Everybody knows Ludwig Bemelmans' work (above). He's the guy who did the Madeline books.
Bemelmans was an outstanding gouache painter (example above) at a time when nobody took gouache seriously. The art critics were only interested in oils so Bemelmans and others abandoned their water media and took up oil, sometimes with disastrous results.
Here's the same scene as above, only Bemelmans painted it in oil this time. Which would you rather own?
Bemelmans made a big mistake. I'm second to none in my love for classical oil paintings (above), but I have to admit that there's something about the modern era that's not congenial with oil.
Whatever it is, it may have been afoot even in Rubens' time. He was the acknowledged master of the highly finished oil painting, yet half his work feels impressionistic, and looks more like sketches than finished art. I don't think Rubens was lazy; he just found it difficult to convey with heavy oil what was in the air in his time.
No doubt our exposure to Japanese art influenced us. Japan made high art out of what essentially are cartoons. Of course we were already on the cartoon track with artists like Cruickshank, Daumier, Busch and Lear. Later on Lautrec, Picasso, Dufy and Miro would take it up. Cartooning really was the heart of 20th Century art.
Getting back to Bemelmans, I love his early cartoony pictures. They're not just a stylization of things he saw, but a suggestion of how it felt to see them.
Take the scene above for example. It's bracing and incongruous at the same time. That's how modern man sees everything, as a puzzling and exciting hodgepodge of opposites. In this case the opposites are technology and nature, light childish line used to portray heavy iron, rapid movement of colossal things, and the acceptance of it all by ordinary people.
What separates us from the past is that we moderns have no fear of living with contradiction and contrasts. We revel in it. We favor artistic styles that embody it.
I also like the kid way that Bemelmans draws. Here (above) he portrays the regimentation and technology that makes modern restaurants possible, and renders them in a style that suggests charm and childhood innocence.
Why isn't gouache used in modern cartoon painting's anymore?! I'd kill to see these kind of backgrounds in cartoons. They're all done on the computer now in Photoshop and they always look the same: very flat and boring, or they're ripping off Ren and Stimpy. Thanks for the wonderful post, Eddie!
ReplyDeleteWhile you're at it, do you have any suggestions on what I can for Spring Break in case I can't go on that road trip to New Jersey and New York? Thanks.
I remember seeing the Madeline books as a kid. Haven't thought about them for years. Thanks for the post!
ReplyDeleteDon't know if you saw this, Eddie, but here's a small animation piece I did. My first try at animating a cartoon from start to finish. Any notes and suggestions are welcomed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CO4tzZ2PVYg
Brubaker: Haw! I liked it. You should do lots of films like that...one every two weeks or so...and post them without restriction so everybody can see them.
ReplyDeleteLearning animation can be very slow. It can take years or decades. The only way I know to speed up the process is to expose yourself to public humiliation on a regular basis. Your fear of it will motivate you to make fast improvements.
Roberto: Go somewhere that's interesting but outside your comfort zone...somewhere where everybody will know you're an outsider.
Thanks, Eddie.
ReplyDeleteI might do that. I have a few things storyboarded.
Great post. The gouache painting is so much more lively and moody than the oil version, which looks boring by comparison. The New Yorker cover takes me right back to my years as a server. Great to see the back of the house, a little narrow kitchen with the girls ready to run the food to their tables. I can almost hear the chatter and clanking plates!
ReplyDeleteOn a somewhat related note, I've been meaning to share a particular style of music with you, Eddie. It's called Shape Notes or Sacred Harp. It's very primitive, and powerful, and moody, which is why it is kind of related to this post. here is the song that introduced me to it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5g1UHZwN3ds&feature=related
and a more melancholy song from the same film:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIkPyUecsnI
The singers run through a song singing notes according to their "shape", called Fa, So, La, and Mi.
There are still singings happening all over the country. There is one at a baptist church just two blocks from my home, every month. It's become one of my favorite activities. I have learned how to sightread/sing, and feel an incredible sense of humanity, awes, and peace when the group harmonizes during these ancient tunes. Here is a historian discussing the heritage of the songs:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3mb3Ya9OUc
and here is what it looks like in person:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrlNN7ftYpk
I hope you get some enjoyment out of these videos, Eddie!
Wow! Eddie, this is one of your most important posts. I've never thought of how the discovery of Japanese art by the Impressionists had the decisive effect of turning painting toward cartooning, but you're absolutely right. At the same time, they had another example of a cartoonist closer to home who was a great artist: Daumier. And then, as you say, all down the line into the twentieth century. I'd maybe go further with your thought about oil painting as a medium. Maybe the increasingly loose, impressionistic brush strokes starting with Turner's paintings of trains and ships and going up to Monet and Renoir show how oil paint as a medium struggles to depict the modern world, a world of speed and movement.
ReplyDeleteKelly: Wow and double wow! Those videos were great! I listened to some others on the same theme, and was much impressed. I'd never heard of this music before. Thanks much!
ReplyDeleteGlad you enjoyed, Eddie. If you ever want to make an afternoon of it, look here for information on Singings in the L.A. region:
ReplyDeletehttp://homepage.smc.edu/russell_richard/fasola/
and here:
http://homepage.smc.edu/russell_richard/fasola/regsings.htm
If you go, ask someone to let you stand with them as they lead. When you are in the center, getting the full surround sound effect, it'll be like nothing you've ever experienced.
BTW the Jung and Freud movie, "A Dangerous Method" is available to rent, at least here in Louisville KY. It was even better the second time around.
Gouache backgrounds were once common in animation but went to acrylic in the 1950s and never came back. Casein paint, a type of tempera using milk as the vehicle, is rarely found today. Casein paint was usually applied to hard surfaces like plywood rather than soft, pliable ones such as canvas, because once dry casein paint was prone to cracking unless applied onto a hard surface.
DeleteKelly: Thanks for the LA listing! I'll try to make it.
ReplyDeleteThanks also for the reference to the psychoanalysis movie. I'll give it a try. I'm not a Keira Knightly fan, but maybe this'll be the film that wins me over.
Stephen: I could be wrong, but my hunch is that speed and movement as influences on modern art are overestimated. I'll try to blog about what I consider the major influences are. It's a hard subject to write about. Few people can be objective about their own era.