HEATED DEBATE: IS ILLUSTRATION A BIG ENOUGH PROFESSION? BY STEVEN HELLER

HEATED DEBATE IS A PLATFORM What is big? When I was art in it. Illustrators are shoehorned Brad Holland for the first time, FOR THE EXPRESSION OF director of the New York Times into small spaces, so much so who rebelliously declared to THOUGHT-PROVOKING VIEWS Book Review, a post I held for that a once innocuous word now anyone who’d listen he would AND A START-POINT FOR almost thirty of my thirty-three has dubious implications: the never merely illustrate but instead DEBATE. HERE, WRITER AND years at the New York Times (until word ‘spot’ is not just a genre of would interpret his commissions. ART DIRECTOR STEVEN HELLER autumn 2006), I met with three illustration it is the state of the art. Why, he asked, wasn’t his visual ARGUES THAT NOT ONLY DO illustrators a day, four days a An editorial spot was once an point of view as valid or profound ILLUSTRATORS HAVE TO THINK week, to review their portfolios. opportunity to test young talent. as a writer’s? And so fervently BIG, THEY HAVE TO WORK Discounting the repeat visits But today spots are among the did he believe that illustration BIG, OR FACE A FUTURE (maybe ten per year), and those most frequent illustration formats should not be subordinate to an WHERE THEY ARE RELEGATED that really had no business being (covers of the New Yorker being author’s words that through force TO FILLING SMALL HOLES IN called illustrator (another twenty a notable exception). Even of will he convinced editors and EDITORIAL TEXT. per year), this meant too many some of the most accomplished art directors of its rightness. He artists were invariably looking for illustrators are now forced to do wasn’t the only one, but his work too few illustration jobs (and, of spots because it constitutes the on the OpEd page of the New course, I did not meet everyone majority of work they are offered. York Times was key in raising the who was looking for work). So, Incidentally, doing something intellectual bar on illustration. in this sense the field may be small doesn’t mean one has more Many of Holland’s quantifiably too big. freedom, either. Photographers illustrations started as loose However, quantity is not are routinely afforded big spaces, drawings in sketchbooks, what I am concerned with now. while illustrators seem to be left which were adapted with a By big I mean important, indeed with the remains. Spot implies tweak here and a twist there expansive. For me what is crucial inconsequential, as in filling up to address specific editorial to the future of the illustration space or adding a spot of color issues – yet never slavishly so. profession is whether the field’s to a page, rather than providing In this way his ideas were not output is big enough to be meaning. (‘Out damn spot!’) mimicking particular passages, relevant. I want to know what But this (and here’s the but instead served as allegories illustration contributes today, if familiar refrain) was not always or metaphors representing anything, that other art forms true. Illustration commanded larger concepts evoked by an do not. In other words, what are prime editorial real estate during author. If his assignment was, for illustrators saying through their the mid-1960s throughout the instance, to illustrate American work? How are they saying it? late 1980s and even into the dependence on foreign oil, he And if they are saying anything 1990s. Moreover, illustration adamantly refused to show a meaningful, are they pushing added visual dimensions beyond predictably contorted Uncle Sam boundaries that need pushing? the scope of the text. The notion receiving a drug-like ‘fix’ from I’ll cut to the chase. I have that the verb illustrate meant OPEC (how many times have serious doubts that illustration more than copying a passage we seen that uninspired idea?); as practiced over the past five from a manuscript was fairly instead his image was of a man decades – the one-off single radical in the Rockwellian pouring a dinosaur from an oil image used to illuminate era, when the most common barrel. ‘Oil’ was metaphorically an author’s text or sell an illustration métier was a kind implied, but since the overall advertiser’s product – has any of romantic realism, but when image rejected cliché, it forced real significance whatsoever ‘conceptual illustration’ finally hit the viewer to decipher the today. This may be heresy – and in the 1960s, it hit big, like the symbolic code, which in turn it may be wrong – but the trivial heavens parted and the lord said triggered a more intense reading ways in which most editorial and commercial art was ‘the word.’ of the image. Of course, his advertising illustration is being I was introduced to this image was still worth a thousand currently used has marginalized alternative methodology when, words, but it was invested with the field and many of the artists during the late 1960s, I met intelligence that complimented

64 HEATED DEBATE 1/2 IF ILLUSTRATION IS TO BE BIG (AGAIN), IT MUST BECOME CULTURALLY RELEVANT BEYOND MAKING SPOTS FOR MAGAZINES AND NEWSPAPERS.

those words in ways only a strong disturbing black and white many style-mongers found it pursue a highly successful career visual could do. drawings about gun culture in the easier to make small illustrations as a post-surrealist painter, Holland was inspired United States, which began that perpetuated the trivial side working on a considerably larger by independent graphic because he grew up around of illustration (and regrettably the scale (albeit in a manner quite commentators dating back to the weapons, but he used it as a annuals are full of them along similar his illustration, though the nineteenth century, like Francisco veritable portfolio; Sue Coe side the good). Stock houses content is much more focused Goya and Honoré Daumier, turned a critical eye towards have thrived on illustrators who on his passions). Perhaps this is followed in the early twentieth animal abuse with a large continue to make pictures project why some illustrators, including by Kathe Kollwitz and George number of shockingly revealing a conceptual bent, but are all- Holland, Coe, Arisman, and Grosz, and later Robert Osborn, images of concentration camp- purpose templates created with Seymour Chwast, as well as Edward Sorel, David Levine, Alan like abattoirs from around the as much feeling as elevator graphic designers, like Paula Cober, Ralph Steadman, but world in her book ‘Dead Meat.’ music. Scher (with her mammoth hand- especially Roland Topor, among This so-called ‘personal’ Milton Glaser once said lettered maps of the world) the leading conceptualists of the expression was not illustrative in that despite the swelling field of produce huge canvases and late-1950s and 1960s. Each of the conventional sense of illustrators and designers over the other media where physical size, these artists created independent illuminating a storyline but it past decade or so, the ratio of and the visionary ambition, is visual statements, integral art nonetheless informed the good to mediocre always remains greater than the opportunities works, some as socio-political magazine assignments these fairly consistent. Nonetheless, afforded the common illustration. polemics others as expressions artists would also receive. although some extraordinary Scale alone does not ensure of conscience – indeed many of Arisman jokingly recalled, after practitioners are active, bigness, and I don’t recommend them stand up to scrutiny today. sending his book to art directors, illustration from my vantage point that illustrators compensate by Big idea-infused ‘conceptual he mostly got jobs related to largely gets no respect, at least simply making their work larger. illustration,’ which was heinous criminal acts, but the fact as a wellspring of big ideas, and But thinking bigger than that diametrically opposed to was illustration was entering certainly compared to ‘fine art.’ squeezed spot on the page is sentimental Rockwellian realism, realms that had been taboo. And this is where physical bigness imperative to raising illustration’s was adopted as the gold Ultimately editors and audiences is a crucial issue. bar to new heights. In fact, this standard of late twentieth century embraced the symbolic visual Cultural pundits readily has already begun. With the editorial and advertising. While language for good but also not- accept that fine art is culturally advent of graphic novels, Internet realism has never been entirely so-good reasons. bigger than illustration, and one animation, artists’ toys, and other expunged, nor should it be, The superficial elements of reason is because fine art is in entrepreneurial wares, illustrators expressionism, surrealism, and conceptual illustration were, fact much bigger. Few illustrations are finding new reasons and even l’art brut emerged as more in truth, easily appropriated. are monumental, and most are outlets for personal expression. viable alternatives for the Surrealist and expressionist not meant to endure tests of time. The challenge is not to squander multifaceted editorial content in tropes – figurative and landscape Christoph Niemann’s work, the opportunities by simply such concept-based magazines dislocations, radical changes which is constantly clever, and making trivial stuff. If illustration is as Psychology Today and in scale, hard-edged woodcut brilliantly packs a wallop in a to be big (again), it must become newspapers like the New York graphics, among others small space, is nonetheless no culturally relevant beyond Times. Abstract and symbolic – gave the illusion of intellectual match for the painter Walton Ford making spots for magazines and vocabularies gave illustration complexity even if the images in terms of sheer ambition. newspapers. New, indeed big, more cerebral weight. Illustrations were void of real content. While this is surely apples and ideas are necessary. Expanding were no longer solely objective Consequently conceptual veneers oranges – as an illustrator the role of the illustrator into mirrors of innocuous content; were increasingly common, and Niemann’s tendency is to solve social commentators and instead the new breed of style over substance was on the the problem at hand and the critics, as well as inventors ‘illustrator/journalists’ turned rise throughout the 1990s. fine artist is not so constricted – and innovators, and ultimately their subjective lens towards While this should not imply an a hierarchy is established that independent thinkers will be the themes and events that entire genre was debased – relegates illustration to a lesser field’s best growth hormone. ◆ ◆ demanded more personal it was not, and many astute status. I used to publish smart analysis. Marshall Arisman, for illustrators turned to the big idea conceptual illustrations by Mark one, self-published a book of with intelligence and panache – Tansey, who left illustration to

65 HEATED DEBATE 2/2