Pene du Bois' Solid, Simplified Images

Guy Pène du Bois (1884-1958) studied art 1903-04 at the New York School of Art with Edward Hopper and Rockwell Kent, among others, under Robert Henri.

Hopper gained the most permanent fame from today's perspective whereas Kent and Pène du Bois were fated (again from today's perspective) to respectively become archetypical 1930s and 1920s representatives of American painting. Which is slightly ironic in Pène du Bois' case, because he spent much of the 20s in France.

A short Wikipedia entry is here, but for useful depth regarding Pène du Bois, read this article.

I find his paintings frustrating to look at. That's largely because of his simplification of facial detail -- eyes are sometimes depicted by a small slash of black paint -- and the sad fact (for Pène du Bois) is that most viewers tend to focus on a face if one is present in a painting.

What was going on, I think, is that he was caught up with the challenge of modernism, as was true for many of his contemporaries. There were several approaches taken in those days, but Pène du Bois opted for depicting people by means of simplified, solid images. This was in contrast to striving for flattened images in supposed conformity to the picture plane, an alternative favored by artists of a more theoretical temperament. My take is that Pène du Bois pushed the simplification option a little too far.

Here are examples of his work.

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The Arrivals - c.1918

Dining Out - 1919

Woman with Cigarette - 1929

Country Wedding - 1926

Opera Box - 1926

Carnival - 1927

Woman in Brooklyn - after 1929

Blue Armchair - 1923

Pène du Bois was quite capable of making representational depictions, but examples are hard to find on the Web; the image immediately above is one of the few I found that go in that direction. Examples I've seen off-line suggest that he tended to set modernism aside when painting family and friends.

Jazz-Age Murals in Las Vegas

For the past three weeks posts on this blog have been appearing on their regular Monday-Wednesday-Friday publication schedule. That's because, speaking of schedule, I can schedule publication of posts ahead of time and let kindly Google do the rest.

Me? I was in California and Las Vegas and wrote not a single post while there; a backlog was worked up before I left home. But I did take some photos to thrill and amaze you. Coming soon are views of architecture and interior decoration, but for now I offer some blurred shots of a few murals that I spied while on my annual non-gambler casino crawl.

For those of you who have never been to Las Vegas or haven't visited since the mid-1990s, The Strip (Las Vegas Boulevard, which isn't actually inside the LV city limits) is comprised of a host of large casino-hotels, most of which are designed around a theme. Examples include The Palazzo, The Venetian, Bellagio, Caesars Palace, Treasure Island, Paris, Luxor, and New York - New York to name a few whose names convey their theme. Such complexes are costly to build in part because of the décor that is crucial for conveying the theme.

The photos below are of some murals that are really quite minor details contributing to the atmosphere of each place. The first two were taken in the New York - New York, the other two in the Wynn, which is luxurious but has no obvious theme attached to it. Both sets have a 1920s feeling in terms of subject matter and style. Take a look:

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Paul Rand, Graphic Designer

A very cursory web search didn't point to the actual source of the above quotation, but the agreement is that it indeed came from graphic designer Paul Rand (1914-96), a dominant player in that field for decades.

Of course, there were some who used it as a departure point for other ideas such as "Don't try to be good, just original" and "Try to be both original and good." Me? I'm with Rand. The modernist emphasis on creativity (= originality) has led to some bad side-effects including the nearly invisible amount of true instruction I received as an undergraduate art student (apparently they thought training would kill creativity). If one tries to be good doing art, a useful dab of creativity has a decent chance of creeping in.

Back to Rand. A website dealing with him is here. It contains a biography, a large collection of photos of Rand and many examples of his work, some of which are shown below.

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Some logotypes Rand designed

Direction magazine cover - March, 1939

Direction magazine cover - Spring, 1943

Book cover - 1958

Unused logotype for Ford - c.1960

My take on Rand is that he was indeed a master of his trade. That said, I think his strongest work was in the field of logotypes and graphic corporate identity.

A good deal of the rest of his work was in the odd, spotty graphics that were most popular from the late 1930s into the mid-1950s. Other designers followed Rand's lead, and a fair amount of it was found in page designs and advertisements that were intended to look "sophisticated." This style is evident above in the images of magazine and book covers. I find it for the most part too unstructured and insubstantial for my visual comfort.

In contrast, Rand's corporate symbology was usually solidly structured incorporating strong design elements. It was highly influential: I recall a student project where I tried to come up with a simple, modernist logo for Miller Beer that of course was a design failure.

Speaking of design failures, Rand's attempt at redesigning the classic "Ford oval" falls into that category. Ford was wise to shelve his proposal. Even the best designers have their off-days, it seems.

F.C.B.Cadell: Scottish Colourist Who Used Black

Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell (1883-1937) was one of a four-man group known as the Scottish Colourists: his wikipedia entry is here.

The Colourists (I'll use the British spelling in this post) were influenced by Post-impressionism and perhaps Fauvism. They succeeded the previous-generation Glasgow Boys (scroll down) who were influenced by Jules Bastien-Lepage.

Cadell was socially well-connected, living for a number of years in a fashionable Edinburgh neighborhood (Ainslie Place) a few blocks from the west end of Princes Street. He tended to live higher than his inheritance and painting sales could support and was essentially broke when he died from cancer and liver disease aged 54. What little tangible estate he had (probably mostly in the form of unsold paintings) was willed with a few stated exceptions to his housemanager/companion Charles Oliver. Unlike the other Colourists, Cadell enlisted for the Great War and was twice wounded.

As for his mature art, his subjects ranged from portraits to interior scenes to still lifes to plein-air works. Some pre-war paintings were done in a loose style, but his later work tended to be carefully composed with defined edges.

For one known for color, his works tended to feature significant areas painted in pure black and much of the rest were flatly painted in pure or tinted grays. These served as contrast to other colors that then stood out. In a number of interior scenes from the 1920s he included a Chinese Red chair as a prop that provided a considerable color jolt.

I have yet to see a Cadell in person, so will assume that their general appearance is colorful. Here are examples of his work. They are in rough chronological order (he seldom dated his work), and some titles might be conjectural.

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Ben More from Iona - c.1913
This was from his first visit to the island. Cadell went there many times in the 1920s and early 30s.

Afternoon - 1913
An interior scene painted when his style was relatively loose.

The Black Hat - c.1914
From the same period. He used a black hat as a prop for many of his portraits of ladies.

Portrait of a Lady in Black - c.1921
This is one of his better-known paintings. Post-war, he tightened his brushwork and incorporated flatly painted areas. A good deal of black is used here while the rest of the color is limited to pastel shades.

The Embroidered Cloak - c.1923
This painting used a similar color scheme to the one shown above.

A Lady in Black - c.1925
Still more similar colors.

The Orange Blind - c.1927
Blacks and grays set off the orange, gold and blue-green.

Vertical Grille Bars as Styling Theme

Today's cars often incorporate visual focus points and linear features at the front, sides and rear that serve as brand identifiers. This is nothing new: one of General Motors' styling section founder Harley Earl's desiderata was including styling details that would keep viewers entertained as they walked around the car.

But in Earl's day the main focal point was the car's front, or "face" that it presented to the world, and another desideratum was that a car's front should make the brand identifiable from a block or so away. These days the front and grille itself (because air is now usually drawn in through a slot below bumper-level) are no longer necessarily the main focal point thanks to side and rear detailing. (Yes, there are exceptions such as Cadillac Escalades and all Lincolns starting with the 2010 model year.)

Back in the 1940s, Earl notwithstanding, side and rear views of cars were often rather bland in terms of details and not particularly distinctive. So a distinctive grille was the main feature viewers could seize upon to identify what make a car was. For this reason, many brands strove for continuity in grille design themes. Examples are Rolls-Royce, Packard and Cadillac (which has featured an egg-crate motif since the 1941 models). Other makes such as Ford were less consistent.

1940 is also interesting because it was around then that grille openings assumed a horizontal (landscape) format after having been vertical (portrait) for about 30 years. This led some stylists to propose a grille motif featuring vertically positioned chromed bars. Each of the Big Three U.S. car makers had one of their brands assume this style which was retained for many years as an identifier. These makes were General Motors' Buick, Chrysler's DeSoto and Ford's Mercury; examples are shown below.

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Buick

Buick - 1942
Buick introduced its vertical bar theme for its 1939 models and returned for a long run starting with the 1942s, few of which were built thanks to production being curtailed for the war effort.

Buick - 1949
By 1949 the grille bars were more rounded, but the 1942 theme was adhered to.

Buick - 1950
1950 Buicks sported an overhanging teeth look that was derided by observers who called it a "dollar-sign grille" and worse.

Buick - 1952
Buick dropped the overbite for its '51 line and the 1952 models were similar. 1955 was the last year for the vertical bar theme for many years; it crept back in during the 1980s.

Buick - 2012
Current Buicks have a strong vertical bar theme, carrying on the 1940s tradition.

DeSoto

DeSoto - 1942
DeSoto used the vertical bar theme on its 1941 line, but I'm showing a 1942 car because its "face" is distinctive and classic in its way. The grille is waterfall-like, for instance. But the important detail is the headlights covered by doors that opened when the lights were turned on. Hidden headlights were a fad around 1970, but DeSoto only had them on its war-constrained '42s.

DeSoto - 1949
The entire Chrysler line got its post-war restyling for 1949 and DeSoto featured grille bars of varying width.

DeSoto - 1953
The bars got chubby for the 1951 model year and that theme was continued in 1953 when Chrysler offered it next round of restyled bodies.

DeSoto - 1955
The 1955 model year (another completely new set of bodies for Chrysler) was the last for DeSoto's vertical bar theme. I like the way the grille opening makes those little hops above the bumper guards. Sadly, Chrysler abandoned the DeSoto brand during the 1961 model year.

Marcury

Mercury - 1946
Mercury didn't adopt vertical bars until 1946. Note how thin they are.

Mercury - 1949
The '49 Mercury is considered by many as the classic version of the brand. Grille bars are still fine, but their expanse is greater and the convex curve of the ensemble ads greater reflection from the sky making the grille seem bolder.

Mercury - 1952
I find the restyled 1952 Mercurys interesting because of their integral bumper-grille that was innovative. The vertical bars are found only at the bottom -- sort of like chopped-off remains of the 1950 Buicks' toothy overbites.

Mercury - 1958
By the late 1950s Mercury was drifting away from the vertical bar theme, though vestiges can be seen here. By the mid-1960s only the sporty Mercury Cougar line retained vertical bars.

Mercury - 2010
In the years leading up to Mercury's 2011 demise the vertical bars theme was brought back to the fore, perhaps as a last-gasp attempt to distinguish the brand's products.

Matisse and Fergusson: Color Versus Drawing

At its root, the issue of color versus drawing is a matter of taste. So there is no agreed-upon point where one can draw the line (pardon the expression) where one or the other should begin to take precedence.

Those who favor color are sometimes called "colorists." I thought it might be interesting to compare two colorists whose emphasis on drawing differed somewhat, this to illustrate what I noted above.

In one corner, I offer Henri Matisse (1869-1954) who went wild with color as a Fauvist in the early 20th century. After Fauvism faded, Matisse continued to emphasize color for the rest of his career. What he de-emphasized was drawing; people and other objects were presented in a sketchy and somewhat distorted way, being subordinate to colors.

Matisse was quite able to draw accurately. So why did he persist in distorting the images he painted? I don't know. Perhaps he was simply following modernist fashion. But I'm inclined to doubt this because he tended to intellectualize his work, stewing over whether he was making "progress." My guess is that he justified his casual draftsmanship on the grounds that the drawing should also serve the needs of composition and perhaps that well-drawn images would distract viewers from focusing on his color experiments.

The opposite corner is John Duncan (JD) Fergusson (1874-1961), a member of the four-man Scottish Colourists group. Some of Fergusson's painting subjects were as casually rendered as Matisse's, but most of the time his images featured more careful draftsmanship.

Below are examples of their work. For Matisse I favor his odalisques, of which he painted many in the 1920s, because he was paying more attention to draftsmanship then than in his Fauve days or later on.

Matisse

Decorative Figure Against an Ornamental Background

Odalisque with Gray Trousers - 1927

La robe jaune - 1929-31

Woman in Purple Coat - 1937

Fergusson

Tete

Summer - 1920

Spring in Glasgow - 1941

Le voile persan - 1909

An Astonishing Rochegrosse

The Musée d'Orsay recently completed its renovation. Galleries have been reorganized, paintings rehung.

I have no plans to visit Paris any time soon, so like many readers of this blog, I'll just have to read reviews and try to imagine how things look.

One painting whose fate I'm curious about is this one:

Le chevalier aux fleurs - The Knight of the Flowers - c.1894
Click to enlarge.

It's by Georges Antoine Rochegrosse (1859-1938) and the d'Orsay's web site offers this commentary.

So why did I use the word "astonishing" in this post's title?

For one thing, it's huge -- 2.35 meters high by 3.76 meters wide. And it's bright; compositionally, there are few dark areas to tie things together. But what struck me most when I first saw it were the reflections on Parsifal's suit of armor. By pulling in the surroundings, they made Parsifal almost as ethereal as the rest of the scene.

I don't suppose professional art critics would ever call it a great painting. Me? I find it an astonishing (there's that word again!) tour de force.