Illustration Now! [antikvár]

s C The Changing State of the Art I have been commissioning editorial illustration for more than three decades, and was an avid fan long before that. I watched trends and fashions come and go, come and stay, and come and die like grapes on the vine. As a kid I was as awed by Norman Rockwell's covers for the Saturday Evening Post as were virtually everyone in the United States. He was our Ver-meer. His gritty though idyllic representations of America, his romantic panoramas of small towns and nostalgic places, void of Irony and full of passion, triggered the pleasontest of emotions. I followed those lesser lights in his circle who observed and captured comical and poignant moments through realistic depictions, even though their art became Increasingly musty. Bock In the forties and fifties the dichotomy between art and illustration was as profound OS black and white. Abstract Expressionism dominated the American art scene and Influenced the world too. With few exceptions, abstraction was prohibited in American editorial and advertising art. At first, only a few "modern" pioneers, including Ben Shohn, Robert Weaver, Robert Andrew Parker, and Thomas B. Allen, injected a kind of raw Impression-Ism and astute symbolism into their work. Push Pin Studios' Milton Glaser, Seymour Chwost, Paul Davis, Reynold Ruffins, and James McMullan Introduced eclectic references, including the Art Nouveau, Art Deco, Cubism, and Surrealism. In fact, by the early Sixties Surrealism in spirit of Magrltte and Dolí emerged as a viable commercial style. In Europe, Illustration and cartooning was always more sophisticated. The work of André François, Ronald Searle, Roland To por, and Jeon-Mlchel Folon was as heady osltwos witty. Still, it was not until the late Sixties, In the woke of the historic youth culture revolution of that time, that American illustration became a more personal art form with all the weight of the purer arts. Bythlstime many of the most influential illustrators had established unique personas as graphic commentators. Ed Sorel, David Levine, Ralph Steadman, and Robert Grossman were among those who expressed social and political opinions with wit and Irony through superb drawing and pointing skills. They laid the groundwork for the acceptance of Illustration OS more than a mere replication or Interpretation of another's texts. Sure, they were beholden to those manuscripts as a touchstone, but their ideas and concepts complimented rather than supplemented; they could expand upon rather than slavishly follow the word. The late Sixltes gave rise to underground comics, psychedelic posters, and other timely stylistic manifestations, but It also reintroduced the history of graphic commentary as a resource for contemporary illustration. Brad Holland was among the pioneers nourished by this history - works by Kaethe Kollwitz, Henrich Klee, Georg Grosz, and notably Francisco Goya - and produced illustration that was at once narrative and representational but also replete with a personal vocabulary of new vernacular symbols. Commonly accepted clichés were rejected in favor of mediated freedom. The venerable practice of an art director or editor underlining passages to be illustrated was no longer acceptable. Holland challenged editors not to interfere with his ideas. And once this notion of illustrator as "author" caught on, the floodgates opened for many others. The above is obviously only a partial story of how illustration evolved into the state we find today - extremely eclectic, defiantly personal, Intensely conceptual, astutely witty, and irrepresslbly expressive. These are just a few of the viable descriptions of our current art. Once it was possible to see only a few dominant, highly crafted ond usually painterly styles. Today, In this volume alone, there are countless ways to draw a cat (or anything else that is either familiar and unfamiliar). While every artist represented has antecedents