Tag: illustration

Alfonso Ossorio

Alfonso Angel Ossorio, “The Red Egg”, 1942, Watercolor and India Ink on Paper Pasted on Cardboard, 61.8 x 35 cm, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris

Born in August of 1916 in Manila, Alfonso Ossorio was an abstract expressionist artist of Hispanic, Filipino, and Chinese heritage. At the age of fourteen, he moved to the United States and attended Portsmouth Abbey School in Rhode Island, graduating in 1934. Ossorio studied fine art at Harvard University from 1934 to 1938, and continued his studies at the Rhode Island School of Design. He became a United States citizen in 1933.

Discovered by art dealer and collector Betty Parsons, Alfonso Ossorio had his first show, featuring his Surrealist-influenced works at New York’s Wakefield Gallery in 1940. Following World War II service in the US Army as a medical illustrator, tasked with drawing surgical procedures on injured soldiers, he took some respite in the Berkshires, a region in western Massachusetts known for its outdoor activities. It was there at the 1948 Tanglewood Music Festival that Ossorio met Edward Dragon, a ballet dancer, who would be Ossorio’s life-long partner. 

Through his connection with Betty Parsons, Ossorio became acquainted with the work of Jackson Pollock. Becoming both an admirer and a collector of Pollock’s expressionist work, he and Pollock soon developed a close friendship and reciprocal influence on each others work. Later in 1951, through critic and art historian Michel Tapié, Ossorio established a contact between Pollock and the young Parisian gallery owner Paul Facchetti who realized Pollock’s first solo exhibition in Europe in 1952.

In Paris in 1951, Ossorio and Edward Dragon frequently met with artist Jean Dubuffet and his wife Lili. While they were visiting, Jean Dubuffet wrote the text for his monograph on Ossorio entitled, “Peintures Initiatiques d’Alfonso Ossorio” and introduced Ossorio to art critic and collector Michel Tapié. Tapié organized a one-man show at the Studio Paul Facchetti of Ossorio’s small, luminous “Victorias Drawings”, which Ossorio made while visiting the Philippines. Produced using Ossorio’s experimental drawing technique of wax-resistant crayon on Tiffany & Co. stationary, the works in this series are counted as some of Ossorio’s most innovative. 

Dubuffet’s interest in art brut opened up new vistas for Ossorio, who found release from society’s preconceptions in the previous unstudied creativity of insane asylum inmates and children. In the 1950s, Ossorio began to create works resembling Dubuffet’s assemblages. He affixed shells, bones, driftwood, nails, dolls’ eyes, cabinet knobs, dice, costume jewelry, mirror shards, and children’s toys to the panel surface. Ossorio called these assemblages congregations, with the term’s obvious religious connotation.

On the advice of Pollock, Ossorio and Edward Dragon purchased an expansive 60-acre estate, The Creeks, in East Hampton, Long Island, New York, in 1951, where they lived for more than forty years. Alfonso Ossorio died in New York City in 1990. Half his ashes were scattered at The Creeks estate and the other half came to rest nine years later at Green River Cemetery, alongside the remains of many other famous artists, writers and critics. 

Alfonso Ossorio’s works can be found at The Creeks, the Harvard Art Museum in Massachusetts, the Honolulu Museum of Art, the Housatonic Museum of Art in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC, among others.

Top Insert Image: Alfonso Ossorio, “Young Moses”, 1941, Ink on Paper, 45.1 x 46.7 cm, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York City

Second Insert Image: Alfonso Angel Ossorio, “The Red Egg”, Detail, 1942, Watercolor and India Ink on Paper Pasted on Cardboard, 61.8 x 35 cm, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris

Bottom Insert Image: Alfonso Ossorio, “Resurrection”, 1940, Black Ink on Paper, 43.2 x 56.5 cm, Private Collection

Simeon Solomon

Simeon Solomon,  Frontispiece to His Book ‘”A Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep”’, 1871

Solomon’s “A Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep” is an important early gay text, a prose poem,which was privately published in 1871. The image above is captioned “Until the day break and the shadows flee away”, a quotation from the Bible in the Song of Solomon 2:17.

The performance by Neil Bartlett, entitled “A Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep”, was an one-man homage to the life and work of Pre-Raphaelite painter Simeon Solomon. The performance was originally created and performed at the height of the first wave of the British AIDs epidemic in 1987.

Alfonso Ossorio

Alfonso Ossorio, “Saint Martin and the Beggar”, 1940, Ink, Gouache, and Watercolor on Paper, 52 x 37 cm, Ayala Museum, Manila, Philippines

Born in August of 1916 in Manila, Alfonso Ossorio was an abstract expressionist artist of Hispanic, Filipino, and Chinese heritage. At the age of fourteen, he moved to the United States and attended Portsmouth Abbey School in Rhode Island, graduating in 1934. Ossorio studied fine art at Harvard University from 1934 to 1938, and continued his studies at the Rhode Island School of Design. He became a United States citizen in 1933.

Discovered by art dealer and collector Betty Parsons, Alfonso Ossorio had his first show, featuring his Surrealist-influenced works at New York’s Wakefield Gallery in 1940. Following World War II service in the US Army as a medical illustrator, tasked with drawing surgical procedures on injured soldiers, he took some respite in the Berkshires, a region in western Massachusetts known for its outdoor activities. It was there at the 1948 Tanglewood Music Festival that Ossorio met Edward Dragon, a ballet dancer, who would be Ossorio’s life-long partner. 

Through his connection with Betty Parsons, Ossorio became acquainted with the work of Jackson Pollock. Becoming both an admirer and a collector of Pollock’s expressionist work, he and Pollock soon developed a close friendship and reciprocal influence on each others work. Later in 1951, through critic and art historian Michel Tapié, Ossorio established a contact between Pollock and the young Parisian gallery owner Paul Facchetti who realized Pollock’s first solo exhibition in Europe in 1952.

In Paris in 1951, Ossorio and Edward Dragon frequently met with artist Jean Dubuffet and his wife Lili. While they were visiting, Jean Dubuffet wrote the text for his monograph on Ossorio entitled, “Peintures Initiatiques d’Alfonso Ossorio” and introduced Ossorio to art critic and collector Michel Tapié. Tapié organized a one-man show at the Studio Paul Facchetti of Ossorio’s small, luminous “Victorias Drawings”, which Ossorio made while visiting the Philippines. Produced using Ossorio’s experimental drawing technique of wax-resistant crayon on Tiffany & Co. stationary, the works in this series are counted as some of Ossorio’s most innovative. 

Dubuffet’s interest in art brut opened up new vistas for Ossorio, who found release from society’s preconceptions in the previous unstudied creativity of insane asylum inmates and children. In the 1950s, Ossorio began to create works resembling Dubuffet’s assemblages. He affixed shells, bones, driftwood, nails, dolls’ eyes, cabinet knobs, dice, costume jewelry, mirror shards, and children’s toys to the panel surface. Ossorio called these assemblages congregations, with the term’s obvious religious connotation.

On the advice of Pollock, Ossorio and Edward Dragon purchased an expansive 60-acre estate, The Creeks, in East Hampton, Long Island, New York, in 1951, where they lived for more than forty years. Alfonso Ossorio died in New York City in 1990. Half his ashes were scattered at The Creeks estate and the other half came to rest nine years later at Green River Cemetery, alongside the remains of many other famous artists, writers and critics. 

Alfonso Ossorio’s works can be found at The Creeks, the Harvard Art Museum in Massachusetts, the Honolulu Museum of Art, the Housatonic Museum of Art in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC, among others.

Second Insert Image: Alfonso Ossorio, “Tree”, September 1940, Ink and Graphite on Paper, 51 x 33 cm, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: Alfonso Ossorio, Untitled, 1941, Watercolor and Ink on Paper, Estate of the Artistjpg

Judge Magazine

H. A. Petersen, “The Flying Liner”, Date Unknown, Illustration from the Judge Magazine

The “Judge” was a weekly satirical magazine published in the United States from 1881 to 1947. I was launched by artists who had seceded from its rival magazine “Puck”. The founders were cartoonist James Albert Wales, dime novels publisher Frank Tousey and author George H. Jessop.

This illustration shows the optimism at the time that science and innovation can overcome the forces of nature that affect man. Here a modern ship, the Aerotania, is given the ability through the wonders of scientific advancement to jump over icebergs, one of the deadly hazards to shipping.

Book of Kells

Chi-Rho Page, Book of Kells, 800 AD, Trintiry College, Dublin

The Book of Kells, known also as the Book of Columba, is an illuminated manuscript Christian Gospel book in Latin, containing the four Gospels of the New Testament together with tables and introductory texts. It was created in a Columba monastery in either Britain or Ireland around 800 AD.

The illustrations and ornamentation of the Book of Kells combines traditional Christian iconography with ornate motifs of Hiberno-Saxon art. The existing manuscript comprises 340 folios and, since 1953, has been bound in four volumes. The leaves are on high-quality vellum; the insular script is in iron gall ink, and the colors were derived from a wide range of substances, many imported from distant locations.

The Cho-Rho page dwells almost entriely of the name of Christ, or rather on its traditional abbreviation into the “Chi-Rho” symbol. In this illumination the Chi is the dominant form, an X with uneven arms, somewhat resembling a pair of curved pliers. The Rho stands in its shelter, with its loop turned into a spiral. There is also an Iota, an I, the third letter, passing up through this spiral. All three letters are abundantly decorated, their curves drawn out into flourishes, embellished with discs and spirals, filled with dense tracery and punctuated with occasional animals and angels.

Reblogged with thanks to http://my-ear-trumpet.tumblr.com

Chung Ling Soo

Artist Unknown, “Chung Ling Soo”, 1908 Advertising Poster

This rare 1908 poster advertised a tour of the talented magician Chung Ling Soo. It is one of eight different known posters of the magician’s tours.

Born William Ellsworth Robinson in Westchester County, New York in 1861,Chung Ling Soo was a behind-the-scenes designer of magic tricks for headliners Harry Keller and Alexander Herrmann before he struck out on his own. Around 1900, while in Europe, he adopted the Chung Ling Soo persona.

Robinson went to great lengths to preserve the illusion, limiting his speech on stage to the occasional bit of broken English and relying on an interpreter to talk to journalists. Robinson in his persona of Chung Ling Soo performed a bullet catch trick at a show in London, England in 1918; it was one of the big theatrical showpieces of his performances. Instead of catching the bullet on a plate, the bullet hit his chest. Robinson died a few days later at the age of 56.

RAW: Number Six

Cover Art for Raw, Number Six, 1984, Published by Raw Books and Graphics, New York

“Raw” was a comics anthology edited by Art Spiegelman, a cartoonist best know for his graphic novel “Maus”, and Françoise Mouly, a Paris-born designer and editor. The anthology ran from 1980 to 1991. It was a flagship publication of the 1980s alternative comics movement, serving as a more intellectual counterpoint to Robert Crumb’s visceral “Weirdo”, which followed in the underground tradition of “Zap” and “Arcade”. The anthology “Raw” was one of the main venues for European comics to reach the United States at that time.

“Raw” featured a mix of American and European contributors, including some of Spiegelman’s students at the School of Visual Arts, as well as various contributors from other parts of the world. These included the Argentine duo of José Muñoz and Carlos Sampayo , the Congolese painter Chéri Samba, and several Japanese cartoonists known for their work in “Garo”, a monthly manga magazine. Though comics were the main focus, many issues included galleries of non-comics illustration and illustrated prose or non-fiction pieces.

Peter Diamond

The Illustrations of Peter Diamond

Peter Diamond is a Canadian illustrator based in Vienna, Austria. born in Oxford, England, He received his BFA in Fine Arts at NSCAD University located in Halifax, Nova Scotia. In addition to his freelance work, Diamond teaches drawing at Illuskills and works with the international illustration community through the European Illustrators Forum. He is represented internationally by The Loud Cloud.

Peter Diamond’s work owes much of its character to the album covers and self-published comics that were his special focus in art school and the early years after graduation, as well as the punk gig posters of his teenage years.

Hideki Koh

 

Hideki Koh, Title Unknown, Date Unknown

Hideki Koh was born in Mie Prefecture, Japan in 1951. In 1998 he began drawing pictures with a special focus on boys and young men. From 2000 Koh has introduced his art through solo and group exhibitions in Tokyo, Osaka, London, Melbourne, and other cities around the world.

Through his oil paintings, drawings, and other works of art Koh expresses the freshness and liveliness of the boys and young men he depicts. He often includes in his works the lives of small animals and insects. The aesthetic world he creates provides constant fascination and charm for his growing number of fans.

In addition to his paintings and drawings, Koh is a well-known doll-maker who creates stunningly realistic dolls and accessories. Beginning with his first solo doll exhibition titled “Hitogata” in 2004, his reputation as a talented doll-maker has steadily increased both in Japan and world-wide.

In addition, the multi-talented Koh does body painting for stage actors and at art gallery events. In 2013 Koh started an art and drawing school in Tokyo. He also organizes sketching workshops around the city where he teaches and mentors young artists.

Bernard Buffet

Bernard Buffet, Illustration for “Les Chants de Maldoror”, 1952, Drypoint Etching, Edition of 125

“Les Chants de Maldoror” was published by Les Dix of Paris and was printed by Atelier Daragnes in 1952. It was presented in-folio with leaves loose in two black cases with a limited edition of 125 copies. The 125 original etchings enclosed, each in a 12 x 16 inch format, were by Bernard Buffet. “Les Chants de Maldoror” was Buffet’s first illustrated book.

Snakes and Ladders

Snakes and Ladders Board Game, United Kingdom, 1895, Victoria and Albert Museum, London

The board game “Snakes and Ladders” originated from “Vaikuntapaali” or “Paramapada Sopanam”, a game from India based on morality.    It was often known as in Ancient India as Moksha Patamu.

In the game, the ladders represented virtues such as generosity, faith, and humility while the snakes represented vices such as lust, anger, murder and theft. The moral of the game was that a person can attain salvation through performing good deeds whereas by doing evil one takes rebirth in lower forms of life. The number of ladders was less than the number of snakes as a reminder that treading the path of good is very difficult compared to committing sins.

The game was transported from India to England by the colonial rulers in the latter part of the 19th century, with some modifications. Renamed as “Snakes and Ladders”, the number of snakes and ladders were equalized and the game was stripped of its moral and religious aspects.