Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- Thanks to Bill Peckmann, we can look at a few more of the great cartoons by Peter Arno. These were all done for The New Yorker magazine. All three posts done on Arno represent about ½ the book on the cartoonist.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

- Bill Peckmann sent me the pieces so that we can see how Harvey Kurtzman built to the final “Little Annie Fannie” cartoons in Playboy.

Here is the pencil rough of one such cartoons. You’ll note that he signed this for Bill Peckmann in 1972. Bill included this short note: “Red pencil is Hefner’s ‘blue pencil’”.

The cover Harvey Kurtzman made for the piece.

Pages 1 & 2

Pages 3 & 4

We follow that with Kurtzman’s color roughs of the piece. I didn’t reassemble it so that you could see it in a slightly larger size.

1

2

3

4

Finally, we have the finished result as printed in Playboy.

1

2

3

4

Many thanks, again, to Bill Peckmann for sharing these priceless materials.

- Bill Peckmann sent me a piece by Harvey Kurtzman from his Playboy work.

Here’s a note from Bill: “The art from today is from the June 1960 issue of Esquire magazine. It’s a neat commentary on classical music, Hollywood and Vienna done in 1960.”

“All of his Esquire pieces were probably the best finished color art he ever did, he liked them enough to have them framed and hung in his living room. It was always a big treat for his fans to actually see the originals. Harvey was a very, very kind person, his front door was always open to us slobbering fans.”

Here are the pictures.

1

2

3

4

- More of the artwork of Lyonel Feininger, thanks to Bill Peckmann‘s greast resources. This is from a third catalogue of his artwork at a gallery showing. These are all drawings done using different materials.

Unfortunately the pictures are printed quite small on the page, so they remain small in the post. I’m sorry about that. However, something is better than nothing. If only we had the actual drawings here, you’d see some closeups.

1
The catalog cover.
.
23
(L) The catalog title page | (R) a biographic portrait
.
4&5
Two self-portraits: one in 1906, the second in 1908
.
6
.
7
.
8
Several drawings of chimneys in Paris.
.
9
.
10
This is from another catalogue, but it fits well here.
.
11
.
12
.
13
.
14
.
15
.
16
.
17
.
18
.
19
.
20

- The Albert Hurter book, He Drew As He Pleased, continues. This book is a beautiful edition, which reminds me – in a tactile way – of The Robert Field book The Art of Walt DIsney – of drawings Hurter did while at the Disney Studio in the 30s and early 40s.

Hurter was a key designer from Europe who was allowed to draw what he wanted as inspiration for the designs of the films in production at the time. He was an enormous influence on Snow White and Pinocchio.

These pages are all scanned and sent to me by Bill Peckmann and I have to thank him. The book is not easy to scan. So here we complete the posted book.

__________________
.
82
“Opera”

83

84
‘When “The Reluctant Dragon” was in preparation,
these medieval studies appeared… each from memory.
Albert never resorted to “scrap”…’

85

86

87
“Stalwarts”

88
“Refreshments… Fifteenth Century”
89
“Knighthood’s dignity never seemed to impress Albert”

90
“St. George warms up”

91
“Between Halves”

92

93
“Complete Overhaul”

94
“A pet character of Albert’s who never quite never reached the screen”

95
“Some of his last sketches.”

96
“Between serious thoughts Albert succeeded in elevating
the practice of doodling until it approached a fine art”

97

98

- There was such an interest in Ludwig Hohlwein’s work, last week, that we’re going forward with more. These come from two books, a 1926 edition of his work (see title page below) and
a 1994 German book, Ludwig Hohlwein, 1874-1949: Kunstgewerbe und Reklamekunst.

All the scans were done by Bill Peckmann, who owns both of these books. Many thanks to him for not only introducing me to thie wonderful artist but for sharing so many illustrations of his work.

Title page from the 1926 book.

Here’s a portrait of Hohlwein.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13
Illustrations 13 & 14 are book covers.

14

15

16

17

- I had planned to post some examples of Feininger’s second comic strip, Wee Willie Winkie, this week. However, Bill Peckmann surprised me with more of his fine art. This is all from 1908, just two years after he left the strip behind. Most of these images are done with some form of crayon on paper, rather than oil on canvas.

The show was one that was held at the Achim Moeller Fine Art gallery in New York.

1
This is the catalogue’s cover.

2
A self portrait opposite the title page.

3
A foreward to the catalogue by gallery owner, Achim Moeller.

4
Two Figures, 1908

5
Promenade, 1908

6
Two Figures, 1908

7
Street Scene, 1908

8
The Miller and His Child, Heringsdorf, 1908

9
Masks, Gelmeroda, 1908

10
Figures Seated on Beach Overlooking Town, 1908

11
Workmen, 1908

12
Railway 1909

13
Train 1909

14
Railroad Men, Zehlendorf 1908

15
Railway Scene, 1908

16
Steam Train, 1908

17
Railroad Scene, 1908

18
Grotesque Scene with Six Figures, 1908

19
Study for Carnival in Gelmeroda, 1908

________________________________

The 2011 Oscar nominations were just revealed. The nominations for Best Animated Short include:

* “Day & Night” Teddy Newton
* “The Gruffalo” Jakob Schuh and Max Lang
* “Let’s Pollute” Geefwee Boedoe
* “The Lost Thing” Shaun Tan and Andrew Ruhemann
* “Madagascar, carnet de voyage (Madagascar, a Journey Diary)” Bastien Dubois

I’m very sorry to see that Sensology Michel Gagné abstract short wasn’t nominated. After all these years you would think ONE absract film could be included. But the Academy members are even more straight laced than in the past.

- Peter Arno had set out to be a musician in his earliest years, but the sale of a gag cartoon to the New Yorker (which ran June 20, 1925) started him on a long, industrious and extraordinary career. He appeared in the New Yorker almost every week of my life, so I got used to seeing his work. I also took for granted the absolute ease with which he sold his gags, something that’s sorely missed today. The compositions, the use of grey tones (most of his cartoons were done in B&W&grey washes with black ink brush lines), and the use of angles all played perfectly to the service of the gag.

Bill Peckmann surprised me with these images from the book on Arno. Thanks, Bill.

The book’s cover.

1
Arno drawing his muse.

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

- We’ve been, lately, showcasing some of Lyonel Feirlinger‘s work. A close cousin of his would seem to be Ludwig Hohlwein. Hohlwein was a brilliant German poster artist. His influence seems to have fallen far and wide. Alex Toth and Rowland B. Wilson have both admitted a fondness for Hohlwein, and homage can be found in several of their works. There can also be no doubt that Vernon Grant was aware of Hohlwein’s work.

Hohlwein was born in 1874 and practiced his art until 1906 when he turned to pster design. He quickly became one of the leading masters of his day. (Interestingly, it was 1906 when Feininger did his two great comic strips and left to turn to oil painting in Germany.)

Bill Peckmann introduced me to Hohlwein, and he’s scanned many of the posters from the book to the right, a 1926 publication. Many thanks, again, to Bill for the material.

Here, then, are some of the posters from this book:

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13
Here’s a note from Bill Peckmann: “Here’s the color version of the ad/poster
from an oversized Dover reprint book. Sorry I couldn’t get it all on the scanner,
but you’ll get the jest of it. It’s that glowing coal of the cigarette in the
silhouette that Rowland just loved. Pretty neat, huh?”

14
An Alex Toth image.

15
Another Alex Toth image that looks
very much like a Feininger strip panel.

- Last week, I posted some examples of Lyonel Feininger‘s comic strip art, panels from his 1906 strip for the Chicago Tribune, The Kin-der-kids.

As I pointed out, then, he left comic strips in 1906 and moved onto fine Art painting. This week, I’d like to look at the painting part of his early career.

Bill Peckmann has in his wonderful collection the brochures for two art exhibits that took place in the 80s. He’s sent me material from both brochures that I’d like to post here. The first was a show that took place at the Achim Moeller Fine Art Gallery in New York. Here is the NYTimes review for that show:

1

2

3

4

5
Paris chimneys 1906

6
Steam Train 1908

7
Cover of second gallery brochure

8
Cover of booklet for second gallery show.

9
Title page

10
Lyonel Feininger

11

12
Haystacks 1907

13
Steeple Behind Trees 1907

14
Edge of the Wood, Lobbe 1907

15
Arcueil I 1907

16
The Proposal 1906

17
Pedestrians 1908

18
Carnival in Gelmeroda II 1909

19
Small Blue Locomotive 1909

20
Newspaper Readers 1909

21
Carnival in Arcueil 1911

22
Velocipedists 1910

23
Still Life 1912

24
Bridge O 1912

25
Newspaper Readers II 1916

Many thanks to Bill Peckmann for this material.

Next week examples of Wee Willie Winkie