Graphic Grandeur (Dangerous When Wet Edition)

 

Fifty summers ago, this Roger Kastel-illustrated poster made its debut on the exteriors, and in the lobbies, of movie theatres across the nation and around the world, promising filmgoers a terrifying cinematic experience. However, movie posters often promise things that the actual movies then fail to deliver. Did Jaws live up to its poster's promise? Well, if you were a filmgoer fifty summers ago--and most people didn't bother with movies during the summer until this one completely changed the business model--you already know the answer to that question, but play along with me anyway as we watch the trailer: 

Trailers also sometimes promise more than the actual movie delivers, even as it's a slicing and dicing of the actual movie. Trust me, though, Jaws delivered (with a lot of slicing and dicing of a different sort.) Personally, I've always found the film more exciting than out-and-out scary, but that's fine with me. Whatever gets the heart thumping. Based on a then-recent bestselling book by Peter Benchley (Robert's grandson) and only the second feature film by the then-still-in-his-20s Steven Spielberg, it quickly became the all-time box-office champ and remained so for the next two years until topped by another summer blockbuster Star Wars (which in turn was topped a few years later by Spielberg's E.T., the Extraterrestrial which made its debut during--you guessed it--the summer.) One thing that had no chance of topping it--at least not in the commercial sense--was some magazine parody, but that doesn't means my then-middle-school-age-self couldn't get a giggle out of this:

Looks like unsafe swimming conditions all around.

Illustration by Mort Kunstler

 

If the Fates Allow

 

I'll write about the bounced commies and Luke Short's new western some other time. For now I want you to focus solely on Norman Rockwell's illustration. The people pictured seem realistically rendered, don't they? That's partly due to Rockwell's skill as a painter, especially his almost photographic attention to detail, and partly because, well, they're real people. The woman doing the hugging is Rockwell's second wife Mary. The young man she's embracing and who's back is turned to us is Jarvis Rockwell, her and Norman's oldest son. On the far-left edge of the painting, in glasses, is youngest son Peter. And the exuberant lad in the plaid shirt right behind Mary is middle son Thomas. The man with the pipe who seems to be looking on at the scene taking place with amused curiosity is none other than the family patriarch, Norman himself. The family that models together stays together.

Yet according to Deborah Solomon's 2013 biography, American Mirror: The Life and Art of Norman Rockwell, this was anything but a model family. Rockwell was insecure about just about everything but his chosen profession. And even then, he was more secure doing commercial art--which a Saturday Evening Post cover basically is--than the type of art found in galleries and museums, which in his case turned out to be the same thing but the latter not realized until very late in his life. This insecurity led to him maintaining a certain aloof distance from family and friends, and family at least paid a price for this aloofness, most notably wife Mary, who developed a serious drinking problem that repeatedly landed her in and out of the hospital. Eventually the whole family ended up in therapy. The illustration itself doesn't truly reflect on the Rockwell family's 1948 Christmas. Norman spent the holiday in Los Angeles--as a kind of personal getaway, while the rest of the family stayed behind in Vermont.

Does that make the above illustration a lie? Not necessarily. It could have taken place during a different Christmas. Or just as likely, Rockwell may have witnessed somebody else's family reunion, and just replaced that other person's family members with his own, achieving in art what his own insecurities prohibited him from doing in life. Whatever the reason or whatever happened, it's worth remembering that imperfect people and imperfect families, both of which there are a great deal many, have to find ways to make it through a holiday season in which the perfected art of happiness is practically a moral mandate. Enjoy the eggnog and brush strokes.

Enough of that. I don't want to ruin your holiday. So I'll turn my attention to the woman pictured above, who is also in the Rockwell illustration. Turns out she was an...

Christmas at Home (1946)

...artist herself.

That's right, it's Grandma Moses. Born in 1860, the farmer's widow didn't take up painting until age seventy-six. Completely self-taught (thus a "primitive" artist) she produced pictures of what she termed "old-timey" New England. One of these pictures ended up hung in a rural drug store, where a big city art collector out for a drive in the country saw it. Soon after a collection of her works hung in the gallery of an Austrian refugee who had run afoul of the Nazis for the twin crimes of being Jewish and advocating modern art. That was waaay different from anything that happened to Grandma Moses in old-timey New Hampshire, but no matter, soon she went from folk art to what might be called fine art, though the style remained basically the same, only now exhibited in different venues. As she became more well-known, Grandma Moses became a pop culture figure as well, thanks in large part to Hallmark cards, which reproduced her paintings on a series of popular greeting cards.

Norman Rockwell, himself a pop culture figure with a line of Hallmark greeting cards, helps Grandma Moses cut a cake celebrating her 88th birthday. The whole thing was a PR stunt dreamed up by a Hallmark exec. It certainly made sense to pair the two, who had just met. Though their artistic styles, and perhaps their artistic sensibilities, differed, what both of them offered the greeting card consumer was that much sought-after commodity: warmth. And wouldn't you know it that a genuine warmth did develop between the two? They became friends. Not best friends. The age difference (he was thirty-four years her junior) and Rockwell's own aforementioned aloofness, got in the way of that, but for a while Grandma Moses was part of his social circle, and as with anyone part of his social (and familial) circle, it eventually got her on The Saturday Evening Post. Not that Grandma Moses needed his help getting on the...

 

 

...cover of a magazine.

 

Take it away, Judy:

Graphic Grandeur (Cultural Exchange Edition)

 Cartoonist and illustrator Jean-Jacques Sempé was born on this day in 1932. In his native France he's best known for illustrating a series of children's books written by René Goscinny (best known for the comic strip Astérix) collectively called Le Petit Nicolas (in English Little Nicholas.) Here in the United States Sempé is far better known for the many covers he's done for The New Yorker. Take a look (in some cases, a very close look):

 

 

Knowing that Sempé is from France makes me think all the above scenes must take place in France. However, The New Yorker is an American magazine, and there's no reason these scenes can't take place in America. The United States obviously has airports and swimming pools and downtowns with lots of traffic. The United States even has classical musicians, a favorite theme of  Sempé's. In fact, there are whole orchestras with such musicians. I live in Cleveland, and I'm told we have a very good orchestra, have had a very good orchestra for quite a while, that it was once led by a man named Szell who in his day was as well-known as Dennis Kucinich. Currently, it's led by Franz Welser-Möst (like most Rust Belt cities, we have a lot of ethnic groups.) Cleveland rocks listens politely and then claps. But getting back to Sempé, whatever their country of origin, most of his characters seem engulfed by their surroundings. They don't seem to know or care that they're engulfed. On the other hand, we know they're engulfed, because we're afforded a bird's-eye view, and we have to care enough to squint to find them. But the squinting's usually worth it. Maybe that's what makes Sempé's work so universal, and particularly appealing for Americans. If there's one thing we have in this country, it's engulfing surroundings.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got some squinting to do.

Naughty or Nice?

 I'm sure you've run into the fellow above this holiday season. I don't mean whoever is behind that fake beard, but who he represents. You've seen him on Christmas cards, sitting on to top of a pine tree, on yours or your neighbors' lawn, in advertisements, in animated TV specials, and in the flesh at the mall or department store. Santa Claus, or course. He's a familiar figure, a figure you may even have a bit of affection for...Unless you're devoutly religious, in which case you may just hate his guts. After all, Christmas is a religious holiday, a devout holiday, a sacred holiday. Or should be. How in the world did this fat buffoon in the garish outfit come to represent it? Well, whether you like Santa or hate Santa, the answer lies in the odd, contradictory nature of Christmas itself.

As the first syllable would indicate, Christmas is ostensibly a celebration of Christ's birth. Except the two New Testament writers who describe the event, Matthew and Luke, say nothing about it taking place on December 25. The other two Gospel writers, Mark and John, don't even mention it, figuring the reader is smart enough to know that in order for a man to die on a cross, he has to have been born in the first place. Paul? He sent out a lot of letters, but not one of them was a Christmas card. Nobody back then sent out Christmas cards. How could they? The holiday didn't exist and wouldn't exist for another three centuries. Before we can figure out where Santa came from, we first have to figure out where Christmas came from.

According to most scholars, there was a Christmas before Christmas, a Germanic pagan winter festival called Yule, basically designed to cheer people up during the long, dark days of December, and offer them hope that the sun would some day return. Fourth century Christians (as well as their sponsor, the newly-baptized Roman Empire) basically co-opted Yule (and, of course, the Yule log) partly to convert the many pagans still running around, and partly because the Christians themselves could use some cheering up during the long, dark days of December.

 I'm sure some of you will regard the above paragraph as so much revisionist history. Well, it wasn't secular humanist college professors ensconced in ivory towers that first expressed skepticism about the religious origins of Christmas, but Protestant reformers, particularly those we now call Puritans. Beginning in the 17th century, they downplayed, debunked, and downright dumped on Christmas. The contempt for both the holiday and the sinful practice of people letting down their hair and enjoying themselves, was transported across the Atlantic on the Mayflower to the New World, where it took root. Boy, did it take root! It was banned in New England, just as it had been earlier banned by Oliver Cromwell in Old England. Both bans had been lifted by the beginning of the 17th century, but for the next one hundred years, Christmas was treated as an embarrassment in Protestant countries. Celebrate if you must, but do it behind closed doors and don't shove your tidings-and-comfort-of-joy lifestyle down our throats! Meanwhile, the long December nights remained as dark as ever.

For party animals things began looking up in the 19th century, during, oddly enough, the Victorian Era. Charles Dickens (who I talked about in the previous post) helped popularize the expression "Merry Christmas" and it did indeed become more merry. All the festive holiday traditions were taken out of the closet and dusted off. Decorations, carols, ornaments, desserts, wrapping paper, mistletoe, the necking that took place under the mistletoe, and finally the giving of gifts all gained in popularity during this time. Christmas was well on its way to becoming the glamorous holiday it is today. Now all what was needed was a symbol. Sure, there was the Nativity, but that was best saved for religious observation. As Christmas became more fun (as well as secular) you needed a representation of that fun. A mascot, even.

There were several contenders. Chief among them was the Germanic Christkind, sometimes a cherub, sometimes a beautiful angel, who broke into people's houses in the middle of the night and delivered presents. The Brits had Father Christmas, who at first didn't deliver presents but changed his mind after he found Christkind breathing down his neck. Seeing that the eastern part of what is now the United States was once part of the British Empire, you'd think Father Christmas would be a mascot on this side of the pond, too. But not everybody in the Thirteen Colonies was English. There were German immigrants, whose Christkind ended up being Kris Kringle. And in New York City, formally called New Amsterdam, there were the Dutch...

 

Now, you'd think if the Dutch were to go looking for a Christmas mascot, they'd start it Holland, where there's plenty of snow and ice in December, if Hans Brinker is to be believed. But no, they went south of Holland. Way, way south of Holland, to Asia Minor, today Modern Turkey. It was there that a man named Nicholas held the religious office of bishop, and, after he died, became a saint. But there's plenty of saints. Why make this particular one the mascot for Christmas? Some say it's because miracles have been attributed to him, but that's how you become a saint in the first place! I suspect it has a lot to do with his feast day, December 6,  not quite two weeks before Christmas. The Dutch merely let him hang around for a while. Now, of course, these Dutch speak Dutch, and in their language, Saint Nicholas became Sinterklaas. Dutch immigrants brought the idea to America, where he became the aforementioned Santa Claus. The now Americanized mascot caught on pretty quickly (though he was often still referred to as Saint Nicholas.) Washington Irving mentions him in 1809 in his first book  A History of New-York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty (written under the pseudonym "Diedrich Knickerbocker".) However, Santa got his biggest P.R. boost fourteen years later when a professor of Ancient Greek, Clement Moore, wrote a poem titled A Visit From Saint Nicholas. That's the one that begins with:

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;
The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugar plums danced in their heads

(Not even a mouse? As if an unobtrusive rodent living under the same roof as humans is the exception rather than the rule? They were pretty blase about pest control in 1823.)

Here's Santa up close and personal:

He had a broad face and a little round belly,
That shook when he laughed, like a bowlful of jelly.
He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself;
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head, 
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread

Pretty vivid imagery there, and he seems much more approachable than that fellow with the halo in the picture above (people with halos are almost never approachable.)

The next person to leave his mark on Santa was Thomas Nast, an illustrator and political cartoonist best known for creating the Republican elephant and the Democratic donkey (but don't blame him for the actual parties.) The picture above is from a then-new edition of Moore's poem. Physically he looks like the Santa we know, but where's the white fur trim? And what is that on his head, a nest? An adjustment was clearly in order.

Subsequent illustrators looked back across the sea at Father Christmas. Much thinner than the U.S. mascot, but he had the right wardrobe.

The Santa we know was almost complete. It was left to just one more man to put on the finishing touches.

Haddon Sundblom (1899-1976), the son of Scandinavian immigrants, took up commercial illustration and quickly rose to the top of his profession. In 1931, Sundblom was commissioned by the Coca-Cola company to do a series of Christmas-related advertisements that ran from 1931 to 1965. It was one of the most popular ad campaigns ever, and I'm sure you seen them here and there even if you were born long after 1965:

I love his style.

Sundblom did a lot of other things as well. For instance, if you've ever ate a bowl of oatmeal between 1957 and 2012 you probably remember this guy:

Ironically, the above company is now owned by Coke's arch-rival Pepsi.

But this is Christmas, and I want to leave you with one final Sundblom image from 1972, the last he ever did before he retired:

Whatever gets you through those long December nights.

Merry Christmas.

Graphic Grandeur (Up the Down Staircase Edition)

Artist M.C. Escher was born on this date in 1898. Take a look--a long look--at one of his lithographs (Sorry if this picture goes outside the frame some, but the only way I could do it justice is by showing it in its original size): 
 

Relativity (1953)

I think I'll take the elevator instead.