Natural Progressions

Rodolphe Töpffer often gets credit for being the first comic artist, but I think an equally strong case can be made for William Hogarth. Born November 10, 1697, Hogarth made illustrations for books and poems that showed sequentially the dynamics of seventeenth century English life. In A Harlot's Progress, Hogarth traced the slow descent of an innocent girl into the world’s oldest profession and, finally, total dissolution. The third image in the sequence (above, from 1732) shows the “harlot” Moll moving on from the semi-respectable position of “kept woman” to the level of common prostitute. Hogarth witnessed how English society allowed young women to fall into such situations by limiting their prospects essentially to marriage, destitute spinsterhood, or the exchange of sex for money. A few years after A Harlot’s Progress, Hogarth designed the series titled A Rake's Progress in which he showed how young men took advantage of their position in the English patriarchy and wasted their lives in vice. With a clear eye and savage remorselessness, Hogarth struck directly at the heart of English society and showed it the face it wanted to ignore in the mirror.

Despite such moralizing in his work, Hogarth remains hilariously funny. Hogarth’s six paintings derived from the satiric comedy play Marriage à-la-mode show how marriage wasn’t that much better an option than prostitution in some ways. In the third panel of the series (above, from 1743-1745), Hogarth shows the Viscount, the “catch” of the story, visiting the doctor to demand a refund for the mercury pills prescribed for his syphilis. A young prostitute beside the Viscount touches an open sore on her mouth that represents the onset of syphilis. For Hogarth, the venereal disease of syphilis stands in for the larger spiritual diseases of the twisted sexual politics of English society at the time. The double standard in which men could frequent prostitutes yet woman had to remain pure or else become “damaged goods” results in a tangled mess of morals rather than a sound foundation of civilization. Such imagery seems strikingly modern for Americans in light of the culture wars in which, among other issues, fundamentalist religion calls for sexual abstinence instead of sexual education despite hard statistical evidence proving how America’s youth suffers from enforced ignorance.

In The Abu Ghraib Effect (reviewed here), Steven F. Eisenman praised Hogarth for not playing along with the violence embedded in Western civilization and its art. Eisenman specifically cited Hogarth’s 1751 series The Four Stages of Cruelty. In four panels, Hogarth traces the life of a young boy who begins by torturing animals and later graduates to killing people before dying himself at the end of a hangman’s noose. In the fourth and final panel, The Reward of Cruelty (above, from 1751), Hogarth shows the subject’s final fate, in which anatomists dissect the murderer’s body as sanctioned by law. Hogarth, who loved animals and actually kept a pet cemetery for his birds and dogs behind his home, knew that childhood cruelty to animals often led to violent, sadistic behavior as an adult, a phenomenon that psychologists today also recognize. In Hogarth’s day, cruelty to animals and, in the case of murderers, people didn’t seem at all unnatural. Not until the Anatomy Act of 1832 did the practice of dissecting murderers end in England. (The Cruelty to Animals Act of 1835 addressed animal abuse just a few years later.) Literally ahead of his time, Hogarth saw the cruelties and foibles of his society and drew them in the hopes that others would draw the same conclusions that he did.

Group Effort

Growing up and reading superhero comics as a kid, certain artists jumped out at me—Neal Adams, Jack Kirby, John Buscema, Frank Frazetta, and others. Something with those artists just clicked with my sense of art at the time. As an adult, I find myself remembering artists that I took in unconsciously rising to the surface of my mind, such as Dave Cockrum. Born November 11, 1943, Cockrum’s work on the X-Men, such as his Giant Size X-Men #1 cover (above, from 1975), revitalized a dying title for Marvel Comics. Cockrum created the look for such characters as Storm, Nightcrawler, and Colossus and helped make the X-Men the lucrative cultural phenomenon they are today. Alas, as seemingly with all the great comics creators, Cockrum saw little of the money generated by his creations. When illness struck in 2004, Cockrum desperately needed help, which came in the form of friends Clifford Meth, Neil Adams, and other comic industry movers and shakers. Their efforts shamed Marvel Comics into acknowledging Cockrum’s contribution to the X-Men franchise and resulted in monetary compensation that helped Dave and his family in his final years. The man who excelled at creating groups of superheroes found himself on the receiving end of kindness from fans and peers on a superheroic scale.

Although Cockrum’s work on X-Men and earlier on The Legion of Super-Heroes brought him the most attention, Dave’s occasional work on other Marvel Comics titles showed his versatility and dramatic sense of composition as well. In the cover to Daredevil #143 (above, from 1977), Cockrum shows the hero dramatically plummeting from a rooftop as a lion threatens to maul him. The plunging verticals of the composition give the picture an amazing sense of movement. The foreshortening of Daredevil’s hand as he reaches outside the picture plane for his billy club rivals similar effects used by Jack Kirby. Cockrum certainly fell under the influence of Kirby, as did so many artists of the 1970s, but you sense more influence than mimicking in Cockrum’s work. As a young man, Cockrum wrote insightful letters to the publisher of the Fantastic Four commenting on creations of Kirby such as the Inhumans. Years later, Cockrum found himself designing covers for that same title, a dream literally come true.


As a kid, I was a sucker for superhero teams—not just the biggies, like the Fantastic Four, the Avengers, and the Justice League of America, but hastily cobbled together groups such as The Defenders, The Invaders, and The Champions. Cockrum did his best to save what was a shaky union with art such as that on the cover of Champions #13 (above, from 1977). “Hercules! Black Widow! Angel! Ghost Rider! Iceman!” the covers breathlessly promised. I ate it up. The Champions lasted all of 17 issues, but I probably read more than half of them. Looking at the covers Dave Cockrum did for The Champions and other second-line titles, I find myself traveling back through time and remembering such books like old friends. As I said before, Cockrum’s talent seemed best suited to group efforts, usually sprawling compositions full of flailing limbs and laser blasts—a modernized version of a Baroque fresco of mythological figures duking it out. Dave Cockrum’s talent also inspired the group effort that rescued his best work from being lost in the wake of corporate maneuvering. Sometimes the good guys actually do win.

UPDATE: Clifford Meth has asked me to pass on the following announcement:

"On behalf of Dave Cockrum's widow Paty, I am in the process of grading hundreds of comics from Dave's personal collection collection. This includes Silver and Golden Age books, as well as many of Dave's personal file copies. Contact me at cliffmeth@aol.com if you're seriously interested."

If you're a comics fan, please consider helping out one of the great comics artists and getting a piece of history in the bargain.

And the Winner Is…

Alex the Judge contemplating how wonderful life is over a plate of French fries.

Then, a moment to contemplate the Phillies’ World Series Championship as the entries are tossed into the hat for the drawing to see who will win a copy of Nicole Dacos’ The Loggia of Raphael: A Vatican Art Treasure, published by Abbeville Press.

Alex the Judge pulls the name from the hat…

Alex the Judge drunk with the sense of power that the Art Contest by Bob can bring…

And the winner is… Michael C.! Congratulations, Michael!

Thank you to everyone who played and thank you, again, to Abbeville Press for sponsoring this amazing giveaway!

THE FINAL DAY to Get Your Loggia Hall Pass!

No, not THAT Loggia, although Robert Loggia’s portrayal of Coach Wally Riggendorf in Necessary Roughness remains the most watchable part of that movie aside from Kathy Ireland as Lucy the Placekicker. THIS Loggia—a copy of Nicole Dacos’ The Loggia of Raphael: A Vatican Art Treasure, courtesy of Abbeville Press! CLICK HERE to learn how to enter the drawing for a copy of this magnificent coffee table book that will transport you to the grand palace of the Vatican. It’s the closest you’ll most likely ever come to being Pope.

International Man of Mystery

When Giorgio Barbarelli da Castelfranco died, most likely from plague around November 6, 1510, the man known better as “Big George” or Giorgione left behind more questions than he or his art ever answered. Born either in 1477 or 1478, the tragically young artist befuddled and astonished contemporaries by turns. In an age that called upon artists to express religious truths in imagery for all to understand, Giorgione instead worked in enigmatic shadow. His Self-Portrait as David (above), now just a fragment of the larger work showing the hero holding the head of Goliath, shows the young artist posing with an expression that pronounces neither triumph nor regret. Giorgione’s self-portrait could easily be mistaken for one of Gustave Courbet’s many self-aware, mysterious self-portraits—an amazing comparison considering that Giorgione painted roughly 350 years before Courbet. One of the prime contenders for “father of modern painting” remains Titian, yet Giorgione either taught or studied beside that innovator. Giorgio Vasari, a contemporary, believed that Giorgione and Leonardo da Vinci should share credit for founding modern painting. Such debates are irresolvable, but Giorgione’s role, whatever that may be specifically, remains undisputed.

Giorgione broke all the rules in painting works that refused to tell a clear story—historical, religious, or mythological. Gabriele Vendramin, a leading intellectual in Giorgione’s Venice, commissioned Giorgione to paint The Tempest (above) in 1508. We all clearly see the woman and child on the right and the man on the left. Indistinct ruins as well as verdant vegetation surround them. A bolt of lightning splits the dramatic sky above them. What all that means, however, is engagingly unclear. Perhaps Giorgione painted The Tempest as a test for his patron—an intellectual puzzle with endless solutions, none of which could be “wrong.” Everything in the picture is natural and realistic, but Giorgione leaves them disconnected enough for us to fill in the blanks. Such fertile mystery informs the later landscapes of Nicolas Poussin and stretches even into modern times in the works of artists ranging from Giorgio de Chirico to Andrew Wyeth. In our modern (perhaps post-modern) world, we’re accustomed to such disconnect in our art, so it’s hard to fathom just how unfathomable Giorgione’s works such as The Tempest first seemed.


When Giorgione died, he left several works unfinished, such as The Sleeping Venus (aka, The Dresden Venus; above, from 1510). Titian finished many of these works, which has led to difficulties in attribution between the two. Decades later, in 1538, Titian returned to Giorgione’s Sleeping Venus by painting The Venus of Urbino. Whereas Giorgione’s Venus lushly stretches in her sleep, unaware of viewers and dreaming of things we can only guess at, Titian’s Venus confronts the viewer eye to eye, short-circuiting all the mystery. When Édouard Manet painted Olympia, the work that many feel launched the Impressionist movement and all the movements that followed, he may have fused visually Giorgione’s and Titian’s nude goddesses. Manet copied the direct stare of Titian, but he also conveyed the sense of mystery in Giorgione through details such as the black cat and maidservant. Some scholars believe that Manet’s Luncheon on the Grass, another key early work in modern art, owes much to Giorgione’s The Tempest in its strange, quiet mystery. Thus, Manet, another potential “father of modern art,” looked back to Giorgione and rediscovered unanswered questions that still fired the imagination.

Before the Footlights

When Everett Shinn traveled to France in the summer of 1900, he most likely saw Edgar Degas’ paintings of dancers from the 1870s and 1880s. Born November 6, 1876, Shinn the American took Degas’ French treatment of the theater and dance and translated it to the American idiom of the Ashcan School in works such as Dancer in White Before the Footlights (above, from 1910). A playwright and actor himself, Shinn felt himself drawn to the theater and made it his specialty (as Degas had done before) in the Ashcan School’s larger program of depicting the growing American urban populating both at work and at play. Because of the clear appeal of such works, Shinn enjoyed commercial success long before fellow Ashcan School artists such as Robert Henri, John Sloan, William Glackens, and George Bellows. While his fellow Ashcan artists earned their reputation in depicting the darker, harsher side of urban life, the handsome and urbane Shinn cultivated a position in high society through these Degas-esque paintings.

Of course, Shinn still remained true to some degree to his roots as an illustrator. Working alongside Glackens and Sloan as newspaper illustrators, Shinn’s quick drafting skills and eye for arresting compositions soon made him a successful artist of everyday life in New York City. After witnessing the eviction of an old musician from his apartment on the Lower East Side, Shinn painted Eviction (Lower East Side) (above, from 1904). Pumping up the pathos, Shinn replaced the single old man with a whole family cast onto the streets. The family slumps onto a mattress in despair as passersby watch workers dump the family’s belongings beside them on the pavement. Jacob Riis’ photography, collected most notably in his 1890 work How the Other Half Lives, drew public attention to the deplorable living conditions many immigrants endured in their pursuit of the American dream. Despite such awareness and the first social policy changes aimed at alleviating the problem, squalor and crime continued to plague the poor in New York City decades later and demand the talents of Shinn and others to bring it to the public’s eye.


Today, scholars recall Shinn mainly as another member of the Ashcan school. Henri, Sloan, Glackens, and Bellows usually eclipse Shinn and his work. Shinn’s talent is undeniable, as seen in quick pastels such as his Self-Portrait (above, from 1901), but the balance of light and dark in his work skews too heavily towards the Degas-esque and not enough in the gritty direction we associate with his better known contemporaries. Shinn played to the taste of his time at the eventual expense of later obscurity when the public desired fewer pretty pictures and more depictions of harsh reality. Sadly, Shinn suffered through a series of broken marriages and financial ruin during the Great Depression before enjoying a brief renaissance of interest in his work in the 1930s until his death in 1953. Like his Ashcan cohorts, Shinn raised the field of illustration in America to the level of high art and helped usher in the age of American urban life as a subject worthy of the artistic spotlight.

Language Immersion

Some people believe that the best way to learn a foreign language is language immersion, the method by which a person tries to operate entirely in a second language. Such immersion stretches the mind to actually think in that second language and make the leap from simply translating everything mentally from their mother tongue. When European artists of the nineteenth century began to encounter the world of Japanese prints, they immersed themselves in that second visual language and stretched themselves artistically to incorporate that wholly alien look into their work. It’s difficult for us today to imagine that initial impact of Japanese art on Western art, but two new books edited by Nobuyoshi Hamada, Wave, Cloud, Pine: Traditional Patterns in Japanese Design and Flower, Bird: Traditional Patterns in Japanese Design (published by PIE Books and distributed in the United States by Rizzoli Books), help recapture the diversity and seemingly endless inventiveness of those Japanese artists that found a place in the souls of artists such as Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, and countless others. Oddly wonderful works such as Utagawa Kunisada’s Catching a Giant Carp—What Luck! (above, early 19th century) opened up a whole new range of possibility for Western art as Japanese society itself opened itself up to the West.

Unfortunately for those who do not read Japanese, these two volumes contain very little English text. But in one of the few extended passages in English, Hamada explains the appeal of the Japanese approach to nature in art. “The wisdom of past generations lay in capturing this beauty in paintings and craft objects, so to be incorporated into everyday life, enjoyed, and cherished,” Hamada writes. “Unlike Western art, which treats nature as menacing and adversarial, the art of the East pursues harmony with nature and focuses on humanity’s perceptions of the natural world.” When Ito Jakuchu paints The Colorful Realm of Living Beings: Hydrangeas and Fowls (above, 1759), he elevates flora and fauna to the level of humanity, integrating Buddhist and Zen abstract concepts with concrete nature. For someone with the sensibility and sensitivity of Van Gogh, such works represented the world inside his head and heart that his hands still struggled to realize visually. Perhaps better than any missionary, these traditional Japanese designs conveyed the truths of Buddhism and Zen to Western audiences looking for an alternative to the Christian tradition tainted by centuries of politics and warfare.

Hamada breaks up the two volumes into the five categories of wave, cloud, pine, flower, and bird and entrances you with repetition. Between stunning color reproductions, Hamada intersperses preparatory drawings in fine detail that place the technique of the artists under a microscope. Right after seeing how an artist represents a wave’s motion in color in the context of a painting, we see the pure line itself in black and white. Hamada isolates the gesture and focuses on the human element in representation, specifically how the artist sought to reproduce the spirit of the wave and not the photographic reality. Katsushika Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa, which Hamada includes in his examination, looks like no wave ever seen by human eyes, yet the biting fierceness of a wall of water strikes us through Hokusai’s gestures better than via any snapshot. Once you get the visual language down, Hamada guides you through the multiplicity of uses Japanese artists put it to. Japanese prints may lead the wave of Japonisme in the Western mind, but Hamada proves that the gestures of those prints ripple throughout Japanese culture to furnishings, kimonos, pottery, postcards, and even photography. Even the patterns of rock gardens contain the elements of traditional wave patterns. Examples such as the wave pattern found in the Undulating Bargeboard of the Gokonomiya Shrine (above) demonstrate how these motifs reach every corner of Japanese life. Such integration just can’t be found in Western civilization, which may explain not only our historical disintegration and our fascination with the East.

As I paged through these works, I found myself reverse engineering so many works of Western artists into the Eastern images before me, consciously going against the grain of influence. When I saw Gan Ku’s Tiger (above, late 18th century), my mind immediately flashed to Franz Marc’s Tiger. Marc doesn’t copy Gan Ku’s animal and may never have even seen anything by the Japanese artist, but the same spirit of the animal itself shines through both works. The preparatory drawings with their distinctive lines reminded me of the drawings of Van Gogh, whose draftsmanship seemed so “wrong” to contemporaries yet seems so right to us today. There’s certainly a danger in trying to link these traditional Japanese patterns to their implementation in Western art, but there’s also a benefit in seeing just how deeply those motifs have taken root in Western visual culture since the late 19th century. Influence is often such an elusive trail to follow that such clear and documented lines of descent as the effect of Japanese art on Van Gogh’s generation is an irresistible path of research.

The lack of English text actually benefits a non-Japanese reader in some ways. The lack of verbal explanation frees the reader to surrender himself to the images themselves. Allowing the sequences of images to pass and engrave themselves on your imagination through repetition, you will find yourself inspired by these motifs and the artists that practiced them. Startling variations, such as the stylized, almost modernly abstract clouds of Tosa Misufumi’s Amanohashi (above, from 1855), will open your eyes to the amazing inventiveness of these artists working within an ancient tradition. Nobuyoshi Hamada’s two volumes of Traditional Patterns in Japanese Design are an ideal gift for any young artist learning how to see the world and shape an individual vision from a universe of possibilities.

[Many thanks to Rizzoli Books for providing me with review copies of the PIE Books titles Wave, Cloud, Pine: Traditional Patterns in Japanese Design and Flower, Bird: Traditional Patterns in Japanese Design and for the images above.]