What I'm Up To

In 2012 I finally finished "Art Adrift" and had it published as an e-book on Amazon. The publishing process, once I learned it, was simple enough that I decided to write more books.

As 2012 draws to a close, I'm working on a book about American automobile styling. I posit two periods when the appearance of cars was evolutionary. Otherwise, aside from occasional exogenous nudges due to technological advances and government regulations, automobile styling has been far more a matter of fashion than design in the pure, ideal sense. The book will be richly illustrated to show the reader how my thesis applies.

While that is going on, I'm mulling about a book dealing with the early 20th century ideology/religion of Functionalism as applied to the fields of industrial design and architecture. No real thesis yet, but I'm collecting material on the subject.

And it also seems that I'm done yet done with Art Adrift. I recently read a couple of chapters and spotted enough typos needing correction to persuade me to do a clean-up to have in place for new purchasers before the end of the year. It's available now.

Turner Prize Finalists 2012

For the United Kingdom's avant-garde art world, the Annual Big Deal is the Turner Prize, named after the 19th century painter J.M.W. Turner, who many art historians regard as a precursor of modernist art because of the semi-abstract quality of large areas of many of his later paintings.

The Turner Prize is only one of several important scheduled events that reveal the present Modernist Art Establishment take on what art ought to be. But for what it's worth, here is a link to the 2012 prize finalists with the winner identified.

I find it interesting that only one of the four finalist works involved graphic art. The other three involve Installation, film and video (as best I can tell from the citations). None of the finals painted in oil.

This serves to help confirm the speculation in the final chapter of my book, Art Adrift, that self-styled avant-gardists had to abandon painting for other media because there was little room for major innovation in painting after 1920 or thereabouts.

F.C.B. Cadell's Nearly Faceless Faces

F.C.B. (Francis Campbell Boileau) Cadell (1883-1937) was a member of the Scottish Colourists, an informal group active in the early decades of the 20th Century. I wrote abut him here, and his Wikipedia entry is here.

In August when I was browsing Glasgow's Kelvingrove Art Gallery, I got to see some of his paintings in person for the first time. Although it's actually pretty obvious even when inspecting reproductions, for some reason it struck me at Kelvingrove that many of Cadell's paintings feature sketchy treatments of facial features. He might have done this so that faces would not grab viewers' attention from the entire painting. Or perhaps he had another reason; I don't know what was on his mind.

Below are images of some Cadell paintings found on the Internet with close-up photos of facial detail I took at Kelvingrove.

Gallery

Reflections (Girl in Blue) - c.1912

Reflections - c.1915

A Lady in Black - c.1925

The Orange Blind - c.1925

Early Fortune Magazine Cover Art

The business magazine Fortune was launched by Henry Luce's Time, Inc. in February 1930, only a few months after the October 1929 stock market crash that set off the Great Depression. While the timing seems poor in light of history, the concept surely made some sense during the period when the magazine was being planned.

Surprisingly, the magazine wasn't scrubbed as the Depression was dragging on far longer than originally thought. I don't know if or when it became profitable, but Luce stuck with it until prosperity finally returned. As I write this, it is still being published.

Fortune in its first decade or so was a classy publication. It was printed on thick, quality stock and illustrated by some of America's best illustrators and photographers. It was priced at $1 per copy or $10 for a yearly subscription. According to an inflation calculator I just accessed, those values translate into about $14 and $140 in 2012 dollars. On the high side, but not impossibly so.

Below are some covers from 1930 into 1940.

Gallery

February, 1930
The first issue. Pictured seems to be a wheel of fortune adorned with Zodiac symbols.

August, 1933
The cover illustration was made by Ernest Hamlin Baker who did many portraits for Time magazine covers.

May, 1934

May, 1936
Illustration by John Cook.

February, 1938
Illustration by Alan Atkins.

September, 1940
By the start of the 1940s, Fortune was using photography for cover art. The aircraft pictured is a Douglas B-18 of the Army Air Corps' 9th Bomber Squadron based at March Field in southern California. By the time this Fortune cover was printed, the squadron was converting to B-17s.

Waterhouse Gallery, Santa Barbara

If you happen to find yourself in Santa Barbara, California and are hankering for viewing representational paintings, the Waterhouse Gallery should be on your to-see list.

It's tucked on the corner of an L-shaped pedestrian passageway (La Arcada) connecting the main drag (State Street) with East Figueroa Street, which runs at a right-angle to State. The image above shows the gallery from a small plaza at the angle of the L.

When I last visited, the gallery was having its annual Figurative Exhibition, a display of paintings by many of the better currently active painters who disdain abstraction and the edgy postmodern idiom.

The gallery is not large, so the paintings on view also tended to be of modest size and packed together. This was no problem, so far as I am concerned, because they were mostly up close and I could concentrate on nearly every one.

My main complaint is that the paintings lacked an accompanying label with the name of the artist and the title. I wonder why. One possible reason is that this forces the viewer to inquire the gallery staff, thereby starting a conversation that might lead to a sale. This is fine with capitalist tool me, though I can't afford quality paintings and would find it useful to simply gather information without interacting with the staff. However, the second link above is to the paintings on view and identifies who made them, so all was not totally lost.

Seen on the Road, November 2012

If it's Novemeber, then that's when my wife and I are on the road down to Las Vegas and then to Los Angeles, Santa Barbara and points north.

Here are a few things that caught my attention.

Yes, Las Vegas has lots of "visual clutter." But that's what can make it interesting. I don't gamble, but instead while away our annual weekly stay by strolling the streets, casinos and shops looking at architecture, products and people. The photo above features the plaza in front of the Venetian casino.

Nearby is the Fashion Show indoor mall which has many of the same upscale shops found in the casinos along with some of the usual mall fare. I have no idea what to make of that structure in front of it. Chalk it up to being in Vegas, I suppose. The truck with the sign advertising girls who really want to come visit you is one of a fleet that prowls up and down the Strip.

I noticed the "tasteful" jacket and matching shoes in a show window of the Billionaire shop in the Palazzo casino. Items in the shop are very expensive (more than a thousand for a pair of shoes, for instance), and if that jacket is any indication, marketed to the nouveau riche.

Meanwhile, over in the Wynn's, these ladies are setting up a window display at the Chanel shop. It seems that this season Chanel, Dior and some other couturiers are into puffy, above-the-knee dresses. Chanel in all its Vegas shops (and elsewhere, I suppose) has the mannequin's normal fake hair topped by a Louise Brooks style helmet wig of an unnatural shade (the wig leaves some of the other "hair" showing in all cases). I am not sure what Coco herself would make of this, given her preference for simple, understated, practical clothing.

On to Santa Barbara and its Nuevo Paseo, a downtown outdoor shopping mall. Before the Great Recession, Santa Barbara had plenty of stores. But now one sees a noticeable number of closed ones such as this former chocolate shop. Note that the Santa Barbara area has plenty of rich people. I noticed empty stores up in Carmel as well, Carmel being even more upscale. Given that the voters of California just voted in an income tax increase, I expect to find even more empty stores the next time I visit.

Speaking of Carmel, I thought it'd be fun to toss in a photo of Storybook Style as found in the village of Carmel-by-the-Sea itself. I've photographed this one before, but always there were cars parked in front, preventing a full view. I took this on a dreary day just before shops opened.

I thought they had been consigned to History. But no! It seems that Oscar Meyer has had some new Wienermobiles built such as this one seen in northern California. Long may they roll.

New Illustration Readings

Here are two items of interest to readers who like pre-1970s illustration.

First is issue No. 39 of Illustration magazine. I'm citing it because its cover and lead article deal with Pete Hawley, famous for the illustrations he made for Jantzen back in the 1950s. I really need to write a post about him. Another article in that issue you might enjoy concerns the somewhat enigmatic Heinrich Kley who also deserves a post.

The next item worth your while is the new book about Albert Dorne with text by primo illustration maven David Apatoff who mentions it in this post on his Illustration Art blog. The huge news in this post is that he is working on a book about the great Bernie Fuchs. If there's anyone more qualified to do a biography about Fuchs, I'll be stunned to know who it might be. I can hardly wait for the Fuchs book.

As for the book about Dorne, I'm not so sure. It isn't Apatoff's problem, but instead mine. That's because, while I respect Dorne for his work and career, I could never get excited about his illustrations, competently done though they were. So I'll mull over buying the book for a while. Oh: I ought to do a Dorne post too.