Howard Pyle Exhibit Catalog Gripes

The Delaware Art Museum has an exhibit (November 12, 2011 – March 4, 2012) dealing with famed illustrator Howard Pyle (1853-1911). It opened three days after the 100th anniversary of Pyle's death.

The cover of the exhibit's catalog is shown above. If you can't visit the museum store, you can order the catalog here.

I have issues with the catalog. That's because it drifts a small way into the cesspool of academic political correctness which, in my possibly warped judgment, is unfair to both the subject and readers interested enough in the subject to fork over the $45 cost of the book.

First, the positive elements. I thought the chapter by illustrator James Gurney was especially informative, probably because he is knowledgeable about the history of illustration and understands the trade's practical aspects. As for the authors of the other chapters, I didn't at first know who they are because nowhere in the book is there any background information. Gurney is not identified either; I'm aware of him because I follow his blog (linked above).

Although there is some subject matter overlap, most of the chapters are informative, even the one dealing with Pyle and the Swedenborgian Faith that was related to some of his works.

One place that ruffled my feathers was a chapter titled "The Gender of Illustration: Howard Pyle, Masculinity, and the Fate of American Art" by Eric J. Segal. Some Googling suggests that this Segal is on the faculty of the University of Florida and has written about masculinity with respect to Norman Rockwell and the matter of race as related to the Saturday Evening Post magazine. "Gender" and race are two politically motivated academic obsessions of the last few decades, so I suppose Segal is doing a nice job of building his career dealing with those and related subjects. I regard this business of applying currently fashionable views as a yardstick for evaluating a past that was essentially unaware of them as both intellectually silly and potentially dangerous to the reputations of worthy historical figures. This chapter should never have been included in the catalog.

I also had a problem with part of the chapter "The Persistence of Pirates: Pyle, Piracy, and the Silver Screen" by David M. Lubin. Lubin's chapter isn't all that bad except where he takes several detours attempting to link piracy to late 19th century capitalists, a gratuitous gesture unnecessary to the chapter's subject. Lubin is on the faculty of Wake Forest University.

As for my overall reaction to the catalog, I would have preferred more larger reproductions of Pyle's art and a lot less "scholarly" analysis.

John Berkey Featured in Illustration

It's pile-on time. Illustration magazine just came out with its 36th issue which features ace illustrator John Berkey (1932-2008) and illustration-oriented blogs are already posting about the great event. So why not join in? After all, I too am a Berkey fan and wrote about him here just about a year ago.

The author of the illustration piece is Jim Pinkowsi who maintains a blog that has images of much of Berkey's work; the link is here. A Website by the Berkey estate is here.

Pinkowski's article has details on Berkey's use of casein paints, a medium I was never fond of. It seems that Berkey didn't use the paints out of tubes (though he might have early in his career), instead he mixed his own batches using raw pigments. Later he seems to have added acrylic binder to some of his mixes.

Let me propose two classes of classical illustrator (ignoring those using digital media for most of a given piece): There are those who paint using easels (Norman Rockwell, J.C. Leyendecker, Dan dos Santos, Greg Manchess) and there are others who work on a drawing board. Drawing board based artists tend to be commercial artists who use gouache, airbrush and other water-based media on materials such as illustration board, though a small (less than 0.5 meter, say) illustration can be done on a drawing board using almost any kind of medium and support.

Berkey was a drawing-board guy. And he was shrewd enough to realize that working close to the image could degrade the result; it had to be viewed from farther away because the final version usually would be reproduced at a smaller size than the original -- in effect increasing the viewing distance. Berkey's eventual cure for this problem was a mirror setup. His drawing board was reflected using a mirror placed above it to another mirror placed at a distance. This double-reversal allowed him to view the work-in-progress at a distance of about eight feet (2.5 meters) without having to budge from his chair.

Here is how the setup looked from the perspective of the drawing board. This image was scanned from the book whose cover is shown below.

Pinkowski's blog includes other images of this setup.

The Illustration article is of interest because it contains more than just a bunch of Berkey's space ship images, great though they are. A nice selection of other subjects can be found, demonstrating Berkey's overall ability and versatility.

If you don't see the new issue of Illustration in your local Barnes & Noble's magazine rack, go the the Illustration site linked above and order before it is sold out.

In the Beginning: Robert Fawcett

Up until now, the items I've posted on early works by artists dealt with painters -- mostly modernists who began their careers painting in a more traditional manner. But recently I've been doing a little research on illustration art from the 1920s and 30s and stumbled across some early examples of work by illustrators mostly known for their later styles. So I thought I'd expand the concept to include illustrators.

The main source for the present post is the Annual of Advertising Art, an awards publication of the Art Directors' Club of New York (its history is here). The first volume appeared in 1922 and succeeding volumes have continued to the present. I found a number of early volumes in the stacks of the University of Washington's main library and took photos of selected pages: these photos are the source material for the "beginning" art in this post. Ideally, I should have made scans, but that wasn't convenient so I hope the inferior quality of the images won't be held too much against me.

Illustration for Sherlock Holmes story
Above is a characteristic illustration by Robert Fawcett (1903-67), one of the most successful illustrators in his day. A number of items about Fawcett can be found on the Web, and here are links to blog posts by Charlie Parker, Leif Peng, and David Apatoff -- the latter wrote the text for a recent book about Fawcett that I reviewed here.

Note Fawcett's mature style in the image above and compare it to some of his early work below. I cast dates as "c.1929" and so forth; my conjectural date is for the year preceding the year the Annual in which the image appeared was published.

Gallery

Illustration for Rayon advertisement - c.1929

Illustration for Knox Hats - c.1929

Lesquendiu lipstick advertisement illustration - c.1929

Illustration for Cadillac - c.1931

Illustration for Cadillac - c.1931
Note that the depiction of the couple in this illustration is nearly the same as in the illustration below. I don't know which was created first, but Fawcett was able to leverage his effort and his art director apparently either didn't notice what was going on or else didn't mind it.

Illustration for Cadillac - c.1931

Fawcett was in his late twenties when he did the work shown above. To be included in the Annual of Advertising Art was a major feather in an illustrator's career cap, so the young Fawcett was no slouch even though these works are unrecognizable to casual Fawcett observers.

Keep in mind that he was building his career in those days, not maintaining it. He was experimenting with the styles of around 1930, creating salable works while evolving towards the classical Fawcett idiom.

Architectural Training: Penn in the 1950s with Louis Kahn

Richards Medical Research Laboratories, University of Pennsylvania, 1965, Louis Kahn, architect.
A while ago I stumbled across this book by Herbert Bangs (1928-2010) who was the architect and principal planner for Baltimore County. Bangs had an undergraduate degree from Johns Hopkins, received art training in New York and then attended Penn, earning a Master's degree in Architecture.

The book itself gets involved in matters spiritual as well as geometrical bases of aesthetics, fields largely outside my ken. What interested me was his take on architectural training in the 1950s, when modernism was at high tide and postmodernism was waiting in the wings. Two factors (among others) fueling my interest: I took first-year architectural design while an undergraduate at the University of Washington, and I later attended Penn, though in a different field.

The following quotations are from pages 37-38:

On the one hand, the rational, scientific analysis of structure and space is what is taught, while on the other the work is evaluated and graded on the basis of so-called aesthetic appeal. When I studied architecture at the University of Pennsylvania in the 1950s, this factor of aesthetic appeal tended to dominate the proces of design, even though its existence could not be logically or scientifically justified. The studio courses were, in fact, directed largely to refining what was considered to be a subjective and individual aesthetic intuition. To the critics [assembled to evaluate student projects], a design either looked good or it looked bad, and students were supposed to learn to recognize the difference by a trial-and-error referral to their own aesthetic sensitivity.

There was, however, no theoretical discussion of "aesthetics" itself, and what it might be, or, oddly enough, of beauty either, although that was presumably what architecture was about. Neither was there any unifying vision on the part of the various critics or masters that could relate the material, utilitarian-functional aspect of our work to the mysterious aesthetic sensitivity, or even provide some simple understanding of what the aesthetic sense might be. This was not the result of negligence on the part of the instructors; I do not think they ever considered the matter, or thought it necessary to do so. They simply assumed that the direction
initially established by the Bauhaus and the "Modern masters" was the right way to go and were content to swim with the flow. We students were also remarkably incurious and did not raise the question either, although in retrospect it is apparent that the issue is vitally important, even essential, to an understanding of architecture.

The idea that the practice of architecture was primarily a scientific and technical discipline seemed, without exception, to be accepted by all of our regular faculty members. Louis Kahn, for instance, who was just beginning to acquire a name for himself at the time, took his responsibilities as a teacher seriously, and met with groups of students in the evening to talk about architecture and what it meant to him. It appeared, from what Kahn said, that even the powerful geometric forms that he intuitively sought, and that made much of his work of lasting significance, were not valid in themselves, but were accepted only if they could be logically justified in terms of some utilitarian requirement.

This analytical, rational aspect of Kahn's thinking sometimes led to dreadful results when carried to conclusion....

[Visiting critic Lucio] Costa told Kahn that what he had been asked to review was not architecture, but something deadly, and destructive of the human spirit. Two attitudes were thus seen to be opposed: the logical, scientific attitude responsible for new and daring technological forms and the older humanism that was primarily concerned with enhancing the lives of those who would inhabit the buildings. Costa's remarks were not well received by the dean and the other jurors and he did not return.

And in a sidebar on page 38:

Kahn, even then, had completed a number of famous buildings. Modest and unassuming, he was completely devoted to architecture as an art and was venerated by many of his students. When I worked on a studio project under his direction, I was disappointed to find that he encouraged a slavish imitation of his own buildings, not so much from simple egotism as from an absolute conviction that his way was the only right way.

Flawed Golden Age Ad Art

Some observers place the Golden Age of American Illustration from the last few years of the 19th century up through the first two decades of the 20th. Me? I'm more partial to the 1920s and 1930s, possibly because that era interests me greatly and also because color printing technology continued its advance, allowing artists' intentions to be better realized.

Regardless, the publishing industry was crawling with illustrators during the heady late 1920s because color photography technology hadn't reached the state where resulting images reproduced as well as illustrators' work did. As always, quality of those illustrations varied. This variation was due to the spectrum of talent and skill of the illustrators as well as to deadline pressures resulting in rushed work.

Below are two examples of flawed illustrations that appeared in advertisements by important automobile companies of the day. One set of flaws is minor, another flaw is more noticeable: were the advertising agency art directors asleep at the switch?

This image is not from the original Hudson Motors ad, but rather a photo I took of a page from a book that included the illustration. (I used a photo because my available scanners can leave funny striped patterns when dealing with some printed images. In any case, my intent is discuss details, not the piece of artwork in general.)

The advertisement was probably for Hudson or Essex cars and the artist was Karl Godwin (not to be confused with the contemporary and better-known Frank Godwin). I have found little concerning Karl Godwin on the Internet, and this short post by Leif Peng contains most of what seems to be out there.

The illustration appears to be done in transparent watercolor, a difficult, unforgiving medium. Godwin did a nice job from a technical standpoint with the exception of that ugly, too-dark shaded area at the base of the neck of the girl at the top.

But the real mistakes have to do with the cloche hats at the top and left. Note that, in each case, the front base of the hats' crowns do not align with the foreheads of the wearers; their foreheads are, in effect, chopped just above the hats' brims. Putting it another way, trace the lines of the foreheads up from the eyebrows and continue the curves are they should appear naturally: such extended lines will fall outside the sides of the hat crowns.

Here is another Karl Godwin illustration, this for the 1929 Hudson. The kinds of defects noted above are not found here. (Well, just maybe there's a similar problem with the bathing cap of the girl at the top, but there's not enough image available to be certain.)

I do like Godwin's use of color. Very 1920s. Rich, toned-down effects. The orange skins are set off by purple shadows in a manner picked up in the early 1930s by Walter Baumhofer on his cover illustrations for Doc Savage Magazine (scroll down the link for examples).

This is a detail from a late 1920s advertisement for Willys-Knight automobiles. I don't know the name of the artist.

By the 1930s and 40s, illustration art for automobile brochures and advertisements usually featured smaller-than-normal people who were often placed closer to car windows than they could possibly be in reality -- the idea was to make the cars appear larger than they actually were.

This Willys illustration has a college theme, and Joe College, Jim College and Jerry College are scaled about the right size for the car. The problem is with Betty Coed, perched on the running board. She is much too small compared to both the guys and the car. Plus, her pose looks awfully familiar, though I can't place the source. Why didn't the art director catch this sizing error? Lack of oversight? Or was the printer deadline too soon for changes to be made? We'll probably never know.

Example: Wrong-Era Hairstyle

My impression is that the practice of fashion conformity unraveled around 40 years ago. While it's possible to identify characteristics that peaked in usage at various times (bold patterns on men's sport jackets in the early 1970s, padded shoulders on women's garments about ten years later), these styles weren't nearly as dominant as those of previous decades. A good example is women's skirt lengths -- short in the mid-1920s, long in the mid-30s, knee-length in the early 40s, mid-calf during the 50s, etc.

Of course fashion following was never entirely lockstep. Older women tend to shy from wearing short skirts, for instance. And I tend to maintain a preppy look when my wife insists that I have to abandon my beloved blue jeans for some occasion or another.

Then there is the matter of transitions between dominant styles. Women's bobbed hairstyles of the 1920s were anticipated around 1910 when some avant-garde gals got their long tresses chopped. That bobbed style apparently became boring to some women even before 1930 and they began to let their hair grow out. Consider the photo below.

This publicity photo (which I cropped a bit) is of a 1929 Auburn model 120 with girls from a physical culture club of some sort providing a lot of added interest.

Note the girl on the left and compare her hairdo to those of the others. The girls on the right have the typical tight-wave permanents of the 20s, the one on the left has much longer hair that strikes me as being more "natural" and perhaps "timeless." She also lacks the boyish, curveless figure that was the height of female body fashion during the flapper era. Compared to the other two, she looks terrific, not to mention out of place given the rest of the setting.

Lexus Goes for Baroque

Among the many technical advances over the years related to automobiles has been the capability of stamping sheet steel into increasingly elaborate shapes. Effects that are common today were only remotely possible, say, 60 years ago, and then only for car bodies created by hand at coachbuilding shops such as those thriving in Italy.

Once it is possible to do something, it also becomes possible to over-do it. Such is the case for the Lexus CT Hybrid, a luxury take on the Toyota gas-electric hybrid Prius (Lexus, in case you aren't aware, is a part of the Toyota empire). For more information about the car, here is the official Web site.

From what I glean from the automobile press, Lexus management has been concerned about styling in recent years. Early Lexuses featured smooth, rather bland styling and the brand quickly achieved success thanks to its luxury touches and excellent build-quality, not to mention the then-legendary Toyota reliability. Lexus styling remained bland for a long time while failing to include enough design cues to give the make strong visual identity as compared to rivals Cadillac, Mercedes and BMW.

This styling failure finally began catching up, so in recent years we have seen new Lexus cars sporting more aggressive looks, though nothing yet has emerged that strongly states "Lexus!" when one spies one on the street. The current sedan front end theme, for instance, has a grille with a V'd look and there's a sports model with inward-facing double-Vs on either side of the grille (think >--<). (Hmm. Perhaps those Vs are actually variations on the pinched L-for-Lexus logo found on different parts of its cars. Whatever.)

When Lexus introduced its luxury compact hybrid, as a cure for blandness the poor car got seriously Baroque sheet metal treatment. Baroque enough that the result is a confusing mishmash of curves, angles and planes. Dare we take a look?

It's the rear of the car that bothers me the most.

Working from top to bottom, we find dog-leg curve-reversals for the rear side-windows and for the wrap-around parts of the back window ensemble. Nothing wrong with this in theory, but on the Lexus the two reversals are not well linked and therefore clash. Plus, there an odd little crease from the inflection point of the side window curves running to and then along the lip of the back window's overhanging roofline terminus. This feature is cramped and fussy.

The rear face below the windows is little more than an incoherent set of smallish surfaces forming projections, recesses, lips, voids and Lord knows what other visual chaos. It reminds me of the visual clutter found on early post-World War 2 Japanese cars. The solution to this mess would be a large, controlling form supported by details related to function (the opening for the trunk-lid/5th door, for instance) and visual linkage to shapes and design elements on the adjoining sides.

Finally, there is that bulbous-yet-creased part of the rear bumper's plastic sheathing at the rear corners of the car. At the top is a faint echo of the shape of the wheel well opening that is broken into a drop conforming to the main surface of the bumper sheathing's impact plane. Admittedly a car's corners presents tricky situations for stylist to deal with, but the Lexus staff should have been able to come up with a better resolution. They didn't because, I suspect, they were expected to do some wild and crazy things as part of the scheme to jazz up Lexus styling.

And as for creating a strong styling theme for Lexus? Back to that drawing board, gang.