Yearly Archives: 2020

George Barbier

Art Illustration, Paintings, Photographers

Art Deco illustrator.

For an index of articles on art illustrators, click here.

George Barbier (1882-1932) died young, just as the Great Depression started to roar. That’s somewhat appropriate as his delicate Art Deco illustrations are frequently about flappers and society people of the 1920s, the newly rich who saw no end to stock market gains. They had disappeared by the time of his death.

“Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau,” quoth the famous economist Irving Fisher in early October, 1929. Proving that you should never take investing advice from an economist. Black Thursday, October 24, saw the market drop by 11 percent, followed four days later by Black Monday, when it fell another 13 percent; and the next day, Black Tuesday, when it lost 12 percent more. Good market timing, Irving.

Sounds just like today when stocks are overvalued by 50% as the market continues in denial about 40 million unemployed – and largely unemployable – American workers. Today we are waiting for the pandemic to ‘magically disappear’ courtesy of the moron in the Oval Office. Nothing changes.

Here are some favorite Barbier images from the Roaring Twenties, ones no photographer could ever equal:




The Roaring Twenties and its denizens.


Exquisite use of line.


Before the days of sardine cans masquerading as transportation.


Simple charm and great sophistication. Hitchcock
appropriated the firework background in ‘To Catch a Thief‘.

Like Dufy and Gruau after him (see the previous two posts here) Barbier’s work was always in demand.

If you are interested in learning more about the gorgeous bias cut dresses frequently draped so elegantly on Barbier’s women, check out Madeleine Vionnet.

Raoul Dufy

Art Illustration, Paintings, Photographs

French fauve painter.

For an index of articles on art illustrators, click here.

The Fauves (‘wild beasts’) were a collection of early 20th century painters who emphasized color over form. While Derain and Matisse are the most well known members of the group my personal favorite is Raoul Dufy (1877-1953) for the sheer joy and abandon he brings to his many paintings. In that regard, Dufy (‘Do-fee’) was happy to cross the barrier into commercialism, and his images feature to this day on anything from chocolate box covers to tea towels. That in no way minimizes their significance to a century hungry for visual arts in a world of growing advertising and marketing, all of this before photography became mainstream and inexpensive. Today, a Dufy could not pay the bills in a world where literally everyone owns a camera. In his abundant output he was a predecessor to the supreme commercial artist of the century, René Gruau.

Here are some favorites from his large body of work:




The influence of cubism is writ large.


A wonderful realization of Montmartre and Sacre Coeur.


The Riviera was a favorite venue.


Vive La France!


René Gruau

Art Illustration, Paintings, Photography

Master of sparsity.

For an index of articles on art illustrators, click here.

There has been no greater illustrator than René Gruau (1909-2004), an Italian master best known for his long association with Christian Dior, back when ‘couture’ meant something and the working class knew its place. Gruau (‘Grew-oh’) was of Italian birth but Paris was his abode. There, at the age of 14, he was already making a living from his marvelous drawings. Every major fashion house retained him and while his images remain in our subconscious few know who this master artist was.

His relevance to photography is that once the barrow boys (working class lads with a Pentax like Bailey, Donovan and Duffy, their fathers barrow boys from the East End of London, whose perfectly virulent English they inherited) started snapping the demand for traditional drawings plummeted. Not that this bothered Gruau for he was in a class of one, remaining happily employed for the rest of his very long life. And the barrow boys never came close to Gruau’s class, greatly devoid in their make up.

There is so much of his work out there it’s hard to know where to begin, but the following images are Gruau at his very best.




Just a splash of red.


Alluring, eye catching, perfect.


A sparsity of line not known since Matisse.


His greatest partnership was with Christian Dior.


Utter genius.


TR6

Photographs

British beauty.

Before British socialism killed off its sports car industry the world was blessed with such delightful creations as the AC, MGB, Sunbeam and Triumph.




Triumph TR6, 1968-76.

America had a great appetite for these when the only homemade options were the porky Thunderbird and the poorly made Corvette.

But British socialism saw to it that “If I can’t have it, you can’t have it”, which seemed to be the mantra of the socialist government, and labor unrest saw to it that all British sport car manufacture ceased at the end of the 1970s. Mazda filed the niche nicely with its superb Miata, manufactured to this day and, unlike its British predecessors, it started every time, did not leak oil and had air conditioning which actually worked.

Of the 91,850 TR6s produced, 83,480 were exported; only 8,370 were sold in the UK, which explains why the above, a neighbor’s car, has left hand drive. My neighbor actually owns two, the other in red and both sport the period-correct red rimmed tires which came with the car. Doubtless he is adopting that tried and true dictate of British car ownership. Own two. One to drive, the other to fix. It probably helps to have two British mechanics also, for when one goes on strike.

In the event the TR6 had a simple, reliable single cam in-line six and a gorgeous body by Italian Giovanni Michelotti, to whom Triumph wisely delegated design.

iPhone 11 Pro snap.

Wanted. Another WPA.

Photographs

FDR got it right.

At the height of the Great Depression the Roosevelt administration created the Works Project Administration. According to Wikipedia:

“…. the WPA provided jobs and income to the unemployed during the Great Depression in the United States, while developing infrastructure to support the current and future society.

Above all, the WPA hired workers and craftsmen who were mainly employed in building streets. Thus, under the leadership of the WPA, more than 1 million km of streets and over 10,000 bridges were built, in addition to many airports and much housing.”

The current administration (a misnomer, I grant you) thinks that giving people money is the way out of their dramatic loss in income. After all, the average American has savings between $2,729 and $15,589 which, on the face of it is as close to zero as makes no difference. Americans need to relearn the meaning of thrift and stop looking for handouts. They also need productive jobs, not clerical positions selling sportswear. A new WPA would put them to work rebuilding all those rotting roads and bridges and, hey, learning to use a shovel is easier than using a supermarket scanner. Their labors would recapitalize America and, with related efforts, deleverage a society addicted to debt.

Instead, what we see is this sort of shocking image. A line of SUVs awaiting handouts of food at a food bank:




You can sleep in a car but you cannot drive a house.

Leverage? Those SUVs are all financed, of course, and the credit cards of those drivers are earning some usurious lender 21% annually. So while we put Americans back to work wielding shovels, let’s cap credit card lines and limit interest to 4%, which will neatly transfer the pain from the borrower to the lender.

As a photographer it’s not lost on me that the greatest burst of documentary photography the world has seen was at the behest of FDR’s Farm Security Administration whose Roy Stryker hired the best of the best to tour America and document the depredations of the Great Depression. We should recreate that organization in these troubled times, too. Lest we forget.

In a couple of legislative actions we get safe roads and bridges and a revitalized nation, which beats useless malls and unnecessary ‘discretionary’ spending.