above caught my eye last month in a gallery on El Paseo in Palm Desert, California. It has a lot of Abstract Expressionism business going on, yet it also contains an image that is representational and for the most part correctly proportioned. (The open mouth on the figure to the left is exaggerated, but nothing like the usual Postmodernist nudge-nudge, hey I'm being Ironic distortions gracing all too many gallery walls these days.)

The artist is Vanni Saltarelli. A biographical snippet is here and a slightly longer one (in Italian) is here.

Saltarelli earns his keep by portraying mostly undressed women, but also does other scenes for variety, as can be seen below.

I find his work interesting and rather likable thanks to the representational elements, though occasionally he spoils things by getting the shape of, say, an arm a bit wrong (see painting above).

But of course there's nothing new under the sun, as the saying goes. Consider the paintings below.

These paintings are by Kenneth Callahan (1905-1986), one of those "mystic" Pacific Northwest painters I wrote about here. A longish biography of Callahan is here. Interestingly, it mentions that Callahan didn't consider himself a "mystic" (a true self-assessment, I think) and didn't think Guy Anderson should have been included either (I also agree).

As for Callahan's work, I was never taken with it. A case of an artist active before 1945 who was trying to come to terms with Modernism and simply struggled without coming to a breakthrough style. Saltarelli, who seems to have been born in the 1940s, strikes me as being comfortable with Modernism, and thereby able to transcend it.

The Greasy-Face School

Not long ago, in this post, I featured Michael Carson, whose style evolved recently. Commenters mentioned that his earlier work reminded them of that of Malcolm Liepke.

That was true for me as well, and it's mentioned in the Wikipedia entry on Liepke (above), which also notes Liepke's friend Milt Kobayashi as a subject of his influence. And it turns out that Carson, like Liepke, has Minnesota ties; something in those 10,000 lakes affecting the artistic air there?

But there's more! While noticing Carson's new work in Palm Desert I chanced upon yet another painter doing the Liepke thing. The name is Leslie Sanbulte, but I couldn't find any background information on a quick Google search. That is, nothing regarding Minnesota.

In light of all this, I now proclaim a new school of painting: the Greasy Face School. In support, I humbly offer the examples below.

Gallery

Malcolm Liepke - Over Her Shoulder

Malcolm Liepke - Watching the Crowd

Michael Carson

Michael Carson

Milt Kobayashi

Leslie Sanbulte - Bonnard's Fantasy

Leslie Sanbulte - Favorite Blue Wrap


In another recent post I compared a currently active painter with Joaquin Sorolla and wondered about similarities in style and subject-matter.

I halfheartedly offered the thought that perhaps it was subject-matter (the coast around Valencia) that contributed to the Sorolla effect. But the similarity in treatment of skin for the artists featured here cannot be explained away in the same manner.

It's a big world and the USA is still pretty much a free country, but I question the wisdom of artists painting in the same off-natural style. Since Liepke seems to be the originator, that's okay by me: I like a fair amount of his work. But the others ought to try something else for their own professional good, I think. And as I posted earlier, Carson seems to have realized this and is now doing work I find more interesting than his Greasy Face stuff.

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.