Paul R. Alexander (1937-2021)

Science fiction artist Paul R. Alexander has died. I wrote about him previously on this blog, on November 17, 2011. (Click here to read what I wrote.) I showed some of Mr. Alexander's artwork when I last wrote of him, but any small part is inadequate for lovers of art and illustration. Paul Alexander was a surpassingly good artist.

He was born on September 3, 1937, in Richmond, Indiana, son of Fred and Ora Olive Alexander. He graduated from Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio, in 1967. Although he lived and worked on the East Coast, Mr. Alexander returned to the Midwest later in life, living, working, attending church, and enjoying his hobbies and friends in Greenville, Ohio. That is where he died, too, on June 14, 2021, at age eighty-three. One new bit of information on him: Paul Alexander was a model train enthusiast. Called a "gadget artist" by Vincent Di Fate, Mr. Alexander knew his gadgets, from miniature trains to immense spacefaring vehicles of the imagination.

Paul Alexander's first work listed in the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDb) is his cover for The Eyes of Heisenberg by Frank Herbert, published forty-five years ago this month, in December 1976. His last came at around the turn of the current century, in the period 1998-2001. In addition to covers and interior art for science fiction magazines and books, Mr. Alexander created illustrations for Encyclopedia Britannica, Institutions Magazine, and the New Jersey Telephone Company. He also did designs for the packaging for Robotix toys made by Milton Bradley. Click here to see more.

There has been so much sadness these past few years, especially in the last two. Now we have more sadness. But at least we also have the undying work of Paul Alexander.

To read an obituary in the science fiction magazine Locus, click here.

Text copyright 2021, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Pictures for a Year's End-No. 3

Rob Day of Indianapolis provided the cover illustration for Maphead By Lesley Howarth (1994). You can find Mr. Day's website by clicking here.

Text copyright 2020, 2024 Terence E. Hanley 

Some Drawings by Women Artists-No. 2

Next up in this series is Florence Sarah Winship (1900-1987) of Elkhart, Indiana. I have written about her before. Click here to find out more about her and to see more of her art. The front and back cover illustrations here are from Fifty Famous Fairy Tales, published by Whitman in 1954 and 1956.

Text copyright 2020, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

May the Fourth Be With You! 2019

We're in the last year of Star Wars movies but on this Star Wars day--May the Fourth--I'd like to look back and remember two who have left us.

Peter Mayhew died last week, on April 30, 2019. Star Wars fans know him as Chewbacca, Han Solo's sidekick and co-pilot. Born on May 19, 1944, he was not an actor at all until George Lucas cast him as Chewbacca in 1976. The three main actors get lots of credit for the success of Star Wars, but can you imagine the original or its two sequels without Peter Mayhew as Chewbacca? It's a sad thing to contemplate.

Strangely, Chewbacca began life as a pointy-eared alien. Only later was he softened into a furry and lovable creature. The artist who first depicted him was a Hoosier, Ralph McQuarrie, who was born on June 13, 1929, in Gary, Indiana. McQuarrie wasn't in the movie business, either, until shortly before George Lucas hired him to create pre-production artwork for Star Wars. He went on to work on many more movies. A great deal of the look and mood of the Star Wars universe is based on his work. Ralph McQuarrie died on March 3, 2012.

As it turns out, Chewbacca's final appearance was inspired by the works of another artist and another writer. The writer was someone you might have heard of, George R.R. Martin, who wrote a story called "And Seven Times Never Kill Man," which was published in Analog in July 1975. The artist was John Schoenherr (1935-2010), who illustrated Mr. Martin's story and provided a painting for the cover of Analog that Star Wars fans will, I think, find very familiar. (In addition to Chewbacca, think Ewoks.) Michael Heilemann tells the full story on his very fine blog Kitbashed: The Origin of Star Wars, here.

Early promotional poster artwork by Ralph McQuarrie, dated April 1, 1975. The tall, pointy-eared alien is an early version of Chewbacca. Note the resemblance of the Luke Skywalker-like character to George Lucas and the golden robot to the figure in Fritz Lang's Metropolis. You can see why McQuarrie's pre-production paintings of Star Wars helped to sell Twentieth Century Fox on the project. It must have been this version of Chewbacca to whom Carrie Fisher referred in her audition for Star Wars.

Here's a sketch of the new, furry Chewbacca. The body and the getup are mostly the same. It's the head and arms that have changed, based on inspiration by science fiction artist John Schoenherr from 1975.

Here is Chewbacca with the other principals on Tatooine. Painting by Ralph McQuarrie.

And here he is again on the Death Star in another of McQuarrie's famed panoramic paintings.

Original text copyright 2019, 2024 Terence E. Hanley, with acknowledgments to Michael Heilemann for his research on the origins of Chewbacca. 

Franklin Booth on the Cover of Life

The covers of the old Life magazine weren't always comical, humorous, or satirical. Sometimes, as in those shown below, done by Indiana illustrator Franklin Booth, they were serious, adventurous, and romantic. Born on a farm in Indiana, Booth (1874-1948) seems to have been an artist with his head in the clouds, and he often drew and painted clouds--great, mountainous, billowing clouds, like landscapes in the air. Whether he was drawing works of Nature, such as towering trees like columns in a cathedral, or of man, such as skyscrapers or great spires and domes, all also reached for the clouds, or as every artist attempts, to heaven.

Life, an adventure issue, from October 20, 1921, with a cover by the unmatchable Franklin Booth.

Life, subtitled "Air Castles," from January 12, 1922, again with a cover by Booth, and including an element not always seen in his work: a human form.

Text copyright 2018, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Howard Pyle in Indiana

On the evening of December 4, 1903, Howard Pyle spoke in front of the Irvington Athenæum, a literary and cultural club formed a few years earlier by members of the faculty at Butler University. It was Pyle's first visit to Indiana, but he would not have come as an unknown to a state then renowned for its native and resident artists, including William Merritt Chase (1849-1916), T.C. Steele (1847-1926), William Forsyth (1854-1935), Richard Buckner Gruelle (1851-1914), Otto Stark (1859-1926), and J. Ottis Adams (1851-1927). Some of these men may even have been in the audience on that December evening of long ago. What they heard may have sounded something like a manifesto, a call to the American artist to draw and paint pictures of his or her own time and place, to distinguish himself by placing his art first before the editor of the popular magazine, then before the vast reading public. This would be an art for the common man, made possible by rapid and radical advances in technology, also by a democratic way of life in which art would be available to all and would reflect the experiences of all. It's no coincidence that Pyle would use in his talk a comparison to the development of the steam engine, for with the invention of the steam engine and the popular, pictorial magazine--and by extension all of the other institutions and innovations of liberal democracy--a new age was upon the earth. (1) And by the turn of the nineteenth century, the United States was the leading nation of that new age. Here, then, is the text of an article telling about Howard Pyle's visit in Indiana, from the Indianapolis News, December 5, 1903, page 7:

HOWARD PYLE SPEAKS ON ART OF THE AGE

NOTED ILLUSTRATOR BEFORE IRVINGTON ATHENAEUM.

THE REALLY AMERICAN ART

  Howard Pyle, the noted author, artist and illustrator, lectured last night before the Athenæum Club, of Irvington, on "The Art of the Age." He was accompanied by his wife, and an informal reception followed the lecture. He was introduced to the audience by H.U. Brown, (2) who referred to his as coming from the State of Delaware, and said that this was Mr. Pyle’s first visit to Indiana.

  Mr. Pyle said: "I must confess that I do come from the effete East, but I hope you will not hold that against me. Many of you here have come from the East, and you may remember that there are glass houses in the West as well as in the East."

  He defined art as representing in imagery and picture that for which the age stands in which that art is created. The pictures of the past that have lived have been those that truly represented the age in which they were produced. They might be faulty in drawing or in color, but they were necessarily true in technique. Botticelli’s pictures, he said, represent the childlike enthusiasm of the people of his day as in a later day the creations Michaelangelo [sic] and those of the great Flemish and Spanish painters represent the enormous robustness of an age that was nearing completion.

"So we," he argued, "should hand down to those who follow us the living imagery of what this age stands for. A work of art is a mental image made possible by means of certain technical methods. Everything created by the hand of man must first exist in his mind.

Must Live in Our Own Age

"We can not live to-day in the nineteenth, the eighteenth or the seventeenth century, nor in any century but our own. That which possesses life and power must arise from a living vital mind; otherwise it can not have life. This age is separated from those that are gone by something radical and vital. In the past men lived in a world of effect. To-day we live in a world of causes. The difference between these is the difference between something and nothing. Let us take the creation of the steam engine, the first conception of a young lad observing the kettle boiling over the fire. He sees the steam raise the lid. How was James Watt different from those who had gone before? Millions had seen that same phenomena [sic] of the kettle. In that one moment of observation Watt had stepped from one age into another. At that moment of observation we passed into a new age, the teeming energy of today. * * *

"Do we keep pace in other forms of art with this marvelous phenomenon brought about by the discovery of the power of steam? Do we paint the living things we see to-day about us? Do we paint the pictures that unite man to man, or do we imitate the painters who have gone, who belong to an age that is past? Have we as Americans fulfilled the possibilities of our art?

"We are the possessors of the greatest glories any nation in the world can call its own. We are the inheritors of all the ages. Does our art represent the age in which we live? I think not. We have the greatest sculptors of the world today. Possibly the greatest portrait painters are Americans. It is likely the landscape artists of this country are the peers of those of any other country, but have we created an art that stands for the age? Have our artists in their studios poured forth upon their canvases the life that belongs to this age? I think not.

Wonderful Possibilities

"I think, instead, there is a vast pottering after effects—an effort to produce effects in reds and greens and blues. Look at the wonderful possibilities that lie within our country to create the greatest pictures that could exist in the world. Is there nothing in all our redundant [sic] life that a man must seek the galleries of Europe and learn his mechanism in the schools of Paris?

"The one American art that exists to-day is the art of the illustrator. The illustrator creates that which is American. He is compelled to do so. He has the severest critic in the world—the editor of the magazine, who must consider that which the million people desire to have pictured for them. If there is a failure to do this the magazine will prove a failure. The magazine artist must represent that which is about him.

"So, in the magazine are to be seen all the phases of American life as they stand nowhere else. And from this is to arise the art that is to be handed down to the future. When we begin to paint pictures that are representatIve of American life, all we ask is your support and encouragement. Then other rewards will come fast enough."

* * *

Now known as the father of illustration in America, Howard Pyle (1853-1911) started his own school of illustration in his native city of Wilmington, Delaware, in 1900. His most famous student was undoubtedly N.C. Wyeth (1882-1945), but others at his Brandywine School included Hoosier illustrators Gayle Porter Hoskins (1887-1962) of Brazil, Herbert Moore (1881-1943) of Indianapolis, and Olive Rush (1866-1973) of Fairmount. Another student, Frank Schoonover (1877-1972), taught at the Herron School of Art in Indianapolis in the late 1920s or early 1930s.

* * *

It is ironic in view of Howard Pyle's words before the Irvington Athenæum that he died and was interred not in the New World but in the Old. He went to Italy in June 1910 for his health and to study the murals in that country. He fell ill and contemplated a return stateside. Instead, Pyle died in Florence on November 9, 1911. A Quaker, he was interred at the Cimitero degli Inglesi, or English Cemetery, a burial ground for Protestants and other non-Roman Catholics. I have been to his grave. It is a simple niche in a columbarium or mausoleum, located towards the rear of the cemetery. The face of the niche, perhaps about the same dimensions as an old-fashioned magazine cover turned sideways, possibly a little larger, is marked only with his name. (I don't think even his dates are on the marker, but I can't be sure. This was several years ago, and we were there at closing hours in late fall, too dark for picture-taking.) If nothing else, the marker on his grave should read: "Father of Illustration in America."

Notes
(1) By Howard Pyle's reference to the invention of the steam engine, I am reminded of Henry Adams' dynamo as a symbol of a changing age, from The Education of Henry Adams (1918).
(2) H.U. Brown was Hilton U. Brown (1859-1958), a graduate of Butler College (later Butler University); reporter, editor, general manager, and vice-president for and of the Indianapolis News; and president of the board of directors of Butler University. When we were kids, our local branch of the Indianapolis Public Library was named for him. I remember seeing his daughter, the author Jean Brown Wagoner (1896-1996), at the Brown Branch, at our school, or maybe somewhere else. My classmate Mary Wagoner is her granddaughter. If I have my geography right, Hilton U. Brown lived across Emerson Avenue from the artist and teacher William Forsyth. I believe his property in Irvington, on the east side of Indianapolis, became part of the grounds of Thomas Carr Howe High School. Now, in our very democratic age, the former site of his grand home is occupied by a gas station.

Images from Howard Pyle and His Hoosier Students

The Mermaid, by Howard Pyle, 1910.

A work by Gayle Porter Hoskins, date unknown.

An illustration by Herbert Moore from The Men Who Founded America (1909).

Finally, two covers for Woman's Home Companion by Olive Rush, the December issues of two successive years, 1908 and 1909.

Original text copyright 2018, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

"Money in the Face of the Modern Girl"

Time was when illustrators (and cartoonists) were celebrities and among the highest paid people in the arts and entertainment in America. Sidney Smith, for example, signed a contract in 1922 to draw a chinless wonder called Andy Gump at a rate of $100,000 a year for ten years. In 1935, Smith got a raise, his new contract guaranteeing him $150,000 annually for his work on the daily comic strip The Gumps. Unfortunately for Smith, the Grim Reaper came calling. Smith wrecked his car on October 20, 1935, and was instantly killed. Other artists were a little luckier and enjoyed comfortable, often lavish, lifestyles, especially in the artists colonies around New York City, in New Rochelle, New York, Silvermine, Connecticut, and Leonia, New Jersey, for example. Chicago Tribune staffer John T. McCutcheon, a Hoosier cartoonist and the longtime dean of American editorial cartoonists, even owned his own tropical island.

A good deal of the wealth and celebrity enjoyed by American illustrators and cartoonists was made possible by the technological advances of the late 1800s and early 1900s, advances that made the artwork printed in popular books, magazines, and newspapers evermore true to the original. In the Golden Age of Illustration, from about 1880 to about 1920, printing, paper, and binding improved in quality; American industry perfected methods of mass production and mass distribution; and large numbers of readers had a little extra time and a little extra cash to spend on popular entertainment. The popular press was where they got much of that entertainment, especially before movies came into their own. Art schools and art organizations proliferated during those years of 1880 to 1920 (and after). Art schools turned out myriads of illustrators, cartoonists, commercial artists, letterers, typographers, and designers. And if you were good enough and worked hard enough, you might succeed beyond your wildest dreams. Your name would daily, weekly, or monthly be before the American public, and that public would clamor for your work.

The Indianapolis Star was one newspaper to recognize the success and celebrity of the nation's magazine illustrators. On April 10, 1910, the Star printed on the front page of its magazine section an article called "Money in the Face of the Modern Girl." Written by an anonymous feature writer, the article opens:

"My face is my fortune, kind sir," the model said to the artist, and straightaway he reproduced her comely features in water colors [sic] upon his illustration board, and sold the painting to the art editor of a popular magazine, thereby receiving a check which enabled him to return to his lodgings without dodging the landlord and the tailor. The painting, printed with ravishing color effects on the front cover of the magazine, created such an increased demand for the periodical that the publishers told the art editor to take all the artists's work he could get. Thereupon the face of the model likewise became the fortune of the artist.

The article might be a little cynical in tone. Its author might have regretted the commercialization of art and the newfound wealth and prominence of the lowly commercial artist. But it reveals an important historical fact, namely, that color reproductions of art, especially art depicting the modern girl of the time, helped move books and magazines. In the process, the illustrator of the popular press became a recognized and respectable figure. Some made a banker's salary, and a sidebar to the article gives us a keyhole view into the past. I have transcribed the sidebar here:

Earnings of Leading Magazine Illustrators of Country.

Harrison Fisher . . . . . . . $75,000
Howard Chandler Christy . . . $50,000
Howard Pyle . . . . . . . . . $20,000
C.D. Gibson . . . . . . . . . $15,000
James Montgomery Flagg. . . . $15,000
Maxwell Parrish . . . . . . . $15,000
Frank X. Leyendecker. . . . . $12,000
Joseph C. Leyendecker . . . . $12,000
Orson Lowell. . . . . . . . . $12,000
Jessie Willcox Smith. . . . . $12,000
Sarah Stilwell Weber. . . . . $10,000
Elizabeth Shippen Green . . . $10,000
Frank L. [sic] Schoonover . . $10,000
George Brehm. . . . . . . . . .$8,000
Lucius W. Hitchcock . . . . . .$8,000
C. Allen [sic] Gilbert. . . . .$8,000
Henry Hutt. . . . . . . . . . .$8,000
Albert Wenzell. . . . . . . . .$8,000
A.I. Keller . . . . . . . . . .$8,000
Hamilton King . . . . . . . . .$7,500
John Cecil Clay . . . . . . . .$7,500
Walter Taylor . . . . . . . . .$7,500
F.C. Yohn. . . . . . . . .  . .$7,500
H.C. Raliegh [sic]. . . . . . .$7,500
Worth Brehm . . . . . . . . . .$5,000

(The names in bold are not bold in the original. I have made them that way to set the Hoosiers apart from their fellows. More on each of them below.)

Many of the names on this list will be familiar to fans of American illustration. Those in the top ranks of earnings are also among the top ranks of illustrators as artists, and they have been subject of countless books and articles published over the last century and more. The others deserve some attention, too, though. I'd like to go through all of the artists listed here, one by one, if only briefly.

Born in Brooklyn into a family of artists, Harrison Fisher (1875 or 1877-1934) was most well known for his pictures of the modern woman, known as the Fisher Girl and the American Girl, for Cosmopolitan, The American Weekly, and The Saturday Evening Post.

Although Ohioan Howard Chandler Christy (1872-1952) drew and painted pictures of war and the machines of war, he, like Fisher, was known for his young woman, the Christy Girl, of the 1910s and after.

Howard Pyle (1853-1911) is justly called the Father of Illustration in America. For about a decade he ran a school for artists and illustrators in his native Wilmington, Delaware. His students included some of the other artists on this list. Pyle died in Florence, Italy, and lies interred in a nondescript mausoleum in the back of a small cemetery for non-Catholics on the outskirts of that city. I have been to his grave. I wish that more people would pay it a visit and pay their respects to a great American artist.

Charles Dana Gibson (1867-1944), a master of pen and ink, created the still-famous Gibson Girl, a hugely popular interpretation of the modern woman of the 1890s and early 1900s. The author of "Money in the Face of the Modern Girl" noted Gibson's decline in popularity as color reproduction was perfected in the early part of the twentieth century: Gibson worked almost exclusively in black and white.

Like Gibson, James Montgomery Flagg (1877-1960) was an Easterner and an artist of the city and its society. His rendering of Uncle Sam--a self-portrait--has become an icon of American popular art, but Flagg, like his contemporaries Fisher and Christy, excelled at drawing and painting young and attractive women.

Maxwell Parrish (1870-1966) of Philadelphia and New Hampshire was a magician of light, color, design, and technique. It would not be any overstatement to say that he stood alone among the artists on this list and of his time--no one I know of has since matched his accomplishments as a painter who seemed to have captured sunlight in his pigments. He was and still is an extraordinarily well-admired artist.

Frank X. Leyendecker (1876-1924) and Joseph C. Leyendecker (1874-1951) were German-born artists and one of two sets of brothers on this list. Frank died young. Joseph was known for his ultra-sophisticated men and women, especially for his famous Arrow Collar man.

Though born in Iowa, Orson Lowell (1871-1956) drew pictures of life in society. His style and subject matter are similar to those of Charles Dana Gibson, although his pen work is perhaps finer and more controlled, almost to a photographic effect in many of his pictures.

Philadelphian Jessie Willcox Smith (1863-1935) was and is renowned for her sensitive and beautifully rendered images of children and their mothers. She created illustrations for advertising, magazines, and children's books. For several years, she shared a studio with other women artists, including Violet Oakley and Elizabeth Shippen Green.

Sarah Stilwell Weber (1878-1939) of Pennsylvania studied with Howard Pyle and was a friend and associate of other women artists. She, too, created advertising art and illustrations, including sixty covers for The Saturday Evening Post.

Elizabeth Shippen Green (1871-1954), also of Pennsylvania and also a student of Howard Pyle, illustrated books and magazines, including Harper's Magazine, St. Nicholas Magazine, The Saturday Evening Post, and Woman's Home Companion.

Born in New Jersey, Frank E. Schoonover (1877-1972) studied under Howard Pyle and created the same kind of heroic and adventurous illustration, of war, history, fantasy, pirates, and the American West. Schoonover taught at the Herron School of Art in Indianapolis in 1927 and possibly later.

An illustration created by Frank Schoonover for the John Carter of Mars stories by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Note the date: this picture was made one hundred years ago.

There are three native-born Hoosiers on the list above, starting with George Brehm (1878-1966). Born in Anderson, Indiana, Brehm attended Indiana University and cartooned for The Arbutus, soon after for the Indianapolis Star. Like so many artists from the Midwest, he headed to New York City to find his fame and make his fortune. Brehm created illustrations for most of the popular slick magazines of his day, as well as for many books and advertisements, including for Coca-Cola.

"Misbehaving" by George Brehm.

There must have been something about Indiana boyhood that stuck with Hoosier artists of the early twentieth century, for they returned to that subject again and again. George Brehm and his brother Worth were only two of the artists of boyhood. Others included John T. McCutcheon, Gaar Williams, and Merrill Blosser of Freckles and His Friends fame. 

Lucius W. Hitchcock (1868-1942) is not well represented on the Internet, despite his success as an illustrator of books and magazines, including Harper's. Hitchcock also created illustrations for The Conquest of Canaan (1905) by Hoosier author Booth Tarkington. Although Hitchcock was born in Ohio and not in Indiana, I would like to show one of his pictures here to correct in some small part the fact that he has been overlooked, at least in the digital realm.

An fine illustration by Lucius W. Hitchcock from Harper's Magazine, March 1910.

Born in Connecticut, Charles Allan Gilbert (1873-1929) was an illustrator and animator, and a camouflage artist during World War I. He is most well known for his memento mori picture All Is Vanity, from 1892.

Chicagoan Henry Hutt (1875-1950) began working as a professional artist when he was still a teenager. He created all kinds of illustration but was especially popular for his depictions of young women.

Born in Detroit, Albert Wenzell (1864-1917) studied art in Germany and France but was in no way an art snob. He wrote:

It seems to me, after many years spent abroad, with the consequent opportunity for comparison, that American art has advanced amazingly, further than is generally appreciated at home or abroad. The average American, for instance, admires the drawing of American girls by American Artists. But he rarely goes abroad to have his portrait painted.

American artists excel, it seems to me, in color. There are half a dozen men here now--I don't refer to several well known American artists living abroad—no, there are New York men whose work is not familiar, but whose talent is the first order. It is most unfortunate that our home talent is not more appreciated and encouraged. I have little sympathy with the idea that an artist must live abroad in some so-called art centre. If a man be an artist it makes little difference where he lives. (1)

New Yorker Arthur I. Keller (1867-1924) was a painter and an illustrator of many books of the Golden Age.

Hamilton King (1871-1941) created not one type of girl but two, his Coca-Cola Girl and his Hamilton King Girl for Turkish Trophies Cigarettes. He worked in pastel for many of his illustrations. His clients included Theatre Magazine.

John Cecil Clay (1875-1930) hailed from West Virginia. Like so many of his contemporaries, he drew lots of young, attractive women. His illustrations appeared in The Century Magazine, Good Housekeeping, Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly, Life, The Saturday Evening Post, and Good Housekeeping.

Walter Taylor (1860-1943) was the oldest artist on the list above and the only Briton. I'm not sure why he would be included in a list of "Leading Magazine Illustrators of Country."

Renowned for his historical illustrations, Frederick Coffay Yohn (1875-1933) got his start in his native city working for the Indianapolis News in the 1890s. By the turn of the century, he was in New York City and creating illustrations for leading magazines, especially Scribner's. His work has been reproduced on at least two U.S. postage stamps.

An illustration by F.C. Yohn from The Last Days of Pompeii by Edward Bulwer-Lytton in an edition of 1926.

Early in his career, Yohn specialized in historical scenes and scenes of war and action, but he was equally good at more sedate tableaux, such as in this illustration. I don't know the source or the date, but I suspect this is from the period 1895-1910, judging from the artist's technique.

"You Can't Do That!" by Yohn, from Scribner's, August 1914, the month and year in which the Great War began. If you think steampunk is something new, think again: artists and authors of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were busy at this kind of thing long before any of us were born. For more on Yohn, go to the following URL:

http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Frederick_Coffay_Yohn

Born in Oregon, Henry Patrick Raleigh (1880-1944) was the only Westerner on this list. He was an extremely prolific and popular artist, illustrating, for example, more than 500 stories in The Saturday Evening Post. Even during the Great Depression, he was making more than $100,000 a year.

Worth Brehm (1883-1928) was the younger brother of George Brehm and like him was born in Anderson. Although he was an accomplished colorist, Brehm often worked in charcoal. He specialized in drawings of children, including for the Penrod stories of Booth Tarkington, which appeared in Cosmopolitan.

Another bit of misbehavior in the classroom, this time by Worth Brehm.

Finally, an illustration by Worth Brehm from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain.

I would like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, and Happy New Year!

Note
(1)  Quoted on the website of the Society of Illustrators, here.

Original text copyright 2017, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Kenneth Rexroth (1905-1982)

Today's entry is eccentric. In its spinning and turning, it will catch a renowned artist, poet, and critic; a pop singer who cast herself as a witch; an actress who played a princess; two worldwide pop-cultural phenomena; a song about dreams; and the dreams themselves of countless young people--dreams of quest and conflict and a chance at becoming a hero in a battle that never ends. Among those who dream and who have dreamed were four boys who, on a day forty years ago, sat in a darkened theater in Indianapolis, eagerly awaiting the start of a movie that would prove unlike any before it, even if it was drawn from tales as old as storytelling. My older brother had seen the movie before. My younger brother, his friend Tom, and I had not, but we were excited in a way that only children can be excited to see a movie about which we had heard so much. Not long before that day at the Eastwood--a theater now laid low by the passage of time--the movie had opened across the country and had almost instantly become a sensation beyond any moviegoing experience before it. Nothing before and nothing after--not even Jaws from two summers before--would match what it became in the year and more following its release. It has since grown into a franchise, moreover, a worldwide phenomenon. The movie was of course Star Wars. It came out forty years ago today, on May 25, 1977.*

Strange details stick in your head. I remember that as we waited to see Star Wars, a song played in the theater. (Those were the days before commercials were shown before the movie begins.) The song was "Dreams," by Fleetwood Mac, from the album Rumours. I didn't know it at the time, but Rumours was released on February 4, 1977, not long before Star Wars came out. It was a sensation, too, and became one of the biggest-selling albums of all time. "Dreams" reached number one on the pop-music charts on June 18, 1977, probably around the time the four of us went to see Star Wars. (Our seeing it was an early birthday present from my parents to my younger brother.) Another thing I probably didn't know at the time: "Dreams" was sung by Stevie Nicks.

Now comes the strange part--strange, then somewhat plausible, at least in my view. The heroine of Star Wars was of course Princess Leia, played by Carrie Fisher, who was only nineteen years old when filming began on Star Wars in March 1976--nineteen and completely convincing not only as a princess but also as an outer-space senator. Although she had been in movies before, Carrie Fisher became a household name with Star Wars. Millions mourned her death this past year. She was loved as few people in popular culture are truly loved. Stevie Nicks is also loved that way, by millions the world over. She who sang "Dreams" for us has, strangely enough, been named as a possible replacement for Carrie Fisher. This isn't just some lone fanboy's dream: it's actually a thing on the Internet. As soon as I heard about it, I thought That might actually work. Whereas some people seem to be saying that Stevie Nicks should just be a stand-in or a body double for Carrie Fisher, I think she could actually be Princess Leia. No one I can think of could fill the role, but Stevie is loved like Carrie was loved, and she has a similar stature, not just physically but also in pop-cultural terms. The pop culture of the 1970s is falling into pieces with age as all things do--sadly, neither Linda Ronstadt nor Steve Perry can sing anymore--but if you want to hold it up for at least a little longer, I say Why not? If she can act and if the deal can be swung, why shouldn't we have someone new in Stevie Nicks to play the forty-year-old part of Princess Leia? I realize that it's only a fantasy--a dream--to think that way, but what else is all of this but a dream and a fantasy?

So what does any of this have to do with Indiana and its artists? Well, as any Star Wars fan ought to know, Ralph McQuarrie (1929-2012), the conceptual artist behind the film and the franchise, was born in Gary, Indiana. He worked with director and screenwriter George Lucas as early as the spring of 1975, two years before the movie was released. He would go on to work on other films in the series. I would like to go beyond Ralph McQuarrie, though, and write about another Indiana artist who had nothing (or almost nothing) to do with Star Wars but by the turns of an eccentric idea can be caught in a discussion of the movie and its related phenomena.

A painting by Indiana illustrator Ralph McQuarrie for The Empire Strikes Back (1980). 

Kenneth Rexroth was born on December 22, 1905, in South Bend, Indiana. A home-schooled prodigy, then a teenaged orphan, he moved to Chicago to live with his aunt around 1919 or so. Although he is now known as a poet and critic, Rexroth studied at the Art Institute of Chicago in his youth. I would be surprised to find that any of his artwork survives. On the other hand, maybe there are drawings by Kenneth Rexroth hiding among his papers, wherever they might be housed.

Rexroth had a varied career as a traveler, friend, husband, lover, critic, essayist, poet, author, translator, activist, and associate of many famous people, including Beat Poets and other literary figures in San Francisco. You can read about him on the Internet and in those ancient artifacts known as "books." I'll note only that Kenneth Rexroth died in Santa Barbara, California, on June 6, 1982, at age seventy-six.

"Dorothy," a portrait by Andrée Dutcher (1902-1940), first wife of Kenneth Rexroth. 

Now comes a part about which I'm not sure, followed by some thoughts that I hope will stand on their own, even if I'm wrong about this connection to Kenneth Rexroth. And here is that connection, if it really is a connection: a long time ago, I read that there are only two kinds of stories, namely, the Iliad and the Odyssey. I think the quote was attributed to Kenneth Rexroth, but I can't be sure. As happens too often, when you lose a quote, it's hard to find again, even in this age of the Internet. But I have kept that thought in my head and have applied it to the analysis of books and movies over the years. It seems to hold up pretty well. Boiled down even further, the idea is that every story is either of a conflict--the Iliad--or of a quest or journey--the Odyssey. I would like to look into that idea in relation to two high-powered, pop-cultural franchises.

The cover of Poetry Readings in the Cellar (Fantasy, 1958), a spoken-word record with Kenneth Rexroth and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. I wrote that there is no connection between Rexroth and Star Wars. Well, that's if you stop too soon. If you don't stop too soon, you'll learn that Lawrence Ferlinghetti (b. 1919) was friends with Erik Bauersfeld (1922-2016), voice of Admiral Ackbar and Bib Fortuna in the Star Wars movies.

Before Star Wars, there was Star Trek. Since the former came out in 1977, the two have lived side by side. One is fantasy. It appeals or is meant to appeal especially to children. The other is science fiction, though not always of the highest order. It appeals to children but also to adults, as the best entertainment of the 1960s and '70s did. I'm sure there is some overlap in the fandom associated with each, but the stereotype is that there are just two kinds of people: Star Wars fans and Star Trek fans. I'm not sure what these fans think of each other. If you fall back on stereotypes, you might say that Star Wars fans think that Star Trek is boring and that Star Trek fans think Star Wars is childish and one-dimensional. But those are stereotypes. Anyway, consider their titles: Star Wars. Star Trek. Take away the word Star and you're left with what? Wars--a conflict, the story told in the Iliad. Trek--a quest or journey, the story told in the Odyssey. There are wars in Star Trek and quests in Star Wars, but each is essentially of its own type. (With that in mind, might Princess Leia be Helen of Troy and the Millennium Falcon the Trojan Horse?)

So just by their titles, these two franchises bear out the idea I have attributed here to Kenneth Rexroth. If there are only two kinds of stories, each must cover a lot of ground. The possibilities for storytelling would seem vast. However, there are limits in each. War eventually ceases. The journey finally reaches its end. Wars and journeys without end can only mean misery and despair. So what does that mean for a pop-cultural franchise? I saw part of the results in Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015). The moviemakers seem to have been recreating Star Wars for a new generation. That's fine. Star Wars is after all a story for children. Why shouldn't children now have the same chance we had--we four and millions more like us--in 1977 for an exciting fantasy of rushing from one star system to another towards a climactic battle against an evil empire?

But there's a crack in the Star Wars story. I say it as a fan, but there's a crack, for in Star Wars, there must always be an Empire and there must always be a Rebellion. The Star Wars universe is vast and the possibilities for storytelling are theoretically endless, but the main action in every movie is the same: Imperial forces against Rebels, Sith against Jedi, the Dark Side against the Force. Without that conflict, Star Wars may well amount to nothing. So the war goes on, movie after movie, decade after decade, all with variations on a simple theme: the Empire or its equivalent always builds a big, impenetrable fortress and the Rebels or their equivalents always penetrate it and destroy it, often with what is seemingly the most powerful weapon in the universe, the X-wing fighter. Maybe Star Wars: The Force Awakens recapitulated the original trilogy not so much for a new generation of moviegoers but because it's the only story that can be told in the Star Wars universe. And maybe Darth Vader returned in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016) because of a further limitation: maybe only he makes a truly compelling villain and a suitable embodiment of the spirit of the Empire. One thing is for sure: he beats the heck out of his weak little tantrum-throwing emo grandson.

In Star Trek, on the other hand, there are always new horizons of outer space where no man has gone before. Storytelling in the Star Trek universe is far less limited than in the Star Wars universe if only because it isn't framed and delineated by war, which has, significantly, a classic narrative structure. There is always a Federation and the starships of the Federation, but beyond that, only the writer's imagination places bounds upon what stories might be told. Star Trek, as Kenneth Rexroth wrote of the Odyssey, "is a collection of adventures, of little melodramas." There are limitations even here, though. One is that in the Star Trek universe, there isn't the classic narrative structure as in a story of war. The story just goes on and on, with all parts being equal to all other parts. There isn't any growth or development in the characters. They simply live out their lives in stasis, returned at the beginning of each episode to where they were at the beginning of the last episode, despite anything that might have happened in between. Captain Kirk might have great adventures, but he doesn't grow. Luke Skywalker, on the other hand, might grow (in addition to being a story of conflict, Star Wars can be considered a Bildungsroman), but he can never have peace in a universe that must always be at war.

So which limitation is worse? I can't say. A better way might be to look at possibilities rather than limitations. Star Wars and Star Trek have both told great stories. When they have not told great stories, it hasn't been because of the limitations of their respective types. And I would say that neither franchise has reached the bounds of possibility. There are still more stories to tell, and it's nice to think that forty years from now there will still be excited children waiting in the dark, waiting for the words Space: the final frontier . . . or A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away . . .

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*Addition (Feb. 5, 2022): Incidentally, Stevie Nicks turned twenty-nine years old the day after Star Wars made its debut.

Copyright 2017, 2024 Terence E. Hanley
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