De-Modernizing Modernist Architecture in Victoria

In my opinion, modernist architecture usually works best when it is in a non-modernist setting. That setting might be a large lot filled with trees, gardens and lawns if the building is a residence or, if it is in an urban location, surrounding buildings having traditional architecture. If the structure is well-designed, it can have a jewel-like character.

But a large cluster of modernist buildings tends to be visually sterile and anti-human. After all, we humans evolved in natural settings filled with complexity and details -- not classical geometrical shapes. Which is why most pre-modern buildings of importance in Europe, Asia, Egypt and Central America employed ornamentation to varying degrees.

An example of classically sterile modernism applied to apartment structures is the 860-880 Lake Shore Drive complex in Chicago. They were designed by the sainted modernist Mies van der Rohe, so using that example shouldn't be regarded as a cheap shot on my part.

A postmodern structure that comes close to traditional appreciation of complexity of detail is the Shoal Point Condominium in Victoria, British Columbia. It's the large, reddish structure behind the houseboats in this photo that I recently took (click my images to enlarge slightly).

The architect is Paul Merrick, whose firm's Web site is here.

A snotty, condescending modernist take on Shoal Point by Trevor Boddy in Toronto's Globe and Mail is here

Admittedly, Shoal Point lacks clarity in terms of basic form. But that doesn't bother me because nature itself often lacks visual clarity. And an apartment or condominium building does not require the clarity of a train station or airport terminal. Shoal Point uses a number of common elements such as window shapes, but stirs them into a tangle where they visually pop out here and there rather than march together like soldiers on parade. And it also employs a good deal of ornamentation. Let's take a closer look.

Sculpted elements are by Victoria artist Derek Rowe (no Wikipedia entry or personal web sit at the top of a Google search, but there is this).

This is the entrance by Dallas Road.  There's a definite Art Nouveau feel to it, though the ironwork pattern is geometric (Secession?) rather than organic.  I was taken by the sculpted faces.

Note the thematic seashore elements (starfish, seashell) in the lower hair swirls as well as fish in some of the images above.

Unconvincing Matte Paintings

Nowadays computer graphics are used, especially if the entire film is digitized. But up to around 20 years ago, the production costs of movies were held down by building partial sets and filling the rest of the screen with what is called a matte painting. A nice book on the history of matte painting is "The Invisible Art" which, unfortunately, seems to be out of print. I've been re-reading my copy and it brought to mind scenes that used matte painting undetectably and others where the artifice was obvious. Just for fun, let's deal with the latter case.

I saw Orson Welles' "Citizen Kane" only once, many years ago. But I noticed that a number of images didn't seem realistic. For example, some of the buildings in New York street scenes of the early 1900s looked stiffly unnatural. Unfortunately, I could not find examples of those on the Internet, but have others that support my contention. Chesley Bonestell and maybe other matte artists working on the movie created sharp-edge paintings, perhaps according to Welles' wishes or possibly because that was their preferred style. The extensive Wikipedia entry linked in this paragraph notes that Welles strived to achieve "deep focus," where both near and distant objects appeared sharply defined. I'm not sure why he wanted this, but it might help explain why some of the matte shots (and the film had many) didn't work well because the paintings had to be crisply done, increasing their potential artificiality. Then again, maybe Welles didn't really want the movie to look completely realistic. Film and "Citizen Kane" buffs, please clarify this in Comments.

Much matte art was done using large brushes, especially for background objects that would be slightly out of focus anyway. Where sharp edged features such as door frames, bannisters and other manufactured objects were close to the camera's focal plane, then matte artists had to use distinct edges to blend their painting with those objects in the movie set. Otherwise, looser painting seemed to work better, especially in the years when film stock did not permit high definition for any of what was being shown.

Another point regarding matte painting is that such paintings served best for scenes lasting less than ten seconds; better yet, less than five seconds.  Otherwise, matte artists feared that viewers would discover the artifice.

Here are some examples of scenes using matte painting.

Citizen Kane - opening sequence
Kane's Xanadu, in the distance, might not quite be in sharp focus (the image I found seems a little blurred all over). But it doesn't seem "real" to me.

Citizen Kane - political convention
The matte part is the convention floor and seating. Looks like a painting.

Citizen Kane - political convention, different viewpoint
Another false-looking scene. The nearest few rows probably had live actors, and there might have been some on the stage, but I can't be sure, given this static image.

Citizen Kane - credited to Bonestell
The Gothic windows seem a little too sharply defined.

Citizen Kane - successful Bonestell matte
The reflection of the distant figure on the floor is part of the painting.

The "Star Wars" movies used a variety of special effects including matte painting. Most of the mattes were hard to detect, but a few jarred me, especially those of the Cloud City in "The Empire Strikes Back". The matte artist was Ralph McQuarrie, who did the concept art for the original Star Wars movie but had never done matte painting previously. For some reason, his paintings of Cloud City on the planet Bespin looked phoney, yet were kept in the movie.

The Empire Strikes Back - completed view of Cloud City

The Empire Strikes Back - Cloud City matte painting

The Empire Strikes Back - Ralph McQuarrie painting Cloud City matte

The Empire Strikes Back - another Cloud City painted scene

Everything is in too sharp focus and there seems to be a lack of reflected light. Also, the mattes were on view for a substantial time, which allowed their unreality to sink in. There might be other problems, but I find it hard to put a finger on them; perhaps some readers can help here too. But the main thing for me was that this special effects lapse (along with a few more minor ones) lessened my enjoyment of the movie when I first viewed it.

Up Close: Dean Cornwell (2)

This is part of an occasional series dealing with detail images of paintings featuring the brushwork of the artist. Previous posts can be found via the "Up close" topic label link on the sidebar.

The present post features illustrator Dean Cornwell (1892-1960) during the period when he was abandoning his original style for a muralist style that he was learning from Frank Brangwyn. I discussed the evolution of Cornwell's style here. A previous post about Cornwell in the present series is here.

The illustration featured here was part of a series for Bruce Barton's popular book "The Man of Galilee" (1928). More information about Cornwell's illustrations for that book can be found here.

The source of the detail image is explained below:

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The Kelly Collection has what is probably the outstanding holding of American illustration art by private individuals (not organizations). I was able to view part of it at The Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California towards the end of a January 12 - March 31, 2013 exhibition run. The collection concentrates on illustration art created roughly 1890-1935 and one of its purposes is to further knowledge and appreciation of illustration from that era.

Non-flash photography was allowed, so I took a large number of high-resolution photos of segments of those original works. This was to reference the artists' techniques in a manner not always easy to obtain from printed reproductions. (However, the exhibition catalog does feature a few large-scale detail reproductions.)

I thought that readers of this blog might also be interested in seeing the brushwork of master illustrators up close to increase their understanding of how the artists worked and perhaps to serve as inspiration for their own painting if they too are artists.

Below is an image of the entire illustration coupled with my work. Click on the latter to enlarge.

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Mary Washing Jesus' Feet - 1928

Cornwell's Brangwyn-based style features formal and informal selective outlining coupled with flat or modeled color areas within the outlines to create images. It is a kind of casual cloisonnism. Here Cornwell is using a good deal of pale blue along with darker versions of his subject's basic color to outline. What I have yet to figure out is the system for selecting outline colors in this and other works of this style by Brangwyn and many others active in the late 1800s and first decades of the 20th century. Does anyone know of a source for an explanation?

Alcuni Ritratti : Toto Koopman

Note that instead of the usual Molti Ritratti, this post has the ritratti count as Alcuni. That's because the star of this post, Catherina "Toto" Koopman (1908-1991), deserved to be depicted a lot, but wasn't, aside from photographically in her fashion modeling career.

I can't find much biographical information about her on the Internet. But you might try this Financial Times article about early professional fashion photography models; scroll down to locate the part about Koopman. (For American English speakers, her Dutch last name would be pronounced something like COPE-man.)

In summary, she was part Dutch and part Javanese/Chinese, was pursued by rich, powerful men, imprisoned by the Germans during World War 2 and lived the rest of her life with a female art dealer. If this interests you, this biography will be published in September. And if you can read French, that version has been available for a while.

Here is what the fuss was about:

Gallery

Frontal view of face

Profile view of face

By Joseph Oppenheimer

By Joseph Oppenheimer
This image his credited on some Web sites as being of Koopman, but I'm not sure. For instance, the eyes and eyebrows seem wrong.

By George Hoyningen-Heune - 1933

By George Hoyningen-Heune - June, 1933 Vogue magazine

By George Hoyningen-Heune - September, 1934 Vogue magazine

Up Close: J.C. Leyendecker

This is part of an occasional series dealing with detail images of paintings featuring the brushwork of the artist. Previous posts can be found via the "Up close" topic label link on the sidebar.

The present post deals with J.C. (Joseph Christian) Leyendecker (1874-1951), one of the most successful illustrators during the first four decades of the last century. His production of cover art for The Saturday Evening Post, America's leading general-interest magazine at the time, was roughly equal to that of Norman Rockwell.

I wrote about him here. Some other links dealing with Leyendecker are here, here, and here.

Detailed examples of Leyendecker's finished work as well as some preliminary studies are available on the Web, but I thought I'd toss in a couple more examples here.

First is an illustration called "Florist" for the Spring 1920 Kuppenheimer Style Book, Kuppenheimer being a mens' clothing company. The second is called "Woman Kissing Cupid," and was the cover art for the 31 March 1923 Saturday Evening Post.

The source of the detail images is explained below:

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The Kelly Collection has what is probably the outstanding holding of American illustration art by private individuals (not organizations). I was able to view part of it at The Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California towards the end of a January 12 - March 31, 2013 exhibition run. The collection concentrates on illustration art created roughly 1890-1935 and one of its purposes is to further knowledge and appreciation of illustration from that era.

Non-flash photography was allowed, so I took a large number of high-resolution photos of segments of those original works. This was to reference the artists' techniques in a manner not always easy to obtain from printed reproductions. (However, the exhibition catalog does feature a few large-scale detail reproductions.)

I thought that readers of this blog might also be interested in seeing the brushwork of master illustrators up close to increase their understanding of how the artists worked and perhaps to serve as inspiration for their own painting if they too are artists.

Below are images of entire illustrations coupled with my detail photos. Click on the latter to enlarge.

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This image is from the Kelly Collection website.

This image is from the Kelly Collection website.

Leyendecker's style was unique to the point that other artists almost never dared to imitate it. It has been commented on by many observers, so I have no strong reason to add to such commentary at this point other than to say that I always found his work fascinating. My main reason for posting this is to note that the 1920 painting is showing cracking whereas the 1923 work, like most other Leyendeckers I'm aware of, seems to be in good shape.

Ludwig Hohlwein: Poster Illustration Master

Ludwig Hohlwein (1874-1949) in my opinion was one of the greatest poster illustrators, ever. He also was one of the better poster designers of the first half of the 20th century, though in this respect he was outshone by the likes of A.M. Cassandre and others.

Hohlwein had a distinctive style, usually using the notoriously difficult (for me, anyway) watercolor medium often in flat, overlapping areas to build up images.

The quality of his work was such that his political leanings are usually ignored or downplayed by writers and critics. Critics are more likely to bring up the politics of leftist German artists such as George Grosz and John Heartfield, though seldom in a negative way. With Hohlwein, negativity would be easy to introduce, yet his work was so good that, like the case of fashion designer Coco Chanel, his views and activities are viewed with a blind eye. For example, this politically liberal artist/blogger simply enthuses about how good an artist Hohlwein was.

And what was Hohlwein's political dark side? Well, you see, he was a Nazi. A member of the party once Hitler took over Germany in 1933. Before that, he created posters in support of the Kaiser's war effort. After the Great War he did posters supporting the anti-leftist Stahlhelm (steel helmet) paramilitary organization. However, it should be noted that his political posters were "positive" in that they supported the regime without negative depictions of the regime's enemies. In other words, so far as I know, Hohlwein never created an antisemitic poster. Grosz and Heartfield, on the other hand, went to great lengths to do negative portrayals of what they despised rather than showing the presumed positive joys of a risen proletariat.

The most detailed biographical information I could find on the Web is here. And his German Wikipedia entry mentions that he was forbidden to pursue his profession until February 1946, about nine months after Germany's defeat in World War 2. So presumably the Allies noted his general support of the Hitler regime, but could find no direct connection to its negative deeds.

I begin the examples of Hohlwein's work, below, with a few of his regime-supporting works to show what they looked like. Then I include a number of the posters he made for advertisers, these being what gained him his fame.

Gallery

This encourages youth to join the Stahlhelm youth organization.

Advertising the Union of German Maidens, an arm of the Hitler Youth.

The lower red caption asserts "We are those who guarantee the future."

A 1912 poster for Audi automobiles. Around this time Hohlwein included large patterned areas in some of his posters.  Also note the Coles Phillips color dropout style.

Advertising gentlemens' clothing. Note Hohlwein's artistic license where the two men are lighted from opposite directions.

A coffee ad.

One of Hohlwein's best-known posters, this for Casanova cigarettes. Note the way the woman's face is rendered.

For a fashion event.

High-fashion perfume.

"Summer in Germany means splendid holidays!"

Advertising sport hats.

Urging women to wear jewelry.

1930s Spaceships

What should a spaceship look like?

Back in the Moon exploration era, they came in two types. One was a conical re-entry vehicle, the other a boxy arrangement with spindly bits attached. The latter didn't need to be streamlined because it wasn't intended to enter the atmosphere. The space shuttle had to operate both in the atmosphere and in airless space, so its design had to be keyed to the former environment. The same can be said for shuttle-like vehicles currently in the planning and testing stage.

So following a period when spaceships were often portrayed as the space-only style, we seem to be returning to the science-fiction spaceships of newspaper comic strips and pulp magazine covers. Not precisely so, of course, but in the spirit of being able to rocket away from Earth to land on Mars or wherever using the same vehicle.

The early Sci-Fi magazines did their best to emphasize or at least incorporate science in their stories. I've been reading some books (originally appearing in Amazing Stories magazine) by Philip Nowlan that served as the basis for the Buck Rogers comic strip that was launched in 1929. The second of these, "The Airlords of Han," goes into enough detail regarding anti-gravity and other 25th century technology that the flow of the story suffers greatly.

Once Sci-Fi comic strips appeared, scientific pretensions were at best subliminal and gee-whiz adventuring was what such strips featured. Nevertheless, if the characters needed to dash around the solar system, they had to have spaceships and cartoonists had to come up with what they looked like. Here are some examples from the 1930s along with a few from the 1940s.

Gallery

Amazing Stories cover by Frank R. Paul - 1928
Paul was a pioneer Sci-Fi illustrator, so his spaceship concepts surely influenced Dick Calkins, the original Buck Rogers comic strip artist.  I'll guess that those yellow dots along the side of the ship represent portholes for passenger cabins.  If so, then where is the space for the motor and its fuel needed to generate that huge blast of flame rushing out the stern?

Buck Rogers aerial taxi - October 1930
Yes, it isn't a spaceship. But the Buck Rogers strip includes all sorts of futuristic conveyances ranging from this taxi to aircraft to interplanetary vehicles.

Buck Rogers - June 1931

Buck Rogers - March 1932

Buck Rogers - 1932

Flash Gordon - 1938
Five years after the Buck Rogers strip was launched, Flash Gordon appeared. Alex Raymond, with both arms tied behind his back, could out-draw Calkins, so it's no surprise that his spaceships look sleeker. Calkins' late 30s spaceships still look clunky.

Flash Gordon - 1939

Brick Bradford - 1944
Brick Bradford, drawn by Clarence Gray, was 1930s Sci-Fi strip that lasted many years while never attaining the popularity of Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon. I had a great deal of trouble finding examples of Gray's spaceships on the Internet, the example above being the only one.

Buck Rogers c.1948-49
Rick Yager began drawing Buck Rogers Sunday strips in the 1930s and by the mid-1940s was the sole artist. Shown above is a sleek spaceship from a Sunday strip.

Up Close: E.M. Jackson (1)

This is part of an occasional series dealing with detail images of paintings featuring the brushwork of the artist. Previous posts can be found via the "Up close" topic label link on the sidebar.

The present post deals with Elbert McGran (E.M.) Jackson (1896-1962) who painted covers for leading American magazines such as Saturday Evening Post and Collier's. Biographical information regarding Jackson is sparse, and this is the most detailed I could locate through a brief Google search.

Featured here is an illustration titled "Coat Check Girl" for the 19 April, 1930 cover of Collier's.

The source of the detail image is explained below:

* * * * *
The Kelly Collection has what is probably the outstanding holding of American illustration art by private individuals (not organizations). I was able to view part of it at The Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California towards the end of a January 12 - March 31, 2013 exhibition run. The collection concentrates on illustration art created roughly 1890-1935 and one of its purposes is to further knowledge and appreciation of illustration from that era.

Non-flash photography was allowed, so I took a large number of high-resolution photos of segments of those original works. This was to reference the artists' techniques in a manner not always easy to obtain from printed reproductions. (However, the exhibition catalog does feature a few large-scale detail reproductions.)

I thought that readers of this blog might also be interested in seeing the brushwork of master illustrators up close to increase their understanding of how the artists worked and perhaps to serve as inspiration for their own painting if they too are artists.

Below is an image of the entire illustration coupled with one showing detail. Click on the latter to enlarge.

* * * * *

A reference photo I took

Jackson had a nice, clean style of painting that yielded crisp looking images when reduced to magazine size and run through the printing process. But the detail image shows (if you can enlarge it) that his brushwork wasn't "tight." He simply painted his subjects large enough to suit his style knowing that reduction would tighten things up.

Note that the light background paint is cracking, whereas the paint on the subject seems to be holding up well. I can think of more than one possible reason for this, but hesitate to come to a conclusion.