Tim Hawkinson

Tim Hawkinson in front of "Wall Chart of World History from Ancient Times to the Present," 1997

By Michele Leight

In ancient times, Tim Hawkinson might have rubbed shoulders with alchemists, artists, monks, magicians and flute and lute players. Merlin might be called a scientist today instead of a magician or alchemist, but the word 'scientist' had not been culled for contemporary usage in medieval times.

When the Director of the Whitney Museum of Art in New York called Hawkinson a "modern medievalist," not a mad scientist, it struck the right chord. The artist's first major retrospective is a wildly imaginative rollercoaster ride of emotions, artistry, mechanics, materials, self-examination and a beguiling blend of ancient and modern references and inspirations, grounded in solid classical traditions.

"Divan," pastel and paper on foam core on panel, 1997, collection Tony and Gail Ganz

Fine artistry is always close at hand in Tim Hawkinson's work despite the deliberately distracting wizardry, mechanical dexterity and complexity of some of the constructions, not to mention the sheer wealth and variety of materials, both found and fashioned, that make up the majority of the pieces. There is one work that might be called a "painting," a gorgeously subdued, fantastical work featuring multiple shrinking Tinkerbells - fairies - in monochromatic colors: "Divan" (1997) in the hands of Hawkinson, becomes a sofa extraordinaire. Now in the collection of Tony and Gail Ganz, it is one of the most straightforward pieces in the show in terms of materials, created from pastel and paper on board mounted on wood.

Fascinated by cartoon and Hollywood magicians, I have always relished the way a person or thing becomes humongous or miniscule with a simple wave of technology, often disguised as the 'magic wand': Tim Hawkinson's works generate the same sense of wonder as they veer from gargantuan and humongous to minutely detailed and tiny. For example, the drop in scale from the colossal "Pentecost" in the opening gallery of the show to the tiniest "Feather" (1997), created from a strand of the artists own hair - or a eensy "Bird," (1997), artfully constructed from the artist's own superglued nail clippings.

"Emoter," altered ink-jet print, monitor, stepladder and mechanical components, Andrea Nasher Collection, 2002

It is just not possible to walk past a work by Tim Hawkinson without reacting. Familiar with his mechanical face, "Emoter," 2002, (included in this show), from The Whitney Biennial in 2002 (see The City Review article), I was even more drawn in by "Uberorgan" in the Atrium of the IBM Building on Madison Avenue in New York.

"Uberorgan," (following three images) in the IBM Building Atrium, Madison Avenue and 56th Street, New York, woven polythylene baloons, nylon, cardboard tubing, mechanical components and air.Andrea Nasher Collection, commissioned for exhibition at MASS MoCA, North Adams, Massachusetts, 2000.

I was on my way to an event but stopped dead in my tracks, smitten by the huge multi-armed aerial octopus, or tree-branch - or whatever the gigantic construction reminds you of on a particular day - with inflated organs trailing entrails, anchored by pipes which invoke Tibetan horns if your imagination is ignited. The sound this modernist organ makes in one musical segment is just like the Tibetan horns I heard in Ghoom Monastary not far from Kurseong, clinging to the mountainside on the dizzy ride up to Darjeeling, in the foothills of the Himalayas. There are no monks, or mountain mists, here in the heart of Manhattan's vertical columns of commerce and enterprise, but the sounds generated by this work are eerily similar. "Uberorgan" unlocks different memories and associations for different situations.

If, like some, you are more perplexed than impressed by the aerial construction in the IBM Atrium, you will still probably stop and look at the massive contemporary art organ mated with a wind instrument for a giant, if for no other reason than fascination that it is constructed of all kinds of wonderful media - found, man-made and deftly fashioned. I connected the name of the artist on the description of the piece in the IBM Atrium to an upcoming press preview at The Whitney. The "Uberorgan" made me mark my calendar in bold script - go see this show. I wondered what else this witty Merlin of contemporary art had to offer.

I was not disappointed; the show at the Whitney appeared at first to be about many wildly imaginative things, including "Uberorgan" installed down the avenue at IBMs headquarters, but the more I looked at, smiled at and absorbed Tim Hawkinson's work the more seriousness I found. The playfulness is winsome, especially when you are all grown up now, and the unselfconscious approach of the works - mirrored in the artist himself - makes it okay to have fun, to be young again, but the seriousness comes later.

Smart, playful, witty and original, Hawkinson's multi-disciplinary approach belies a keen intelligence. While it is easy to be taken in by the playfulness and leave it at that, spending more than just superficial time with some of the constructions at the show recalls life- preserving and life-threatening equipment, all under the innocent guise of a mechanical face, or musical instrument, or weird contraptions that blip water via a computer simultaneously into several steel buckets with the pulsating accuracy of a plasma drip.

Detail of Wall Chart of World History From Earliest Times to the Present," 1997. Ink and colored pencil on paper. Private collection, courtesy Ace Gallery

Speaking with Tim Hawkinson was effortless and he was good-humored about having his picture taken in front of "Wall Chart of World History From Earliest Times to the Present," (1997), a gorgeous and obsessively detailed pink, red and gray scroll, reminiscent of the ancient Chinese variety, of enormous length - 51 inches wide by 420 inches long.

"Let's take the photograph here, so the red shows up," he said, ever aware of the impact of color. The result is the photo at the top of the story. The artist smiled when I said his work was both playful and serious. "Yes," he replied, eyes gleaming.

Hawkinson has a keen sense of humor, and our conversation somehow turned to children: I said how wonderful it must be for his daughter - Claire, just 16 months old - to have a father who makes such fantastical constructions and artworks.

"Balloon Self-Portrait," 72 by 48 by 33 incyhes, 1993, refabricated 2005, Ace Gallery

"Actually, that one scared her," said Hawkinson, indicating "Balloon Self-Portrait," (1993), an inflated latex human form suspended from the ceiling above our heads.

"I had covered myself in latex and was waiting for it to dry and she walked in on me in the bathroom," he explained, revealing the process of the aerial baloon man above us. Little Claire did not go for "Balloon Self-Portrait" - but the other works in the show do not involve her father becoming smothered in grungy fluids that must have looked pretty strange to a toddler - so they must delight.

Through the centuries serious issues and messages have lurked behind humorous and playful facades - Shakespeare's buffoons and clowns for example. They get to say what Shakespeare himself wanted to say about many things: they were safe to hide behind. The bard knew only too well how the public could be. Hawkinson's work has the same banter and buffoonery.

"H.M.S.O.," wood, fabric and string, 90 inches diameter, 1995, collection Dean Valentine and Amy Adelson

Imbedding seriousness in humor makes it infinitely more palatable. That takes a lot of savviness these days, with all of us so bored and over stimulated by everything. We are in perpetual visual surround-sound, and therfore in danger of over-dosing. Most of us would rather have fun, then - if we absolutely must - deal with reality. We know cod liver oil is good for us, but we can't see the good it is doing and who really likes to ingest that awful tasting stuff anyway? My son used to ask in his blunt childlike way:

"How do I know it is good for me? I can't see it. Show me."

Confronted with this ingenius form of kid logic I ended up promising my son chocolate cake in return for taking the foul tasting mixture (without spitting it out) which worked far better than the "it's good for you" approach. I have not drifted away from the subject: the "chocolate for ikky tasting vitamin or medicine" trade is just how I felt about the approach Hawkinson takes to engage the viewer - humorously, gently, cleverly - and then the seriousness, the idea or underlying message emerges, by which time it is far easier to deal with.

The following three photographs show Hawkinson's "Uberorgan" with tentacles outstretched in the IBM Atrium on Madison Avenue and 56th street in New York City. Here is how the artist describes his creation:

Detail of "Uberorgan" Another view of Uberorgan

"Several bus-size biomorphic baloons, each with its horn tuned to a different in the octave, make up a walk-in self-playing organ. A 200 foot-long scroll of dots and dashes encodes a musical score of old hymns, pop classics, and improvisional ditties. This score is deciphered by the organ's brain - a bank of light sensitive switches - and then reinterpreted by a series of switches and relays that translate the original patterns into non-repeating vairations of the score."

Uberorgan, 2000, is constructed of woven polythylene balloons, nylon, cardboard tubing, mechanical components, and air. Andrea Nasher Collection, commissioned for exhibition at MASS MoCA, North Adams, Massachusetts, 2000.

There were a couple of dazed and confused looking ladies with grey hair peering up at the gigantic "Uberorgan" octopus in the Atrium of the IBM Building the first evening I saw it. No doubt the cost of the piece was running through their minds, and what is the point of it? what does it mean? has the world gone mad if this is art? But they stopped and reacted - they did not just walk on by. They even smiled after a while.

Great and good art should produce a reaction; anger and outrage is better than no reaction at all. Worst of all is catatonic acceptance and boredom. Anyone who goes to "Tim Hawkinson" at the Whitney will react and not be bored or disappointed, even if they don't 'get' the art. That might come later. The kids will love it too - that is a certainty. For one who has been to many contemporary art and sculpture shows, I was pleased to discover that I could still be altered by a show. I am frequently moved and exalted by art, but to be altered even in a small way is challenging these days. Changing the way one thinks, even slightly, is something. I found the show opened up whole areas of thought that had lain fallow after years of neglect - I became connected to my art school days. Happy times.

Tim Hawkinson explores the ins and outs of the world, emotions, bodies, perceptions and the inner self with quixotic grace and intelligence - then sews or knits his discoveries into the wider fabric of our existence, revealing the magic and madness, beauty and barbarism that is the 21st century. The seeming innocence of much of his works makes the viewer long for that state of innocence, now gone from ourselves and our vision. But the latent seriousness in many of the pieces is a reminder that seriousness has after all preserved civilizations - and our acknowledgement of the need for a "classical order" is historically proven.

Above all, the devotion and often myopic diligence required of many of Tim Hawkinson's works recalls the excellence and discipline required of artists, goldsmiths and sculptors in medieval and ancient times. The artisans guilds or monastaries that were a hot-bed of fully funded patronage and support; the inter-action between artist and the "work" is reminiscent of the Zen monks of olden times who painted the most awesome calligraphic artworks with their own hair and squid ink; a time when apprenticeship as an artist entailed back-breaking attention to detail and surface preparation - often as many as 24 coats of gesso, fine sanded between each layer, for a Renaissance master's gilded triptych. As we explore a Hawkinson work in front of us we understand the exactitude and focus beneath the playfulness. Our role changes - viewing and having fun is not enough and we start to engage in the rigour of "making" and the mental gymnastics required in the process of understanding.

"Pentecost," polyurethane foam, sonotubes, solenoids, found computer program and mechanical components. Dimensions variable. Andrea Nasher Collection, 1999

Works like Uberorgan and the fantastical "Pentecost," 1999,(Andrea Nasher Collection) in the opening gallery at The Whitney make us by their sheer size step back, as well as engage, as one does when confronted by a sight as awe-inspiring as The Grand Canyon or The Eiffel Tower. The huge works push the viewer away, yet they are strangely cosy and accessible. The minute "Bird," 1997, (fingernail pairings and superglue, Andrea Nasher Collection), seems innocent enough: it's tiny scale is inviting - then close inspection reveals it is made of clipped finger nails, and we are momentarily startled, taken unawares and off-guard. Fingernail clippings? Eek!

"Life-Size Mirror Self-Portrait," Synthetic polymer and aluminium foil on polyester. Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation, Los Angeles, 2000

Hawkinson knows the power of positive/negative: attract/repel. But he pulls back just in time so that things don't get too disturbing. A strange tune emerges from an even stranger looking construction that suddenly emits a well known and comforting passage by Bach, or a recognizable pop song!

Background, "Volume Control," paper, aluminium foil and glue on panel, 1992, private Collection, courtesy Ace Gallery; Foreground, "Armor Ooze," aluminium foil, synthetic ploymer on urethane foam, and brass brads, 1996, collection of Eileen-Harris Norton and Peter Norton

History is important to Hawkinson, as well as our place in it; in the process of engaging our focus with a simulated CD made of luscious aluminium foil, (in front of which lies what looks like a latter day fallen knight in shining armor), or "Drip," with its fine, vein-like tubes of blipping fluid, we accept that there is a steady, consistent flow, a stabilizing physical, emotional and mental "classical order," that has been passed on through the centuries.

Preserving the past while making his mark in the present and moving into the future is a constant theme in Hawkinson's work; continuity is cleverly packaged in startling 21st century objects fashioned from found and ready made materials that are non-threatening, often strangely familiar and therefore re-assuring. It can also be eerie, surreal, disquieting - like all great art.

"Drip," 2002, polythene, mechanical component, and water. Dimensions variable. Collection Steven Neu.

When one of the constructions abrubtly stops working for instance, we are uneasy: the voice inside says:

"It has stopped." Like a heart beat, a pulse.

What if everything we have come to rely upon stopped working? How reliable is what we know, feel , see and touch - everything that is our world? How permanent is all this? Hawkinson's constructions make you stop and stare, no matter how busy or preoccupied your mind is.

One of my favorite exchanges about his work took place between two thirty-something businessmen, intent in conversation, striding purposefully through the IBM Atrium, thankfully right past my alert ears.

As if to exert its magic over two diligent souls too busy to notice its presence, "Uberorgan" began its whizzing, gas-emitting, soft-strangulation, sublimely sonorous and extra-terrestrial sounds, accompanied by ever-so subtle bumps and mechanical grinds.

"What's that?" asked one businessman, amazed, momentarily rooted to the ground.

That's art," his colleague replied seriously.

"Really," he said, looking up in wonder at "Uberorgan," suspended like some extra-terrestrial above the bamboo trees.

Found Here: http://www.thecityreview.com/thawkins.html

Abner Dean - What Am I Doing Here?

The characters in these drawings are modestly sexless, but they reveal all sorts of things about themselves through their activities. Their guiding star is folly, and when they act in groups, it’s always under the direction of a collective id... Some of the drawings are under the sway of a symbolism that suggests a simplified modern version of the instructive images Bosch or Bruegel composed — there are men turning into birds, or mushrooms turning into men, and people with portentous objects affixed to their pates — eggs, books, irons. Of course, when the rest of you is naked, even a hat becomes a portentous object: a naked man wearing a policeman’s hat is not simply a man wearing a hat. But even in the most hermetic and perplexing cartoons, you feel there might be some unacknowledged part of yourself acting out its pet obsession in some corner of the diorama.
— Philip Wylie
Found Here: http://whatthingsdo.com/single-panel/what-am-i-doing-here/

Abner Dean (1910 – 1982), born Abner Epstein, was an American cartoonist who was the nephew of sculptor Jacob Epstein. In allegorical or surrealist situations, Dean often depicted extremes of human behavior amid grim, decaying urban settings or barren landscapes. His artwork prompted Clifton Fadiman to comment, "His pictures are trick mirrors in which we catch sight of those absurd fragments of ourselves that we never see in the smooth glass of habit."

Graduating from Dartmouth in 1931, Dean studied at the National Academy of Design. He worked as a commercial illustrator, contributing to The New Yorker, Esquire (magazine) and other publications. His work for Life included illustrations of George Orwell's 1984 for a Life article on Orwell.

His first book, It's a Long Way to Heaven (Farrar and Rinehart, 1945) had an introduction by Philip Wylie. Chris Lanier, in "Abner Dean Made This: An Appreciation," analyzed the approach Dean took in the book:

The characters in these drawings are modestly sexless, but they reveal all sorts of things about themselves through their activities. Their guiding star is folly, and when they act in groups, it’s always under the direction of a collective id... Some of the drawings are under the sway of a symbolism that suggests a simplified modern version of the instructive images Bosch or Bruegel composed — there are men turning into birds, or mushrooms turning into men, and people with portentous objects affixed to their pates — eggs, books, irons. Of course, when the rest of you is naked, even a hat becomes a portentous object: a naked man wearing a policeman’s hat is not simply a man wearing a hat. But even in the most hermetic and perplexing cartoons, you feel there might be some unacknowledged part of yourself acting out its pet obsession in some corner of the diorama.

At first these pictures look like gag cartoons (there’s a funny drawing, and then a caption that might provide a laugh) but on closer examination they reveal themselves to be a different animal. In a gag strip, the caption usually puts the image to a full stop — the joke has been released from the image, and so the image has been “used up” — disposable as the burnt rind of a firecracker. With some of Dean’s images, the caption can indeed provide a laugh, but the image, instead of coming to a full stop, begins to spool out in disquieting directions... But even the drawings that are closer to gags, like “Double Thinking,” showing a man who has a doll doppelganger of himself strapped to his back (a woman is embracing the doppelganger, while the man himself is observing her and taking notes), are drawn with such an atmosphere of blasted loneliness that what you take away from them, more than the laugh or the cleverness, is a sense of chilly disconnect. In Heaven, Dean situates his scenes in landscapes, even when he doesn’t strictly need a wider environment to sell the situation — and most of the landscapes are barren, showing empty hills or dead cracked trees, piles of jagged rocks, horizons stretching out the promise of more nothingness.

Seven more Dean collections were published over the next 16 years. As indicated by the title of his Naked People (1963), his more personal work portrayed most often unclothed people in a variety of absurdist situations, reflecting the themes of disillusionment, self-delusion, yearning and the meaninglessness of modern life. Despite this, he usually drew in a very slick, professional and cleanly drawn, even cute style. Dean's vision expressed a darkness atypical of cartoon work of his time. He has begun to accumulate a posthumous cult following of admirers.

Several years ago, when I had the Serbian cartoonist Aleksandar Zograf staying at my apartment, I showed him the fruits of some recent used-bookstore reconnaissance — two collections of cartoons by Abner Dean. I explained that I’d never heard of Dean before spying an alluring spine on the “humor” shelf and that subsequently, snooping around on the internet, it seemed the only people aware of his work were a handful of other cartoonists and a small cadre of enthusiastic collectors. Near as I could tell, he hadn’t had a book in print for the duration of my adult life.

After Zograf had paged through several images in the books, he looked up at me with an incredulous expression, and said: “Incredible! There should be a monument to this man!”

He was right — though it’s hard to say what an appropriate monument would look like. If it were a sculpture, it would probably involve a naked person or two, their nipples and genitals erased enough to deflect objections from the local decency brigade, but engaged in an obscure, vaguely improper activity that would be sure to raise other inconvenient issues. An appeal to the plaque of this monument to straighten things out would be in vain: the single sentence it would offer might seem straightforward enough — “I hate apple pie” or maybe “Facts are consoling” — but applied to the naked figures, the apparent declarative intentions would be thwarted. It could only be erected in a public square whose function was perturbation.

In 1945, Dean published his first book of “naked people” cartoons, under the title It’s a Long Way to Heaven. The characters in these drawings are modestly sexless, but they reveal all sorts of things about themselves through their activities. Their guiding star is folly, and when they act in groups, it’s always under the direction of a collective id. Clifton Fadiman, in a preface to another of Dean’s books, put it very well: “ His pictures are trick mirrors in which we catch sight of those absurd fragments of ourselves that we never see in the smooth glass of habit.” Some of the drawings are under the sway of a symbolism that suggests a simplified modern version of the instructive images Bosch or Bruegel composed — there are men turning into birds, or mushrooms turning into men, and people with portentous objects affixed to their pates — eggs, books, irons. Of course, when the rest of you is naked, even a hat becomes a portentous object: a naked man wearing a policeman’s hat is not simply a man wearing a hat. But even in the most hermetic and perplexing cartoons, you feel there might be some unacknowledged part of yourself acting out its pet obsession in some corner of the diorama.

At first these pictures look like gag cartoons (there’s a funny drawing, and then a caption that might provide a laugh) but on closer examination they reveal themselves to be a different animal. In a gag strip, the caption usually puts the image to a full stop — the joke has been released from the image, and so the image has been “used up” — disposable as the burnt rind of a firecracker. With some of Dean’s images, the caption can indeed provide a laugh, but the image, instead of coming to a full stop, begins to spool out in disquieting directions. Take, for example, “The Man with the Book of Answers.” The surface gag here is that the supplicants to the man with the Book of Answers all have their ears plugged. That’s kind of funny — you can imagine all sorts of pilgrims going through the motions of pilgrimage, and then stuffing their ears once the revelation is at hand. But the longer you look at the drawing, the more strange details accumulate, and you realize the characters aren’t just delivering a gag; they’re enmeshed in a perverse social relationship. The old man’s eyesight is failing. Is that a result of having pored over the Book of Answers? Is it merely a visual device that the pages of the Book of Answers appear to be blank — or are they actually blank? The old man is chained to the book by a leg shackle — is this something he’s done himself, in order not to have it taken from him? Or has he been chained to it as a sort of punishment? Whether he was conjoined to the book by choice or fiat, it has made him a desiccated freak. And the supplicants aren’t supplicants at all — they’re gawkers. They haven’t been looking for answers, they've been looking for the freak. It’s an exchange that’s depraved on both ends of the equation.

But even the drawings that are closer to gags, like “Double Thinking,” showing a man who has a doll doppelganger of himself strapped to his back (a woman is embracing the doppelganger, while the man himself is observing her and taking notes), are drawn with such an atmosphere of blasted loneliness that what you take away from them, more than the laugh or the cleverness, is a sense of chilly disconnect. In Heaven, Dean situates his scenes in landscapes, even when he doesn’t strictly need a wider environment to sell the situation — and most of the landscapes are barren, showing empty hills or dead cracked trees, piles of jagged rocks, horizons stretching out the promise of more nothingness.

That’s not to say the style isn’t elegant, genteel — even charming. The chilliness comes as a delayed reaction. I've watched several unsuspecting victims with a Dean book I've just pressed into their hands, and followed with perverse glee as their initial expression — an expectation of being charmed — curdled on their faces. The surface of the drawings has the slick poise of classic New Yorker cartoons. The characters could be recently released from the employ of Arno or Addams, having delivered their bon mots and retired from their parties and boardrooms, caught unawares after shedding their tuxes and evening gowns. The style seems the essence of an upper-middle-class '40s or '50s; the remarkable thing is that this isn’t an ironic appropriation of a '50s style after the fact — it’s the thing itself, happening as it was lived. It’s the underbelly of an era revealed not through retrospective commentary but by experience. Of course, the spikiness of the popular culture of that time has been smoothed by nostalgia; some of the New Yorker cartoonists could be quite acidic. But Dean goes beyond barbed social commentary — he’s willing to suggest human civilization might be an irredeemable enterprise. It’s the difference between a grimly resigned belief that that war between the sexes is intractable and the belief that the subconscious is a roiling mass of venomous snakes. Dean’s work is certainly in step with the era’s popularization of Freud; he’s just more recklessly willing to play in Pandora’s sandbox. The final image in Heaven is titled “Arrested Development” — it shows an old bearded man wearing a diaper. For this picture Dean has abbreviated his jaunty signature to “A.D.” as if to draw a parallel with the title. You can imagine the spry geezer happily finger-painting a history of the world with his own shit.

Dean’s second book, What Am I Doing Here? (1947), is a further distillation of his chuckling poison. The jaunty signature is omitted entirely, and the tableaux are more grim (Heaven actually has a couple of lighthearted visions of human connection, maybe even love; there are a few images of euphoria in What Am I Doing Here?, but they all have the tang of disappointment deferred). The most obvious shift in his second book is the use of an audience surrogate, an everyman who can be sympathetic without necessarily being admirable. His presence in the drawings gives the carnival of grotesquerie a cumulative effect. It’s a Long Way to Heaven is a series of snapshots, and What Am I Doing Here? is a catalog, a life. That our everyman appears to emerge from disasters unscathed in subsequent pictures could be evidence of resilience, or insensitivity, or perhaps even idiocy — but probably not innocence.

The use of an everyman also allows Dean a device to counterpoint the behavior of humanity en masse. What Am I Doing Here? is full of throngs of people, usually in misery — and when they’re not in misery, it’s even worse. There are squadrons of naked people on the street, heads down, gloomy. Some are wearing blinders. Some are carrying huge boulders outfitted with handles, as if they were briefcases. Whole neighborhoods are weeping openly as they go about their business, and it’s impossible to say if there is a cause, or if it’s some mass hallucination with its own self-reinforcing logic. Are people crying because they’re sad or are they crying because everyone else is crying and they want to get along? Which would be the more depressing answer? There are angry mobs, crazy mobs — fighting each other, running off cliffs like lemmings. What Am I Doing Here? displays a convulsive terror of “mass man.” One picture shows a full-fledged riot, with bricks and bottles peppering the air. Our everyman sails through the scene, a look of insouciance on his face, astride a tall unicycle that puts him above the trajectories of the hurled street flotsam. The title: “The Trick is…Not Caring."

Some of the conglomerations of mass man are excrescences of conformity; others, the shadow-castings of fascism (the indicia page of Heaven has a paragraph that reads: “This book has been manufactured in accordance with paper conservation orders of the War Production Board.” I can’t quite describe the lovely feeling I get, knowing the industrial churn of the Second World War could, despite itself, set aside a few pages for Dean’s patiently delineated nihilism). To the furnishing of natural disaster in Heaven, What Am I Doing Here? adds backdrops or war and dereliction. Burning cities are used for background ornamentation; windows are cracked or boarded up. The picture “I'm Looking for Someone With A Mole on Her Elbow” shows our everyman on a probably futile quest, calling through a bullhorn, walking down a shattered street. He’s wearing makeshift shoes — bags tied with rope around his feet — to protect himself from the rocks littering the road. A pedestal has been voided of its monument, perhaps swept off by war or totalitarian upheaval. Great and impassive forces have had their way here, leaving behind a complete vacuum. The only creature to hear our everyman’s call is a frightened cat.

In one of those improbably apt alignments of commercial illustration, Abner Dean was commissioned in 1949 to illustrate a fawning article on George Orwell’s 1984 for Life magazine. I can’t imagine Orwell liked the illustrations, any more than he would have liked the editors' strenuous efforts to link his totalitarian dystopia to specifically left-wing politics. Dean makes some stabs at depicting the dinginess of Orwell’s decaying London, but the drawings are helplessly clean and jolly. I don’t know what Dean’s politics were; I doubt it was intentional, but his drawings have a way of Americanizing Orwell’s warning, despite the reassurance of Henry Luce’s underlings. If America were to fall under totalitarian rule, they argue, it would certainly be a healthy, optimistic,

Despite the running thread of “mass man“ in What Am I Doing Here?, Dean still pays plenty of attention to the individual at the extremes of his solitary metaphysical condition. My favorite Dean drawing might be “How Much of Me is Me?” It shows a man in a church, literally peering down into himself. Having no clothes, he is pulling the skin of his chest up — pulling it up so far that it covers most of his face, as he stares down into the fold — as if his skin formed a collar. This seems like an act of genuine self-examination, but it takes place in a church where four stained glass windows repeat the scene: a man peering down into the fold of his own flesh. So the gesture of the actual man could be a reflex, or reflection, something done in mindless imitation rather than introspection. Another one that always grabs me is “This is Good Food,” showing our everyman gratefully devouring his own heart, alone among rows and rows of empty restaurant tables. It could be a delicious meal of self-pity, or something more elemental, the self-consuming nourishment of one’s ultimate resources.

And then there are the ones I've never been able to fix any definite meaning to, ones I don’t “get” but which nonetheless fascinate. The most hypnotic of these is “Sing That Song Again,” which might actually out-Freud Freud. Our everyman is dressed as a baby; it seems a disguise to outwit the law (a wanted poster with his face on it is plastered to a nearby wall). He is addressing his request for the song to a naked woman who is tending his carriage. She might be younger than he is; she has a look of congenital stupidity on her face, and she’s sucking a soda-pop through a straw. A shaft of light, like benediction from heaven, falls upon her. I return to this mysterious picture, and others, in trepidation of the day when they will finally make sense.

Dean went on to make other books. Come As You Are (1952) showcases a more domesticated strain of his humor — it’s a series of party scenes, with the social tangle of bodies impressively choreographed. “Mass man” here has been manicured to a more manageable size. There’s an edge to some of the cartoons, but ultimately they’re as solicitous as a good raconteur — all the partygoers, after all, are wearing clothes. Dean also wrote some books of illustrated verse that are (despite perhaps giving off a sparkle or two of self-hatred) content to cavort in the realm of light farce. He didn’t abandon the “naked people” cartoons, but to my eye, the later collections lack the powerful concentration of his first two books. For one thing, he moved away from the gliding finesse of his early technique. Steinberg and Steig had risen to ascendancy at the New Yorker, the open neurosis (if not outright insanity) depicted in their drawings finding a jagged correlative in their sharp, angular lines — the sort of lines a ragged fingernail might make on an oppressively blank wall. It probably seemed natural to Dean to gravitate toward that direction stylistically, to give his images the serration of his ideas. But the tension is lost. Aberrance that advertises itself as such can be quarantined as an eruption. It’s more disturbing, and more fraught with self-incrimination, to find depravity materialized in the skin of smooth normalcy. There are some cartoons in his “classic” style sprinkled through the later books, but they don’t seem as strong as the earlier ones, and I have to wonder if they're actually leftovers, recycled as padding.

But What Am I Doing Here? suffices, at any rate, to provide the blueprint for Dean’s eventual monument (because greatness is always eventually recognized, if you’re patient enough to wait until it’s too late, right?). This blueprint exists in a picture captioned “I Made This,” which is clearly a portrait of the artist and his oeuvre. Our everyman is standing on a hill, where he’s assembled some sort of rickety, possibly improvised sculpture. Lashed to a tree stump, it consists of a few boards, a funnel and wash basin, some plucked flowers, an umbrella, a looking glass, a cut-out silhouette of a woman’s head. Our everyman is imploring people to look at it, but no one does so — the people on the road that runs by the hill are all preoccupied, each of them dragging a heavy boulder with a rope. Their bruised eyes are pointed down at the dirt, or shut. You can’t really see the expression on our everyman’s face, whether he’s imploring with a sense of optimism or desperation, because the image is a two-page spread, and his face is lost in the crease. The stump itself — the platform of the monument — has a ragged edge. The living tree has been cut down; the trunk lies with its rings exposed — dead wood.

Found Here: http://thehighhat.com/Marginalia/006/Abner_Dean.html

Rider Prints by Gianmarco Magnani

Phenomenal Rider Prints by Gianmarco Magnani, a Illustrator from the USA.

Found Here: http://lookslikegooddesign.com/prints-gianmarco-magnani/

The Work
Silence Television, Gianmarco Magnani's Portfolio. The works are digital illustrations printed on premium matte 270 gm photo paper.
For better care, printjobs are covered with a clear film that protects and gives them a matte tone.
Each series are composed by 4 prints and the title of each print is the corresponding number.

Found Here: http://www.silencetv.com/info.html

Jean Michel Basquiat Tenor 1985

Tenor

1985
Acrylic, oil stick and Xerox collage on canvas
254 x 289,6 cm
Private collection (courtesy Bruno Bischofberger, Zürich)
© The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat

The canvas is completely covered with colour Xeroxes. The following four Xerox images appear twice. The block of text at top left above the bird's head is repeated at bottom left under the right wing of the lowest bird; the brown box left of the second text can be found again above right of the bird's head we started at; the hollow yellow shape directly above the same bird's head re-appears under the middle bird down on the left side. Finally the image in the top right corner is repeated under the right fist of the figure at bottom right. The figure's mouth is open and might therefore be the tenor singer of the title, although tenor saxophone more naturally springs to mind. Tenor might alternatively refer to the general tone of the painting that is set by the black animal figures. The word RATON that is repeated three times at centre is Spanish for "mouse".