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History of Illustration Susan Doyle, Jaleen Grove & Whitney Sherman (editors)

Chapter 24: The Shifting Postwar Marketplace: Illustration in the United States and Canada, 1940-1970 Stephanie Haboush Plunkett, Jaleen Grove

ISBN: 9781501342110

CSULB Library Permalink: https://csu-lb.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01CALS_ULB/d7ul0l/alma991015984308502910

Doyle, Susan, et al., editors. History of Illustration. Fairchild Books, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018.

PartV

The Evolution of Illustration in an Electronic Age

The Shifting Postvvar Marketplace: Illustration in the United States and Canada,1940-1970 Stephanie Haboush Plunkett with contributions by Jaleen Grove

Chapte r 24: T11 e Shifting Postwar Marketplace: Illustratio n in th e United States and Canada, 1940- 1970 397

In the first half of the twentieth century, general-interest magazines like the Saturday Evening Post and Collier 's , and popular women's magazines such as Ladies' Home Journal, Good Housekeeping, and McCall's, had built vast, loyal followings. Emerging from a long period of political and economic transformation following the Great Depression (1929-1939) and World War II (1939- 1945), Americans began to re-imagine themselves and the new lives that they hoped to lead. Production, finely tuned by wartime necessity, enabled a booming peacetime economy with a plethora of new products and modern, time-saving conveniences. Directly linked to commerce and to selling the "American Dream" of affluence for everyone, the magazines' aspirational images depicting desirable, ideal high standards of living reflected and shaped twentieth-century visual culture, public perceptions, and consumption. Top publications boasted subscriptions of two to nine million during the 1940s and 1950s, and copies were shared among family and friends, bringing the readership even higher.

Yet by 1970, many of these magazines had disappeared as American popular media evolved, transforming the field of illustration. This chapter explores the illustration of mid-century mass magazines, the postwar shift in publishing and visual culture, and illustrators' responses to it.

Influence of Film and Photography

In magazines, images were encountered at a pace and sequence controlled by the reader, who studied each illustration one at a time and who ascribed significance to each picture according to his or her participatory, personalized interpretation. Film was autonomous by comparison, presenting dynamic content in a gripping medium in a way that was not as dependent on viewer participation. Because one had to see film in a theater, the medium did not immediately threaten illustrated magazines, but it did have an impact on illustration in that viewers became relatively more passive in their media consumption.

From film's earliest days in the 1890s until the 1990s, illustrations appeared on movie posters far more frequently than photographs. Many featured a scene or montage of scenes from a film, whereas others emphasized the likenesses of major stars (Figure 24.1 ). As audiences became used to seeing close-ups of actors' heads on screen, 1930s magazine covers zoomed in on cover girls' faces too-a format made popular by Jon Whitcomb (American, 1906-1988), a leading illustrator of glamour and celebrities who had begun his career painting movie, theater, and travel posters in his native Ohio. His 1930s story illustrations featuring melodramatic close-ups against a plain background set off a new trend in illustration, nicknamed big head illustration (Figure 24.1). This style of composition eventually dominated fiction illustration in women's magazines of the 1950s.

Even before mid-century, photography had begun to replace narrative illustration in magazines. Photographs conveyed a sense of immediacy and placed viewers in the moment, recording events more directly and with presumed accuracy. These qualities felt contemporary and representative of the increasing pace of a changing society (see Chapter 17, Theme Box 36, "The Camera"). Though photography ultimately posed a challenge by usurping illustration's dominant role, it was also essential for those who sought to capture countless details, from the subtleties of facial expression to the folds of a model's dress. For many practitioners, reference photography all but eliminated repeat modeling sessions with high professional fees- an advantage in a deadline-driven field.

Artists have used cameras and projection devices for centuries, sometimes surreptitiously if they wished to conceal technical intervention in their process. For many years, fine artists and some illustrators lambasted drawings made with the aid of photographs. They perceived photography as artificial support, which

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Jon Whitcomb, movie poster, T'1 e Glass Slipper, 1955. In thi s movie poster featuring Leslie Caron in a film adaptation of Cinderella, Whitco mb creates an idealized portrait that subtly al ters the actress's pro portions, exaggerating her large eyes and pouty lower lip. Unlike studio photography, illustration allowed for the seamless introduction of fantasy elements like the twinkling stars and magic "pixie dust" around her head.

Norman Rockwell Muse um Collec tion.

Figure 24.2

398 Part V: The Evolution of Illustration in an Electronic Age

to them seemed antithetical to the notion of the artist's creative synthesis and skill. Nonetheless, many mid-century illustrators used photographs and projection devices as an integral part of their process (Figure 24.2).

Narrative Realism, Nationalism, and American Values at Mid-Century

As discussed in Chapter 18, illustrators in the United States and Canada and their audiences enjoyed a long tradition of narrative realism-visual storytelling derived from academic painting. Advertising, political rhetoric, and textbooks of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries projected presumptive morals and spirits of the people through narrative realism, which often celebrated ideals of family life, democracy, and prosperity-the tenets of

Louie Lamone (American, 191 8-2007), reference photographs for New Kids in the Neighborhood (top row). Norman Rockwell (1894- 1978, American), New Kids in the Neighborhood, illustration for "Negro in the Suburbs" by Jack Star, Look, June 16, 1967 (bottom row). Oil on ca nvas. Following his preliminary sketches, Norman Rockwell we nt to elaborate lengths to create photo graphs that portrayed his concepts exactl y by scouting models and locations, researching costumes and props, and staging scenarios fo r the camera. Photographs were then transferred, in whole or in part, to his fin al substrate with the aid of a balopticon projector.

the so-called American Dream. Until the 1960s, social injustice, class divisions, and the persistent economic hardships that many faced were generally ignored in images that reflected a pared-down, small-town existence and promoted as commonplace a material standard that was more aspirational than attainable for many readers.

The American Dream was just as seductive for Europeans and Asians, whose advertising art resembled American examples by the 1920s. Canadians, exposed to far more American media than their own, adopted American values despite the misgivings of cultural nationalists who feared an erosion of Canadian identity. Toronto-based Rex Woods (British, Canadian, 1903- 1987) even joined the New York Society of Illustrators and mimicked the advertising art and calendar art techniques of J. C. Leyendecker, Rolf Armstrong (see Chapter 20), and Haddon "Sunny" Sundblom (see the section "Sundblom Studios" later). Woods designed pretty-girl covers for almost every Canadian Home Journal from 1930 to 1947 (Figure 24.3).

Depictions of African Americans

The unwritten but established policy of the Saturday Evening Post was that African Americans were to be

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Figure 24.3 Rex Woods, cover, Canadian Home Journal, August, 1932. Canad ian magazines had a diffi cul t time competing against better-financed American ones, and frequently resorted to mimicking America n titles. This cover aptl y documents the co nvergence of American and Canadian cultures: the young woman wears trousers and has a ukulele, like li berated New York Ci ty fl appe rs, but reclines in a ca noe-long a symbol of Canadian identi ty.

Image courtesy of Thomas Fisher Rare Books Library. University of Toronto. By per mission of the Rex Woods Estate. Used wit h permission of Rogers Media Inc. A ll rights reserved.

Chapter 24: TI1 e Shifting Postwar Marketplace: Illustration in the United States and Canada, 1940- 1970 399

portrayed almost exclusively in service roles- evidence of the racial prejudices that sparked the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Other marginalized populations were largely ignored unless pointedly the subject of a text. A soft approach to racial inequity characterizes Boy in a Dining Car (1946), a Post cover (Figure 24.4) by Norman Rockwell (American, 1894- 1978) that sympathetically portrays an African American man, but in a service role as a kindly dining car waiter. Until the 1960s, Pullman porters and waiters were exclusively African American. While the profession contributed to the development of the black middle class in America, ubiquitous portrayals of African Americans in service roles perpetuated racial prejudice.

A masterful visual communicator, Rockwell was America's best-known twentieth, century illustrator, whose extensive body of work over a six -decade career became a defining national influence. A Time reporter in 1943 said, "He constantly achieves that compromise between a love of realism and the tendency to idealize, which is one of the most deeply ingrained characteristics of the American people:'

Less conservative than the Post, Look, published from 1937 to 1971, was a popular general-interest magazine that emphasized current events and photography. The magazine sometimes commissioned artworks by noted illustrators like Bernie Fuchs (American, 1932- 2009) to capture emotionally charged events relating to the civil rights movement and other contemporary themes, as in his 1965 portrait of American Baptist minister and activist Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929- 1968) (Figure 24.5). Circulation of this pictorial biweekly peaked in 1969 at 7. 75 million readers.

Figure 24.4 Norman Rockwell , Boy in a Dining Car, cove r art , The Saturday Evening Post, December 7, 1946. Oi l on canvas, 38 x 36''. Rockwell mirrored a moment in his so n's life that he thought would touch a common chord. Inspired by H. K. Browne's illustratio n of a similar scene in Charles Dickens's David Coppe,field, Rockwell 's painting desc ribes a young boy's first experience of ca lculating a waiter's tip.

Illustrators Harvey Dinnerstein and Burton Silverman (both American, b. 1928) created compelling depictions of African Americans in reportorial drawings that revived the historical tradition of the artist as visual journalist. Published in newspapers and magazines, their works documented the arrest of Rosa Parks on December 1, 1955, for refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white passenger, as well as the event's aftermath. This reportorial series of works, including Church Meeting, Montgomery by Silverman (Figure 24.6), and Henrietta Brenson [sic], 1956, by Dinnerstein, capture

Figure 24.5 Bernie Fuchs, Portrait of Martin Luther King, Jr. , in Look, March 23, 1965. Bernie Fuchs's portrait captures the energy of civi l rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. , who led thousa nds of nonviolent demonstrators to Montgomery, Alabama, after a fi ve- day march from Selma to Montgomery, in which African A mer ican res idents joined with the Student Nonviolent Coordinati ng Committee (SNCC) and the Southern Chri stian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to campaign fo r voting rights.

Courtesy of'l'he Fuchs Fam ily. © Estate of

Bernie r:uchs.

Figure 24.6 Burton Silven11an, Ch urch Meeting, Montgomery, 1956. Pencil on paper, 12 '/• x 11 ''. Drawing in graph ite on pape r directly from life in bus sta tions, courtrooms, and churches, Silverman sought to capture uni versal human emoti ons and to ('remain

distant enough to make an effective piece of art without losing contact with the intense fee lings being generated at the moment of creati on."

Courtesy of The Pa1-rish Art M useum, Water M,11, NY, Li ttlejohn Col lect ion 196 1.3.1 88. © Burton Silverman. 1994 © Bur l'on Philip Silverman/ Licensed by

VAGA, New York, NY.

Figure 24.7 Harvey Dinnerstein, Henrietta Brenson [sic], Montgomery, 1956, 1956. Graphite and chalk on gray laid paper, 14 ·1/1c, X 9 1//)

(composition) . Dinnerstein cap tures Brinson's resi lience and determination, registered in her defiantl y folded arms and furrowed brow. Henrietta Brinson was a par ticipant in the Civil Rights Movement.

Delaware Art Museum, F. V. du Pont Acquisit ion Fund, I 993. © Harvey Dinnerstein, Delaware Art Museum, F. V. du Pont Acquisition Fund, 1993.

400 Part V: The Evolutio n of Illustration in an Electronic Age

the spectrum of emotions that marked the moment as a turning point in the struggle for civil rights (Figure 24.7) .

Depictions of Middle-Class Families an d Women

Alfred Charles "Al" Parker (American, 1906-1985) inherited the tradition of narrative realism but updated it in both content and form for mid-century audiences. Parker invented an idealistic mother and daughter who dressed alike and graced covers for Ladies' Home Journal from February 1939 until May 1952 (Figure 24.8). The popular duo celebrated holiday traditions, shared a love of sport, and played their part supporting the war effort during World War II . Their ideal family was reunited in July 1945 when their returning soldier was welcomed home, and in keeping with the postwar "baby boom;' a son was soon born to Parker's ideal American family in 1946. Parker's last mother-daughter cover portrayed an officer's return to his still-beautiful wife and growing family during the Korean War conflict. Thereafter, Ladies' Home Journal 's covers were solely photographic.

Expected to manage households and raise children, many middle-class women did not have the means to achieve the beauty standards set by their magazines. Opportunities for education and other accomplishments were limited, and professional employment for married women was not often a subject of serious consideration.

Figure 24.8 Alfred Charles "Al" Parker, cover, Ladies' Home Journal, February, 1939. This mother-daughter cover illustration was the first of a popu lar series featur ing an idealized American fa mily that continued until 1952. Parker's cover was designed with a Poster Style aesthetic, emphasizing strong silhouettes against a fl at backgrou nd. The graceful mother and daughter gliding across the sug gested ice in perfect unison, and in matching outfi ts, sparked a fashion trend.

No rman Rockwell Museum Collection . Originally published in Ladies' Haine Journaf3

magazine, February 1939.

From their inception, Ladies' Home Journal, Good Housekeeping, McCall's, and others encouraged the belief that, as charismatic purveyors of taste and culture, women were most instrumental when helping their families achieve success. The suburban home, replete with late model cars, new appliances, and well-scrubbed children, became synonymous with postwar affluence.

A cover illustration by Stevan Dohanos (American, 1907- 1994) exposes the challenges faced by American women who shouldered much of the responsibility for family enjoyment without the opportunity to fully participate in the experience. A woman's husband and children enjoy a relaxing holiday at the beach while she is relegated to the kitchen and endless chores (Figure 24.9).

Teaching the Narrative Tradition: The Famous Artists School

In the late 1940s, the executives of the Society of Illustrators sought to share the traditions, skills, and professionalism of established artists through a correspondence school that would impart their knowledge and help support the Society. The idea was not original-during the late nineteenth century, illustrator Charles Hope Provost founded the Correspondence

Chapter 24: The Shifting Postwar Marketplace: Illustratio n in the United States and Canada, 1940- 1970 401

Figure 24.9

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A CINCH FOR SABOTEURS

Stevan Dohanos, cover, Saturday Evening Post, July 19, 1952. Stevan Doha nos created many cove rs for the Saturday Evening Post and other publications that fo cused on people in their environs. He frequently portrayed elements found near his home in Westport, Connecticut, an active community of illustrators during the twentieth century.

School of Illustrating, which offered "home instruction in drawing for newspapers and magazines by successful illustrators;' and the Federal Schools of Commercial Designing in Minneapolis began selling correspondence lessons in 1919 (see Chapter 18, Theme Box 39, "Education"). But the Society had the advantage of putting some of the biggest names and greatest talents in the business into their plans.

Begun in 1948 in Westport, Connecticut-an artist's colony since the 1920s- the Famous Artists School became America's most popular art correspondence school. Due to the Society's nonprofit status, it ended up being operated independently for profit with ex-Society president Albert Dorne (American, 1906-1965) at its head. The initial course offered in-depth how-to instruction in the working methods of eleven "famous artists;' including Norman Rockwell, Al Parker, Stevan Dohanos, Robert Fawcett, Jon Whitcomb, Harold von Schmidt, John Atherton, Ben Stahl, Peter Heick, Austin Briggs, and Fred Ludekens (Figures 24.10 and 24.11). Selected lessons were eventually combined in four volume sets focused on the visual narrative, from idea to finished illustration. Revised annually, the course was updated with new lessons and artists. Salesman sold Famous Artists School courses door-to-door throughout North America and eventually internationally, with Famous Cartoonists and Famous Writers courses soon added to the mix.

Figure 24. 10 Unidentified photographer, publicity photograph of the Founding Famous Artists School lllustration faculty with paintings. Created for Cecil B. DeMille's film, Samson and Delilah , 1949. Left to right: Harold von Schmidt, John Atherton , Al Parker, Al Dorne (white shirt, on the ground ), Norman Rockwell, Ben Stahl, Peter Heick, Stevan Dohanos, /on Whitcomb, Austin Briggs (rear, far right), and Robert Fawcett (front, fa r right). Fred Ludekens is not pictured here.

- · - ii

0 - Figure 24.11 Al Dorne, Head Study, 1949. Pencil on paper, 14 x 18''. Al Dome's style hovered perfectly between caricature and illustration. Although a Famous Artists School book about his techniques was never pub li shed, as director of the School, he contributed many drawings to the career course, such as thi s sequ enti al series on the development of a head.

Norman Rockwell Museum Collect ion, Gift of Magdalen and Robert Livesey/Famous Artists School Collection.

Figu re 24. 12

402 Part V: The Evolution of Illustration in an Electroni c Age

The courses attracted more than 60,000 students in the 1940s and 1950s. Students completed assignments from the comfort of home and then sent them to Westport to be corrected by in-house illustrators trained in the methods of the founding faculty. The school's popularity illuminates the historic influence of correspondence education during the postwar era. The G.I. Bill, officially known as the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, was created to help veterans of World War II by granting tuition stipends for college or trade schools. From 1944 to 1949, nearly nine million veterans received $4 billion under this program-a boon to the Famous Artists School. Women displaced from wartime jobs by returning veterans also sought training in illustration.

Impact of Television

When television was introduced in the late 1940s, few could disguise their fascination with the swiftly passing images of "the home screen:' Many saw their first telecasts in bars, which won and retained customers by installing

Norma n Rockwell, New Television Antenna , cover art, Th e Sa turday Evening Post, November 5, 1949. Oil on canvas, 46 1/ 2 x 43''. Ne ,v Television Antenna was painted in the midst of the television bonanza, when public interest in the new medium was on the rise. A workman balancing on the steep rooftop of a time-worn Victo ri an home insta ll s the latest technology while the home's owner points enthusias tically to a shadowy picture on his television sc reen. In the 1950s, many older urban buildings we re razed in favor of more modern structures. Rockwell thus measures th e promise of new technology against the historical past, and invites our considera tion of whether television may become the "religion" of the future, as suggested by the church steeple.

Digital Image © 2016 M useum Associates I LACMA. Licensed by Art Resource, NY. All righ ts reserved. © 1949, Curtis Publishing, Ind ianapolis, IN. All rights reserved. Printed by permission of the Norman Rockwell Family Agency. Copyright © I 949 the Norman Rockwell Fam ily Enti ties.

TV sets that were often tuned to professional W(~stling, an early filler of the schedule. Of the 102,000 TV sets in the United States in early 1948, two-thirds were in the New York area, where most stations operated. Those living more than seventy-five miles from such urban centers as New York, Chicago, St. Louis, Boston, or Los Angeles could do little more than read about television as many rural regions did not gain viewing access until 1955 (Figure 24.12).

Television became both a symptom and a cause of accelerating cultural change in America during the 1950s, marking shifts in family life, gender roles, politics, leisure, consumerism, and communications. The new medium especially posed a challenge for illustration. In many respects, television shows such as Leave It to Beaver (1957-1963), Father Knows Best (1954-1960), and The Donna Reed Show (1958-1966) appropriated the tradition of narrative realism of magazine fiction-and in turn, influenced illustration of the era. Amos Sewell (American, 1901-1983 ), who created fifty-seven Saturday Evening Post covers, captures the impact of television in an amusing but pointed portrayal of a hospital visit that is not going well from the patient's point of view (Figure 24.13) . An ignored magazine on the desk pales by comparison to the engrossing television set. As people began watching TV instead of reading, corporations shifted their advertising budgets away from print to television, reducing revenues for many illustration-rich magazines.

Figure 24.13 Amos Sewell , Hospital Visit, cover art, The Saturday Even ing Post, April 29, 1961. Oil on board, 26 '/., x 24 1/2 ". Sewell sets the scene by showing what is seemingly becoming passe-books and magazin es. Oblivious to the pati ent, this \voman's husband and son are absorbed in a television program whil e she endures thei r in sensitivity. Presumably, guests would never have begun rudely reading the magazine on th e desk during th eir visit- evidence of the cultural shift that th e new medium brought.

Chapter 24: The Shifting Postwar Marketplace: Illustration in the Un ited States and Canada, 1940- 1970 403

Theme Box 46: McLuhan: Media Theory by Sheena Calvert

In the fol lowing passage, Marshall McLuhan (Canadian, 191 1-1 980), an important thinker in media theory, foresaw the form and import of tech nological developments such as the Internet:

A computer as a research and

communication instrument could

enhance retrieval , obsolesce mass library organization , retrieve the

individual's encyclopedic function

and flip into a private line to speed

ily tailored data of a saleable kind. (from The Gutenberg Galaxy: The

Making of Typographic Man, 1962)

He theorized that such ways of producing knowledge and accessing information were the logical exten sion of new forms of "electronic interdependence" taking shape through the proliferation of television and other electronic media forms of the mid-twentieth century.

In Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964), McLuhan distinguishes between "hot" and "cool" media. Hot (high-definition) media are sensually engaging and immersive and require less active attention. Movies and radio, for instance, are linear in form and require little decoding. Cool (low definit ion) media are more detached and require more active audience engagement to decode meaning . Cool media would include books and, today, computer games. A lecture is hot, while a seminar is cool, and so on. Forms of il lustration that require focused attention and thoughtful contemplation might be described as cool-graphic novels, for example.

In The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (1962), McLuhan argues that from 1453 onward (the date of Gutenberg's intro duction of moveable type in Europe), human understanding has been influenced by what McLuhan calls the "linearization of print," in which we habitually think in straight lines, left to right and front to back (as in a book). This, in turn, forms our understanding of the world as primarily linear and becomes a habit of thought. It also isolates us from one another, through silent reading: "Printing, a ditto device, confirmed and extended the new visual stress. It created the portable

book, which men could read in privacy and in isolation from others," he wrote. The Gutenberg Galaxy throws a particularly astute light on the historical and technological as they interface and criticizes the move from oral to visual forms of under standing that print culture promotes: "[T]he world of visual perspective is one of unified and homogeneous space. Such a world is alien to the resonating diversity of spoken words."

For McLuhan, the convergence of technologies and mass media held great potential to reverse the frag mentation of society: the growth of electronic media would return modern society back to a preliterate, oral (non-print-based) culture and social organization, making the world into a global village where '"Time' has ceased, and 'space' has vanished." Such media would retribalize and

reunify human beings in ways that would address what he saw as the problematic separation of people that had taken place within print culture.

We can see how such ideas are now enacted within social media, where groups form and individuals are linked globally without being affected by distance. It's interesting to consider how the growth of social media has both performed this reunification to a degree, while also reinforcing it. We have access to more information and more social connections than ever, and technology has prompted great social change in ways McLuhan predicted. Yet there is still an inherent separation and loneliness in the specter of people behind individual

screens, lacking face-to-face inter action with other human beings.

As McLuhan himself warns in The Gutenberg Galaxy: "There can only be disaster arising from unawareness of the causalities and effects inherent in our technologies. "

In Understanding Media, McLuhan also interrogated the relationship between the medium in which some thing appears and the effects of that medium on the message being con veyed, a concept he famously sum marized with the catchphrase "The medium is the message." For illustra tors, the question of medium versus message is of great significance. If

an image is hand-drawn rather than computer-generated, how does this affect the ideas within the work?

McLuhan suggests that all media have intrinsic properties that deeply influ ence the communication of meaning, where human beings are "massaged" (manipulated) by various media forms that each affect the human sensorium differently. If we think about how digital media shape our perceptions of the

world and our modes of work and make us increasingly screen-based, we can see the truth in one of McLuhan's key statements: "We shape our tools and they in turn shape us." This greatly debated theory that our tools and our media deeply and irrevocably change society, often in unpredictable and uncontrollable ways, is called technological determinism.

McLuhan's thought was summa rized and given visual form in a highly influential milestone in illustration, a book titled The Medium is the Mas sage, in collaboration with the emi nent graphic designer Quentin Fiore (American, b. 1920) and publisher Jerome Agel (American, 1930-2007) . Exploiting phototypesetting and montage to present integrated image and-text messages in the format of the mass-produced pulp paperback book, this example of the very elec tronic media and new communication consumption that McLuhan wrote about was also the heir to earlier experiments and theories introduced by the Dadaists (Chapter 19) and Walter Benjamin (see Chapter 13, Theme Box 27, "Benjamin: Aura, Mass Reproduction, and Translation").

Further Reading McLuhan, Marshall, The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (Toronto : University of Toronto Press; 1962).

McLuhan, Marshall , The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man (New York: Vanguard Press , 1951 ).

McLuhan, Marshall, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (Corte Madera, CA: Gingko Press, 2003) .

McLuhan, Marshall , Quentin Fiore, and Jerome Agel, The Medium is the Mas

sage: An Inventory of Effects (Corte Madera, CA: Gingko Press, 2001).

404 Part V: The Evolution of Illustration in an Electronic Age

The postwar trend toward suburban living also reduced newsstand sales, while rising production and circulation costs lowered profit margins. To combat this problem, publishers experimented with a range of creative marketing techniques, such as geographically specialized split-run editions, which allowed publishers and corporations to target segmented markets (such as Canada) by tailoring a portion of the print run with different advertising, editorial content, or covers designed especially for them. Striking graphics, product samples, and foldouts engaged audiences but could not stem the tide. Between 1950 and 1970, illustration-friendly publications like the Womans Home Companion, Colliers, and even the Saturday Evening Post, disappeared. Produced as a weekly from 1897 to 1963, and later as a biweekly, the Post ceased publication in 1969. Since 1970, it has appeared in a variety of formats that do not reflect its original design as a richly illustrated, general-interest magazine.

Influence of Modern Art

As film, photography, and television were changing the media landscape, modernist sensibilities favoring abstraction, avant-garde art, and the Swiss International Style in design also relegated narrative realism to a lesser status (see Chapter 19). As in the art world, conceptual approaches began to emerge in the work of illustrators who investigated abstraction and visual metaphor over literal representation. Young postwar illustrators and graphic designers began integrating elements of Post-Impressionism, Cubism, Futurism, Dada, and Surrealism in an effort to bring applied art into greater alignment with fine art. One such illustrator, Boris Artzybasheff (Ukrainian, American, 1899-1965), created striking, socially conscious Surrealist designs for many major magazines, including Life and Fortune. He also illustrated more than two hundred covers for Time between 1941 and 1965, including one featuring an anthropomorphized computer that cheerfully assists businesspeople with their data- an optimistic vision of the future that registers none of the complexity of the digital revolution predicted by Marshall McLuhan (see Theme Box 46, "McLuhan: Media Theory" in this chapter) (Figure 24.14).

Illustrators began to abandon the realism and compositional approaches of academic painting. Al Parker's innovative compositions, for instance, used informal poses, high-key palettes, and unique, eye-stopping layouts that emphasized design over detail. American illustrators Tom Lovell (1909- 1997), Jon Whitcomb (1906-1988), John Gannam (1907-1965), and Edwin Georgi (1896-1964) also contemporized traditional narrative formats with similar innovations. In one boy/girl illustration, a genre that depicts a man and a woman together and captures the spirit of their relationship, M. Coburn "Coby" Whitmore's (American, 1913-1988) lush brushwork and high-key color palette

are reminiscent of Post-Impression'ism (ca. 1886-1905), the French art movement characterized by flattened, light-filled spaces and asymmetrical compositions (Figure 24.15). Despite its somewhat abstracted quality, Whitmore's image remains tied to the romantic idiom that was prevalent in women's magazines at the time.

Stylistic investigation became the norm in advertisements, movie posters, paperback book jackets, and children's books of the era, which continued to feature illustration. Record album covers such as those by Tom Allen (American, 1928-2004) became a new showcase for illustrators (Figure 24.16). Born in the music production center of Nashville, Tennessee, Allen developed an expressive style that was inspired by the forceful art of his contemporary, figurative painter Leon Golub (American, 1922- 2004). Allen and fellow illustrators Robert Weaver (American, 1924-1994) and Robert Andrew Parker (American, b. 1927) favored an approach that exploited composition, juxtaposition, and color in a departure from portraiture's customary realism.

As in the United States, Canadian art directors followed developments in European graphic design, and a number of illustrators in Canada also began to introduce a wider visual vocabulary than previously seen there. The most successful was Oscar Cahen (German, Canadian, 1916- 1956), who had come to Canada as a

Figure 24.14 Boris Artzybasheff, Executive of the Future, cover art, Esquire, April 1952. Gouache on illustration board. 13 '/, x 12 ''. Boris Artzybasheff 's image implies that an anthropomorphic computer interacts via tel ecommunications vvith humans in the nascent digital age. Artzybasheff was also known for his striking magazine portraits of noted fi gures.

Courtesy of the Syracuse Un iversity Ar t Collection . Copyright': Previously published in the Apri l 1952 issue of Esquire magazine, a publication of Hearst Communications, Tnc.

Chapter 24: The Shifting Postwar Marketplace: lllustration in the United States and C an ada, 1940- 1970 405

Figure 24.15 M. Coburn "Coby" Whitmore, Sleeping Woman, illustration art, McCa ll s, ca. 1960. 13 1

/ 2 X 15 1/•t''. Coby Whitmore's ri chly painted illustration emphasizes color, shape, and an ambiguous spati al composition , indicating his interest in modern art forms that depart from the traditions of narrative realism.

Collection of the ·rinkelman Family, Estate of Carol and Murray T inkcl rnan. Originally published in 1\llcCa/lS" magazine.

Figure 24.16 Tom Allen, Little Ji m my Rushing and the Big Brass Label, album cove r art , Columbia Records, 1958. Widely known fo r his striking album covers for country and jazz musicians, Torn Allen beca me fri ends with many of his subjects and insisted on being present at recordin g sessions to inspire artwork that he felt was authenti c. American jazz and blues singer Jimmy Rushing is se nsitively portrayed in this art fo r his album cover in whi ch furniture and music stands are placed asymmetri cally to co unterbalance the fi gure.

Courtesy of Donna L. ·rhompson, © Estate of Tom Allen/Don na L. Thompson.

refugee in 1940. Cahen's fiction illustration showcases his strengths at skillfully blending European modernism with American narrative realism (Figure 24.17).

The mid-century debate about the relative merits of abstraction and realism placed illustration generally, and Norman Rockwell particularly, in the crossfire. In postwar America, the primacy of abstraction in avant garde curatorial circles was clearly established, and by the 1950s, abstract art had many collectors. Although much of the general public continued to prefer narrative realism, influential critics such as Clement Greenberg championed Abstract Expressionism and disparaged traditional figurative art as kitsch (see Chapter 19, Theme Box 40, "Greenberg: Avant-Garde and Kitsch") . By 1961, the popular press had covered Abstract Expressionism for over a decade, beginning with a Life magazine story of August 8, 1949, that provocatively asked whether Abstract Expressionist artist Jackson Pollock (American, 1912-1956) was the "greatest living painter" in the United States. Rockwell, it should be noted, was the most famous American painter at this

Figure 24.17 Osca r Cahen, illustration art, "The Man With a C oat" by Morley Callaghan, 1'vlacleans, April 16, 1955. Ink, pencil, 20 x 27 '!, ' (board ). Before co ming to Canada, Cahen trained in several European countries and worked as an adverti sing artist in Prague, where be first encountered and

deployed American styles . Like many Canadian ill ustrators, he also devel oped an abstract painting ca reer.

Courtesy of The Cahen Archives . © The Cahen Archives:~

406 Part V: The Evolution of Illustration in an Electronic Age

time. Rockwell's The Connoisseur shows the clash between the two modalities (Figure 24.18). His depiction of a well-heeled gallery visitor cleverly aligns the man with tradition, while the abstract painting-modeled after Pollock's infamous "drip" canvases- is a rebellious riot of color. Rockwell's personal opinion of abstraction is ambiguous. However, after completing this illustration, he anonymously submitted sections of one of his studies for The Connoisseur to exhibitions, where they took first prize and honorable mention. Rockwell ultimately found he could stay most relevant by applying his narrative painting skills as a catalyst for change.

In the 1960s, particularly following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 and the intensifica tion of American military activity in Vietnam, long- held beliefs and cultural norms shifted dramatically in America. Attitudes about race, sexuality, and gender roles were examined as diverse social groups united to fight for civil rights and to protest the Vietnam War. After resigning his forty-seven -year tenure with the Saturday Evening Post in 1963, Rockwell embraced the challenge of creating imagery that addressed the nation's pressing concerns in a pared-down, reportorial style. The Problem We All Live With for Look magazine is based on an actual event, when six-year-old Ruby Bridges was escorted by U.S. Marshals to her first day at an all-white school (Figure 24.19). While the neutral title of the image invites interpretation, Rockwell's depiction of the vulnerable but dignified girl clearly condemns the actions of those who attacked her.

Figure 24.18 Norman Rockwell, The Connoisseur, 1961 , cover art, The Saturday Evening Post, January 13, 1962. Oil on canvas, 37 '/4 x 31 '/,''. Add ressing notions of the "high" and "low" in art, Rockwell inspires our con sideration of what the gentleman's reaction to the abstract painting might be. The convinci ng "quotation" of Pollock's technique gave Rockwell the opportu nity to utilize abstraction wh ile remaining inside his comfort zone.

The Studio System

In the postwar age of consumerism, illustration and design studios (first established in the nineteenth century) throughout the nation linked artists with clients to satisfy the rising demand for editorial and advertising imagery. Studio employees included managers, salesmen, art directors, photographers, retouchers, letterers, and illustrators; the studio's clientele were businesses, publishers, and advertising agencies. Aspiring artists often began as apprentices, organizing supplies and matting artworks for presentation to clients-moving into the bullpen (the group workspace filled with drafting tables), as salaried illustrators once they had developed their skills and knowledge of production. The studio system continued until approximately 1970.

Sundblom Studios

The artist Haddon "Sunny" Sundblom (American, 1899- 1976) opened his successful agency, originally called Stevens, Sundblom & Henry, in 1925 in Chicago, then the capital of the advertising industry. The studio landed prestigious accounts such as Quaker Oats, Cream of Wheat, and Packard autos, which attracted skilled artists seeking employment. By the 1960s, the firm- now called simply Sundblom Studios-had "graduated" some three hundred artist assistants and completed advertising campaigns for Coca-Cola, Maxwell House, American Tobacco Company, Palmolive, Nabisco, Goodyear, Procter & Gamble, Frigidaire, Westinghouse, and other leading corporations.

Sundblom and his staff invented the pleasant, reassuring faces of the Quaker Oats man and Aunt Jemima, and updated the jolly Santa Claus familiar to American audiences from Thomas Nast's nineteenth century images. The "sunny glow" of Sundblom's art can be attributed to an emphasis on smiling expressions on handsome people, care-free alla prima ("at the first

Figure 24.19 Norman Rockwell, The Problem We All Live With, 1963, illustration art, Look, January 1964. Oil on ca nvas, 36 x 58". On its tenth anniversary, Rock,-vell's painting humani zes enforcemen t of the

1954 Bro,,vn vs. Board of Education ruling, which mandated desegregation of

America n schools. Rockwell heightens attention on the subject by painting the girl in a pristine wh ite dress, symbolizing her innocence.

Chapter 24: The Shifting Postwar Marketplace: Illust ration in th e Un ited States and Canada , 1940- 1970

touch") brushstrokes rendering volume directly onto the canvas wet- into-wet, and his use of a rich, warm palette. The Sundblom look- often adopted by artists outside the studio-led to its being equated with privileged American commercialism (Figure 24.20).

Charles E. Cooper Studios

Founded in 1935 and situated at fashionable 57th Street and Lexington Avenue in New York City for three decades, Charles E. Cooper Studios was a renowned agency specializing in glamour illustration for advertising and women's magazines (Figure 24.21). The illustrators received 50 percent of each advertising commission secured by the company's account executives. Often, employment in a studio meant the firm owned all work done by its staff, even if the illustrator had brought the job in him- or herself (as was typical for editorial work). But because their popularity as editorial story illustrators attracted more lucrative advertising contracts, Cooper Studios generously allowed its illustrators to keep 100 percent of such payments. American illustrators Joe

Figure 24.2 1 Joe De Mers, interior illustration, "The Green Sca rf" by Jean Todd Freeman, Ladies' Horne Journal , February 1956. Considered too sensual fo r the covers of th e Saturday Evening Post, Joe De Mers's disti nctive artwo rks featuring dramatic close- ups and unexpected perspectives often focused on glamourous debutantes and up-and-coming career wo men in pursuit of romance. The Saturday Evening Post, Ladies' Home Journal, McCall's, Esquire, and other magazines published his eye-catching ar t in conjunction with popular fi ction and serialized stories, which were the soap operas of print media. In this double- page spread, De Mers epitomi zes the glamour and the convincing naturalistic poses and expressions of the "big head" style th at several Cooper Studios illustrators were well known fo r.

Tearshcet, Norman Rockwell Museum Collection. Originally published in Ladies' Home Jou ma/• magazine, February 1956.

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Figure 24.20 Haddon "Sunny" Sundblom, Tra vel Refreshed, Coca Cola Company, 1949. The boyish "spr ite"• character accompa -._ nying Santa Jaus was introd uced in 1949 as Coca-Cola'~ person1fi ca t10 11 of effervescence. Sundblorn's contribution to adve rtising was primarily that of a styli st-the lush, glowing style of hi oil on canvas paint, ings was highly influenti al.

408 Part V: 11,e Evolution of Illustration in an Electroni c Age

Bowler (b. 1928), Bernard D'Andrea (b. 1923), Lorraine Fox (1922-1976), Bob Levering (1919- 2011), Murray Tinkelman (1933-2016), William H. Whittingham (b. 1932), Coby Whitmore, and Jon Whitcomb were among the noted illustrators who worked at Cooper Studios.

Lorraine Fox was one of the most prominent wo'men in the field and the first female inductee into the Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame, albeit posthumously in 1979. Working at the Charles E. Cooper Studios and as a free lance artist, she created stylized, decorative illustrations for magazines, advertisements, and book covers (Figure 24.22). Good

Housekeeping, Redhook, Womans Day, McCalls, and Cosmopolitan were among her many clients, and she taught at Parsons School of Design and the Famous Artists School.

As the field of illustration shifted emphasis to concepts and experimentation over technical prowess, Cooper Studios recognized the need to attract younger talent interested in visual problem solving and symbolism rather than a traditional painterly approach (Figure 24.23 ).

Push Pin Studios

Push Pin Studios was formed in New York City in 1954 by Cooper Union graduates Milton Glaser (American, b. 1929), Seymour Ch wast (American, b. 1931 ), Reynold Ruffins (American, b. 1930), and Edward Sorel (American, b. 1929) as a hybrid graphic design and illustration studio. Push Pin was recognized for its eclectic sophistication. As early proponents of what would be dubbed Postmodernism (see Chapter 27),

its members found inspiration in a variety of visual approaches ranging from the Italian Renaissance, Art Nouveau, Art Deco, and Constructivism to comic strips, early American painting, and nineteenth century woodcuts and engravings. Like Dada artists (see Chapter 19), they playfully and ironically combined anachronistic elements with contemporary imagery. Forgotten typographic styles, flourishes, and decorative borders of the nineteenth and early twentieth century were also revived in their work (Figure 24.24).

Push Pin artists rejected the prevailing Swiss (or International Typographic) Style notion that illustration and design were discrete practices, and sought an integration of typography and illustration that pushed against such approaches to visual communication. Inspired by the 1957 Self-Portrait in Profile by Dada artist Marcel Duchamp (French, American, 1887-1968), Milton Glaser's poster design (Figure 24.25) of musician Bob Dylan employs a vernacular font consisting of stylized, geometric shapes associated with Art Deco of the 1920s (see Chapter 20). Created in New York, the design also resonates with the work of San Francisco poster artists of the 1960s and 1970s (see Chapter 26).

WOMAN 'S DAY .

/17/~-ter~ by SOPHIE KERR

Figure 24.22 Lorraine Fox, ''A Va lentin e for Uncle" by Sophie Kerr, Womans Day, February 1959. In thi s piece, Fox has combined actual bits of lace, ink, and dyes with stencil ing techniques on paper rem ini scent of Victorian decorative crafts with an interpretive portrait of Uncle Sam and other American iconography.

Estate of Lorraine Fox, courtesy of Bernard D 'A ndrea .

Figure 24.23 Murray Tinkelman, Knight on Rhinoceros, cover art, The Illustrations of Murray Jinkehnan, 1980. Ink on illustration board. 24 7/16 x 23 1/16".

At Cooper Studios, Murray T inkelman represented a new generation of illustrators who were interested in self-generated projects as much as the co mm ercial assignments. This ink-on-paper piece grew out ofTinkleman's personal explorations as he sharpened his focus on making more concep tually driven images; it ultimately won a Society of Illustrators Gold Medal. This direction attracted a series of compell ing assignments that lent them selves to conceptuall y dri ven treatment.

Collection of the Ti nkelman Fami ly, Esta te of Carol and Murray Tinkclman.

C hapter 24: The Shifting Postwar Marketplace: Illustration in the United States and Canada, 1940- 1970 409

Figure 24.24 Seymour Chwast, "Mothers:' cover, Push Pin Graphic, December 1976. Push Pin Graphic, a publication art directed by Seymour Chwast, was first created fo r Push Pin Studios' fri ends and clients in 1957, but became a promotional device and an important reference fo r contemporary ill ustra tion and des ign. It was produced as a thirty-two- page bimonthly magazine from I 976 to 1980 and featured illustrations by Ch wast and other ar tists represented by the studio. Imagery often integrated historical art and design forms, such as the calligraphic flouri shes seen in the masthead.

End of the Studios

In the 1960s and '70s, as illustration work dwindled in the face of competition from television and photography, the large studios began to close. Many illustrators who freelanced while holding studio jobs gradually became entirely self-employed. One area of illustration that continued to thrive, however, was paperback covers. Will Davies (Canadian, b. 1924), who excelled at chic, glamorous boy-girl subjects in the vein of some of the Cooper Studios illustrators, found a steady client in Harlequin, a Canadian publisher of romance and other popular fiction . Over four decades, he completed more than five hundred covers for their paperbacks (Figure 24.26).

Many Canadian illustrators sought work in New York, but improved communication and delivery systems from the 1960s onward meant artists could stay in Canada. James Hill (1930-2004) was known mai nly for editorial and paperback book cover illustration. In the 1960s, he developed a kaleidoscopic painterliness

Figure 24.25 Mi lton Glaser, Portrait of Dylan, poster insert fo r record album, Bob Dylan's Grea test Hits, Columbia Records, 1966. One of Milton Glase r's ea rliest posters, this des ign was also one of his best known about six million we re distributed along with Bob Dylan's seminal album. Push Pin's interpretations of visual forms had a signifi cant impact on illustration and graphic design from th e 1950s to th e 1980s th rough thei r visual mash ups, which spurred styli stic and con ceptual changes in commercia l art.

Inc.

Figure 24.26 Will Davies, cover art, Neptune's Daughter, Harlequin, I 987. Canadian illustrator Davies sometim es brought models from New York to Toronto to pose for photo shoots and sketching. His final work was often exe

cuted in gouache in a manner similar to Ameri cans such as Al Parker and Jon Whitcomb. He also illustrated fas hi on, automotive adver tisi ng, historical subjects, and por traits for editorial commiss ions.

Figure 24.27 James Hill, fron tispiece, The Short Stories of Osca r Wilde, Limited Edit ions Club, 1968. Using coll age wit h real feathers to

, achieve an original composit ion with rich metaphori - cal content, Hill bridges trad itional narrative reali sm and conceptual illustration and captu res th e aesthetics of th e psychedelic era.

4 10 Par t V: ·n, e Evolution of Il lust ration in an Elec tro ni c Age

that won him a prestigious commission from the Limited Editions Club, which produced signed editions fo r collectors (F igure 24.27).

The Conceptual Shift in Editorial Illustration

While many magazines survived the 1950s and 1960s, the number of illustrations used was reduced or replaced by photography. Sports Illustrated, Fortune, and Playboy, however, built distinctive brand identities by featuring more innovative ar twork. In th is new business environment, individualistic illustrators fo und favo r. One artist with an identifiable autographic style is R. 0. Blechman (American, b. 1930), a celebrated ill ustrator, animator, children's book author, graphic novelist, and editorial cartoonist, whose 1967 animated Alka-Seltzer commercial featur ing his characteristically nervo us, wavy line is considered seminal. For Blechman, images are often in response to written ideas or concepts, as in his book The Juggler of Our Lady ( 1953) , a satirical retell ing of a classic medieval Christmas tale in a graphic novel format (F igure 24.28).

The trend toward individuali sm meant that established mainstream illustrators such as Al Parker had to reinvent themselves. In 1964, Sports Illustrated sent Parker, instead of a photojournalist, to capture the excitement of premier auto racing at the Monaco Grand Prix- a h ighlight of his career (Figure 24.29) . Parker painted and photographed on location with li ttle

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figure 24.28 R. 0. Blechman , "Can talbert Was Unhappy. He Wanted His Juggli ng to Reform the World ;' cove r ill ustra tion, Tin Juggler of Our Lady: A Medieval Legend, 1953. Issued soon after World War II , The Juggler has an underlying message of soc ial justice, but fo r Blechman the project also bro ught together his love of comics and movies. In 1954, The Juggler was also m ade into a short animated fil m.

Courtesy of R. 0. Blechman.

Figure 24.29 Alfred Cha rl es (A l) Parker, interior illust ra t ion, "As if at a Parade, Monagasques see the Race from a Strategic Balcony on Bo ul evard Albert 1 Near th e Harbor, Mo naco Grand Prix ;' Spo rts Illustrated, May 1964. Experient ial and documentary, Parker's visual essay uses a dramatic perspec tive to generate an inti mate gli mpse of the e vents unfolding aro,1nd him .

Al Parker Collection, D. R Dowd Modern Graph ic History Library, Washington University Libraries, \•Vashi ngton Universit y in St. Louis. © Estate of Al Parker.

C hapte r 24: The Shifting Postwar Marketpl ace: Illustration in the United States and Canada, 1940- 1970 4 11

editorial oversight. The outcome was an expressive suite of autographic illustrations that spread across eight pages that manifested the value of the illustrator's intellect and interpretive abilities.

From the mid-1950s through the 1980s, photography and television provided direct access to world events and left illustration to capture abstract meaning and phenomena not easily described by literal representations. Conceptual illustration, which drew some inspiration from Dada and Surrealism (see Chapter 19), allowed for the visualization of complex social and psychological issues through metaphor, suggestion, visual puns, and complex word-and-image play. Developments in fine art and cultural criticism also contributed to interest in less literal and more conceptual approaches to illustration. Robert Weaver (American, 1924- 1994), a leader of this new direction in illustration in the 1950s, characterized the possibility of the illustrator's role as a cultural agent by saying, "I see no reason why an illustrator should not think of himself as a serious contemporary painter . . . That he has not realized [his artistic opportunities] is borne out by the low opinion in which the illustrator is held in the general art world. Many illustrators of today are too little concerned with the actualities of their time."

KENNEDY'S LAST CHANCE

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Figure 24.30 Robert Weaver, illustra tion, "Kennedy's Last Chance to Be President" by Richard Rovere, Esquire, April 1959. Robert Weaver's multilaye red composition alludes to shifting powers in government symbolized by individuals holding parts of a fragmented drawing of th e White House.

Al Parker Collection, 0. B. Dowd M odern Graphic H istory Library, Washington

University in St. Louis. Previously published in the April 1959 issue of Esquire magazine, a publication of H earst Communications, Inc.

From the 1950s through the 1970s, Weaver produced illustrations for Esquire, Fortune, Sports Illustrated, Life, Look, the New York Times, and Columbia Records, all of whom supported more expressive work (Figure 24.30). Inspired to find new approaches to visual storytelling that were reflective of the growing interest in psychological or ideological content, Weaver ruptured the picture plane and combined discontinuous actions or seemingly unrelated ideas on one page to invite interpretation. His innovative, collage-like approach to painting, as reflected in his 1968 Lincoln Park, was quickly imitated by others (Figure 24.31).

In the 1960s, the marketing trend known as The Big Idea emerged, in which designers and writers identified a key attribute of an idea or product and then constructed its social meaning through a confluence of experimental design and semiotics- a process sometimes referred to as visual thinking. Art directors worked collaboratively with illustrators to develop all aspects of conceptual illustration from layout to allusion and metaphor. Artworks commented on and enhanced the interpretation of text rather than echoing specific passages, and invited reader participation in decoding meaning. For instance, in Saul Steinberg's (Romanian, American, 1914-1999)

Figure 24.31 Robert Weaver, Lincoln Park, ca. 1968. Acrylic on board, 28 '/s x 17 '//'. Robert Weaver's split image provides alternate views of Lincoln Park, Chicago, the site of protests during the I 968 Democratic National Convention. Each night, the park was cleared of people sometimes by force - as inferred by the inset fea turing Chicago police armed with nightsticks. Weaver conceived of this approach to convey the passage of time and shifting events in a single image. The snapshot of police in riot gear hangs heavily over the eerily still scene.

Norman Rockwell Museum Collec tion,

Gift of Magdalen and Robert Livesey / Famous Artists School

Collec tion.

Figure 24.32 Saul Steinberg, Utopia, 1974. Colored pencil, pencil, watercolor, crayon, ink, rubber stamps, and collage on paper, 21 1/ 2 x 29 3/,''. Originally published in the New Yorker, July 29, 1974. T his conceptual illustrat ion influ enced by Dada and Surrealism iden tifies Manh attan th ro ugh iconic buildings on the hori zon: the World Trade Center Twin Towers, Citico rp Center, Empire State Bu il ding, and Chrysler Building.

The Art Inst itute of Chicago; Gift of The Saul Steinberg Foundation.

412 Part V: The Evolutio n o f Illustration in an Electroni c Age

ironically titled Utopia (Figure 24.32), Long Island is an other-worldly wasteland rising up behind a happy couple who appear plucked from an advertisement, ready to stake their claim. Steinberg's drawing accompanied a 1974 article in the New Yorker about the vast influence of urban planner Robert Moses, who favored highways over public transit, and whose controversial policies helped create the modern car-dependent suburbs of Long Island and the rest of the nation. Best known for his incisive and witty New Yorker drawings, Steinberg moved across disciplines, creating art for all manner of things- from wallpapers and fabrics to public murals, stage sets, and advertisements.

Conclusion

During the postwar era when magazines still retained vast readerships, narrative imagery for covers, fiction articles, and advertisements remained popular. With the increased use of television and photography to convey visual narratives, mainstream publications foundered. This prompted shifts in magazine content as new attitudes about the creation and consumption of imagery emerged. Although narrative realism was not fully rejected, illustrators moved toward more autographic and conceptual approaches. Many recognized the importance of being active commentators in an ongoing visual dialogue and in conveying a personal voice in their art.