Arthur Heming

Curator Cassandra Getty and myself at the opening of a long overdue exhibit. Once one of Canada's most popular artists, this is the first retrospective of him ever.

Illustration panel at CAA 2013!!

Exciting news! My colleague Doug Dowd and I proposed a panel on illustration studies to the Association of Historians of American Art for inclusion at next year's CAA - and it was accepted!

For those who don't know art history circles, getting a panel or paper into CAA (College Art Association) is to art historians what getting into the Whitney Biennial is for artists. As far as I know, this is the first time the merits of periodical illustration and its status in American art history is going to be discussed in detail, with the most prominent art historians on the continent.

I hope all my illustrations buddies can make it! This is a milestone for the entire field. Possibly we are marginalized no more!

Arthur Heming mastodon picture for Jack London story 1901

 

I'm still working on Arthur Heming for an upcoming exhibition and catalog. Our team just recently found this image posted by an anonymous person looking for info about it. We REALLY want to talk to you, so I am posting here in hopes you will find this in a google search. Please get in touch. 

And if anyone else has Heming info or artwork - I want to talk to you too! 

Illustration's Permanent Homes

I recently discovered Quentin Blake is in the process of setting up a devoted, permanent illustration museum. Excellent, all for it. But I am mystified why he says it's the first in the world. The Cutlers have done their best to do the same in the USA in their own way. The Norman Rockwell Museum isn't just about Rockwell.  The Society of Illustrators' Museum of American Illustration is public. There are other institutions in the US that support subfields of illustration, such as the Eric Carle Museum and the National Museum of Wildlife Art.  In Europe, there is Museo ABC.

I also find it odd that Blake's group has chosen the name "House of Illustration," as this seems to tread awfully close to Illustration House, which as a private commercial gallery has been a fixture for nearly 40 years.

I'm all for the more the merrier, but this kind of cultural poaching is not very merry. If we're to collectively work on the much needed effort to make illustration as valued as other arts, respecting our peers is essential.

I commend Quentin Blake for his efforts. Perhaps he just didn't do his research and the mistakes are innocent.  I hope he revises his PR to more truly reflect the situation, and I invite him to reach out to fellow institutions to make a strong network that would help him achieve his goals.

Oscar Cahén: Oct 1-30 - installed!

Well, waiting for one thing still.

Giving a Talk on Russell Patterson, Oct 2

If you're in Massachusetts it would be lovely to see you for tea, at the Norman Rockwell Museum on Sunday, Oct. 2. I will be giving the following talk:

Sex, Booze, and All That Jazz:
The Humorous Illustration of Russell Patterson

This illustrated lecture presents the work of Russell Patterson with over 50 images and a film clip. We will examine how his cartoons of the “Patterson Girl” from the 1920s and 30s, like the earlier Gibson Girl, paradoxically symbolized both the excess and the containment of female sexuality in popular culture.

Russell Patterson’s girlie drawings were symptomatic of shifts in courtship, class behaviors, commercial culture, and changing conditions in the field of illustration following World War 1. Patterson helped redefine modern beauty standards and gender performance in comics, puppet shows, advertising, magazines, interior design, fashion design, and beauty contests.

Patterson’s illustrations were a response to a new norm, where illustrators were faced with models’ unprecedented sexual and business autonomy. The tension between the sexes in his work is reflective of the displacement of illustrated print media by the camera and the very models he had helped promote. The increasing tawdriness of his depictions of women may be seen as an attempt to hang on to power by showing what the camera could not, as well as a misogynist mocking of the very sexuality his illustrations celebrate. Widely imitated and famous in his day, Patterson’s masterful black and white line drawings express the rebellious spirit of the jazz age so outrageously that they still charm—and raise eyebrows—today.

Sunday, October 2 at 2:30 p.m.

Norman Rockwell Museum

http://www.nrm.org/2011/09/rockwell-center-tea-and-talk/ 

Giving a Talk on Robert Weaver Sept 29

Robert Weaver remains one of the more controversial figures in the illustration world. If you're in St Louis, I hope you will come to my presentation:

Blind Spots:
Robert Weaver and Juxtapositions of
Art and Illustration

 

In the 1950s, renowned illustrator Robert Weaver introduced into magazine illustration a painterliness and immediacy that related it to contemporary art. This put him in the controversial middle between gallery and illustration worlds at exactly the moment when commercial art was being held up by art and culture critics as the epitome of evil. Outspoken Weaver berated both illustrators and modern artists for their respective blind spots, and drove himself to keep looking where others were not. Throughout his life he eschewed singularity of vision for juxtaposition, revealing unseen third meanings. Then, as Weaver developed his interest in the relationship between diachronic and synchronic time and fractured vision, his eyesight began to deteriorate, leaving him seriously visually impaired. Still, he continued making art and speaking out, overcoming his own blind spots. In this talk I will survey Weaver’s career and work, and discuss his all-important defense of illustration as an art form.

Thursday, September 29, 4:30 p.m.
Ginkgo Reading Room, Olin Library, Level 1

Washington University, St Louis

FREE!