Category Archives: Art Illustration

The great art illustrators

The American Dream

Art Illustration, Photographs

Sadly, no more.

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

I wrote despairingly about America’s End of Empire at the conclusion of last year and now think I was being optimistic. How years of prosperity and growing wealth were flushed away by a corrupt Wall Street, an incompetent series of governments and an all too willing US borrower, all in a matter of a few years, is now ancient history. What is yet to come is a depression of a severity that will fundamentally change the position of the US in the world, which is still in deep denial of the true depth of the chasm we all face.

It was easy to be reminded of this when reading the current issue of Vanity Fair – still the best photography magazine in the US – which profiles the decaying of the American dream. I’m not about to repeat the populist ethic at work here (anyone buying VF for its writing has a serious case of socialism to attend to) but the pictures accompanying the article are extraordinary.

They are reproductions of the enormous posters Kodak hung in Grand Central Station over four decades. Nothing less than an attempt to recreate the world of Norman Rockwell using photography, the result is in equal parts gauche, tasteless and saccharine. A new low in bad taste which, understandably, has not been repeated in a decade or more as Kodak is …. well …. bankrupt. Hardly surprising for a company whose management makes the captain of the Titanic look like a steady hand with great foresight and judgement.

Without further ado, here they are, all copyright of Eastman Kodak, though I’m not sure it’s something I would sue about:

So how many people did you count who are not named Scooter, Chip or Buffy and have colored skin? Are all these people simply stuffed mannequins ready for Madison Avenue’s predators?

In case you missed it, here’s a snap of the new US Treasury Secretary (I believe I am the first to disclose this) – the dude making the rabbit’s ears – from today’s Wall Street Journal.

He’s right to be concerned as the jerk put all his eggs in one basket.

As for Eastman Kodak, well nothing has changed judging by today’s headlines:

Happy Thanksgiving

Art Illustration, Cooking, Photography

The best time of the year.

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

For an index of cooking articles on this blog click here.

This year we are blessed with friends from England and my in laws from San Diego. I managed to track down a Diestel turkey – you know, the kind that wanders California’s great wide expanses while listening to Mozart. This translates into a tasty and juicy bird.

And, in protest against our government’s woeful ways with our money and our citizenry’s placid, nay, complicit, acceptance of the rape of our economy, the wines this year are Spanish (a nice Rioja to start) and French (thank you Bordeaux!) Even the port is from where port should be from, meaning Portugal, US winemakers being clueless when it comes to making this grog.

On the hardware front I have finally invested in a genuine French Sabatier chef’s knife. It’s from Thiers, in France, and if you decide to get one be super careful as the name is not trade marked, meaning there are lots of nasty imitations out there. You will not find this one at WalMart. The one I got has a carbon steel (non-stainless) blade, meaning a little more care is called for when cleaning, but provides a far keener and longer lasting edge, something stainless steel cannot equal. I toyed with the idea of one of those Japanese ones where the metal has been folded on itself a billion times or something, like one of those Samurai swords, but found the look beyond ugly. Form cannot be forgotten even when function is superior.

I was rather taken with the ‘rosewood’ handle on this one, though it’s actually epoxy. Unlike Apple’s deceitful ads (twice as fast, twice as light, blah blah blah) this one makes no claim to anything other than a sharp edge. Heck, it will rust on you before you can say Vive la France if you don’t dry and oil it after use. Note the lovely design of the bolster, where the blade enters the handle. Unlike your camera, this will still be a current model in fifty or a hundred years’ time. And spare parts will remain available ….

Sharpening? Why trust the Village Idiot with missing digits to do this the old way? The answer is the right tool to confer the right angles of grind and a proper steeling, something your local ‘expert’ knife sharpener knows nothing of. I use one of these and immediately ran my new knife through it producing, yes you guessed it, a finer edge than the factory managed before shipping. Proof? How about two millimeter thick tomato slices, the skin intact? The ultimate test of a kitchen knife.


The ultimate test. Two millimeter thick tomato slices.


The Chef’s Choice 130 knife sharpener’s Stage 2 burnishing steel, removed for clarity.

After re-establishing the proper 25 degree edges on your trashed knives – using the Stage 1 coarse diamond wheel – you pass the blade over the Stage 2 burnishing steel a dozen times a side. Then one final quick swipe through the fine stropping wheel in Stage 3 and you are set. In each case, you torque the knife’s handle so that the blade is gently forced against the tool, something the instructions fail to point out. So twist CCW on the left and CW on the right. Thereafter a swipe across the Stage 2 steel every now and then is all that’s needed and the amount of material you will be removing will be one thousandth of that destroyed by the Village Idiot. And Stage 2 needs no mains power – it’s simply a stationery hard steel.

Well, I’m off to the kitchen where the bird awaits.


Diestel turkey with rosemary from the garden, ready for the oven.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Update September, 2020.

The chef’s knife gets little use nowadays, obsoleted by a cleaver – a superior tool in every way.

Wealth

Art Illustration, Photographs

A fabulous photograph.

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

I blew by this one on my first glance through this month’s pile of fashion magazines and am awfully glad to have revisited it.

Lord & Taylor is a clothing and knick knack store for the wealthy. If you want to see the best Christmas windows in New York you need go no farther than Cartier, Saks or Lord & Taylor, all conveniently close by on Fifth Avenue. By the way, when it comes to Christmas windows, we west coast recluses marvel at Saks’s in Union Square in San Francisco, a city with much of New York’s charm and diversity but little of its nastiness.

First and foremost, this complex composition, worthy of Rembrandt’s Night Watch, speaks of success. A large, well dressed family, preparing for a barbeque. Obviously this is the weekend place.

The silver haired paterfamilias, fit and tanned, is very much in charge, strengthening his position of control by taking on the menial cooking chores. He’s old world, of course, so no stainless steel multi-knobbed built in barbie for this man. So gauche. No. It’s charcoal and an old Weber grill, and who could argue? It’s the ultimate condescension of the wealthy – use what the working man does. It’s real – look at the smoke trails in front of the preppie boys.

The massive cantilevered arms must support a very large awning. The affluent have large patios which need large awnings.

He seems to have three sons, the two who finished prep school and are now at Yale and Princeton, the eldest very aware of his film star looks, and then the third, in the hoodie. He went to UC Santa Cruz, did too much surfing and too many drugs, started a rock band and is the real success of his generation. He’s making music on the bass with his niece on the trumpet. Rich people play instruments.

The mother (Lauren Hutton) is messing about with the pony (doesn’t everyone have a pony?) and the animal is the focus of attention for her daughter and grandchild on the right. Rich people have animals. Big animals.

The number of kids is hard to fathom. I’m reckoning the girl at top left was a surprise fourth child for the old couple. Rich people can afford it. That still leaves seven kids to account for, so either the last generation was Catholic, or someone else’s kids got into the party. It just adds to the fascination of the picture.

Finally, the almost too precious arrangement of vegetables by the Weber makes another subtle reference to wealth. Clearly these are for show, not consumption. The rich love show pieces, be they veggies or china.

Note also the Degas-like cut off of the child at the lower left and that insanely mischievous look of the little boy front center. What a piece of choreography! All told there are fourteen people in the picture …. and one pony. Mercifully, the art director and photographer left out the obligatory dumb-as-a-brick golden retriever. A Border Terrier would have been nice, but I suppose that’s too much to ask. The rich own Border Terriers.

The inspired choreography, the subtle and oft repeated message (if you have to ask you cannot afford it), the warm colors reminiscent of the great party scenes of Renoir, the rustic setting, the simple classy clothes worn with grace.

Advertising does not get more subliminal than this. Not only does the viewer get gently invited to the world of wealth, he gets an object lesson in deportment and behavior just by gazing at the guests. Would I change anything? Well, I would likely give the old boy a stiff G&T in a nice L&T crystal tumbler. Easy on the ice. When it dawns on the old boy how much of his inherited capital he has just blown on nice clothing, he will need a restorer.

What a photograph! Bravo!

Boy, do I wish I could speak to the photographer who took this.

P.S. The edge tears are in the original; the center ones are mine as I had to rip out the two page spread to scan and join the images.

Giving Thanks

Art Illustration, Photography

The greatest American feast and the great man who made it possible.

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

Today’s journal entry is only peripherally about photography, as I am busy cooking. It is, however, intended as a reminder why any ambitious person should consider coming to America to improve himself and his lot in life. It still matters little in the United States who your father was, how you speak and what size, religion or color you are. Hunger enough and you will be rewarded. You don’t even need ability. Just the desire to work hard.

When I emigrated from Britain to the United States on November 16, 1977, I had no idea of the existence of the great feast of Thanksgiving. Why should I? Poor old England, having won the war and lost the peace, was mired in repressive socialist politics where everyone, starting with schoolchildren, was being reduced to the level of the laziest. Thus the citizens of the British Empire had little to give thanks for. Not having benefitted economically from my fine British education, I did not arrive with just the money in my pocket. Rather, I arrived $4,000 in debt – half from my employer, the other half from my sister in Seattle, who had the vision to come here some years before me. The only hard assets I had in this world were my Leica M3 with 35mm, 50mm and 90mm lenses and two shabby polyester business suits bought at C&A in London. The Leica would last me another thirty years. The suits quickly moved on.

Five days later I found myself a guest of an American family which, with traditional hospitality, had invited this funny sounding immigrant to their Thanksgiving meal. I can never forget this act of warmth and welcome, nor the truly wonderful selection of food loaded on a table whose legs must have been groaning under the weight. This was America as I had always pictured it – the family home, warmth, conviviality, joie de vivre, everyone healthy and rosy cheeked and food a plenty. No wonder that Thanksgiving remains one of my favorite American holidays, for it was my introduction to the best in American values. To this day, few occasions give me greater pleasure than cooking a bird of choice for the feast that follows.

Years later I got to know the art of Norman Rockwell and he captures the sense of this great occasion better than anyone. No photograph can improve on this. Four generations gather to enjoy the feast to come. The sun is shining. Everyone is smiling. All is right with the world.

Let me preface what follows with the statement that I am an apolitical animal, believing solely in an economic system which allows individuals to be rewarded for their efforts and which keeps entitlements and government to a minimum. At the same time, such system has to be imbued with a strong dose of humanitarianism to protect the poor and unfortunate. That’s simple decency. The picayune distinctions in America between Democrats and Republicans, and their rabid hordes of followers looking for a benefit for no cost, are simply of zero interest to me.

Sad, then, to contemplate a Thanksgiving where I can no longer say with joy that I am sharing my lot on this earth with the giant who was Milton Friedman, who passed away a week ago. People speak of him as a great economist, but he was much more than that. He was a great humanist, having by the sheer power of his intellect created more wealth in twentieth century America than all her industrialists combined. Consider just some of his achievements.

  • The ending of the draft.
  • The abolition of the gold standard.
  • Proof positive that Government monetary policy caused inflation.
  • The commitment to free immigration.
  • The support of school vouchers to remedy the crime that is American public education.

This was a man for the ages.

I had the great pleasure of meeting him at the invitation of my friend Art Laffer, in 2002 on his 90th birthday, at a presentation he gave at the Ritz in San Francisco. It was, interestingly, the first time I saw a journalist use a digital camera – I recall with some fascination noting how he inspected the little screen on the back of his camera to check the picture from time to time. Friedman was, his 5 foot 2 inch stature notwithstanding, a giant, with an electric personality. A sharp wit and great charm. His teaching inspired two great students – Reagan and Thatcher – to fix the messes they had both inherited. Milton Friedman’s school drew no geographical boundaries in its admission of pupils. And tuition was free. Indeed, the president of the newly free republic of Estonia, when asked why he had imposed a low rate flat tax on his nation shortly after it gained freedom from its Russian opressor, replied that the only book on economics he had ever read was Milton Friedman’s “Free to Choose”. It hardly need be added that Estonia is booming.

So while I rue this Thanksgiving, the first where Milton Friedman is not among us, I rejoice in the knowledge that even now he is teaching our maker why freedom is the only policy for those in charge to pursue. Friedman once famously remarked:

“A society that puts equality – in the sense of equality of outcome – ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality or freedom. The use of force to achieve equality will destroy freedom. On the other hand, a society that puts freedom first will, as a happy by-product, end up with both greater freedom and greater equality. Freedom means diversity but also mobility. It preserves the opportunity for today’s less well off to become tomorrow’s rich, and in the process, enables almost everyone, from top to bottom, to enjoy a richer and fuller life.”

Amen to that, and Happy Thanksgiving.