Art That Needs Assistance

The Wall Street Journal comes up with interesting art news every few weeks. The latest item worth passing along is "The Art Assembly Line" by Stan Sesser in the 3 June 2011 issue (link here).

Its lede brings to mind a post I wrote back in January regarding artistic skills:

Alexander Gorlizki is an up-and-coming artist, known for paintings that superimpose fanciful images over traditional Indian designs. His work has been displayed at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, the Denver Art Museum and Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum, among others, and sells for up to $10,000.

Mr. Gorlizki lives in New York City. The paintings are done by seven artists who work for him in Jaipur, India. "I prefer not to be involved in actually painting," says Mr. Gorlizki, who adds that it would take him 20 years to develop the skills of his chief Indian painter, Riyaz Uddin. "It liberates me not being encumbered by the technical proficiency," he says.

Sesser goes on to mention other currently active artists who make use of assistants in their work. This has been common for sculptors all along, thanks to the demands of large-scale fabrication and its requirement for specialized, non-artistic skills.

But the practice has been rare for painting in recent times. As Sesser notes,

For centuries, the use of assistants and apprentices was standard in the art world. Michelangelo, Rembrandt and Rubens relied heavily on the assistants in their studios. With the rise of the Impressionists, however, the idea of a studio practice, which maximizes incomes by using assistants, fell into disfavor. Artists were supposed to be pouring out their personal visions onto the canvas—not instructing employees on how to do it.

By the time Pop art came into fashion in the mid-20th century and Andy Warhol began cranking out silkscreens and lithographs with the help of workers at his well-publicized Factory, opinion began to swing back the other way. "The value of a work of art is not invested in the hand that made it, but in the intention and the realization," says Robert Storr, dean of Yale University's School of Art.

This last point makes me cringe. I can accept it when dealing with architecture and even sculpture. But painting should be the artist's own work because, but its nature, it is something one person can do without help. (I'm happy to quality this for exceptionally large paintings such as murals where the primary artist can leave the grunt-work bits to others.)

The statement also strikes me as the "art is whatever" attitude all too present present in this Modernist era. Let's reconsider the abandonment of the concept of High Art, because I think we've reached the point where it is desperately needed.

Back to Sesser, this regarding Jeff Koons:

At the other end of the spectrum is Mr. Koons, who runs his vast, high-ceilinged studio with an efficiency that discourages personal interactions. Everyone has an assigned task, from painting a section of a canvas by following elaborate diagrams to mixing dozens of paints to produce exactly the right color. Large paintings are lifted up a wall by electric hoists; in one room on a recent afternoon, two painters worked silently on a canvas at floor level while two others painted the upper part from a scaffold. There's a hierarchy of supervisors, including a studio manager, a painting supervisor and several assistant managers. It brings to mind an assembly line, but the 56-year-old Mr. Koons, who is married to one of his former assistants, bridles at the analogy of a factory. "People get misconceptions that it's about production, like a machine," he states. "But I've thought for a year about almost everything before starting to make it."

Mr. Koons, whose use of assistants is widely known, says he supervises the work intently: "I'm here Monday through Friday and I try to travel as little as possible. The paintings are as if I made every mark myself." Mr. Koons says he doesn't mentor his artist employees, and they don't bring paintings into the studio to show him. "This is about production of the work," he says. "I want them to stay focused on the work here."

Even though painters abandoned use of assistants as the 19th century wore on, the practice was continued in commercial art. For example, Norman Rockwell used an assistant to do the tedious work of transferring his drawings from preliminary sheets to a canvas where the artist could begin to apply his paints. This clearly is a minor level of help, because the assistant did neither the preparatory drawing nor the final painting.

A case where assistants' work appeared in the final product was the newspaper comic strip in its classical 1930s and 1940's form. Cartoons were printed much larger than they are today, and adventure strips often included a good deal of detail such as those of room interiors and streetscapes serving as background for the action. Assistants often did those backgrounds. I've read of a few cases where the main artist left all to assistants save the character's faces.

Comic book and graphic novel production can follow similarly. Often the lead artist "pencils in" the images and an "inker" uses brush and pen to realize the final images.

So yes, art is often a cooperative endeavor. But sometimes this can be taken too far.

Molti Ritratti: Sarah Bernhardt

The Divine Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1923) was certainly divine enough to inspire painted portraits along with many, many photographs. Her Wikipedia entry is here and a search for images on Google or Bing will offer many aspects of her.

Unfortunately for us, photos of her taken when in her physical prime are too staged to give much of an impression of her personality. By the time photography became flexible, she was already in her 50s.

So it was left for the painters to capture her spark. Below are some examples I culled from the Web.

Gallery

Here is a photo to set the stage.

By Georges-Antoine Rochegrosse

By Georges Clairin - 1871

By Georges Clairin - 1876

By Hans Makart - 1881

By Louise Abbema

By Theo van Rysselberghe - 18881

By Giovanni Boldini

By Jean-Léon Gérôme - 1895

By Alphonse Mucha - 1896

Huge, Unsuccessful Transport Aircraft

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.

Walter Everett, Destructive Master

An illustrator whose work should be much better known is Walter H. Everett (1880-1946). Unfortunately, almost none of his original artwork remains. That's because he burned it.

Illustration über-maven David Apatoff presents much of what is known about Everett here (executive summary: he was odd) and Bud Plant has a short take here. That's pretty much it via the Internet if the first couple of Google search pages are any indication. The illustration-related books in my library add little of importance.

Evidence that exists indicates that Everett was capable of creating illustrations of quality that is art museum material. Especially two pieces: The header illustration to this post and the lead illustration in the Gallery section below. I included a few other works that aren't at that level but, as noted, there is little available.

Gallery

The Loneliness of Peter Parrot - 1924
Illustration that appeared in Good Housekeeping magazine.

I don't have a citation for this illustration.

Samuel Offered on the Steps of the Temple - 1909

Liberty Bonds poster

The two lead illustrations demonstrate that Everett had a mastery of light and color along with skill at placing his brush. To some degree this should be expected, given that he received training from Howard Pyle himself.

Apatoff notes that Everett was a perfectionist. Too bad he wasn't also a packrat.

Opera Notes

My wife likes for us to attend opera, so I go. Last week it was Mozart's Magic Flute which we'd previously seen in San Jose. The Seattle Opera production was better, the role of bird-man Papageno more clarified as comic relief. Anyway, I left the hall for home with a couple of thought-themes rattling around my head:

* * * * *
Opera plots normally don't have much to them. Usually there's a love interest. That serves to generate some dramatic conflict of the expected sort, but other crises and twists are sometimes inserted despite the glacial dramatic pace necessitated by the singing.

Magic Flute plays up an idealized secret society comprised of wise, superior, truth-speaking, tolerant people who ... well, it wasn't clear to me just what they did except that they were able to exercise some sort of power in what remained an imperfect world in spite of that power. Much of the second act dealt with some sort of initiation process built around the love interest. Yes, opera plots are largely fantasies, but I find the idealistic secret society bit particularly archaic from the standpoint today's world. Legends and mythology I don't mind because they are timeless, but secret societies are too rooted in history for me to be pulled into the story line easily.

Secret societies were Hot Stuff in Mozart's day and this continued through the 19th century in the form of college fraternities, sororities and non-college groups as well. What really got me was the idealistic notion that mankind could be so perfectible, at least in the form of an intellectually and morally pure elite. People in their late teens and early twenties can still buy into this notion, but life experience and the reading of history combine to make me wonder what Mozart and librettist Emanuel Schikaneder were thinking. They were young and living in the Age of Enlightenment after all. But that "relevance" to their time negated the possibility of "timelessness" to their opera. That and the utopian notion of abolishing human nature.

* * * * *
Another thought. From what I've read, European audiences up until nicely into the 20th century were quite capable of expressing dislike for theatrical productions by booing, hooting and even throwing objects onto the stage. At the Seattle Opera, audiences are prone to wildly applaud almost anything and never, ever boo or hiss. In fact, the only breaks in decorum I've experienced there were some loud whoops of approval during curtain calls.

Did those Europeans know something Seattleites don't? Which kind of audience reaction is preferable when a performance is sub-par? And just how can one indicate disapproval in such a polite atmosphere? Beats me.

Peak Art

When I was a commercial art student there was a very small group of emerging artists whose work astonished me. Those guys were so good I came to realize that I could never compete with their likes. So I dropped art after graduation and moved on to more technical fields including demographic forecasting and computer system programming.

One of those master illustrators was the great Bernie Fuchs. Another was Bob Peak (1927-1992). A web site about him run by his son is here and a short Wikipedia entry is here.

Peak seems to be best known for his movie posters such as these:

Notice anything?

What I note is versatility. Peak could work in a variety of styles and media and do fine work regardless. Below are more examples that I hope will give you something of the sense of professional awe I experienced in my student days and thereafter when I encountered his work.

Gallery

Two advertisement illustrations for Trans-World Airlines. These are in the Bernie Fuchs mode.

Poster art for My Fair Lady.

Portrait of Jimmy Carter used for a Time magazine cover.

Watercolor portrait of Louis Armstrong.

Portrait of painter and art instructor Robert Henri -- again rather Fuchs-like.

Advertising art: elegant, Deco-poster like.

As I said, versatile

Dodge's Crippled Retro Charger

American Automobile makers use "Retro" styling a lot. There are reasons why, of varying degrees of plausibility. One might be that by evoking beloved cars of yore, sentimental buyers might be lured from BMWs, Toyotas and other foreign-based brands to return to the Yankee fold of their youth. Or maybe stylists or management have simply run out of ideas for new styling themes.

Regardless, what is, is. In today's post, the "is" is the facelifted Dodge Charger that uses the same body as the Chrysler 300.

Gallery

There was an earlier Charger than the 1968 version shown here, but the '68s sported one of the finest American styling themes of that era. This was the inspiration for the 2011 Charger. Besides the flowing lines and the relationships between the various shapes, note the wedge-shaped indentations behind the front wheel well: this idea is what the 2011 retrieves.

This rear three-quarter view illustrates other aspects of the sensuous styling.

Chargers were used in the popular 1970s television series Dukes of Hazzard. I include this action photo because it was the best side view I could locate on the Web. What's important for us is the car's length. Without that length, the styling shown above could not be achieved.

Here is the 2008 model Charger. It uses the Chrysler 300 body with slight differences including the grille and fenderline "hop." Unlike the '68, it's a four-door sedan, no two-door coupe being made on the platform.

The 300 and Charger got facelifts for the 2011 model year. The most obvious Charger difference is the side, where the fenderline was altered and a 1968-like indented wedge was added.

Here's a rear 3/4 view. Compare to the 1968 shown above.

This is the key shot. Compare this to the side view above. Note how much more boxy the basic '11 body is -- due to short rear and (especially) front overhang. The underlying shape is not at all sensuous. In fact, that borrowed side indentation simply makes the car look stubbier than pre-facelift version.

I passed a 2011 Charger a few days ago on my commute to work and was struck by how awkward it seemed and how little the styling relationship was from the classic 1968 model. This is simply a case of Retro gone wrong.