Dieselpunk Airplanes

I'm sort of a sucker for the 1920s and 1930s. Call it a "false nostalgia" thing. For that reason, I've developed a peculiar semi-fascination with Dieselpunk imagery where actual 'tween-wars art, machines, architecture and so forth are dumped into parallel universes or alternative histories and thereby transformed.

Wikipedia deals with Dieselpunk here. A more extensive introduction can be found here at the Dieselpunks Encyclopedia.  And a few Web sites for further immersion in Dieselpunk are here, here and here.

Like most other things, Dieselpunk objects can be fascinating or ridiculous or something between. As for which, that depends on the eyes and background of the beholder. Just for fun, let's take a peek at Dieselpunk aircraft.

Gallery

Flying boat, by Tyler West

Vigil at War
I don't have a name for the artist, but wish I did because it's a realistically imaginative image.

Skycrawlers
Again, I don't know the name of the designer.

"Red Baron" by Ajdin Durakovic

Chaparral float plane by Inago
This looks too nose-heavy to actually fly.

Heavy Attacker, by Inago
This illustration has airbrushing that looks very 1938. The airplane itself strikes me as pretty silly.

Fictional Airships by "linseed"

Joint Defense Fighter by "donaguirre"

British flying aircraft carriers and fighter planes of 1939
These are from the 2004 movie Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, which I haven't seen, but probably should have for the purposes of this post.

Sky Captain - Manta fighter by "linseed"
The Manta also seems too nose-heavy to fly.

Tim Huhn's Retro-Deco Art

There is little personal information about Tim Huhn on the Internet. His own Website has this biographical snippet, and an art gallery site tells us this.

Essentially, Huhn comes from up here in the Seattle area, was trained in California, worked in illustration for a number of years in the Los Angeles area, dropped that and moved to the central California coast, and finally relocated back here.

As for his art, Huhn strikes me as being extremely versatile and able to "sell" his concepts very well. For example, he convincingly painted a number of images in 1930s Moderne style. These poster and mural-like paintings look as if they actually were made in those days. Very impressive. More recently, he seems to have shifted to traditional subjects and technique -- again in a skillful manner. Interestingly, his Web site contains no 1930s iconography; too bad, because he was good at it.

Gallery

Dawn of a New Age

The five images immediately above are posters derived from some Huhn paintings apparently in cooperation with the Just Looking Gallery in San Luis Obispo, California that deals in his art.

Posters of the four seasons.

In Repose
The Just Looking Gallery site indicates that this is a recent work by Huhn.  Still in Moderne mode.

Colonnade at Tolosa (in San Luis Obispo)

Biltmore Tower (the hotel in Montecito, California, near Santa Barbara)

Quartermaster Harbor Morning (on Vashon Island, Washington)
These last three paintings show Huhn working in a traditional mode.

L Fellows: Car Tires and Men's Fashion Illustration

Laurence Fellows (1885-1964), who signed his illustrations "L. Fellows," had an important role in the commercial art of the 1920s, 30s and into the 1940s. I know this because I saw plenty of his work in Art Directors Club of New York annuals and other collections of illustrations from that era.

Only one photo of Fellows has appeared on the Internet, and I could find virtually no information regarding his personal life. On the other hand, useful information about his career and works can be found here, here and (by illustration authority Walt Reed) here.

Fellows had a clean, spare style that observers believe he picked up while studying in France. This was used from around 1915 through the 1920s, especially for a series of advertisement illustrations he made for Kelly-Springfield tires. In the early 30s Fellows took up fashion illustration for expensive lines of men's clothing. During the 1930s he adjusted his style from thin outlines and generally flat surfaces to a more traditional watercolor style in response to changing illustration fashions. Also bear in mind that the proper goal of fashion illustration is to make garments "stars" of the show; this is why texture and pattern dominate Fellows' images here. In spite of these influences, Fellows' work remained distinctive.

Gallery

Kelly-Springfield tire ad illustration from around 1920 (give or take five years).

Perhaps a detail from another Kelly-Springfield ad, ca. 1926.

Couple at ship railing, 1920s.

Formal attire on an Art Deco / Moderne barstool, 1934

Couples dancing, formal attire, 1934

Greeting a woman, 1934.

College students chatting up coed in roadster, 1937.

Man not helping women exit automobile, 1936.

Polo club outdoor lounge lizards, around 1936.

Glaring shoe shine customer, 1935.

Fashionable attire and red sports car, London, 1938.

Perhaps a New York Easter Parade scene, 1941.

Museum of Flight: July 2014 Visit

Every so often I leave the realm of painting and illustration to post about architecture, design, transportation, museums and such. Today's post deals with a museum devoted to flight and, to a lesser degree, space travel.

The subject is Seattle's Museum of Flight, usually ranked as one of the better American aviation museums. It has ties to Boeing, but I offhand don't know if any are formal. Its Wikipedia entry dates its founding to 1965, but it wasn't until the mid-1980s that its permanent facilities began to be opened to the public.

Here are some photos I took on a recent visit:

Gallery

The main buildings are sited next to the Boeing Field runway and near the flight path to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, so visitors experience a good deal of air traffic. Here is a view taken near the main entrance. To the right is the tail of a B-47 Cold War era bomber. The white-shrouded plane to the left is a World War 2 vintage B-29, still under restoration. In the far distance are downtown Seattle skyscrapers. The intermediate distance reveals a couple of UPS cargo planes at the far side of the runway and a large smattering of other aircraft.

Here is a Boeing 787 Dreamliner demonstration aircraft trundling down the taxiway prior to a take-off, perhaps to the Farnborough air show.

A few aircraft are positioned near the museum entrance including this B-17F and the B-47 just mentioned.

Since the opening of the Smithsonian's aviation museum on the Washington, DC's Mall, large halls with suspended aircraft have become a useful cliché for aircraft museums, including the Museum of Flight. Some of the planes seen are a DC-3 airliner (top), Lockheed Blackbird (bottom), and a replica GeeBee racer (the yellow plane near the center of the photo).

A Boeing Model 40 reproduction.

Boeing 80A-1 tri-motor transport from 1929.

Boeing Model 100 (P-12/F4B) built 1928. This aircraft was a civilian version of the Navy F4B-1 fighter that is painted to look like an Army P-12.

Interior of the "Red Barn," Boeing's factory during the 1920s.

Across a major street from the main part of the museum is the Airpark containing several larger aircraft. Seen here the tail of a Concorde supersonic airliner, the first VC-137B Air Force One (Presidential aircraft), a Boeing 727 airliner, and at the right, the first Boeing 737 airliner.

Badly in need of a paint job is the first Boeing 747 airliner. Below the cockpit windows are blurred names of the flight crew for its maiden flight, 9 February 1969 -- more then 45 years ago.

Here are a Lockheed L-1049G Super Constellation, the Air Force One, and the Concorde.

Inside the Personal Courage Wing that houses World War military aircraft, many of which are from the now-defund Champlin collection. I think the name is silly and perhaps politically correct: Why not simply call it something like World War Warplanes Wing, which would be truthful. But this is Seattle, after all (sigh). The lower floor deals with World War 2 and has lots of interesting stuff, jammed so closely together that it's difficult to photograph the planes. Seen here (clockwise from the bottom) are a P-51D Mustang, a Soviet Yak 9-U, a P-47D Thunderbolt and a P-38L Lightning. Mostly hidden behind the P-38 is a Goodyear FG-1D version of the Vought F4U Corsair. This aircraft was fished out of Seattle's Lake Washington years after it crashed during the war.

A replica Albatros D.Va from the Great War housed on the second floor of the wing.

Herman Richir, Belgian Portrait Artist

Herman Jean Joseph Richir (1866-1942) painted subjects other than portraits, but he seems to have been best-known for the latter. Biographical information in English is skimpy on the Internet, so you might consult Wikipedia entries in French or Dutch and click on the Translate button if you are unfamiliar with the language to get a sense of his career.

Back around the 1600s, long before Belgium existed, the area produced major artists such as Peter Paul Rubens. And this continued following the 1830 creation of the current Belgian state, though by that time Paris had become the dominant European art center. Some Belgian painters moved to Paris for career reasons, while others remained and generally paid the price of international obscurity. (Exceptions include the Symbolists Fernand Khnopff and James Ensor, and the Surrealist of sorts, René Magritte.)

Richir made his career in Belgium, was not a modernist, and catered to a wealthy and even royal clientele, so he is essentially unknown to art history. This might be changing thanks to the Internet's ability via search engines to turn up works of artists who failed to make the Modernist Narrative that dominated much of the second half of the 20th century.

So it was that I stumbled on some Richir images and added them to my data base. Below are some of those that I found interesting. From what I can tell, not having seen any original paintings, Richir was a skilled painter who did images that satisfy my eye, at least. But like many others I write about here, what was missing was that je ne sais quoi that could have made his art distinctive.

Gallery

Thé (Les peintres Juliette et Rodolphe Wytsman) - c. 1896

The Snow Fairy - 1918

Madonne

Standing woman

Queen Elisabeth of the Belgians - 1930

Queen Astrid of the Belgians

Woman in blue gown

Jamilé, the Artist's Model