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The Figurative Tradition and Illustration<\/span><\/strong> <\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Having been a student and an artist for more than forty years, I have been struck by the use of the word Illustration<\/em>. In the past 10 years, especially, critics for highly touted art journals, including The New York Times<\/em>, increasingly use the words illustration<\/em> and figurative art<\/em> interchangeably.\u00a0 To put it another way, illustration is used pejoratively to lump together most figurative artists.\u00a0 The effect is analogous to McCarthy\u2019s indiscriminate use of the word communist <\/em>to cast aspersions on an individual\u2019s character and political profile.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0As an artist working in the figurative tradition, the use of the word illustration<\/em> has the uncomfortable effect of chalk being driven over a blackboard. In a slightly different manner, at one time the denigrating reference for figurative art was the use of the word academic<\/em>.<\/span> \u00a0There used to be a clearer understanding of the term illustration<\/em>.\u00a0 It was the depiction of form rendered by illustrators to depict incidents in books, journals or magazines.\u00a0 The world of children\u2019s illustration is full of top flight illustrators.\u00a0 First-rate illustrators, such as Nancy Ekholm Burkert, Maurice Sendak, Eric Carle and Leo Leoni have produced dazzling work.\u00a0 Some of the stories they depict were written by them, some were written by others.\u00a0 Some of these pages are so well-done that I have often wondered what the \u201cfine art\u201d of these artists looked like.\u00a0 In the case of Nance Burkert, I actually came across a very interesting book which showed her non-illustrational work (The Art of Nancy Burkert, Peacock Press, 1977).<\/span> \u00a0Fine artists sometimes used their skills to increase their income by taking on work as illustrators.\u00a0 They worked for magazines and journals illustrating stories and daily events.\u00a0 These artists were probably the exception and ultimately, most illustration was done by professional illustrators.<\/span> \u00a0An analogy could be made between the world of illustration to fine arts and the world of journalism to fine literature.\u00a0 Some journalists have remarkable abilities to depict events and life.\u00a0 Journalists such as Truman Capote and Tom Wolfe have written about very particular events\u2026..a particularly trendy new Left party\u2026..a trial.<\/span> \u00a0Norman Rockwell considered himself an illustrator.\u00a0 He probably thought of himself as a top-of-the-line illustrator.\u00a0 He certainly had the \u201cchops\u201d so to speak.\u00a0 A recent show of Rockwell\u2019s work at the Guggenheim Museum was a very clever attempt to further blur the lines between illustration and art.\u00a0 Perhaps, the show was the wish of the curator, Robert Rosenblum, to get the viewer to re-think the differences between illustration and fine art.\u00a0 The location of the exhibit at the very modern and hip Guggenheim thus provided the backdrop (rather humorously) for this revisionist take on figurative art.\u00a0 Perhaps another aspect of this rather clouded issue is that Rockwell, as an illustrator, might be considered a much better painter technically than Hopper, his direct contemporary.\u00a0 Even if one could argue this point, Edward Hopper is clearly a great artist and Norman Rockwell is still an illustrator (one with enormous facilities, but nevertheless, an illustrator).<\/span> \u00a0Should all work reproduced in a magazine be considered illustration?<\/span> Some magazines reproduce work by Eakins and Homer.\u00a0 These images, however, were created long before the magazines existed and have nothing to do with the term illustration<\/em>.\u00a0 Some journals might produce images by Antonio L\u00f3pez Garc\u00eda or Lucian Freud to illustrate an article.\u00a0 These images were not originally produced as illustrations. They had their own reason for being born and were inspired by the artist\u2019s keenly felt vision.\u00a0 Rockwell, on the other hand, had one or two week deadlines for his covers of the Saturday Evening Post.\u00a0 His images clearly had to do with anecdote and contemporary, weekly events.\u00a0 He was a whiz at rendering scenes that brimmed with a certain humanity and American optimism.\u00a0 Unfortunately, one could argue that these images come close to the sensibility of the world of Soviet Realism. His scenes are often a comfortable, cloying take on the America that never existed. This is akin to the Republican Party\u2019s reference to American Family Values, a way of life that exists for a sliver of our population.<\/span> \u00a0Every now and then, work that appears in a newspaper or a journal transcends the genre. In literature, certain books by Dickens and Dostoyevsky were written to be serialized in newspapers.\u00a0 However, reading A Tale of Two Cities<\/em> or Crime and Punishment<\/em> in book form is really wonderful as they are big works, full of complicated ideas.\u00a0 They just began life within a newspaper format. Bergman\u2019s Scenes from a Marriage<\/em> and Fanny and Alexander<\/em> were made for television, but they defy the medium to become world-class works of art.<\/span> \u00a0Andrew Wyeth is criticized by voguish critics and curators as being an illustrator.\u00a0 This is a highly debatable point, but even if it was the case, certain of Wyeth\u2019s work, for instance Overflow<\/em>, Night Shadow<\/em> and Lovers in<\/em> his Helga series, are so abstract, moody and personal that their connection with illustration makes no sense.<\/span> \u00a0At the start of his career, the artist Edward Hopper worked as an illustrator.\u00a0 Some of his paintings can look like illustration.\u00a0 However, what illustrator could create the moody and iconic works that Hopper\u2019s reputation rests on?\u00a0 Images such as Sunday Morning<\/em> and Nighthawks<\/em> pulse with a great American spirit and poignancy.<\/span> \u00a0I lived in Italy at the American Academy in Rome for almost three years and have traveled and had the good fortune to see a great variety of art.\u00a0 Many of these works depict scenes in the bible.\u00a0 Many of these paintings did not move beyond the subject depicted and interest us merely as historical artifacts. Could Giotto then be considered an illustrator?\u00a0 His work usually narrates some clear cut story from the life of Christ.\u00a0 Yet, when we see the Giotto\u2019s work in person at the Arena Chapel in Padua, Signorelli at the San Brizio Chapel in Orvieto or Piero in Monterchi, we are deeply moved. They transcend their time and speak to us because of their mystery, abstraction and depth, creating remarkable personal visions.\u00a0 So even though they depict specific scenes, they represent some of the greatest visual images and works of art that human beings have produced.<\/span> \u00a0A dear friend and fellow artist says he finds illustration to be very interesting.\u00a0 Moreover, he says that he enjoys the shear abilities that an artist has to depict form.\u00a0 He claims that many fine paintings lean on an illustrator\u2019s ability to see form.\u00a0 I am not sure if he is right, though I have enormous respect for his well-considered opinions.\u00a0 Perhaps he is confusing facility and art.<\/span> \u00a0Artists such as Sargent work with a certain brushy liquidity and his heirs have inherited a \u2018smack and panache\u2019 to their brushstroke.\u00a0 Their work brims over with a facility that looks a bit like illustration.\u00a0 Here, the issue possibly isn\u2019t the look <\/em>of the work, but a certain lack of depth or visual commitment.<\/span> \u00a0Stretching the discussion, there are artists, such as Bosch (Garden of<\/em> Earthly Delights<\/em>), Balthus and Gregory Gillespie who might, at times, seem to be illustrating stories.\u00a0 The difference is that their stories are deeply mysterious and poetic and the books<\/em> for these stories don\u2019t really exist. They probably are located in a fantasy dreamscape within the artist\u2019s imagination.<\/span> \u00a0Perhaps, the difference between illustration and art lies in the surface issues of the former which produces a certain thinness of form and creates a quick fix or take.\u00a0 There is a cleverness of form, a turn of a phrase.\u00a0 Unfortunately, the meal is quickly eaten and not remembered.\u00a0 It is dominated by gesture and facility.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t last and reverberate.<\/span> \u00a0Basically illustration lacks the complexity, depth and commitment of fine art.\u00a0 The complicated individuals created by a Dostoyevsky, Hardy, or Coetzee could never be considered illustration<\/em>.\u00a0 These characters aren\u2019t a \u201cgloss\u201d. They represent the full measure of a human being. \u00a0Their portraits move and are independent; they aren\u2019t marionettes gesturing to invoke some anecdotal event (a Thanksgiving dinner, street demonstration or political event).<\/span> \u00a0Ultimately, to me, illustration is like pornography.\u00a0 I know it when I see it.<\/span> \u00a0My conclusion is that the word illustration<\/em> should be banned in the writing and discussion of figurative art.\u00a0 What about a moratorium on the word?<\/span> \u00a0<\/span> March, 2008<\/span> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Figurative Tradition and Illustration \u00a0 Having been a student and an artist for more than forty years, I have been struck by the use of the word Illustration. In the past 10 years, especially, critics for highly touted art … Continue reading