Jaleen Grove - PhD research on art and illustration

I commenced my Ph.D at SUNY Stony Brook in September, 2007. Below is my proposal.

Visible/Invisible: The History and Cultural Impact of Canadian Illustrators in Canada and the United States

My doctoral thesis examines Canadian advertising and editorial illustrators and their work in Canada and the USA, analyzing their importance in the culture of both countries. Seldom discussed, our illustrators have been producing major cultural icons in the US for 100 years.(1) My proposal has two parts: a historical overview, and an analysis of how illustration intersects with cultural identities at national, regional, local, and personal levels, especially with Canadian work in American media. My 2006 MA thesis on B.C. illustrators(2) and my own illustration career brought me to this topic. I am in my second year of coursework and will formally propose my thesis in August, 2009.

I have begun an index of Canadian illustrators (1850 to present)(3) , a necessary first step since none exist. Currently at 1,994 names, I expect it to top 6000. It is an instrument for studying the scope of illustrators’ careers, their subculture and their status within advertising, publishing, and design. My supervisor, Dr. Michele Bogart, is an authority in art history on commercial artists; I came to the US specifically to study with her. Being in New York has made it possible for me to meet and work with leading illustration history writers, such as Walt Reed and Marshall Arisman, who have provided me with historical and contemporary perspectives.

My methods combine critical analysis of primary texts (original art, illustrators’ writing) and secondary texts (literature in history of advertising, publishing, cultural theory, art history) with interviews and surveys with illustrators in order to delineate the self-conception illustrators have as “creatives” and their social role, describing their relation to the larger political economy of image circulation between Canada and the USA. I also study reception of illustration in artistic and mainstream milieux, tracking celebration, emulation, and rejection.

Part One of my thesis, biographical research, is based on archival records, interviews, and many hours flipping through periodicals harvesting names and samples. This section will be essentially a linear history. My Index to date already shows Canadian illustrators influenced or determined the visual culture of the Boy Scouts of America,(13) Felix the Cat,(14) the look of the flapper and the dumb blonde,(15) beauty standards in Miss America pageants,(16) Superman,(17) Prince Valiant,(18) cowboy art,(19) and popular opinion towards George W. Bush(20) and Barack Obama.(21) A component will cover the growth of schools, businesses, and specific industry centres in Canada (Toronto, Montreal, Hamilton) and the US (Chicago and New York City), identifying movements of talent and power 1900 to present, finding ebbs and flows at different times between certain places. Exemplary illustrators who had particularly stellar careers will be singled out as case studies for understanding the broadness of their cultural impact, in terms of public visibility and of influence on other illustrators. Another section will address what this study determines “illustration”, “American”, and “Canadian” to be; and the rationale for focusing on advertising art and editorial illustration together (fiction, non-fiction, and magazine covers; often the same illustrators doing both; both are arts of persuasion using interpretive description or narrative).

Part Two, interpretation and analysis of this data, is divided into three sections. The first tackles the question of whether advertising and editorial illustration can be considered a legitimate site of cultural expression. Using illustrators’ comments and popular reception, I show that the pleasures of consumerism challenge the received view that fine art is free, genuine and uplifting while commercial art is enslaved, false and dangerous.(22) I seek to understand what makes mass culture attractive, attempting to theorize how, in a capitalist system, commerce could be culture; that art is never removed from it; that experience of commercial culture might (though not neces-sarily always or happily) be considered “genuine”, even as I problematize the notion of “genuine” “Canadian” culture or art forms in light of an equally questionable “all-American” influence.

My second task is to locate types of cultural expression in illustrators’ work. I will group works by whether they fit a generic international identity, or American or Canadian nationalist, regional or local identities. This will entail subsections defining what exactly comprises generic, Canadian, or American visual identity (subjects, styles, ideology), using formal and iconographic analysis (symbols, icons), illustrator’s statements, and clients’ profiles. I expect I will have to develop a theory explaining why art can or cannot be sorted this way; it may be impossible to determine what is or isn’t “Canadian” or “American” – itself a potentially important finding.

Third, I then plan to assess the extent of Canadian illustrators’ impact. This means situating works described in my selected illustrator case studies within their social contexts, tracing the power structures they served, documenting how they were promoted or suppressed and by whom. Comparing the reception, popularity, and emulation of the different sorts of identities expressed, I will answer the research question, “What is the efficacy of advertising and editorial illustration as a vehicle of cultural expression for Canadians in Canadian versus American markets, and in mass versus targeted media?”

Visible in media everywhere, yet invisible in our art history and cultural annals, illustration needs this general overview of itself before specialized work can begin. My SSHRC-funded thesis logically leads to focused work related to media circulation in and out of Canada. This thesis’ two parts can also be developed into two books and an inaugural comprehensive exhibition of Canadian illustration, in an institution such as the National Gallery. I would like to contribute to writing illustration history and developing illustration theory, while teaching with a practice-based approach in art history and theory. In five years, I hope to have established a place for illustration scholarship in the field of art history in Canada similar to how it is developing in the US and UK.

Notes

1. For instance, Quebec’s Palmer Cox created a Kodak Brownie character that became a late Victorian phenomenon. “Palmer Cox”, http://freemasonry.bcy.ca/brownies/dalton_collection.html. Denver Gillen, raised in Vancouver, created Rudolph, The Red-Nosed Reindeer as a Chicago department store promo in1939. “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”, Don Markstein’s Toonopedia, http://www.toonopedia.com/rudolph.htm.

2. S. Jaleen Grove, But is it Art? The Construction and Valuation of Illustration in Victoria's Island Illustrators Society. Master’s Thesis, Toronto: Ryerson University, 2006.

3. S. Jaleen Grove et al, Index of Canadian Illustrators, http://canadianillustrators.wikidot.com/

4. Nina Czegledy and Kim Sawchuk, “Occupation: Illustrator: Grant’s Atlas of Anatomy”. Paper delivered at Canadian Women’s Art History Initiative conference, Oct. 4, 2008, Concordia University, based on a large funded study still in progress.

5. Judith Saltman, Sheila Egoff, et al, initiated a SSHRC funded project titled Canadian Children's Illustrated Books in English in 2006. Saltman is currently starting a new funded project titled Picturing Canada: A History of Canadian Illustrated Books and Publishing. http://www.slais.ubc.ca/PEOPLE/faculty/faculty-bio/saltman-bio.htm

6. John Bell, Guardians of the North: The National Superhero in Canadian Comic-book Art. Ottawa: National Archives of Canada, 1992. This is the principle text, but since 1992 comics scholarship has exploded.

7. Donnelly, Brian, “Locating Graphic Design History in Canada”. Journal of Design History, 2006 19(4): 283-294. Also see The Canadian Design Resource, http://www.canadiandesignresource.ca/officialgallery/

8. See work by members of the Groupe de recherche sur la caricature, Université de Montréal, e.g., Dominic Hardy, forthcoming.

9. Stacey, Robert. “Illustration, Art”. The Canadian Encyclopedia. http://thecanadianencyclopedia.com/

10. Angela Davis, Art and Work. Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 1995.

11. Matthew Soar, “An Insular Profession: Graphic design and consumer culture.”
Journal of Consumer Culture, Vol. 2, Issue 2, (2002): 271-275.

12. Michele Bogart, Artists, Advertising, and the Borders of Art. U. of Chicago Press, 1995.

13. The glamour of Scouting was visually established by Ernest Thompson Seton, who was famous as a writer and illustrator of outdoors stories for boys before he cofounded the Scouts. See Brian Morris, Ernest Thompson Seton, Founder of the Woodcraft Movement 1860-1946. Edwin Mellen Press, 2008.

14. Illustrator and pioneering animator Raoul Barré wrote and drew for the Felix cartoons. See Michel Viau, “Raoul Barre”, BD Quebec, http://www.bdquebec.qc.ca/auteurs/barre/rbarre.htm

15. Illustrator Russell Patterson created Broadway and Hollywood costumes and sets, as well as cartooning flappers, femme fatales, and bimbos for Life and other magazines. See Armando Mendez, “Nymph Errant”, in Flappers and Top Hats, Fantagraphics, 2006.

16. Russell Patterson and Arthur William Brown were Miss America judges, 1920s-1940s. Ibid.

17. Artist Joe Schuster based Superman’s city Metropolis on Toronto. See Henry Mietkiewicz,"Great Krypton! Superman Was the Star's Ace Reporter", The Toronto Star (April 26, 1992).

18. Creator Hal Foster also drew the Tarzan comic strip and is considered to have introduced high realism comics. See Brian Kane, Hal Foster: Prince of Illustrators, Father of the Adventure Strip, Vanguard Productions, 2001. Abridged version: http://www.bpib.com/illustra2/foster.htm

19. John Clymer, Wes Chapman, and Robert Elmer Lougheed were all illustrators who turned to Western themes. Clymer has his own museum, while Lougheed was instrumental in founding the National Academy of Art at the National Cowboy Hall of Fame.

20. In an interview, Anita Kunz told me for the cover of a 2002 New Yorker she drew of George W. Bush was so mocking that the publisher delayed releasing it for six months. It depicted Bush as a cowboy on a galloping horse, Bush wearing his horse’s blinders.

21. Barry Blitt’s July 2008 New Yorker cover of the fist-bumping “terrorist” Obamas was so controversial the Obama campaign publicly protested. See Bill Carter, “Want Obama in a Punch Line? First, Find a Joke,” New York Times (July 15, 2008), http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/15/us/politics/15humor.html

22. The critique against the “culture industry” was famously defined by Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer in The Dialectics of Enlightenment, 1947. It is the principle behind the grant eligibility requirements at the Canada Council for the Arts, which disqualifies commercial art (problematically left undefined) a priori from the peer review process.


Ph.D research I commenced my Ph.D at SUNY Stony Brook in September, 2007. Below is my proposal. *Visible/Invisible: The History and Cultural Impact of* *Canadian Illustrators in Canada and the United States* Jaleen Grove My doctoral thesis examines Canadian advertising and editorial illustrators and their work in Canada and the USA, analyzing their importance in the culture of both countries. Seldom discussed, our illustrators have been producing major cultural icons in the US for 100 years.(1) My proposal has two parts: a historical overview, and an analysis of how illustration intersects with cultural identities at national, regional, local, and personal levels, especially with Canadian work in American media. My 2006 MA thesis on B.C. illustrators(2) and my own illustration career brought me to this topic. I am in my second year of coursework and will formally propose my thesis in August, 2009. I have begun an index of Canadian illustrators (1850 to present)(3) , a necessary first step since none exist. Currently at 1,994 names, I expect it to top 6000. It is an instrument for studying the scope of illustrators’ careers, their subculture and their status within advertising, publishing, and design. My supervisor, Dr. Michele Bogart, is an authority in art history on commercial artists; I came to the US specifically to study with her. Being in New York has made it possible for me to meet and work with leading illustration history writers, such as Walt Reed and Marshall Arisman, who have provided me with historical and contemporary perspectives. My work builds upon Canadian art history and cultural studies in several ways: First, it recuperates artists and accounts for their absence in the art historical record. Many illustrators were never documented, and illustration by even gallery artists was not analyzed, because it was not considered properly artistic. Second, my focus on advertising and editorial illustrators complements recent Canadian projects on medical(4) and book(5) illustrators, comic books,(6) design history,(7) and caricature(8) , providing the means to crosscheck when or if illustrators moved fluidly between these specializations, whether they had same or different experiences in each, and whether the visual language of one affected another. Third, I continue the historical research of Robert Stacey, author of the Canadian Encyclopedia entry for illustration(9) (the only overview we have), and Angela Davis, on the history of graphic arts workers,(10) providing more details and new facets to the book and (especially needed) ephemera publishing histories in Canada. Fourth, by focusing on producers as much as products, I expand understanding of how cultural backgrounds and personal circumstances of advertising creators contribute to the form of what they make, which builds upon Matthew Soar’s work on graphic designers’ subculture. Soar identifies a lack in media studies of work on producers.(11) Fifth, I improve the aesthetic analysis of advertising and editorial art, which has in the past rarely been looked at by art historians but rather by communication and media scholars who are not trained in art and who have, according to Michele Bogart, given cultural analysis of aesthetics insufficient consideration.(12) Sixth, I contribute to the wider realm of cultural criticism, tackling a still common assumption that “art” and “commerce” are mutually exclusive. Seventh, I am bringing consideration of commercial art into the arena of Canadian cultural theory and policy, which in visual art (the case has been different in literature) has hitherto focused on protecting “high” fine art and locating Canadian identity there rather than in illustration or commercially viable (inevitably illustrative) fine art. Seventh, I address the decades of cultural identity arguments that pit a gigantic commercial American culture against a struggling Canadian one, analyzing the means by which cultural power is inscribed or subverted by illustrated media. My methods combine critical analysis of primary texts (original art, illustrators’ writing) and secondary texts (literature in history of advertising, publishing, cultural theory, art history) with interviews and surveys with illustrators in order to delineate the self-conception illustrators have as “creatives” and their social role, describing their relation to the larger political economy of image circulation between Canada and the USA. I also study reception of illustration in artistic and mainstream milieux, tracking celebration, emulation, and rejection. Part One of my thesis, biographical research, is based on archival records, interviews, and many hours flipping through periodicals harvesting names and samples. This section will be essentially a linear history. My Index to date already shows Canadian illustrators influenced or determined the visual culture of the Boy Scouts of America,(13) Felix the Cat,(14) the look of the flapper and the dumb blonde,(15) beauty standards in Miss America pageants,(16) Superman,(17) Prince Valiant,(18) cowboy art,(19) and popular opinion towards George W. Bush(20) and Barack Obama.(21) A component will cover the growth of schools, businesses, and specific industry centres in Canada (Toronto, Montreal, Hamilton) and the US (Chicago and New York City), identifying movements of talent and power 1900 to present, finding ebbs and flows at different times between certain places. Exemplary illustrators who had particularly stellar careers will be singled out as case studies for understanding the broadness of their cultural impact, in terms of public visibility and of influence on other illustrators. Another section will address what this study determines “illustration”, “American”, and “Canadian” to be; and the rationale for focusing on advertising art and editorial illustration together (fiction, non-fiction, and magazine covers; often the same illustrators doing both; both are arts of persuasion using interpretive description or narrative). Part Two, interpretation and analysis of this data, is divided into three sections. The first tackles the question of whether advertising and editorial illustration can be considered a legitimate site of cultural expression. Using illustrators’ comments and popular reception, I show that the pleasures of consumerism challenge the received view that fine art is free, genuine and uplifting while commercial art is enslaved, false and dangerous.(22) I seek to understand what makes mass culture attractive, attempting to theorize how, in a capitalist system, commerce could be culture; that art is never removed from it; that experience of commercial culture might (though not neces-sarily always or happily) be considered “genuine”, even as I problematize the notion of “genuine” “Canadian” culture or art forms in light of an equally questionable “all-American” influence. My second task is to locate types of cultural expression in illustrators’ work. I will group works by whether they fit a generic international identity, or American or Canadian nationalist, regional or local identities. This will entail subsections defining what exactly comprises generic, Canadian, or American visual identity (subjects, styles, ideology), using formal and iconographic analysis (symbols, icons), illustrator’s statements, and clients’ profiles. I expect I will have to develop a theory explaining why art can or cannot be sorted this way; it may be impossible to determine what is or isn’t “Canadian” or “American” – itself a potentially important finding. Third, I then plan to assess the extent of Canadian illustrators’ impact. This means situating works described in my selected illustrator case studies within their social contexts, tracing the power structures they served, documenting how they were promoted or suppressed and by whom. Comparing the reception, popularity, and emulation of the different sorts of identities expressed, I will answer the research question, “What is the efficacy of advertising and editorial illustration as a vehicle of cultural expression for Canadians in Canadian versus American markets, and in mass versus targeted media?” Visible in media everywhere, yet invisible in our art history and cultural annals, illustration needs this general overview of itself before specialized work can begin. My SSHRC-funded thesis logically leads to focused work related to media circulation in and out of Canada. This thesis’ two parts can also be developed into two books and an inaugural comprehensive exhibition of Canadian illustration, in an institution such as the National Gallery. I would like to contribute to writing illustration history and developing illustration theory, while teaching with a practice-based approach in art history and theory. In five years, I hope to have established a place for illustration scholarship in the field of art history in Canada similar to how it is developing in the US and UK. *Notes* 1. For instance, Quebec’s Palmer Cox created a Kodak Brownie character that became a late Victorian phenomenon. “Palmer Cox”, http://freemasonry.bcy.ca/brownies/dalton_collection.html. Denver Gillen, raised in Vancouver, created Rudolph, The Red-Nosed Reindeer as a Chicago department store promo in1939. “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”, Don Markstein’s Toonopedia, http://www.toonopedia.com/rudolph.htm. 2. S. Jaleen Grove, But is it Art? The Construction and Valuation of Illustration in Victoria's Island Illustrators Society. Master’s Thesis, Toronto: Ryerson University, 2006. 3. S. Jaleen Grove et al, Index of Canadian Illustrators, http://canadianillustrators.wikidot.com/ 4. Nina Czegledy and Kim Sawchuk, “Occupation: Illustrator: Grant’s Atlas of Anatomy”. Paper delivered at Canadian Women’s Art History Initiative conference, Oct. 4, 2008, Concordia University, based on a large funded study still in progress. 5. Judith Saltman, Sheila Egoff, et al, initiated a SSHRC funded project titled Canadian Children's Illustrated Books in English in 2006. Saltman is currently starting a new funded project titled Picturing Canada: A History of Canadian Illustrated Books and Publishing. http://www.slais.ubc.ca/PEOPLE/faculty/faculty-bio/saltman-bio.htm 6. John Bell, Guardians of the North: The National Superhero in Canadian Comic-book Art. Ottawa: National Archives of Canada, 1992. This is the principle text, but since 1992 comics scholarship has exploded. 7. Donnelly, Brian, “Locating Graphic Design History in Canada”. Journal of Design History, 2006 19(4): 283-294. Also see The Canadian Design Resource, http://www.canadiandesignresource.ca/officialgallery/ 8. See work by members of the Groupe de recherche sur la caricature, Université de Montréal, e.g., Dominic Hardy, forthcoming. 9. Stacey, Robert. “Illustration, Art”. The Canadian Encyclopedia. http://thecanadianencyclopedia.com/ 10. Angela Davis, Art and Work. Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 1995. 11. Matthew Soar, “An Insular Profession: Graphic design and consumer culture.” Journal of Consumer Culture, Vol. 2, Issue 2, (2002): 271-275. 12. Michele Bogart, Artists, Advertising, and the Borders of Art. U. of Chicago Press, 1995. 13. The glamour of Scouting was visually established by Ernest Thompson Seton, who was famous as a writer and illustrator of outdoors stories for boys before he cofounded the Scouts. See Brian Morris, Ernest Thompson Seton, Founder of the Woodcraft Movement 1860-1946. Edwin Mellen Press, 2008. 14. Illustrator and pioneering animator Raoul Barré wrote and drew for the Felix cartoons. See Michel Viau, “Raoul Barre”, BD Quebec, http://www.bdquebec.qc.ca/auteurs/barre/rbarre.htm 15. Illustrator Russell Patterson created Broadway and Hollywood costumes and sets, as well as cartooning flappers, femme fatales, and bimbos for Life and other magazines. See Armando Mendez, “Nymph Errant”, in Flappers and Top Hats, Fantagraphics, 2006. 16. Russell Patterson and Arthur William Brown were Miss America judges, 1920s-1940s. Ibid. 17. Artist Joe Schuster based Superman’s city Metropolis on Toronto. See Henry Mietkiewicz,"Great Krypton! Superman Was the Star's Ace Reporter", The Toronto Star (April 26, 1992). 18. Creator Hal Foster also drew the Tarzan comic strip and is considered to have introduced high realism comics. See Brian Kane, Hal Foster: Prince of Illustrators, Father of the Adventure Strip, Vanguard Productions, 2001. Abridged version: http://www.bpib.com/illustra2/foster.htm 19. John Clymer, Wes Chapman, and Robert Elmer Lougheed were all illustrators who turned to Western themes. Clymer has his own museum, while Lougheed was instrumental in founding the National Academy of Art at the National Cowboy Hall of Fame. 20. In an interview, Anita Kunz told me for the cover of a 2002 New Yorker she drew of George W. Bush was so mocking that the publisher delayed releasing it for six months. It depicted Bush as a cowboy on a galloping horse, Bush wearing his horse’s blinders. 21. Barry Blitt’s July 2008 New Yorker cover of the fist-bumping “terrorist” Obamas was so controversial the Obama campaign publicly protested. See Bill Carter, “Want Obama in a Punch Line? First, Find a Joke,” New York Times (July 15, 2008), http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/15/us/politics/15humor.html 22. The critique against the “culture industry” was famously defined by Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer in The Dialectics of Enlightenment, 1947. It is the principle behind the grant eligibility requirements at the Canada Council for the Arts, which disqualifies commercial art (problematically left undefined) a priori from the peer review process.						Cover by Anita Kunz