Same Basics, Different Looks: Sonata and Optima

As I've probably noted before, automobile makers can reduce expenses by having different brands share important components such as motors and the basic body shell. This has been done in many places for many years. Sometimes the strategy has been effective and sometimes not. Certain British makes during the 1960s were noted for their "badge engineering" (differentiating brands through small changes in exterior trim) as did Chrysler's brands from the 1970s on. A low point was encapsulated in Fortune magazine's 22 August 1963 cover showing identically painted cars from four different General Motors brands positioned so that they looked essentially the same. Implicit was a contrast from the days when GM brands had distinctive appearances even when sharing major body components.

Avoiding this problem costs money in the form of having differently shaped sheet metal for different brands using the same underlying components. I could cite a number of good examples, but for this post I'll use the current Hyundai Sonata and Kia Optima models. At first glance, they look entirely different. But statistics show they share the same basic dimensions -- wheelbase length, for example. And close inspection of the shapes of doorposts, cut lines and other body essentials confirms underlying commonality.

Let's take a look.

Sonata front 3/4 view

Optima front 3/4 view
Note the shape of the windshields (the black parts behind the glass, not the exterior metal shapes), and the shape and locations of the front and center roof pillars. Also look at the cut lines of the doors in relation to other features such as the front wheel well openings.

Sonata rear 3/4 view

Optima rear 3/4 view
These views offer a different perspective regarding the same features just mentioned, especially the cut lines and pillars.

Which car's styling do I like better? I find the Sonata more dramatic, but the sweeping side creases seem a little awkward as they wrap around the rear of the car. I marginally prefer the Optima. In particular, I like the way Peter Schreyer's "Tiger Nose" grille shape is echoed along the top of the windshield.

Frederick Bosley, Nearly-Unknown Bostonian

Frederick Andrew Bosley apparently was an artist of at least some consequence in Boston during the early decades of the 20th century. Today he is so little-known that only a few images of his paintings can be found on the Internet. Moreover, biographical information is so skimpy that I can't be certain when he was born or died; birth years are either 1881 or 1884 and he died either in 1941 or 1942, depending on what source one uses, though the majority have it as 1941.

Biographical information can be found here and here. From these I offer the following:

Bosley was a star pupil at Boston's School of the Museum of Fine Arts, graduating in 1906. He won the Sears Prize in 1904 and the Paige Traveling Fellowship in 1907. Following two years in Europe he returned to Boston, married, and taught painting at the Abbott Academy and the Groton School. He was charter member of the Guild of Boston Painters. In 1915 he won a medal at San Francisco's Pan-Pacific Exposition. In 1912 he replaced Edmund Tarbell at the Museum School, resigning in 1931 when the school introduced modern art into its program. That same year he became an Associate National Academician.

Here are most of the images of his work that I could find on the Web.

Gallery

Reverie - 1913

Looking at Prints

The Letter - 1919

Peggy Reading to Elizabeth

Catherine Whyte (neé Robb)

Miss Peggy Bush in the Blue Mandarin Coat - 1927

J.C. Leyendecker's Lighting from Below

J.C. (Joseph Christian, "Joe") Leyendecker (1874-1951) was one of the most famous American illustrators during the first four decades of the 20th century. The most important general-interest magazine in those days was the Saturday Evening Post, and Leyendecker's count of cover illustrations for it was in the same ballpark as that for Norman Rockwell, the top illustrator 1920-1960.

Leyendecker's Wikipedia entry is here, another biographical entry is
here and a site with more examples of his work is here.

Leyendecker had a distinctive style featuring crisp delineation of shapes along with hatching and cross-hatching on his subject's surfaces. This made attempts at imitation too obvious for rival illustrators to try, reinforcing his distinctiveness. Moreover, Leyendecker stuck close to his signature style for most of his career, unlike Dean Cornwell, Mead Schaeffer and other prominent illustrators who modified their styles as illustration fashions and demands of art directors shifted over time.

The Leyendecker dazzle distracted my attention from a tactic that he occasionally made use of. Thumbing through a collection of Saturday Evening Post cover illustrations recently, it suddenly struck me that he was using a light source positioned below the level of his subject's heads in some of his work. The effect of such a light source is nothing unusual for illustrating evil villains and other pulp fiction dramatic scenes. But Leyendecker was using it for elegant subjects.

Consider: a low light source can cast the shadow of a lovely woman's nose upward over the region of one of her beautiful eyes. Painting this effect while maintaining the attractiveness of the subject can be tricky to pull off, yet Leyendecker managed it.

Here are examples of his work that incorporate this form of lighting.

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Saturday Evening Post cover - 3 December, 1904

Saturday Evening Post cover - 25 December, 1926

Illustration for Arrow shirt advertisement - 1932

Arrow Shirt advertisement - 1930

Illustration for Arrow collar advertisement - 1920s

Artist to Admiral, Admiral to Artist

This is about an oddity, a random happening that occurred (oddly enough) for contemporaneous families.

Let's start with Augustus John (1878-1961), best known as a portraitist who sired children by his wife and other women. His second son (by his wife) was Caspar John (1903-1984), who went on to become First Sea Lord (1960-63), attaining the rank of Admiral of the Fleet in 1962. In the Royal Navy, First Sea Lord is the highest position that an officer can attain.

Then there is Admiral Joseph Mason Reeves (1872-1948), Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Fleet (1934-36). As his Wikipedia entry indicates, Reeves was a key figure in the development of carrier-based aviation. On a lesser note, he has been credited as the first football player to wear a protective helmet. Unlike Caspar John, Reeves did not lead a navy, but his position was that of top operational officer.

Reeves' oldest son, Joseph Mason Reeves, Jr. (1898-1973, biographical snippet here, became an artist (although he too served as a naval officer, though briefly). He trained at the University of California and, after the Great War, in Europe. Unlike Augustus John, he and his work are not well known today. Below are a few examples of his paintings I found on the Web.

Gallery

Marjorie Moore

Portrait of a young woman

Seated woman

Woman in evening dress

Woman in red shawl

Like John, Reeves seems to have done a good deal of portrait painting. The examples I found were all of women. I rate his work as adequate, but just barely.

William John Leech: Irish Painter in Brittany

William John Leech (1881-1968) was an Irish artist who spent much of his life painting elsewhere. Although there is at least one book about him, biographical information on the Internet is thin; some sites are here, here and here.

Leech had a long career, and the following paintings are, or seem to be, from the later part of it when he was based in England and painted there and in the South of France. But these are not the works of his that I prefer.

Chloe Abbott - 1965

Boats on the Stour - c.1960

Shipping, Billingsgate

Farm Gate

The paintings that impressed me when I visited Dublin recently were done in Brittany and often featured his stunning wife (for a time) Elizabeth Saurine. The reason I was impressed might well have been Elizabeth. Here are some from that phase of Leech's career:

Les Soeurs de Saint-Ésprit, Concarneau - c.1911

Girl with a Tinsel Scarf - c.1912

The Sunshade

Portrait of Elizabeth (Mrs Kerlin, neé Lane) - c.1910

A Convent Garden in Brittany - c.1913
Perhaps Leech's best-known painting. Information about it is here.

In the Beginning: Thomas Hart Benton

Above is "The Wreck of the Ole 97" painted by Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975) in 1943. The exaggerated solidity and twistings of subjects and the strong colors are virtual trademarks of the artist's style. But like most mature styles, it was not evident during his formative years.

Justin Wolff's recent biography of Benton indicates that the mature Benton style did not emerge until the early 1920s. Before that, he experimented with a number of styles, hoping to find his artistic "voice." And it seems that he continued to experiment in later years, though those works were probably intended for his own use.

What I find interesting is that Benton explored an especially wide range of styles before hitting paydirt. Let's take a look:

Gallery

The Artist's Sister - 1913
This painting is entirely traditional, showing that despite his later anatomical antics, Benton was capable of honestly depicting a subject.

The Fish Hatchery, Neosho - 1912
Yet in the previous year he was already tentatively experimenting with modernist stylistic elements.

Bubbles - c.1916
He fell under the Synchromist spell of Stanton Macdonald-Wright for a while.

Upper Manhattan - 1917
Then he backed away from pure abstraction to modernist form-simplification with a touch of Synchromist coloration.

Rhythmic Construction - 1919
Amongst his ziggings and zaggings, Benton included this stab at abstraction. Note the hard-edge look and hints of shapes and colors he would soon turn to in his more representational work.

Self-Portrait with Rita - 1922
This is one of the earliest paintings showing Benton's signature style. Rita Piacenza was his new wife.

Concept Cars: Forward to the Past

Back in the 1950s, 1960s and even through the 1980s American car makers created show cars that supposedly pointed to new directions in automobile style. One popular term for such a "concept car" (a term used a lot nowadays) was "car of the future."

But things changed for a while around 2000. Several concept cars appeared that were Retro, pointing to the past rather than the future. Those show cars weren't strictly old-fashioned; rather, they were modern aside from styling cues borrowed from designs from decades earlier.

Why did this happen? In part, Retro was fashionable -- in production were such designs as the Volkswagen New Beetle and the Audi TT sports car. Soon to appear were a Ford Thunderbird with styling cues based on the 1956 T-bird and the Chrysler PT Cruiser that hearkened to hot rods based on mid-1930s sedans.

Another factor might have been that the US auto industry was doing well enough that companies could afford to create a few show cars that diverged from the usual practice of presenting features planned or considered for production in the next few years.

Here are some of those Retro cars of the future:

Gallery

Chrysler Atlantic - 1995

Bugatti Type 57SC Atlantique
Only three Atlantiques were ever built, but the design is considered by many as one of the high points of Bugatti style. The Chrysler version pulls the body elements into a more integrated package, the strongest holdover from the 57SC being the shape of the side windows. The overall effect strikes me as being aggressively fussy, but nevertheless likeable.

Chrysler Chronos - 1998

Chrysler D'Elegance - 1953
The Chronos is inspired by early 1950s Chrysler show cars designed by Virgil Exner. It comes closest to the D'Elegance: note the grille, the side window cutout pattern and the treatment of the rear fender and its extension forward along the side. The D'Elegance also served as inspiration for the Volkswagen Karmann-Ghia sporty car produced from the late 1950s into the 1970s. A significant difference for the Chronos is that it's a 4-door sedan rather than a 2-door coupe.

Ford Forty Nine - 2001

Ford - 1949
I'm not sure what J Mays and his styling crew were thinking when they came up with the Forty Nine. That is, it's not clear to me if they had some sort of future production model in mind at the time; if they did, nothing seems to have come of it. The Forty Nine is rather bland, but so was the 1949 Ford. If I were in charge of the Forty Nine project, I would have insisted on putting a 1949-style spinner on the front, because that's what defines the original in my mind.

Buick Blackhawk - 2001

Buick Century - 1939
From what I read, GM styling supremo Harley Earl was disappointed in some of the visually weak grilles appearing on GM cars at the end of the 1930s. Surely the 1939 Buick front end was one of the weakest. So I'm wondering why the Blackhawk styling team selected that grille for their concept car. My best guess is that they thought it blended well with the body shaping. And they were probably right, though the addition of a front bumper would likely have diminished the grille's visual strength.