Interview
Just noticed, via Drawn!, the site Illustration Friday, whose purpose is to inspire creativity in (would-be?) illustrators. Haven't had time to explore it much. Looks like there may be an interesting idea or two cooking behind it.One feature of the site that certainly has potential to be interesting is its artist interview section. I was delighted to find that the first (of a total, so far, of two) interview's subject is Chris Sickels, the prolific fellow who operates Red Nose Studio. His stuff has been popular with a variety of U.S. magazine art directors for a few years, from what I can tell. He's not an especially rare sighting. This reflects something more, I can't help thinking, than effective marketing, or the possible fact that the novelty hasn't quite worn off that technically distinctive & whimsical imagery. There's something about his characteristic treatment of figure & face – even where he hasn't achieved his best effects – that fits an aspect of cultural mood in some way. (If there were time, I'd be inclined to make an attempt at teasing this notion out a bit. The way we respond to human-figure depiction & stylization is undoubtedly one of the more telling things to observe about what's happening in a culture. Deserves more discussion.)
Anyway, the Illustration Friday interview with Sickels turns out not to be all that interesting, as these things go. There is, though, for pondering, this beginning of his answer to the single question about his creative process: 'I usually start with words and combinations of words.' I'd love to know more about what that 'starting with words' entails, in Sickels's thinking.
posted by paul bowman @ 9:58 PM
12 Comments:
Sickels has an interesting visual sense - part Edward Gorey and Tim Burton, but too bouyant and colourful to be mistaken for either. I wonder if his "toy"-like illustrations don't entice the beholder to consider things they otherwise wouldn't, were it presented in the typical eroticized fashion of most magazine illustrators?
Darrell, the connection to Gorey & Burton seems to me very apt – this is well put. (Wonder though if buoyant & (at least with Burton) colorful don't also suggest the derivation in a way, as much as relative distinction from them as models?)
Sickels's figures do seem to be almost an epitome of un-erotic. Which is a funny thing, because in some respects his figures exaggerate proportion or emphasis that other stylists or cartoonists (Burton seems again like particularly good reference here) of the figure have exaggerated to achieve a particular (Disneyish?) erotic.
But has eroticization – broad idea, I recognize – really been much a quality of illustration as used in magazine-type publishing in our generation? Trying to think of examples. You'd certainly have been able to say so, even about 'editorial' illustration (largely Sickels's territory) in various ways, a few generations ago. But in our day it seems like eroticization in the mag/news/variety publishing environment is a special purview of photography or photo-based design, and illustrators are looked to for something alternative, when it comes to representation of human figure. (This, the quality of alternative he effects, would seem to be exactly Sickels's appeal for contemporary art direction, if so.) What do you think?
re: eroticization - two popular examples come to mind: Anita Kunz and Owen Smith (Smith especially). But you may be right. They might well be in the minority. And you and I might be reading different magazines! Perhaps we should compare and contrast?
Ha ha! Probably a safe bet you're reading more, & more interesting, periodical stuff than I. But I used to pay a fair amount of attention, via various sources, to what's going on in the illustration field, so have had a little more exposure to that side of things than my reading habits might suggest.
Kunz & Smith are sharp picks here (again!). On the money, plainly. I'm less familiar with Smith – didn't know him by name – but might have thought of Kunz if I'd dwelt on it a bit longer (& been less tired). This thing of fleshy richness with face & figure that they have in common to considerable extent – it indicates nicely what sort of place is 'provided for', you might say, the erotic in figural image in the general readership mass published format nowadays. Not that the erotic is reduced to a certain style of the moment in this environment. Rather, there might be kind of a paradigm in evidence here, and this stylistic correlation a particularly clear example of it.
But at the same time, it does seem that you could safely generalize about handling of the figure in mass readership illustration from late 19th century at least into the early 60s and observe that, in material not specifically for children, prevailing classicism-rooted 'realism' & cartooning alike, irrespective of subject matter (except perhaps in cases of the unambiguously grotesque), allow a kind of safe erotic to ride, in a way, frequently just below the surface. Again, I'm not thinking of pictures' narrative or depicted subjects, the obvious or the veiled, but rather of characteristic, accepted/expected qualities of the drawn or painted figure. To demonstrate well would take a bit of work, but maybe this, or this, fits as a kind of generic example. You follow what I'm getting at, I think?
Trying not to overstate the point (since, for one thing, I've never properly studied any of this). But one might say that the interpretive/'expressionistic' freedom illustrators are broadly sort of expected to maintain & operate from today, as basis of their individual styles, reflects diminishment of the erotic from its former prominence as an assumption, shared unspoken between readership & publishers, about what illustrators are there to contribute to published matter.
For clarification — in the first of those 2 links, it's not the homoerotic take that I've got in mind specifically, or primarily. Noticing instead general things — dominant youthful, conventionally attractive features; a certain quality of depiction of racial whiteness; aspects of color & tone; &c. — in short, a complex of pictorial effects, not something intended by the illustrator as subtle, subliminal, subtextual.
Occurs to me oddly late that actually one of the illustrators I've been highlighting in the sidebar links Autumn Whitehurst, is a very fine example of an illustrator working the eroticizing angle in figural representation, in manner at once old-fashioned & contemporary, for mass readership. I've had some brief acquaintance with her in past; she's exceptionally talented as a painter & draftsperson. Note though that the erotically charged work she's doing for general audience publishing is always photo-dependent in varying degrees.
Interesting: I'd consider Ms. Whitehurst's take to be the most contemporary of the bunch. To my eye it seems the most "cool", too - the distance between me and its eros is shade too removed to be effective, but then I'm probably one generation removed from hers.
Also, I'm noticing the choice of background for these illustrators, the "Friendly Giant" being the lushest, with the most detail. After that comes Smith, who's prone to including just a few telling props, while keeping the focus on his lush, exaggerated figures - a typical "fantasy" scenario. Then we have Kunz, Whitehurst and the painter of The Band Girl, who suspend their figures in the ether. Here perhaps Ms. Whitehurst is the most effective, by placing clarity of focus on specific figural details, like a girl's illustrated shoulder. She would best embody your "diminishment" theory, I think - if I understand you correctly.
Inclined to think, now, that you're tending both to regard the illustration/design in a more complete way than I and to recognize the erotic idea in a more complete way than I. I've leaned here toward paying attention to the figure & its treatment isolated, somewhat, from composition or background, and, too, toward thinking — with perhaps something of an adolescent mindset — of the drawn or painted figure as the thing with capacity to assume the place of object of desire, rather than thinking of desire as it might be evoked by the way the illustration/design works as a whole. (I did use that phrase 'complex of pictorial effects', but had something relatively limited in mind.) Don't mean to draw the contrast between us too definitely — undoubtedly there's considerable overlap in how we're perceiving things. Maybe though it could be said, very roughly, that you see more like a writer and I more like — well, like a guy not quite grown out of a fixation with the problem of 'how to draw people'. : )
Enjoying getting your insights on a variety of interwoven themes here, brevity notwithstanding. A shame not to have better opportunity for conversation. (Of course, having to bother with a good deal of clarifying terms & assumptions might take some wind out of the sails, if we could actually talk at length.)
Autumn, by the way, isn't a generation removed from you I don't think. Pretty sure she is not much younger than I — early-mid 30s. Her sense for the contemporary tone might derive from things not merely generational — Asian roots, for instance. Hard to say, though, without knowing her better.
This 'virtual' conversation is a treat for me, too. When I contemplated the possibilities that might arise from actually talking about this, I thought this format was probably just fine - it gives me a greater opportunity to think before I express. But if we were to discuss issues like you raise in yesterday's post, spoken conversation would be a definite benefit. When I encounter theological concepts in print, I tend to shut down pretty quickly - visualize closing time in a shopping mall, when all the stores roll out their security barriers (or just go Star Trek: "Shields up!").
Although I will commit to this: I'm generally more receptive to the words (in translation, alas) of Calvin than I am to the meditations that usually follow. And I don't consider myself a Calvinist - go figure.
I'm with you here, at least partly. I'm much more inclined to like Calvin than to like being a Calvinist, after about a decade of trying. (Adding 'neo' does little — much less, to be honest — to make me comfortable with the badge.) I'm leaning with some caution toward 'becoming' a Lutheran now, actually. But having identifed as Calvinist has been, for me, as I understand things so far, a good path toward what I'm pretty sure Calvin & Luther and their comrades & their heirs in faith at best always wanted, have always wanted — toward wanting to dispense with the badges and to somehow recover the identity of orthodoxy & catholicity for their own & their families' lives as baptized & communing Christians. For my part, I'm drawn to read theology where it's been a help in this direction — and coming from a background where theology (let alone 'catholicity' or 'orthodoxy') had very little real honor, I've found I've needed a lot of help — frequently unable to answer for 'faith', to answer the threat to myself & those around me raised by what I've supposed was my own faith. But here too I guess I'm very close to what you say of yourself, in that it's not charting my own way through the tangle of theologized ideas in conflict (not that conflict of ideas is without its own good) that I want, but finding engagement with another (indeed even with a Calvin or a Luther across time), a common engagement with what words like catholicity & orthodoxy may acknowledge about history & what's given for us in it. Often it does seem that written theology only allows for that engagement in an impoverished sense.
I notice that I use phrasing like 'I'm inclined to' and 'I'm leaning toward' a lot in these contexts. Maybe that calls for some analysis someday.
It's remarkable the original Protestants were able to come up with as much foundational material as they were, given how their itinerary was usually determined by where they had to flee to next - not as pressing a concern for Calvin, which probably accounts somewhat for both quality and quantity. And this was prior to the Age of Analysis : )
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