Peter Ellenshaw Matte Art

Peter Ellenshaw (1913-2007) is considered a major master of the specialized art of matte painting. A left-handed artist, he was born in England and worked in the matte trade there until he was 40, when he moved to the United States and spent much of his later career at Disney.

Ellenshaw's brief Wikipedia entry is here. The Ellenshaw family website is here (Peter wasn't the only Ellenshaw matte artist). A good source for information about matte art is "NZ Pete," whose site is here; I grabbed several of the images below from Pete.

Gallery

Loch Brin, County Kerry
I don't know if this painting was done for Ellenshaw's personal enjoyment or whether it was related to a movie project. In either case, it shows him as a landscape artist.

"Island at the Top of the World" - concept art - 1974
Besides mattes, Ellenshaw was sometimes involved with concept art for film projects.

"Mary Poppins" - London panorama composite - 1964
"Mary Poppins" was a major project for Ellenshaw. Being an Englishman, creating a London panorama was probably easier than it might have been for an American.

"Mary Poppins" - St. Paul's neighborhood - 1964

"Spartacus" - composite of Roman Forum - 1960
Live action was located where the crowds are seen; the rest was largely or entirely painted.

"Spartacus" - details of Forum matte - 1960
The black area at the bottom of the upper detail image is part of the area reserved for live action. Note how freely Ellenshaw painted some of the indidental buildings.

"The Adventures of Bullwhip Griffin" - 1967
Disney called upon Ellenshaw to paint clusters of sailing ship masts on more than one occasion.

James Montgomery Flagg, Illustrator

James Montgomery Flagg (1877-1960) was one of America's most popular illustrators from early in the twentieth century through the 1930s, and to a lesser extent beyond, as his sketchy style fell out of synch with illustration fashion.

A brief Wikipedia biography is here, but more useful sources are here (for details) and here, where you can scroll to view examples of his work.

I am ambivalent regarding Flagg's art. That might be because it's a little too loose and too stylized for me. Let me elaborate. The looseness could drift towards a lack of control. As for stylization, his faces sometimes came off more Flagg-like than how peoples actually appeared. I'll point out examples below. On the other hand, he was quite capable of "nailing it," and I'll point that out too.

Gallery

Army recruiting poster - 1917
This is by far Flagg's most famous work: iconic to this day.

Illustration for Judge magazine cover, 31 March 1917
Flagg could paint in oils, but that was done mostly when he wasn't illustrating.

Pen and ink illustration
Much of Flagg's illustration work was for magazine interiors, rather than covers. Before the 1920s, he often used pen-and-ink, as did many other illustrators at that time. (This illustration seems to be from the 30s, however, so he continued to use a pen when he could get away with it.)

Wash or watercolor illustration - 1930s
By the 1920s and 30s, he had largely switched to water media. The girl is nicely done, but the Rolls-Royce in the background is far too sketchily done (inaccurately drawn) to suit me.

In Liberty Magazine - 27 October 1934
But here Flagg shines. Not the whole illustration, but with the seated women. Especially the expression on her face.

Sketch of actress Jean Harlow
This is an example of Flagg-style taking over bits of portraiture. Yes, it looks like Harlow. And yes, there's no mistaking who drew her.

"Lost Horizon" poster - 1937
More Flagg intrusion, especially his treatment of the subjects' noses and the general sketchiness that detracts from what many people expect from a movie poster. Flagg's treatment of Ronald Colman's right shoulder is just plain wrong.

The Test of Time: PoMo vs. Velvet Elvis

Just an idle thought, here. Nothing profound, as usual. I was thinking about something I wrote about in my e-book Art Adrift, and this odd idea popped into my head. Let me explain it.

An Art Adrift contention is that much modern and probably even more postmodern art lacks staying power. That's because, especially for the postmodern case, subject matter and presentation fashions are too rooted in the current scene, and universals of humanity tend to be ignored. Ironic takes on cultural references replace emotions such as joy, sorrow, wistfulness and such. Centuries, or even decades from now, how many viewers of paintings will have any idea what such paintings are about, especially if images are considerably distorted from everyday reality? We can relate to paintings by Rembrandt, but will folks 400 years from now (to use a similar time scale) be able to relate to one of Willem DeKooning's messy paintings of women?

Now for my (insightful? crazy? silly?) thought. A couple of hundred years from now, would a painting of Elvis Presley on black velvet be better appreciated than postmodern paintings of certain types? Consider the following:

Gallery

Two Elvis Presley paintings on black velvet
I found these images near the top of a Google seach.

"And Then And Then And Then And Then And Then" - by Takashi Murakami

"Postmodern Sisyphus" by Ana Maria Edulescu

Political portrait of Obama by Samoa

Clearly Elvis is a 20th century cultural icon / artifact / whatever. Few in the distant future are likely to know about him. But he is a fellow human, and a viewer of even an on-velvet Elvis might well be interested in viewing it for its human aspects. The Murakami painting might be recognized as some kind of cartoon, and the painting of a man wearing a hat could well be dismissed as not interesting or informative. As for the artist Samoa's painting showing Barack Obama, it is highly likely that it will simply be a puzzlement, its (poorly drawn) subject and accompanying iconography without meaning.

To be clear: I don't contend that Elvis paintings are or will be necessarily considered great art; but I suggest they'll be easier to relate to than much postmodernism.

Jupp Wiertz Poster Art

A lot of artistic talent and effort went into poster design and illustration during the first several decades of the twentieth century, especially in Europe. I have already written about German artists Ludwig Hohlwein and Werner Axster-Heudtlass. The present post deals with Jupp Wiertz (1888-1939), another capable German illustrator. Unfortunately, I could find little about him in English, but his Wikipedia entry in German is fairly substantial.

Wiertz was versatile, as the images below indicate.

Gallery

The first posters shown above seem to have been done in the 1920s and even before. By the 1930s, he was illustrating travel posters such as this one featuring Aachen. Note the touches of color at the street cafe and market, contrasting with the drab background elements -- a clever touch.

A rather extensive collection of elements here. The background is clearly New York City, but the presence of silhouetted palm trees puzzles me: a reference of California? Brazil, even? The ocean liner, airplane and Zeppelin obviously are travel means, and the silhouettes evoke Germany.

This is nicely dramatic, a Berlin view of the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche on the Kurfürstendamm with its busy traffic.

Giuseppe Amisani: Portrait Art

The portrait above of actress Maria Melato was by Giuseppe Amasani (1879-1941), an Italian artist who specialized in portraying women. He studied at a technical school, switched to art, briefly abandoned the field, attained some success, then traveled a good deal during the 1920s (Egypt, Brazil) before returning to Italy. That's what I glean from Wikipedia entries in Dutch and Portuguese -- entries in English and (surprisingly) Italian are little more than placeholding stubs.

Amasani's style does not neatly fit major categories. He painted realistically in terms of drawing, his colors were sometimes exaggerated as best I can tell from Internet images, and his brushwork was almost always visible, but ranged from relatively subdued to strong.

Market interest in his paintings seems limited, for now. Apparently one can buy a Amasani at auction for only a few thousand dollars.

Here are more examples of his work.

Gallery

Portrait sketch

Ritratto di Emanuele Greppi
Amisanti also portrayed men.

Vera Vergani

Ritratto di Lyda Borelli

Lyda Borelli - 1912
Actress Borelli posed for Amisanti several times.

Riri

Riri col giubbetto rosa
  The biographies linked above do not say who Riri was. A wife?

Ballo nella taverna
This seems to be from the 1930s.

Harry Grant Dart's Circa-1908 Multi-Winged Future

Harry Grant Dart (1869-1938) was an illustrator and cartoonist active in the early part of the last century. Around 1907-10 he created a number of scenes depicting what he saw as future developments in aviation. The illustration above, "Going into Action," is from 1907, and shows aerial combat of a form curiously like a naval action on the ocean's surface. Bear in mind that the Wright Brothers had flown for the first time less that four years before and the Great War was seven years in the future, so his conjecture can't be strongly criticized.

In any case, it's an exciting scene, with deck guns blazing and crewmen maneuvering a craft using what looks like a ship's wheel. The aircraft are not the boxy, kite-like affairs found in 1907. Instead, they have sleek fuselages surmounted by dragonfly-like wings or else are bird-like monoplanes. Missing is a lot of maneuvering in the vertical plane, but in 1907 the airplanes he knew about were content to be flown at a pretty constant altitude.

Dart's brief Wikipedia entry is here, and a link dealing with his cartoon work is here.

Gallery

Air-sea battle at night - 1910
Night sea battles were a rarity, and suggesting that aircraft might be part of the mix was an audacious prediction by Dart.

A Look into the Future - 1908
Another future combat scene. Shore-based artillery in the foreground. Battleships toward the horizon. What might be submarines or high-speed torpedo boats near the shore (it's hard to tell what Dart was depicting here). And that large aircraft sprouting wings in every direction. Oh, and I see something that could be a rocket or missile. Dart was really cookin' when he dreamed this up.

Transcontinental Flyer - 1909
Hard to say what's going on here. The aircraft doesn't seem to have crashed. More likely it landed on the mountaintop so that men could climb off and do some exploring or research nearby.

Transport of the Future
Note the swept-back wings on this job. Very sleek, but like the rest of his imaginary creations, unflyable in reality.

From Harper's - 11 June 1910
Huge wings and delicate frameworks, not to mention a boat-like fuselage with a small fore-deck for observers.

Seen at 2014 La Quinta Arts Festival

One of the major outdoor art shows in the western United Sates is the La Quinta Arts Festival held every March in California's Palm Springs area. I usually write about it, because attending gives me something to do while not driving my wife to and from the Indian Wells tennis tournament that's also held in the area in March.

My interest is paintings, but those comprise a distinct minority of what is on display (and for sale). The rest includes, among other things, photography, jewelery, sculpture and clothing. Some paintings are abstract art, which I generally don't blog about. So I'll mention some artists whose work is at least somewhat representational. I divided the paintings according to whether they dealt with people as subject matter or else were landscapes. There were a few still life artists, but they are ignored here.

Most of the images below are not what I saw at La Quinta. Instead, I grabbed them from here and there on the Internet with the intention of presenting something representing the artists' styles.

Gallery

People

"Three Ladies" by Tom Barnes
This is little more than a cartoon, but Barnes cranks out a lot of paintings in the same vein, so there must be a market for it.

"My Life" by Yoram Gal
Gal's works are often cluttered with expressionist takes on people. They don't appeal to me.

"Studio Gathering" by Ali Golkar
Almost-abstract humans here. Given the colors and composition, I'm guessing that Golkar is a Matisse fan.

"Hat Club" by Rebecca Molayem
More cartoonishness. It must sell well enough, perhaps because of all those colors.

"The Mystery of Her Shadow" by Marcio Diaz
I wonder if Diaz was influenced by Chuck Close, in that he builds up images from fairly uniform little shapes. In this case, the shapes are little circles about the size and shape of reinforcement stickers used for punched paper placed in ring binders.

Landscapes

California landscape by Donny Hahn
The style here is 1920s, where the subjects are partly outlined. Retro, but pleasant.

"Magenta Hills" by Erin Hanson
Lots of strong color here along with some expressionist brushwork. Restrained, contemporary Fauvism? Whatever it is, something is wrong (I blame all that magenta and red).

"Spring in the Mountains" by Diane McClary
More overdone reddish tones, but more acceptable than the previous painting. Still, the colors are too fake, and the sun angle implied by the mountain shadows isn't carried over in the foreground.

Napa valley scene by Beverly Wilson
Wilson also really likes magentas and purples, but she deals with them better than Hanson and McClary.

"Mangrove Harbor Morning" by Tom Swimm
Yes, it's possible to paint hard-edge landscapes. Swimm's work is little too crisp for me, but he is a competent painter in that style.

"Serenity" by Teresa Saia
I thought Teresa Saia was the star of last year's show, as I wrote here. And that charming lady does it again in 2014.