Swiping Among the Masters

Don't Draw What You Can Trace...18th Century Edition

Explaining my sudden reappearance after months of inactivity will be dealt with in a future post. At the moment I'm much more interested in an oddity from the days of real painting.

I follow a fascinating blog titled "Where is Ariadne?" Each posting takes a venerable art theme (e.g. Birth of Venus, Apollo and Daphne, Mermaids, Cain and Abel) and presents a gallery of interpretations of that theme by painters down through history. It's interesting to see how each artist staged a time-worn story: his (almost always his) choice of which portion of the tale to present, its setting, which details he featured, and so on.

This week's theme is "Joseph and Potiphar's Wife," one of those great tales in which artists could present a salacious story ennobled by Biblical trappings. You may recall the plot: the wife of Potiphar, a rich bigwig, attempts unsuccessfully to seduce Joseph. The woman scorned grabs Joseph's coat as he beats a retreat.  Later she uses the coat as evidence when she accuses Joseph of rape.

As I examined the paintings, two of them caught my eye. The first was this 1703 canvas attributed to Lazzaro Baldi.

 

The second was a 1711 painting by Jean-Baptiste Nattier.

Do you see what I see? Curious, I took the images to Photoshop. First I flopped the Baldi.

Then I laid the Baldi over the Nattier, making it transparent so we can compare the images. Here's the result. Baldi is on top, reduced to 33% opacity. I moved it around a bit, but I didn't rotate, scale or otherwise alter the image.

There's no question. The Nattier is a flopped tracing of the Baldi. The fringing on Joseph might come from his figure having been moved by Nattier, but it could just be differences in the photos of the paintings. This isn't someone's careful re-drawing of the earlier painting. It's a direct trace. Considering that the image is flopped, I wonder if it was copied with one of those prism / half-silvered mirror contraptions. Or was the 18th century version of tracing paper laid over the Baldi and the resulting tracing transferred to the new canvas?

I'd love to hear from readers who know more than I do about classic painters. What was going on here?

Swiping Then and Now--3

Two Bites of the Same Apple

In earlier posts (this one and this one) I discussed the honored tradition of artists swiping one another's work. While digging through my scrap file for a job I stumbled across this pair of images.

The first is from a personal-hygiene ad of the late 1940s (being a clipping I've no record of the magazine or its precise date). It probably advertised either Listerine or Lifebuoy, depending upon the offending body part. The signature appears to read "Ric Kelly." I presume it was painted in greys, but there may have been a color version.The second image came from a comb-bound lithographer's sample book from the mid 1950s. I wish I'd kept the book intact rather than razor blading it! But that was decades ago...anyway, this was presented simply as an example of good color printing. There was no headline or copy, just the picture. It's signed "Jack Klay." I haven't been able to make out the date. It looks like "47" but that would place it right about the same time as the original. I suppose it could be "57."Two things immediately strike me. First, it's a remarkably close copy. The location and shapes of the folds in the jacket and blouse strongly suggest that it was traced (projected, pantographed, whatever). The second thing is that Klay's painting of the faces, which differ somewhat from the originals, suggests he was skilled enough not to need to copy someone else's work. What was the story?

Swiping Then and Now--2

Swiping Revitalized--uh, I mean, Revisited.

On the heels of my last post I offer this advice. It is obviously not meant to be taken seriously (It pains me to have to say this, but nature knows no thinner skins than righteous Internetters.) Aimed at American comic artists, clearly. Not bad advice, though.

Handy Handbook for More Effective Comic Book Swiping
by S. R. Chasm

1. Swipe from old stuff. The older the better. Most swipists crib the stuff they liked last week or last year. However fans' knowledge of artists seldom goes back more than a decade. Swipe Frank Miller, you're found out. Swipe Al Avison and only the scholars will catch you. Note: 2008 isn't "old."
   
2. Swipe from alternate genres. Dan Adkins had a good idea: in his comics work he swiped from science-fiction magazine artists; in his s-f work he swiped from comics. At the time there was little crossover between readerships. Be careful, though...
   
3. Don't swipe where everyone else looks. This changes with the culture. Today it's unwise to nab stuff from celebrity shots, porn (this used to be a safe source), movie stills less than 20-30 years old, and mainstream magazines or websites. Lift a photo from a gay porn mag and you'll be nailed in a heartbeat. You're less likely to be called if you swipe a photo from a farm implement trade newspaper.
4. Utilize foreign sources. This is still a good idea, though given the reach of the Internet it's not as safe than it used to be. American fans remain ignorant of most foreign comics. Look how long it took Giffen's love of Jose Munoz to be acknowledged! There are plenty of foreign comics artists, especially from the 50s and 60s, who were great and are still unknown. Not many eyes will catch a swipe from Hans Kresse! Careful, though: Italian Bonelli comics used to be a great source of swipes, but today lots of those guys work for the US market. Gotcha!
5. Learn to Draw Better. Just kidding.
   

Swiping Then and Now

Swiping: What Does It all Mean?
(and who cares?)

The Internet is the spot for pots calling kettles black, so who am I not to join in?

At right, a cover by Bill Black. Can't identify the original artist from the small pic. Maneely?

When I was a fanboy, denouncing swiping was all the rage. I eagerly joined the attack upon Dan Adkins (who it must be admitted raised the concept to a new high). Then a couple of years later when trying to land an art job--any art job--I included a swiped piece in my pathetic portfolio. One AD obviously smelled a rat. Was it because the swipe was the best piece in the book? At any rate he asked what I reference I used. Caught by surprise I babbled vague nonsense that would have been useful only to a politician. My red face gave me away anyhow. I suspect the AD let me go without further ado because he figured I'd learned my lesson.

This recent cover by David Mack was pulled after a Previews appearance when the swipe was outed

A couple more years passed. I found myself the pasteup artist (remember pasteup artists?) at Learning magazine. The art director was Mike Shenon, a talented designer. I loved Mike and learned volumes from him, but I'm telling no stories out of school to say he could show, er, fits of temper. I saw the Shenon temper explode one day when a young art school grad presented an illustration portfolio that I thought was terrific.Jim Starlin (r) does Esteban Maroto. I swiped this from somebody's site (appropriately enough). Don't remember who...if he kicks I'll remove it.

Mike greeted the guy politely and flipped the first page. But on the second page his face darkened. On the third he pointed at the piece and cried, "This is a steal from Joe Bowler!" [The actual artist I no longer recall, but Bowler is from the right period.] Mike flipped a few more pages, getting angrier with each piece. "And this is Coby Whitmore! And Austin Briggs! What the fuck!?" In the 1960s, despite the hippies, "fuck" was an uncommon word in the office. But the quaking artist had unknowingly delivered the ultimate insult.

"THESE ARE ALL AL PARKER!!!" You see Mike was a passionate fan of Parker--and a good friend of Parker--and the guy who later helped mount retrospectives of Parker's life's work.

Mike slammed the portfolio shut and threw it back at the artist. "Get the hell out of here!" he stormed. "How dare you come in here..." and dissolved into an awful tirade. The artist didn't say a word. He retreated up the stairs as quickly as he could without actually running. Mike needed the rest of the day to calm down.

The real Al Parker. 1946 gouache illustration found at Sam Fox School

But this event wasn't the last word on the subject. In comic books, swiping was common and professionals generally didn't think much about it. As most of you know, Wallace Wood made a joke of it with his famous motto "Don't draw it if you can swipe it, don't swipe it if you can trace it..." etc.

Then there's the matter of drawing from "reference." Artists almost always draw more accurately from photographic (or live, if you can afford it) models. Even more so if he projects a photograph and traces it. Swiping, in a sense, is working from reference. Especially if you're not the best of draughtsmen. Your superhero drawing is better because you "referred" to a drawing by somebody who did it better.

Why do artists swipe? Common reasons seem to be (a) inability to draw the swiped subject; (b) fear that one couldn't draw the subject without swiping it; (c) real or perceived lack of time to do preparatory work for a particular drawing. Most of my swiping arose from (a) and (b). But I did plenty of (c), too. Drawing has always been difficult, especially superhero drawing. Faced with a deadline, an often-erased fight scene, and a stack of Gil Kane comics, the better and quicker result came with the swipe.

The third reason probably informed Wood's swiping. He obviously could draw anything he wanted to, but his studio was constantly cranking out a lot of stuff. "Fast" always trumps "original." But swiping can also become a habit. Before you even sketch out a job, you haul out your scrap. I remember one issue of Daredevil Wood drew in which DD, tied to a vertical post, escaped by shinnying up the post. He did this in a panel swiped from a 1934 Terry and the Pirates panel. Now really...did it actually take less time to fish out an obscure tearsheet to copy than it would have taken Wood simply to draw the scene? Me, maybe. But Wood?

Which brings me in a circle back to the thought that prompted this entry. I have run across some newspaper strip work by one Paul Pinson. In the early 1940s he was among the procession of artists who drew Dan Dunn. I don't think Pinson's work was very good (though it wasn't swiped!).
Googling for information on Pinson, I ran across a site with this interesting piece: an 1947 ad from the New York Art Director's Club Annual for Paul Pinson's humorous illustration.Problem is, here's an illustration by Keith Ward's work for Knopf's edition of Reynard the Fox, published just two years earlier.One of two words describes taking an ad in the Holy Book of American Illustration which exhibits a swipe of a recent--and critically acclaimed--drawing: "chutzpah" or "stupidity."

Here's an ad Pinson put in the Annual in 1952. Is it all his work?That's the ultimate downside of swiping, I guess. Once you are identified as a swipist, you could do the best original drawing of your life and everyone will wonder where you swiped it from.

Kurt Caesar--Part 2 of 2

Rendering unto Caesar those things that weren't Caeser's

As much as I like Kurt Caesar's work, I always feel a little guilty about it because of his rampant swiping. I'm of two minds about swiping. In the fannish days of my youth I adopted a self-righteous zero tolerance policy. I was one of several apa hacks (the 1970s equivalent of bloggers) who delighted in excoriating Dan Adkins for stealing almost every panel. Adkins would swipe from s-f magazine artists when drawing comics, and from comics artists when illustrating science fiction mags; it seemed like a calculated effort to reduce the chances of readers recognizing his source material. I changed my tune about swiping once I found myself on the other side of the page. I saw how, in the face of looming deadlines or insufficient skill, swiping could save one's neck Still it's hard to view Caesar's best-known work, the Urania covers, without noting that this planet came from Bonestell, this robot from Mel Hunter, this spaceship from Alex Schomburg.

In his comics work Caesar was hardly alone in being awash in influences. In the late 1930s Alex Raymond and Milton Caniff were the twin gods of the comic strip. Almost every “realistic” cartoonist of the time was influenced by one or the other. Not only in America: American strips were enormously popular in Europe. There, Raymond was undisputed king. Kurt Caesar was one of a shipload of European strip cartoonists who based their work on Flash Gordon's master. Not only cartoonists admired Raymond ; he was equally popular with the public. A Serbian comics website describes how one publisher tried to boost sales by packaging Caesar's “Il Pirata del Cielo” as “the latest creation of the great A. Raymond,” going so far as to paste Raymond's signature onto the artwork!

Another source of Caesar's work was photos, especially movie stills. Working from stills is a time honored tradition. These photos are readily available, often dramatically lit and posed, and treat the same themes as comics. The practice seemed quite popular in pre-war Italy. To give one example, the South Pacific adventures of Franco Caprioli were littered with American movie stars. It's kind of fun to watch a character morph into Wallace Beery and back depending upon whether Caprioli had a movie still that matched his layout.

It's worth noting that comics didn't flow one way across the Atlantic. Some Italian strips appeared translated in American comics. Among them was the ubiquitous “Il Pirata del Cielo,” which appeared as “Sky Pirates” in Sky Blazers #1 (1940).

In Roy Thomas' Alter Ego magazine Alberto Beccatini has documented how after the war several Italian cartoonists worked for Archer St. John's comics. Other Italian work appeared in Fiction House titles, though I'm unsure whether it was new work or translated reprints. I suspect it was both. Kurt Caesar drew a Wings feature under his “Jack Away” byline, and the panels show extensive cut edges, meaning they might have been existing art reformatted to fit the American page. However the cuts may simply have been evidence of pasted over dialogue. I no longer own the comics so I can't go back to figure it out.

After the War, Caesar's covers for Il Vittorioso resembled those of the American “popular science” magazines. He romanticized racing cars, speedboats, new aircraft, and future predictions. The cover at left was from a 1961 issue (sorry about the extreme cropping; I scanned it in two pieces from a bound volume). In his comics work Caesar had simplified and modernized his style somewhat. But he hadn't thrown out his reference library--note the guest appearance by The Mangler in this fictitious strip about the X-15 rocket plane!

(Sky Pirates page from a reproduction of the story at goldenage comicbook stories. blogspot. com. Urania cover from mondourania.com. Other pix from my collection.)