ILLUSTRATION ART

SANTA: THE FASCIST YEARS

2025-12-17T16:41:00.006-05:00

Disney's new animated film, Zootopia 2, is a marvel of computer animation. Bright, colorful and imaginative, it took more than two years and cost over $150 million to make. If you last all the way through the credits at the end, you'll see names of thousands of contributors performing tasks that didn't exist a few years ago. It's difficult to identify the fingerprints of any individual contributor on the finished product.

Zootopia 2 represented a massive gamble of shareholder capital. It required review and approval by dozens of check points along the way, from the bankers and lawyers to the accounting department and the marketing department. The gamble paid off; the movie is a Christmas season smash hit, already rocketing past a box office gross of a billion dollars.

If a creator had approached management with a proposal for a movie called "Santa: The Fascist Years," the bankers would've thrown him into the Sarlacc pit.

That's why, when it came time for Bill Plympton to create Santa: The Fascist Years it was just Plympton and a pencil.

The 2008 movie reveals the secret files regarding Santa's stint with fascism in the 1930s and 40s. It's weird, clever, funny and a good demonstration of why Plympton turned down a lucrative offer to work for Disney many years ago.

The number of pencil drawings Plympton makes for his hand drawn movies is nothing short of astonishing. But what's even more impressive is that Plympton's affection for drawing seems to remain undiminished. You can tell from his originals that he still enjoys drawing each individual picture.

Santa's attack was called the "Blitzenkrieg"

I think these are really nice. Each one has character.

A repentant Santa at the Nuremberg trials

From another movie, Cheatin'

From another movie, Idiots and Angels

If Plympton hadn't come up with the idea of Santa's fascist period, nobody else would've thought of it. And if Plympton hadn't picked up a pencil, nobody would've ever seen it.

ARTHUR SZYK EXHIBITION IN NEW YORK

2025-12-14T22:31:00.004-05:00

A rare exhibition of the pictures of Arthur Szyk has opened at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York. Szyk's jewel-like miniatures must be seen in person to be fully appreciated, and the opportunity doesn't come along very often. It's worth a trip.

I've previously written about my great admiration for Szyk, who was an extraordinary artist and person in so many ways. I know of no other artist who more passionately and persistently applied his gifts in the service of his social conscience.

Szyk's despairing painting of the Antichrist (detail) is
reminiscent of Bruegel's 1562 painting, The Triumph of Death

I try to see Szyk exhibitions whenever they arise. (The last one was years ago at the Library of Congress in Washington DC.) The current one is unique in my experience because it includes early, preliminary and unfinished work.

A draft of a young Jewish boy threatened by a Nazi luger

Detail from an early work

Here is a substantially enlarged drawing, blown up so you can see Szyk's details:

In an era when many artists are struggling with the relationship between art and politics, trying to understand the dividing line between art and propaganda, and most of all trying to put their art in the service of their morality, Szyk is an important precedent, more relevant today than ever.

EMBRACING COLLISION

2025-11-30T23:00:00.006-05:00

This illustration by Jon Whitcomb contrasts a creamy, flawless figure with a violent, abstract background.

Similarly, this illustration by Piotr Leśniak frames a meticulous drawing with a chaotic background:

Vivian Dehning's recent "photo illustration" in the New York Times covers a photograph of a woman with a wild crayon scribble.

Normally the elements of a picture are expected to work together, rather than clash in contumacious oppugnancy.

There are limitless ways for artists to combine opposites so that they work together to add useful contrast:

Norman Rockwell

Austin Briggs

Hard black line contrasted with soft watercolor can often be a productive combination of extremes.

Note how the color is flat but the line contributes volume

Sempé uses black line sparingly in fields of pastel color

However, sometimes the two extremes just sit side by side, yelling at each other. They aren't glued together by form, content or any of art's other epoxies. The artist just seems to enjoy the collision.

One of my cranky friends derides this kind of contrast as "empty" because he finds it devoid of purpose. Without a discernible expressive intent, he finds the contrast to be neither significant nor interesting.

The purpose of the random scribble in Vivian Dehning's "photo illustration," above, might be construed as a comment on the mistreatment of women in the photograph. This purpose, however, is hardly enough to save such a ridiculous image.

I don't claim to be ecstatic about either the Leśniak or the Whitcomb examples. Still I think it's worth considering the notion of "collision" as an aesthetic concept in and of itself. Abstract expressionism proved that not all collisions require an "intent" to be interesting.

Placing realism and abstraction side by side may make an unruly mess, but there is often "intent" to be found, even in purely abstract forms. Could placing freedom and control next to each other be viewed as a way of challenging the reason of each for being? Could their juxtaposition be a reminder that the realistic, controlled three dimensional portion is still, after all, just an illusion, a two dimensional fake no more trustworthy than the adjacent random mess? Or could the collision of the two extremes be a way of dissing the hard labor of the skillful extreme? A postmodernist attack on obsolete talents? An attempt to blow up conventional taste? It's worth looking for potential for artistic value, even in collisions.

MILTON GLASER DRAWS LIKE A DESIGNER

2025-11-16T21:24:00.003-05:00

I love this drawing by Milton Glaser. It's an illustration for a record by classical guitarist Linda Cohen.

Glaser was internationally renowned as a graphic designer, an intellectual and an all-around fount of creativity. I interviewed him in his office before he died, and discovered he was still overflowing with ideas. He's also responsible for a quote I've used several times on this blog:

There is no instrument more direct than a pencil and paper for the expression of ideas. Everything else that interferes with that direct relationship with the eyes, the mind, the arm and the hand causes a loss of fidelity.... I like the idea that this ultimate reductive simplicity is the way to elicit the most extraordinary functions of the brain.

Glaser was not, however, first and foremost a draftsman. An observer might comment that the wings are awkward and the body is not in a natural posture. And where the heck is that light source?

Glaser borrowed the figure from one of the slaves in Giulio Aristide Sartorio's allegorical painting, Diana of Ephesus and the slaves:

It's not clear why Glaser chose that particular figure, since the anatomy or the skin tones or the perspective seemed of little interest to him. His only cryptic remark at the time: "angels probably don't have behinds."

But he transformed the figure in a magical and lyrical landscape.

What's the meaning of the falling star and the beam of light shining down on the rock cliff?

Why does that ear glow red? The whole palette is quite eerie, combining dark subtleties and vivid contrasts.

While most of the drawing has been greatly simplified, the lateral spines on the feathers
in the wings have been individually drawn.

What does it all mean? This drawing opens a lot of questions for us but answers none. I can't imagine how it is related to its subject record album, or how it could help sell the client's product. What kind of instruction could the art director possibly have given to produce this result?

I suppose the answer is the same as it has always been: when you're that good, and that strong headed, and your designs are that powerful, you can pretty much do what you want.

WINSOR McCAY HAD AN OPINION ON TARIFFS

2025-11-05T18:21:00.002-05:00

Today the Supreme Court listened to heated legal arguments about the tariffs recently imposed by the US. But the arguments over tariff policy have been going on for a long time.

Over a century ago, Winsor McCay, the creator of Little Nemo, drew the following political cartoon about the effect of tariffs:

In my view, today's political cartoonists haven't learned much from the past century.

On the other hand, neither have today's politicians.

TAMEA versus MAISIE

2025-11-01T15:36:00.007-04:00

Tamea, the bewitching queen of the South Sea isle of Riva, kissed Dan twice within 5 minutes of meeting him. Maisie, on the other hand, Dan's reliable and steadfast girlfriend from America, permitted Dan to kiss her just once in twelve years.

by Dean Cornwell, from Cosmopolitan Magazine, 1923

In the story, Never The Twain Shall Meet by Peter Kyne, Dan is torn between his passion for Tamea and his loyalty to Maisie.

In the end, Tamea makes the choice for Dan. She loves him, but nobly sends him back to Maisie because she knows he wouldn't be happy for long with the free life on her tropical island. He grew up in a culture of restraint, control and Christian values. The cultures were just too different, and "never the twain shall meet."

When Tamea rejects Dan and sends him back to Maisie, he breaks down sobbing:

At the end of of the story, we witness Dan returning to America with Maisie, but staring thoughtfully back to Riva as it disappears in the distance:

Here's the story behind the story: the illustrator Dean Cornwell married Miss Mildred Kirkham in 1918. The couple had cultural differences of their own. For one thing, Mildred was morally opposed to drinking alcohol. For another, Mildred didn't enjoy traveling. She preferred to stay close to home in NewYork city while Cornwell loved the great outdoors and exploring the American West. Soon Cornwell was working overseas, and was known to have had romantic relationships with other women.

After Cornwell's illustrations for Never The Twain Shall Meet were published, the canvases were returned to his studio. Cornwell revisited his painting of Dan and Maisie sailing away and decided to change the outcome. He painted over the face of Maisie with the face of his own mistress.

In this way, art permitted Cornwell a tiny rebellion against the fate of the fictional character, Dan.

ON TOP OF THE ENCHANTED MESA

2025-10-22T15:17:00.001-04:00

Fans of Krazy Kat will be familiar with the "Enchanted Mesa," the mystical cliff in the remote desert. No human ever sees the top, but it is a place where magic occurs. For example, it is where babies come from.

Fans of the illustrator Harold Von Schmidt will be familiar with his own treatment of the Enchanted Mesa, an actual place in New Mexico:

from Von Schmidt's masterful illustrations for the book, Death Comes For The Archbishop (1927)

It's my bias that when dealing with mystical subjects, line is a superior medium because it keeps a respectful distance from the magic. It is less literal than realistic painting, and less presumptuous in its response to awe. Drawing, by its nature, acknowledges its limitations, yet those limits leave more room for human supposition.

And as the Von Schmidt drawing demonstrates, all of this can be done without losing the power of the original subject.

ELIZABETH SHIPPEN GREEN ON THE BRINK

2025-10-19T13:49:00.004-04:00

In 1902, this is how Elizabeth Shippen Green illustrated moonlight:

Less than ten years later, her treatment of moonlight was far more accomplished:

How do we account for the great transformation of her work within a decade?

Green worked at the dawn of the 20th century, on the brink of many great changes:

The art world was evolving: Green's beloved teacher and mentor, Howard Pyle, passed away along with other great classical illustrators such as Edwin Austin Abbey. Green had been a member of Pyle's first art class in 1894; she recalled, "he did not so much teach me how to draw but how to interpret life." Now a new generation was elbowing its way onto the stage. In the decade following 1902, Picasso and Braque invented cubism; Fauvism made its debut at the Paris salon; and Marinetti introduced his "Futurist Manifesto."

Opportunities were changing dramatically for women illustrators: Previously, illustration had been almost exclusively a man's profession. In 1907, Green was among the very first women admitted to the Society of Illustrators. She earned a long term contract with Harper's Magazine doing a higher quality of illustrations. As Green's biographer Alice Carter wrote, "The first generation of educated American women was becoming successful in a variety of careers, and their achievements were beginning to attract considerable attention."

Color printing was undergoing a revolution: Green began her career drawing black and white illustrations with thick outlines. Look how her work changed as new technologies increased her powers.

Slowly, crude color was added:

Color became more accurate and subtle:

Finally, here are some details from the example I used at the start:

Wrenching changes in Green's personal life: The changing role of women forced difficult decisions on Green. She had to choose between working as an artist or higher education at one of the colleges now available to women. Green, along with illustrators Violet Oakley and Jessie Wilcox Smith, stayed briefly at Bryn Mawr college where Green said she got her whole education sitting on the college lawn breathing in the knowledge left unabsorbed by the coeds.

Most importantly, during this decade of change Green lived as one of the "red rose girls," three talented women illustrators who lived together in an intimate, loving relationship made possible by the new freedom for women. The three had vowed never to get married, but in 1911 Green broke her vow and left the group to marry a man. Her decision was agonizing for the entire group. Green was so torn by her choice, she prolonged her engagement, on and off, for 7 years.

Green lived on the brink of these great trends; she had to gamble, making choices before the outcome was clear. As we've seen, these changes in art, technology, relationships, and popular taste for illustration caused her great distress but didn't stop her art from improving.

We all live in times of change. Today we have uncertainty swirling all around us, from technological revolutions caused by AI to radical transformations in the audience for illustration. It remains to be seen if we navigate them as well as Green.

THE MAN BEHIND J.C. COLL'S DOOR

2025-10-10T18:47:00.006-04:00

There's a lot going on in J.C. Coll's little drawing of a sword fight by a stranded stage coach.

Look how knowledgeable Coll's line is! He understands that the coach would be tilted by the natural slope of the road, not upright. He knows how the wheel would look caked with mud. He even understands the suspension system of the coach, and is smart enough to make the lines dissipate before the details become boring.

There are six figures interacting in this little roadside ballet, each one posed with elegance

And each face, though tiny, retains its own integrity:

Hidden away in the back, behind the door of the coach, is another swordsman, this one a buffoon who couldn't quite make it out of the coach to defend the fair maiden. (In the shadows we can just make out his hand fumbling the sword and his feet slipping out from under him.)

If you saw this illustration in a magazine today, who would even notice the small figure behind the door? It's debatable whether a narrative this complex even needed another figure.

My point today is that this drawing was done in a very different era for a very different kind of audience, an audience that had time to linger over subtle details and get pleasure from small, hidden elements and surprises. An audience without a computer or television competing for its attention, an audience that was not skimming over dozens of images, often in thumbnail sized icons. That difference has a major impact on the incentives for the artist and the reaction of the audience.

HOW ART SET MAD MAGAZINE FREE

2025-10-03T19:11:00.003-04:00

Compare these two cartoons from MAD about father/son relationships. The first is by Jack Davis:

The second is by Mort Drucker:

The first joke is a wisecrack using generic cartoon characters. The second joke involves a different kind of visual humor. It uses sharp observations about the personalities of the father and son: contrast the thick, rough lines used for the father with the delicate lines of the meek son; note how the angle of the picture points us right to the boy's upturned face and frail shoulders. The father’s cigar in his immense paw is a prop strategically placed in the foreground. The father's "smile" is misshapen from years of chomping on those cigars.

We know nothing about the lives of the father or son in the Davis cartoon but it doesn't matter; the joke doesn't depend on it. On the other hand, Drucker’s drawing tells us everything about this boy's life and the life of his father.

The first cartoon could've been drawn by any of the artists in MAD's talented stable. The second cartoon could only have been drawn by Drucker.

MAD's evolution from the first type of joke to the second type of joke is the story of how art set MAD free.

__________________________

MAD started as a ten cent comic book, containing mostly silly spoofs of other comics or movies. It had an excellent collection of artists such as Davis, Wally Wood and Will Elder but its content remained mostly slapstick. MAD couldn't graduate to a more challenging and relevant form of humor until it acquired a different kind of artistic talent– a talent capable of handling a wider range of facial expressions, psychological staging and body language, of cultural and political references.

This doesn't mean the early MAD art wasn't wonderful and hilarious. My point is that the new drawing ability gave MAD's writers a vehicle for more ambitious humor with far greater range.

MAD moved from Superduperman to questioning authority around the kitchen table...

... and from questioning authority around the kitchen table to questioning the veracity of TV commercials or even Presidents of the United States. It was this new, more mature brand of humor that was primarily responsible for transforming MAD into the inspiration for The National Lampoon and Saturday Night Live. Terry Gilliam (of Monty Python) said, "MAD became the Bible for me and my whole generation." Its irreverence conquered America.

Consider some of the fruits of MAD's new artistic reach:

Drucker’s version of West Side Story was not a satire of the movie, but rather a story about a street gang rumble between the communist eastern block nations and the democratic western nations. Drucker had to draw recognizable caricatures of dictators dressed as juvenile delinquents, dancing in front of photos of the United Nations. Earlier MAD artists couldn't do this.

The movie, Fiddler on the Roof was converted into Antenna on the Roof, a commentary about the culture shock of Jewish families who came to America and found "success" to be a mixed blessing. Earlier MAD artists could never support such a story.

Drucker's drawings were crucial to introducing young readers to strange new settings, some of them real and some of them not so much. For example, Drucker's drawing of a crowded wedding buffet (below) helped readers understand a world they might not have personally experienced but which nevertheless rang true.

Or look at how Drucker takes us to the other side of the world, showing the plight of laborers crowded into the hull of a 19th century southeast Asian steamer ship:

Or into a frontier saloon. Note the gilded tacky decor and the ornate cash register:

MAD readers were transported into hundreds of such scenes, made more believable by Drucker's details. And this is the crucial point: Drucker believed that accurate drawing would make the most preposterous premises seem more real. He felt that if he followed the laws of realism most of the time when it came to anatomy, perspective, time, space and gravity, he might buy himself a longer leash when it came to strange and loony situations.

Drucker: making the nutty drawings believable by alternating them with accurate ones.

Mad became great and influential by offering a menu of talented artists and writers working in a variety of styles. Some fans will always love Don Martin more and some will always love Wally Wood.

But it seems to me that MAD became a more formidable cultural force not because its writers suddenly became smarter or more talented; it was because the quality of the art suddenly enabled the writers to present smarter, more talented ideas. Art was always the pathogen that carried MAD's humor and made it so infectious, spreading rapidly from schoolchild to schoolchild around the world. Once the art was good enough to host a wider range of content, it set MAD's humor free to infect the world.

ONE LOVELY DRAWING, part 77

2025-09-18T13:30:00.002-04:00

In one of the greatest passages of western literature, Dante begins The Divine Comedy:

Midway through the journey of life, I found myself in a dark wood where the right way was lost.

For me, this lovely etching by Martin Lewis, titled Which Way? is the visual equivalent.

We all set out on life's path eager to digest the world, but there comes a point midway through the journey when we realize that the world has been quietly digesting us all along, and that it's likely to win the race.

Like Dante's dark woods, Lewis' blanket of snow covers the road and obscures the landscape. Our puny headlights are outmatched. The road ends ahead but is that a cross or a telephone pole?

I love the mood of this drawing, the fear rising in our chest from uncertainty and the lump in our throat from those stars in the sky.

This image wouldn't be nearly so meaningful if it wasn't handled so effectively. The lighting is brilliant. The control of value is extraordinary. Compare the information Lewis shares (the sharp details in the snow, for example) with the information he withholds (the silhouettes in the car).

A beautifully orchestrated piece.

ELEVEN REBELS ON THE ROOF

2025-09-10T12:31:00.008-04:00

In 1961, two noteworthy events occurred in the art world:

1. The artist Piero Manzoni sold cans of "Artist's Shit" as

conceptual art.

2. Eleven young realist painters took to the rooftops of

New York to rebel against the modern art trends of their day.

Today Manzoni's canned shit enjoys a place of honor in the prestigious Tate Art Museum in London. I've been unable to locate a single work by the eleven realists at the Tate, but I'm displaying their work today on the equally prestigious IllustrationArt blog.

In an exhibition of paintings called “A Realist View” at the National Arts Club, the eleven questioned whether the new so-called freedom of modern art was an improvement. They wrote, “This freedom from obligation has resulted, very largely, in an impoverishment of the artist’s imagination, not an enrichment of it.” New York Times art critic Emily Genauer described the eleven as "the new rebels."

For a century modern artists had prided themselves on being rebels against the establishment. Post-impressionists, cubists, fauvists, futurists, surrealists, modernists, dadaists, orphists, expressionists, abstract expressionists, conceptual artists, and pop artists (quickly followed by op artists, postmodernists, neo-expressionists, minimalists, color-field artists, graffiiti artists, installationists, performance artists, earthworks artists and assorted other types) have all enjoyed their time in the headlines. By 1961, "rebellion" was commonplace. But Genauer asserted that the eleven were "the most rebellious of all the new rebel art groups around today."

The eleven artists were committed to realism, but they wanted to show how reality, when perceived through different eyes, could be original, diverse and fertile.

Artist Burt Silverman painted psychologically insightful pictures. He didn't speak in symbols or concepts. As Auden wrote, "God must be a hidden deity, veiled by His creation."

Contrast Silverman's brand of realism with Harvey Dinnerstein's allegorical mural representing the parade of the 1960s:

Dinnerstein painted it in a sharply realistic but fantastical style, very different from the work of the others.

Daniel Schwartz explored bold colors and patterns in his work:

"Epiphany" by Schwartz

David Levine worked very differently, with a powerful graphic style

Aaron Shikler softened realism for his elegiac tribute to President Kennedy which is hanging in the White House (unless of course the current occupant has taken it down):

The work of the eleven demonstrated different faces of realism, showing how it still offered plenty of meaningful opportunity for innovation, variety and growth.

The excitement of the new is difficult to resist. Art that surprises us with unexpected valuations of things can be titillating... at least for a while. After 1961, the role of the artist-- and the definition of art-- have expanded to the point where boundaries are almost impossible to find.

During this same period, astrophysicists discovered that the increasing speed of the expansion of the universe will eventually rob the universe of all life, heat and meaning. Unless its trajectory changes, The future universe will be one in which even subatomic particles will no longer cohere, and matter will dissipate into a formless sea of entropy.

KENT WILLIAMS RELINQUISHES CONTROL

2025-09-02T19:30:00.002-04:00

You put your left foot in, you take your left foot out,
You put your left foot in, and you shake it all about.

--- The Hokey Pokey

Many contemporary artists seem to have have concluded that accuracy and realism are no longer sufficient, so they start a picture in a careful, realistic style then rough it up with an element of wildness-- a spill, a splatter, a deconstruction, a crude gesture.

Here, for example, the talented Jack Unruh proves that he can master fine detailed pen work but then offsets it with a loosely applied thick, wet black brush:

Next, the talented Joe Ciardiello draws with a sensitive, delicate line, but comes back with spatters of fluorescent paint and a primitive black brush that runs dry halfway through its mission:

Each in their own distinctive way, artists seem to feel that a picture benefits from the open clash of two opposite extremes. They first demonstrate their great control of technical skills (as if to prove their credentials) then balance it with with pagan elements (as if to avoid the shame of appearing too civilized). When done well, this increases the range of the drawing.

Andrew Wyeth, after slaving away on a very precise, careful painting, looked at it in despair and decided the only way he could cure it was to risk everything by throwing a cup of paint right in the middle of the picture. Then he quickly left the room before he lost his nerve and attempted to re-assert control.

One of my favorite artists who pairs control with lack of control is Kent Williams:

Note how the fine line, detailed realism of this bird is enhanced by a messy ochre stain:

It contributes freedom and a casual looseness to what otherwise might be a too tight drawing. It improves the composition and design, expands the range and contributes a more organic, natural feel to the work.

Here is another example of an accomplished drawing where Williams gambled with an out-of-control spill and ended up improving it beyond what tight drawing might have accomplished:

After paying the terrible dues necessary to learn how to draw with control, how much of that control are we willing to surrender? That is the question:

THE VIEW FROM SAVONAROLA'S WINDOW

2025-08-25T15:24:00.005-04:00

Savonorola by Fra Bartolomeo (1498

Be sure to keep your eyes open if you visit the convent of San Marco in Florence where the fearsome Dominican friar, Girolamo Savonarola (1452-1498) launched his fiery tirades against modern art.

Savonarola, one of the earliest art critics, lived in a small cell which has been preserved complete with his famous chair.

Savonarola preached contempt for the world (contemptu mundi) which was a sordid place of adultery, sodomy, murder, and envy. One of its worst culprits was modern art which focused on humanistic subjects, luring people away from proper religious subjects. Such art was a "vanity" which deserved to be burned in bonfires in the Florence public square, along with books, mirrors and other sinful, unauthorized objects.

Savonorola proclaimed that "crude scenes that make people laugh shall not be painted" (which would essentially put this blog out of business). He said that art should be viewed through "spectacles of death" to keep us focused on our mortality, and he railed against art with "indecent figures." No one, he wrote, should be permitted to paint "unless they... paint honest things."

The convent knew that the world had its distractions, such as blue skies, green grass and singing birds. To help protect the friars from temptation, the convent windows were boarded up, leaving only a small opening.

The beauty of nature could only be countenanced in limited doses.

As I stood in Savonorola's cell, thinking of the man whose eloquence caused the burning of Botticelli's paintings, I noted a tiny imperfection on the bars of his window. I walked over, took a closer look, and was startled to discover a small devil's head looking back at me.

I checked with an official at the convent and yes, Savonarola had instructed that a devil's head be affixed to his bars in case he was ever tempted to linger too long looking out at nature.

THE MISCEGENATION OF WORDS AND PICTURES

2025-08-20T13:16:00.005-04:00

Words are different from pictures, which might explain why they have different names.

Even though words and pictures may never fully combine, their mere frottage (in both senses of the word) can bring a new richness and multi-dimensionality to art.

Verbal creation and visual creation each contribute different strengths and perspectives to their partnership. As Swinburne said,

Light is heard as music, music seen as light.

Through the centuries, illustration is the art form where words and pictures have interacted most closely. Traditionally, this meant words next to the picture, but still separate:

Comics integrated the words directly into the picture, sometimes with mixed results:

Word balloon competes with drawing (Neal Adams)

MAD Magazine parody

But over the years, artists have found interesting and engaging ways to combine visual thinking with verbal thinking. No one was better at it than the great Saul Steinberg:

Commercial artists who used words as graphic symbols became an inspiration for pop art.

Bob Peak employs words as design elements

I do like the way Claes Oldenberg used words as graphic objects, obliterating the meaning of the words:

I've previously outraged readers by publicly admiring Cy Twombly's Orpheus, which-- unlike Oldenberg-- incorporates the meaning of the word, painting it in a way that evokes its rich content:

Orpheus by Cy Twombly

Yessir, people have wrestled with cross breeding words and pictures in all sorts of ways:

But in my view, the marriage of words and pictures remains largely unconsummated in post modern conceptual art.

Famed artist Jenny Holzer places text side by side with images-- perhaps on a colored background or carved into a bench-- without ever combining or even juxtaposing their different characteristics. These words would fail as literature so Holzer seeks to find legitimacy by taking up residence in the less discriminating side of town: the visual arts.

Holzer apparently believes that projecting boring platitudes on the side of a building transforms them into Art.

Similarly, many other contemporary artists who are incapable of doing the heavy lifting of combining words and pictures rely exclusively upon words (yet still hope to claim credit as visual artists):

Museum of Modern Art displays pages from the Montevideo phone book with the names of political victims.

Apologists and pedants have attempted to justify this use of words as a substitute for pictures, claiming in learned treatises that words were simply a cool new form of visual art.

It may be that in the marriage of words and pictures, some people believe images are the weaker spouse and can be supplanted. Not me. Pictures preceded the written word and will be there at the end to receive it.

ERIC DROOKER's MOLOCH

2025-08-07T02:00:00.001-04:00

I love this powerful cover to The New Yorker by Eric Drooker.

The ancient demon god Moloch sits astride the city
for the New Yorker's annual "Money" issue.

In ancient legend, people hurled their own children into the flames as sacrifices to Moloch. By the time of the Hebrew bible, the book of Leviticus prohibited making such sacrifices, but the dark god continued to find true believers and lives on in allegory. He can be found in the works of William Blake, John Milton's Paradise Lost, and Fritz Lang's Metropolis. More recently, Moloch played a prominent role in Allen Ginsberg's famous poem, Howl. ("What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination?")

When Drooker first conceived of this image, he captured it quickly with a ballpoint pen:

In the next version he shed that full moon, choosing instead to illuminate the city from below, under a dark sky-- a masterful touch in my opinion. He then worked out the perspectives in pencil:

He drew the final version in ink, before adding color:

The New Yorker employs many excellent writers who've contributed strong articles about economics and plutocracy, about venal politicians and rapacious investment bankers. But no linear assemblage of nouns, verbs and adjectives, policed by punctuation, can possibly deliver a message the way Drooker's cover does.

Here we see the value of good illustration: an immediate visual impact that grabs you by the lapels, combined with a haunting presence that lingers long after paragraphs of statistics and adverbs have faded. In an instant, the belching smokestacks and steaming nuclear reactor towers are tied to the fiery furnaces of Nebuchadnezzar II, and modern profiteers and collaborators are shown to serve the same dark gods as our primordial ancestors. No written article could get away with such a message.

Drooker never dreamed that the New Yorker would accept such an image for its cover. He didn't draw it for The New Yorker and only submitted it at the urging of a friend. But I'd like to see the New Yorker run more covers like this, covers that recognize today's peril. Some of the essays inside, including those by editor David Remnick, employ stern language suitable to the high stakes for liberal democracy, Yet most of the cover illustrations continue to offer light hearted moments and political jokes. I would love to see more cover art that corresponds to the seriousness of the time.

CAN'T DRAW HORSES

2025-08-04T01:07:00.004-04:00

Fortunately, Maurice Sendak couldn't draw horses.

His contract required him to illustrate a children's book called Where the Wild Horses Are, but no matter how hard he tried, he just couldn't draw horses well. Sendak struggled and struggled, then in one creative leap he substituted wild things for wild horses, and the story took off from there.

Where the Wild Things Are became a landmark in the history of children's literature, a seminal work that inspired an opera and a feature film and sold over 20 million copies around the world. It made Sendak's legacy.

The artist Jackson Pollock couldn't draw horses either.

Pollock wanted to be a representational painter. He struggled to paint horses but could never get them quite right.

In 1947 Pollock told a friend, artist Harry Jackson, that he'd tried to paint a mural of stampeding horses to satisfy an important commission but lacked the discipline or skill.

Finally “he got mad,” Harry recalled Pollock saying, “and started to sling the paint onto the canvas to create the driving, swirling action and thrust the composition and the heroic size demanded.” Pollock's frustration over his inability to paint horses fueled a creative leap to one of the first important abstract expressionist paintings. He abandoned horses altogether and pioneered a new kind of art with all of the energy but none of the representational constraints.

Pollock's mural gave the art world a jolt. The art critic Clement Greenberg wrote: "I took one look at it and I thought, 'Now that's great art,' and I knew Jackson was the greatest painter this country had produced."

Susan Rothenberg couldn't draw horses either, but by that time nobody gave a damn.

Rothenberg painted in an era when artists no longer needed to feel shame. She painted horses like this and she painted them real big, with oversized confidence:

The art critic for The New Yorker crowed about the "asteroidal impact" of Ms. Rothenberg's horse pictures:

[T]he effect of the horse paintings that Rothenberg sprang on the world in 1975... was like an asteroid impact....her huge paintings in acrylics made some of us laugh with sheer wonderment....The works conveyed anger, exaltation, and self-abandoning intrepidity.

Sendak and Pollock recognized that their inability to draw horses was a serious problem. If they did a crappy job, it would be widely recognized as such, so they twisted and turned and used their imaginations to explore creative, unorthodox alternatives.

Rothenberg was not flogged to higher creativity by a similar sense of shame or self-doubt, and her work reflects it.

NOT YET

2025-07-23T10:24:00.008-04:00

AI continues to cartwheel through the arts, breaking crockery, toppling pay rates and forcing reevaluations of fundamental epistemological, ontological, and teleological truths.

Processes that began slowly with the invention of photography continue to pick up speed and today hurtle forward at a pace that leaves no time for thoughtful assimilation.

AI enables us to plunder the work of previous generations of artists. Their artistic accomplishments can be purloined, cannibalized, deconstructed and seamlessly reassembled with no talent other than the ability to type on a keyboard. Look at how the following YouTuber can remove Cary Grant from the classic movie Charade and substitute himself as Audrey Hepburn's romantic co-star:

Charade and other accomplished original films may someday be buried beneath a sea of fan variations.

Another example: a different Youtuber easily resurrects dead movie stars such as Paul Newman, Marlon Brando or Rock Hudson and makes them actors in a new movie about the Justice League:

Paul Newman as Green Lantern

Just as inferior voices can be corrected and enhanced with AutoTune, inferior pictures can be corrected and enhanced with algorithmic technologies. The need for skill, creativity and imagination have diminished as technology provides a colorable substitute.

All of which brings me to the new Fantastic Four movie, scheduled to be released on July 25:

Last week I saw an advance screening of the film, which is based upon the 1968 Galactus Trilogy (in Fantastic Four #48 - 50). Marvel Studios employed thousands of people, hundreds of millions of dollars, and the latest software to enhance and embellish Jack Kirby's 12 cent comic book. They did everything technology could do to improve the original story.

The movie was bigger and noisier, sure, with plenty of attention-grabbing special effects, but as a work of art it couldn't compare with the power and quality of Kirby's comic book.

Kirby's dramatic staging has been replaced by faster pacing-- about the speed you'd expect from a video game. His costumes have been updated, for the worse. The complexity of his content has been replaced by bland platitudes about the importance of family.

The movie is entertaining, but with all of its advantages it feels artistically inferior to the hand drawn comic book. So for those who say that traditional art forms can be replaced in all meaningful respects by new technologies, I say:

Not yet.

MORE ABOUT BEAUTY AND UGLINESS IN ART

2025-04-16T14:37:00.009-04:00

The illustrator A.B. Frost drew with a marvelous line. He had a special knack for infusing animals with character:

Note the unorthodox way Frost depicts that tail, the stance of the barking dog, the way Frost captures the shape of
the dog's skull, the comical exaggeration of the open mouth and those long, droopy ears.

I'm dazzled by the speed and confidence of Frost's beautiful line capturing this dancer wearing an apron. You have to wonder whether this was drawn with a pen or a rapier.

Note the shading on those shoes; what beautiful ink!

When it came to suggesting a background, Frost knew to use a light touch. Not too much detail, but he nevertheless understood that the tree trunks required a round line, while the tree branches required a flurry of light scratches.

The drawing was published in Life magazine in 1922, long before the era of videos, yet Frost made the image more dynamic, infused with more energy and speed, than many videos depicting actual movement today:

I love the powerful shadows under the man's arm, under the flaps of his jacket, and
on his ankle. Those shoes are sheer poetry!

SO we can safely conclude that this is a beautiful drawing, right?

Uh oh!

The caption on this drawing was, "Yo’ kin talk erbout yo’ tukkey an’ yo’ chicken an’ yo’ goose. Dem things is good fo’ white folks…”.

So what do you think? Beautiful? Ugly? Both?

________________________________

The drawing was exhibited at the recent show, "Imprinted" at the Norman Rockwell Museum and will be traveling to other museums. Definitely worth seeing if you get the chance.

UGLY'S GOT NOTHING TO DO WITH IT

2025-04-06T15:17:00.003-04:00

In recent weeks, I've received an increasing percentage of comments criticizing pictures for featuring "ugly" people or "evil" themes, rather than for being "poorly drawn" or "badly painted" or "unimaginative."

In a recent post about illustrations for the classic novel Lolita, many commenters were uninterested in the creativity or quality of the images because they didn't approve of the book's plot. None of the images were explicit, but the underlying story was too "depraved."

In a recent post about an illustration of President Trump, many commenters were less interested in the artistry of the image than in what they suspected were the "totalitarian" sympathies of the artist, or even my own suspected political leanings for showing such a picture ("You are a Fabian Socialist, a hard leftist, a radical in sheep's clothing. A snooty superior commie pretending not to be, quietly and cleverly trying to undermine our constitution. You are worse than a total partisan hack. You are a Manchurian activist; a deceiver and a traitor.")

In a recent post about drawings by artist John Cuneo, a number of commenters criticized Cuneo's pictures for being too ugly. ("It’s hard for me to appreciate Cuneo’s illustrations because they are so damn ugly." Cuneo is a "a psychosexual slob." His drawings show "saggy tits" and "flab.") Even worse, some suspected that Cuneo's admirers have "lib" leanings.

The direction of these comments surprises me; there's plenty of beautiful art about ugly subjects. Just ask Shakespeare.

My own test for Cuneo's drawings was never, "Would I invite this woman to the prom?" Rather, I feel his drawings are beautiful because their line work is sensitive, complex, thoughtful, probing and intelligent:

Details of Cuneo drawings

Cuneo is not for everyone's taste, but as far as I'm concerned people who dismiss such drawings as "ugly" are applying criteria from a parallel universe. They are likely to miss out on some of the most rewarding material art has to offer.

So in today's post it's probably worth considering: what makes a drawing "ugly"?

I've previously written about how much I adore this drawing by Tom Fluharty:

Readers who sneer at drawings of "flabby" people may be troubled by this picture, but I personally consider it a masterpiece of good drawing: well conceived and designed, with those crisp dark accents shaping and containing that billowing flesh. Fluharty threw away the anatomy book and drew this with his eyes opened, the way good artists are supposed to. He was never tempted to let symmetry do half of his work for him. At the risk of further shocking readers, I would defend this drawing to anyone as "beautiful."

Next, there's artist David Levine, who walked right past the academic models to draw what he called the "shmata queens," the heavy, ungainly women who hung out on a nearby beach. Levine said he was interested in...
a dwindling group of elderly women: Shmata Queens of Coney. The "shmata," or "rag," not only refers to the head cloth, but also to the bathing suits - faded and misshapen by molding to aged and deformed bodies that have been out under the sun.... Once, as I was finishing a drawing, my model said, "Dere is vun ting you kent ketch about us." When I inquired what that might be, she answered, "How much ve eat."
Again and again Levine drew and painted these women on the beach. I'm sure if you asked whether he thought they were "ugly" he'd be puzzled by the question. Certainly they aren't ugly in any sense that should be relevant here.

Still another artist with an observant eye and an interest in less idealized forms of beauty was Andrew Wyeth. He seemed determined to record every mile that a long, harsh life had left on the faces of his subjects:

We have to be careful about judging art based on the morals of the people depicted, or whether a character has a wart on her nose, or whether the colors are pretty. Those are all relevant considerations when it comes to deciding whether you should hang a picture in your breakfast nook, but the important aspects of art run a whole lot deeper than that.

ANOTHER GREAT HORSE'S ASS (part 3)

2025-03-21T17:27:00.000-04:00

(continuing a series)

I love this drawing of a horseman by Rodin:

When Rodin was 16, he drew tight academic drawings:

Over the years he evolved from meticulous drawings (usually drawn from plaster casts or classical prints) to loose, fluid drawings where expressiveness was more important than anatomical proportion. He decided that many of the details he originally labored over were trivial. He became more interested in "large, rhythmical contours," which were often little more than wispy sketches. As his drawings became simpler and more abstract they sometimes gained in power.

Rodin took his drawings as seriously as his famous sculptures. He insisted, "Drawing is the key to knowledge.... Without drawing, no truth."

For Rodin, the truth about the horseman seemed to lie in the haunches of that horse, which takes up the bulk of the drawing and which forms the base from which the movement (as well as the composition) is driven. The gesture of the rider is more like a feather in a chapeau. From his early labors, Rodin understood muscles and skeletal structure and weight; the drawing would not be possible without that knowledge. But the information is buried so deeply that you'd never single it out.

Rodin drew as simply and naturally as he was able. Interestingly, as Rodin became more famous and his drawings became simpler, numerous counterfeiters and fakers tried to imitate his work. There have been museum exhibitions dedicated to distinguishing Rodin's "authentic" loose, airy drawings from the numerous counterfeit loose, airy drawings-- a challenging task.

NEW BOOK FROM JOHN CUNEO (nsfw)

2025-03-06T12:29:00.006-05:00

I just received my copy of the new book by John Cuneo, Good Intentions.

Cuneo has a unique voice in American illustration. When you think about his work, you need a whole different vocabulary: Penetrating. Scary. Brave. Upsetting. Frank. Epic. Scorchingly honest. How long has it been since such adjectives applied to illustration, or to any drawing for that matter?

And funny, lord is he funny.

For decades, scientists have searched for a deep salt mine in a remote location where they might safely store weapons-grade plutonium. Cuneo packages it in tiny spider web lines.

Despite his mostly dark and trenchant observations, there's even a "yes" to be found in this book.

Like Cuneo's other books, we get the feeling that he paid a higher price to create it than we pay to receive it.

ONE LOVELY DRAWING, part 76

2025-02-27T11:02:00.001-05:00

This is a 1933 political cartoon by Vaughn Shoemaker. It appeared in the Chicago Daily News, which went defunct many years ago:

Look how smart this drawing is. Shoemaker understands the architecture of a rowboat and knows that the keel would make it tilt on dry land. He understands the bone structure of ankles and makes those feet tilt at different angles. He understands how the shoulders would hunch up in this position and he understands how the wrists would curl:

Shoemaker also understands the architecture of a pier. Look at how the boards sag, how the posts in the foreground are stained by the previous waterline, how the posts in the background are mere black shadows to lend structural strength with no distracting details:

I've never seen a digital tool make marks like this

Notice how the shadow under the pier is cross hatched to stay lively; this avoids a big black blob in the center of the composition. More importantly, it allows Shoemaker to control the value of the shadow, darkening it as it recedes in the distance:

Notice some of Shoemaker's tactics to keep the drawing lively. He clearly understands how a coil of rope would normally hang, but he twists the end of that rope all around. He understands the anatomy of hands, but he gratuitously lifts that pinky finger to make it more interesting:

Drawing a political cartoon every day, Shoemaker had to work at lightning speed, which meant he had to understand all these lessons before he sat down at the drawing board. He had no time for a field trip to study how a pier is constructed or how a receding waterline leaves marks on the shore. Yet there's a lot of confidence in his thick, fast brush strokes.

Here's my point: In 1933 there were thousands of political cartoonists such as Shoemaker working for thousands of newspapers like the Chicago Daily News. Often these cartoons appeared on the front page, above the fold. Today there are fewer than 40 full time political cartoonists left, and the number of newspapers is rapidly dwindling. Daily newspapers have turned into weekly newspapers, and many of them can no longer afford an editorial cartoonist on the payroll.

Shoemaker was not one of the more famous cartoonists but I think his drawing is noteworthy, so I want to make a point of noting it here.

TRUNDLING TOWARD BETHLEHEM

2025-02-21T01:33:00.004-05:00

President John Kennedy was a passionate believer in the importance of the arts; he was a voracious reader and intellectually curious. He invited over 150 artists, poets and writers to his inauguration.

Composer Leonard Bernstein's invitation to the Kennedy inauguration

The invited artists included Edward Hopper, Andrew Wyeth, Alexander Calder, Paul Manship, Charles Burchfield, Mark Rothko, Max Weber, William Zorach, Walter Gropius and Eugene Speicher. He also invited authors such as W.H. Auden, Saul Bellow, Pearl Buck, John Dos Pasos, William Faulkner, Arthur Miller, Carl Sandburg, John Steinbeck, Robert Penn Warren, Thornton Wilder and Tennessee Williams.

Kennedy knew that the government shouldn't attempt to control the arts, but he believed it was important for the president to demonstrate a high regard for cultural excellence, which he felt was one of the greatest fruits of a free society. He said:

Aeschylus and Plato are remembered today long after the triumphs of imperial Athens are gone. Dante outlived the ambitions of 13th century Florence. Goethe stands serenely above the politics of Germany, and I am certain that after the dust of centuries has passed over our cities, we, too, will be remembered not for victories or defeats in battle or in politics, but for our contribution to the human spirit.

After Kennedy was assassinated, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts was named in tribute to him. Kennedy had been instrumental in the private fundraising for the cultural center during his lifetime. The center was managed by a bipartisan Board of cultural figures. The activities of the center have been paid for by private donations and ticket sales, but as part of a public/private partnership the government provides the maintenance and upkeep for the building. This gives the government a say in its management.

Last week President Trump fired the whole Board and got himself appointed as the new Chairman. This is not a political blog so I offer no opinions on Trump's fitness as president; for all I know, he may go on to become a great president. However-- limiting my comments solely to the arts-- Trump is a vulgar brute with the artistic taste of a simple minded child, pathetically attracted to all things glittery and gold. He is proudly unlettered and can barely muster the curiosity to read more than a few bullet points out of his Presidential briefing books.

Despite his ignorance-- or more likely because of it-- Trump feels that the arts will benefit from his political supervision.

It's not surprising, then, that artists might instinctively bristle at such a natural enemy of the arts. But what kind of responses are available? Is the artistic community defenseless in this exchange?

Well, for one thing, art enjoys the clarifying power of naming. Which brings me to this dandy cover by Justin Metz for The Atlantic in 2024.

This magazine cover was not constructed the way that Norman Rockwell used to construct magazine covers 100 years ago, combining pigments with linseed oil on a palette. Metz curated stock images (the capitol building, the sky and the swamp) and combined them using 3d modeling and Photoshop. He built the rest of the images, creating a hybrid of an old fashioned circus car and a victorian horse-drawn hearse. He forced the perspective, using the legerdemain of steam from the swamp and strategic lighting, in order to squeeze in everything he felt was essential. He crafted and refined the image, including brushing to give it a painterly feel. He carefully designed that whip, the coachman's bulk, the clenched fist. The result, I think, is a powerful image that rivals the best propaganda posters by the greatest illustrators of World War I.

Despite the fact that he used new tools, Metz had to make many of the same aesthetic choices required of traditional realistic painters in the past. The grim colors, the ominous light, the foreboding landscape, the placement of symbols such as the iconic vulture in the dead tree, the pose of the coachman-- these are all the types of elements that Brueghel might have weighed for his landscape, The Triumph of Death. The choice of how many symbols to include without overloading the picture, and how explicit to make those symbols-- again, these are all traditional aesthetic judgments.

In developing a "sinister circus" theme, Metz drew upon childhood Disney movies such as Pinocchio and Dumbo, with their dark sequences that terrified generations of children: the coachman with the bullwhip who drove bad little boys off to Pleasure Island where they were turned into donkeys....

...or the wagon where Stromboli locked up Pinocchio and carried him away into the night...

...or the movie Dumbo where poor Mrs. Jumbo was locked in the circus train prison:

These Disney memes still retain great subliminal power today.

For me, much of the artistry in Metz's cover lies in his depiction of the captive Republican elephant staring out of the shadows. His look of resignation, wondering how his past compromises could've led to this, adds an important layer of tragedy to what otherwise might have been a purely angry image.

There has been a mountain of editorials and books and articles with charts and graphs debating the political issues behind the recent election but I think this cover is a good reminder of how much more devastating a picture can be than words.

UPDATE: As of April 21, 2025, following up on President Trump's hostile takeover of the Kennedy Center, he has now appointed an attractive young blonde with no qualifications, Lindsey Halligan, to remove "improper" exhibits from the Smithsonian Institution and "restore truth and sanity to American history." He has also sent DOGE technocrats with no qualifications to assert controls over the National Gallery of Art. Trump already had a well established reputation as a tasteless enemy of culture before he became president. His recent actions make clear that he is trying to compete with some of the other great autocrats in history to influence his country's culture.

TWO FOR THE ROAD

2025-02-15T18:35:00.005-05:00

America loves a good "road story" about traveling companions who encounter adventure and learn lessons along the way.

Jack Kerouac wrote the famous beat generation classic, On The Road. Mark Twain wrote the story of Huck Finn and Jim traveling down the Mississippi. John Steinbeck wrote Travels With Charley. And James Gurney and Thomas Kinkade wrote the newly re-released The Artist's Guide to Sketching.

As Gurney recounts in their book,

Before he was the painter of light, and before I was the creator of Dinotopia, Tom Kinkade and I were two unknown and penniless art students. We had grown weary of sitting in windowless classrooms, enduring lectures about art theory. We hatched an audacious plan to drop out of school for a while, hop on a freight train and discover America, documenting everything in our sketchbooks.

I expected (and would have welcomed) a narrative dedicated to their travels. The few sections of the book that mention their adventures were quite tantalizing:

We slept in graveyards and the rooftops and sketched portraits of lumberjacks and coal miners. To make money we drew two dollar portraits in bars by the light of cigarette machines.… We boarded the freights again and rode all the way to Willard, Ohio, where we were kicked off at gunpoint by police officers, who had received reports that we were trying to fly a kite off the top of the train.

However, the book is focused instead on the art of sketching, and is organized by subject matter (such as "Materials" and "Achieving Accuracy" and "Capturing Motion") rather than chronologically or geographically. It is filled with helpful examples from their travels:

Some of the art was a revelation to me. For example, I really like the following pile o' chains drawn by Kinkade. The subject presents an artist with some interesting questions about economy. Do you fake it by roughly indicating random links, or is it worth going through the hassle of connecting the links in a chain?

I prefer Kinkade's good hearted pile o' chains to his later, finished paintings of sugary cottages. I also enjoyed what he saw in this gas pump.

But perhaps the part of the book I enjoyed the most was the rousing essay about the value of sketching. I like it because it starts out acknowledging how the world conspires to steer us toward more efficient enterprises:

Many artists tell us: “I guess I should sketch more often, but I never really get the chance.” We know the feeling. There just doesn’t seem to be enough time in the day, and when the opportunity does come up, the sketchbook is never handy. On a vacation it seems much easier to use a camera than a sketchbook to record your experiences.

But by setting aside an entire journey dedicated to sketching "pictures of abandoned tractors and motel signs and jukeboxes," the duo learned:

The more we sketched, the more we began to realize that sketching is both the motivation and the reward for experiencing new things.