John Whitcomb: Never-Changing Style

I recently posted the first in an occasional series of posts about illustrators who changed their style in order to maintain their careers. Those who failed to do that either had shooting star careers or were the fortunate few who successfully worked for decades with few or no adjustments. Most famous of the latter is Norman Rockwell, who never went out of style and now is on the fringe of being considered a member of the fine arts crew. J.C. Leyendecker had a long run as well, but fell out of favor after a 30-ish year run.

In the present post I deal with Jon Whitcomb (1906-1988) who also did well for decades with minor style adjustments. His brief Wikipedia entry is here. Matthew Innis provides examples of Whitcomb's work along with quotations dealing with the female face, Whitcomb's primary subject. A slightly sour take on Whitcomb is here.

For a number of Whitcomb illustrations that have dates assigned, click here. One illustration is dated 1930, but that must be incorrect, given the fashions depicted; I'd say 1940 would be closer.

This brings to mind the fact that I cannot find examples of his work from earlier than the late 1930s on the Internet (though I might have overlooked some). Whitcomb was in his early 30s by that time and surely must have been in a career-building mode before then. Illustration Magazine notes that Whitcomb is in the queue for a future article; perhaps that will reveal some early exmaples.

Here is some of his production (he presented himself as a businessman cranking out product, not as an artist):

Gallery

Advertisement for 1939 Cadillac 62
The illustration is signed, so presumably Whitcomb also did the car rendering. However, for years it was common for one artist to do the car and another one the setting. Until I get more information I'll take the signature as proof.

Magazine illustration - 1939
This was done about the same time as the car ad. It shows that Whitcomb had attained his mature style by that point.

Collier's magazine cover - 12 August 1941

"I think I love you" - magazine illustration
Archetypical Jon Whitcomb.

Woman wearing large hat
No signature, but plenty of web sites claim it's a Whitcomb. If so, I'd guess it was from the 1960s.

Minimal face
A great illustration, also likely from the 1960s (can any reader help us on this?).

Jon Whitcomb specialized in the "big face" type of illustration that emerged in women's magazines during the 1940s and remained dominant into the mid-1960s. He did it very well, creating personal fame and earning a bundle of money. Lovely though much of his work is, it's hard to argue that it's anything beyond superficial on any other dimension. From what I've read about him, it's a good chance that Whitcomb would agree as he hopped into his fancy car to head for the bank to deposit the latest check.

Artist's Name = Widespread Expression

When an artist becomes famous, the nature of that fame usually resides in the images of his work in public's mind. This is different from the fame of movie stars, actors, fashion models and others whose physical appearance is the leading "hook" for public grasping. A few artists are generally recognized by their appearance as well as their work, examples being van Gogh, Lautrec, Picasso and Warhol.

Then there is the odd case where the artist's subject matter becomes a concept that, in turn, is given the artist's name by the public. It's an odd path to artistic immortality, but there it is.

As an American, I naturally think of the Rube Goldberg machine, an elaborate, illogical sequence of odd connections that results in an outcome that could easily have been reached by simpler means.

Above is an example of a Rube Goldberg device and here is the Wikipedia entry for Goldberg who it seems earned an engineering degree from the University of California (Berkeley) before taking up the cartoonist's pen.

If I were British, I would use the term Heath Robinson to refer to the same sort of thing. Below is an example and here is his entry.

Robinson came from a family of illustrators and could whip up some nice, straight work in that field as well as his gizmo cartoons.

I don't know the inner thoughts of Goldberg and Robinson regarding the nature of their fame. But fame of a nice sort is rare, and if I had been them, I'd be happy to accept it.

When Eduardo Benito Was in Vogue

Eduardo Benito (1891-1981) was an icon of the Art Deco era. When I was young I enjoyed seeing his work while flipping through library copies of old issues of the Art Directors Annual, a publication that taught me more than any other about the history of commercial art from the late 1920s into the 1950s.

Here is the best biographical information I could find about Benito on the Internet. It seems that magazine publishing magnate Condé Nast kept Benito busy doing covers for Vanity Fair when he wasn't producing Vogue covers for him. Not a bad gig for an illustrator from Spain.

Gallery

Vogue cover - April 1927

Vanity Fair cover - August 1931

Vogue cover - August 1929

Vanity Fair cover - March 1929

Illustration - 1928

In the Beginning: Gustav Klimt

For a time Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) was obscure, but now he is famous if for nothing else than his gilded painting "The Kiss." If you venture into Vienna and cast about for a souvenir, you're likely to encounter one Klimt image or another unless you are truly into stocking up on Mozart candies. His Wikipedia entry is here.

As his career proceeded, Klimt's style became increasingly loose while his colors brightened. His early works were done in a highly academic fashion with a great degree of skill. From what I've seen, I'd have to conclude that Klimt could have practiced in almost any style extant in his times and would have been successful at it. Many other modernists could not handle academic style art well and, perhaps for that reason, quickly moved to modernism because there was little in the way of alternatives.

Let's take a look at some of Klimt's pre-Kiss work:

Gallery

Fabel - Fable - 1883

Idylle - Idyl - 1884
Click on the image for a large version.

Auditorium of the Alte Burgtheater, Vienna - 1888
This was painted in gouache.

Joseph Pembauer - 1890
Here we find touches of the later Klimt such as the introduction of gilt design in the background.

Liebe - Love - 1895
The painting of the background is in a looser style.

Sonja Knips - 1898
Click on the image for a large version.

Damenbildnis - Portrait of a Lady - 1898-99
Klimt is on the cusp of abandoning his previous academic/naturalistic style for the stylized paintings best known to us today.

Blogging Note

You might have noticed that my response to comments has been slower and weaker than usual. That's because I've been traveling for most of the last two weeks. The posts you've been reading were written earlier and queued for scheduled later release. I'm writing this in artsy Taos, New Mexico and will post about it if I see anything interesting enough to merit doing so.

Design at Your Fingertips

No doubt the concept (in rudimentary form, perhaps) has been around for ages. And perhaps someone else articulated it clearly earlier, but the guy I'm aware of who built a highly successful career around ergonomics and human factors was industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss. As the result of reading his book Designing for People when I aspired to be an industrial designer, along with a lot of interaction experience with various devices in the years since, I pay a lot of attention to the quality of interaction with tools of various kinds.

This post lightly touches on the subject of computer keyboards, something I and most readers of this blog deal with often. It's not a comprehensive survey; I have some illustrations below, a few comments and a wistful conclusion. Feel free to toss in your two Euro-cents (while they last!) in our new, improved, faster publishing Comments link at the bottom.

Gallery

Apple II computer - 1977
Early Apples integrated the keyboard with the body of the machine. I suppose this helped keep costs down a little, but it forced users to be in a fixed position while typing.

IBM PC - early 1980s
The IBM PC featured a keyboard tethered to the system unit. This allowed a user to work with the keyboard on his lap or in other convenient positions: greater freedom. The keyboard had a nice touch along with a click-clack aural feedback. I bought my PC in May, 1983 and really liked the keyboard (which was probably relatively expensive to produce).

Microsoft ergonomic keyboard

Microsoft wireless keyboard

Flexible, waterproof keyboard

Combimouse keyboard
The set of keyboards shown above indicate the variety of ergonomic and other solutions that are or have been on the market. I haven't tried any of them, so I can't comment as to their effectiveness in aiding typing. The reason I haven't tried them is because, unlike some office workers, I seldom engage in extended typing sessions on a computer. When I compose a blog post such as this I'll write a few sentences and then pause to consider what I wrote, taking my hands away from the keyboard. And, in any case, these posts aren't long. Similar thing if I'm writing a computer program: write a few lines of code and then think and perhaps run a test.

But in theory those warped-looking keyboards should be in better synch with one's body. Try dropping your hands before you on a table. Note how your forearms tend to converge, forming something like a 90 degree angle to one another. If your hands are extended, the bones of your middle finger should fall along the same axis as the forearm. But when typing on a standard keyboard, the wrists will have to turn outward a bit so that the hands can cover the board better; this breaks the fingerbone-forearm axis I just mentioned. Warped keyboards tend to preserve that axis.

Apple iMac keyboard
I have an iMac and paid extra for this keyboard which is larger than the basic one (which is like that of a MacBook laptop computer). This keyboard has, among other additions, a key allowing for forward-deletes and a numeric pad, two features that make the extra cost worthwhile to me.

Apple MacBook Air
I also have one of these. For some time Apple keyboards have had flat keys that (for me, anyway) took some adjusting, though I've now adjusted my "touch" accordingly (but still don't like it). I can understand why those flat keys are used in slim laptops such as the Air; tall keys would require a thicker computer.

So why didn't Apple provide better (for me, at least) keys on desktop machines? To cut costs, probably -- though their computers are pretty pricey and probably profitable enough to warrant the added cost of a decent keyboard for iMacs.

Apple iPad virtual keyboard
I've only tried the iPad virtual keyboard briefly -- I used it to bring up this blog on an iPad at an Apple Store. So I know it works, but have no idea as to how well I could knock out an email or blog text using it.

Conclusion? Thirty years later, the IBM PC keyboard is still the best, though I concede the necessity for flat keys on slim laptop computers.

Bunny Art

Australian painter Rupert Charles Wulsten Bunny (1864-1947) was stuck with a last name that I consider unfortunate, though I don't know his take on the matter. To me, "Bunny" is unserious. On the other hand, it's distinctive, so might have been an marketing asset.

Setting this aside, he seems to have been a skilled painter who produced some interesting works. I can't recall seeing any of his paintings either in the USA or Europe. Many are in Australia, which I've never visited. Therefore accept what I just said as a provisional take.

There is a Wikipedia entry on Bunny here, but it's quite brief. A more comprehensive biographical not is here and a short one here.

Below are examples of his work.


Gallery

A Summer Morning - 1897

Dolce farniente (Sweet Idleness) - c.1897
These are two earlier works.

Nellie Melba - 1901-02

CF Keary
Two portraits, the upper one of the famous Australian opera singer.

Return from the Garden - c.1906

Nocturne - c.1908

A Summer Morning - c.1908
Three paintings from the same period.

The Sun Bath - 1913
This was painted on his return to Paris from a visit to Australia. Note the more impressionistic style.

Muses Plucking the Wings of Sirens - c. 1922
An even later work. Bunny seems to have believed that he wasn't Modernist so, like so many other artists of his time, made an effort. If he tried this because his earlier style wasn't selling, I can sympathize even though the result isn't as impressive as his earlier works.