Covarrubias the Caricaturist

Miguel Covarrubias (1904-1957) was a multi-talented man, his activities ranging from cartooning to ethnography, as his Wikipedia entry indicates. As you might imagine, it was the artwork, not the anthropology, that made him widely known and popular over three highly productive decades; his illustrations seemed to be popping up everywhere.

Examples of his work can be found here, and this site seems to be devoted to him exclusively.

As can be seen below, Covarrubias' work was witty, charming and inoffensive to most viewers. In those respects, it was in line with the tastes of the day. In recent times, illustrators seem to feel compelled to create "edgy" works that lack charm, are often offensive, and incorporate no wit whatsoever. Pendulums do swing back eventually, though I see little sign of it happening as yet.

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Sally Rand and Martha Graham contrasted
This Vanity Fair illustration from around 1933 was part of a long series where Covarrubias caricatured two individuals who possessed both similarities and differences. Martha Graham's dance troupe worked in a modernist idiom. Sally Rand gained fame for her fan dancing at the 1933 Chicago world's fair.

Tea Gossip - c.1925
A cartoon from early in his career.

Cartoon map of Mexico - 1947
He painted a number of cartoon maps and murals. Click to enlarge.

Vogue cover - 1 July, 1937

Herbert Hoover - Vanity Fair cover - October, 1931
For non-American readers, Herbert Hoover was President in 1929 when the stock market crashed and was blamed for the severity of the Great Depression even though his policies were similar to those followed by his successor, Franklin Roosevelt, which didn't work very well either.

Mussolini - Vanity Fair cover - October, 1932
I trust we all know who this guy was. The little fellow tugging on Mussolini's ear is probably the king of Italy.

Bali scene - c.1930s
Covarrubias and his wife visited Bali a couple of times in the 1930s. He did ethnographic work there and wrote a book about it.

Back in Time: Saab 96 Series to the Ur-Saab

Not long ago Saab, the Swedish automobile firm (not to be confused with Saab, the aircraft manufacturer, though they once were one and the same) expired. I suppose there might still be a movement afoot to resurrect the corpse, but that would be a triumph of nostalgia over business reality.

I never seriously considered buying a Saab, though I never disliked the brand. The problem was that whenever I was in car-buying mode, whatever Saab was offering at the time was out of synch with my needs or financial resources. In recent decades, the problem was price. Thirty or 40 years ago, I didn't like the styling (take that!, model 99). In the late 1960s it was my concerns about the reliability of front-wheel-drive. Before that, it had to do with the fact that Saabs were powered by a two-stroke motor that required adding oil with every gasoline full-up.

Wikipedia has comprehensive coverage of Saab. Here is their introductory entry which devotes considerable space to the company's final crises. Below are links to entries about the Saab models in the photos.

The present post deals with the first generation of Saabs that were small and featured perhaps the most aerodynamic styling of their day. The photos begin with the final version of that series and work back to what some observers call the "Ur-Saab" -- the prototype Saab automobile. (The term Ur-this or Ur-that is a Germanic locution linking the name of Ur, supposedly the earliest city in the world, to class of something with a history. The Ur-whatever would be the very first known example.)

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Saab 96 - 1960-80
The Saab 96 was the last of the early Saabs that featured teardrop streamlining. A useful improvement over previous 9x Saabs is the wraparound rear window. The final 96s got a four-stroke motor, eliminating the need for continually adding oil.

Saab 93 - 1955-60
The first Saab that came to the serious attention of American buyers was the Saab 93, shown here. When Saab began exporting cars to the USA, they were only marketed in the northeastern states where severe winters and hilly roads in northern New England and Upstate New York made front-wheel-drive a desirable feature.

Saab 92 - 1949-56
The Saab 92 was the initial production model. Front end styling is a little different from the prototype. The production motor generated 25 horsepower, but the streamlined body allowed model 92s to reach 65 miles per hour (around 100 km/h) -- or so it is said. Note the size of the rear window in the 92 and and compare it to that of the prototype below.

Prototype Saab 92 (1947) - as seen in museum
The Wikipedia entry on the prototype Saab is here.

Prototype Saab 92 (1947) - showing front

Prototype Saab 92 (1947) - showing interior

Prototype Saab 92 (1947) - showing rear

Phantom Corsair prototype - 1938
The Phantom Corsair (Wikipedia entry here) was a prototype ultra-streamlined luxury car by millionaire Rust Heinz of the 57 Varieties Heinz clan. Sadly, Heinz died in a car accident in 1939, so any prospect of a production Phantom Corsair vanished with him.

I include this photo so that you can compare its styling (on a long Cord platform) with the Ur-Saab's rear styling on a much shorter platform. The little Saab's styling was extremely elegant in an era when streamlining created an awkward appearance. (See this recent post for examples.)

Stark Davis' Lincoln Birds

In 1928 and perhaps a little before and after, Lincoln automobiles had an advertising campaign featuring their cars against a backdrop of exotic birds and, in one instance, a butterfly.

The artist was Winthrop Stark Davis (1885-1950) who signed his paintings "Stark Davis" and whose fine arts work also dealt with such birds. The only biographical information about his that I could locate is here, and it's pretty skimpy.

That means I'm reduced to showing some examples from that series of Lincoln ads, so here goes:

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1927 Lincoln Berline Laundalet

1928 Lincoln Cabriolet

1928 Lincoln Club Roadster

1928 Lincoln Coupe

1928 Lincoln Town Sedan

c.1928 Lincoln Sport Phaeton

Molti Ritratti: Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) liked to portray people in his novels and, in turn, apparently didn't seem to mind being portrayed by some of Russia's best-known artists.

Those artists included Nikolai Ge (1831-94), Ivan Kramskoy (1837-87), Ilya Repin (1844-1930) and Mikhail Nesterov (1862-1942). Repin painted several portraits of the famed writer.

Unlike a beautiful woman in her simplicity, Tolstoy as he aged presented a feast of details to tempt the skills of portrait painters -- a craggy face, a bifurcated beard, rugged hands, peasant costuming and other paintable features of his persona. Below are some photographs and paintings of him.

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Photo - c.1897

Photo - 1908

By Ivan Kramskoy - 1873

By Nikolai Ge - 1884

By Ilya Repin - 1887

By Ilya Repin - 1891

By Ilya Repin: Tolstoy and his wife in Yasnaya Polyana - 1907

By Mikhail Nesterov - 1907

Evolving Airport Terminals

I'm pretty sure it has been happening at a large airport near you. That's because airports for larger metropolitan areas seem to be continually under reconstruction. For this post, I'm referring to the evolution of the airport terminal.

Not all that many years ago terminals had waiting areas and a few news stands and a limited, "captive" (contracted out to a single supplier) set of restaurants and snack bars. Those restaurants and snack bars seemingly invariably had overpriced goods.

Then cracks in the system appeared. The one that impressed me was the appearance of a McDonald's hamburger stand in the Minneapolis terminal maybe 20 or more years ago. Now, in America, I don't notice any more of those single-contractor operations for food services (news stands still seem to be another story). Better yet, in many airports, the price of a McDonald's burger or a cup of Starbucks coffee is the same as it is off-site.

Behold the contrast with 60 years ago. My example is Seattle-Tacoma International Airport showing old photos found on the Web and a few I took recently.

These are views of waiting areas in the years before major changes occurred. The top photo shows a waiting area near the departure gates and the lower photo shows the main lounge. There was a restaurant with a view of the airplanes that was situated on the second floor beyond the far end of the main lounge.

A few years ago, the central part of the terminal including the main lounge (already re-done a time or two since the photo above was taken), was extensively rebuilt. The photos below indicate the result.

That sign in the background is both fairly recent and seriously tacky. I'm not sure that "captive" passengers within the security zone need to be prompted to spend, because they're likely to do so anyway.

Where the main lounge was is now a food court.

There's also a huge window where aircraft can be observed. Some airport amenities don't change.

Blogging Note

For the last few months I've been on The Big Push, an effort to complete the first draft of a book about the crisis of innovation in Modernist painting. Well, I finally completed drafting all the chapters plus a preface, and I'm setting it aside for a while so I can take a more objective look at it later.

Another reason it's getting set aside is that I'm about to head to the British Isles for much of August. I'll mostly be touring, but will visit art museums where I can, probably in Dublin, Edinburgh and Glasgow (too bad the Hunterian will be closed).

Blog posts will continue to appear on the usual Monday-Wednesday-Friday pace while I'm away, thanks to the magic of scheduled posting times. What will probably suffer is response to comments. I'll bring my iPad, but will be at the mercy of Internet availability as well as that clunky iPad virtual keyboard.

I'll report what I find interesting after I return home 29 August.

Frank Xavier, the Other Leyendecker

Frank (Franz) Xavier Leyendecker (late 1870s-1924), better known as F.X. Leyendecker, was a good illustrator whose work was not as distinctive or appealing as that of his famous brother, J.C. Leyendecker.

Biographical information on F.X. is sparse. Even his year of birth is unclear: I have seen it given as 1876, 1877 and 1879. His Wikipedia entry is here and this site contains a paragraph of information and images of a number of his illustrations. The most information I could find is in this book dealing with the life and work of J.C. What follows was gleaned from it.

F.X. was born in Germany, the youngest of four siblings who moved to the United States in 1882. J.C. and F.X. traveled to Paris in 1896 for a year to study at the Académie Julian, where J.C. studied diligently while F.X. tended to focus more on drinking, drugs and carousing with other art students. After moving to New York City, F.X. was able to begin a long series of cover illustrations for Collier's magazine and also did advertising illustration. Unfortunately, his addiction problems continued and he also developed a bad attitude regarding doing commercial, rather than fine art painting. This attitude problem evolved into a kind of depression which affected his productivity which snowballed into loss of clients and commissions. In 1923 F.X. and his sister Mary moved out of J.C.'s New Rochelle mansion after a series of arguments with J.C. The next year F.X. was dead, done in one way or another due to his addictions.

Here are a few examples of his work.

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Book illustration for "With the Night Mail" - 1909

Vanity Fair cover - December, 1915

Illustration, "The Fortune Hunter" - c.1915

Navy recruiting poster - c.1918

Life magazine cover - 1 September 1921