Posts Tagged ‘Cartoon’
“Beauty belongs to the sphere of the simple, the ordinary, whilst ugliness is something extraordinary”*…
Oskar Kokoschka – “Prometheus Triptych” (left hand panel)
What’s the ugliest
Part of your body?
What’s the ugliest
Part of your body?
Some say your nose
Some say your toes
(I think it’s your mind)
But I think it’s YOUR MIND
… Art holds up a mirror to shifting attitudes. Initial tags of ‘ugly’ sometimes get forgotten as once-derided subjects become valued. Impressionism of the 19th century – now featured in blockbuster exhibits – was initially compared to mushy food and rotting flesh. When Henri Matisse’s works showed in the US at the Armory Show of 1913, critics lambasted his art as ‘ugly’, while art students in Chicago burned an effigy of his Blue Nude in front of the Art Institute. The same institution mounted a major retrospective of his work a century later. Jazz and rock’n’roll were once considered ‘ugly’ music, threatening to corrupt entire generations.
In the face of ‘ugly’ slurs, some artists embraced the word. The painter Paul Gauguin called ugliness ‘the touchstone of our modern art’. The poet and translator Ezra Pound encouraged a ‘cult of ugliness’. The composer Charles H H Parry praised ugliness in music, without which ‘there would not be any progress in either social or artistic things’. The critic Clement Greenberg lauded Jackson Pollock’s abstract expressionism as ‘not afraid to look ugly – all profoundly original art looks ugly at first’…
From Gretchen Henderson‘s essay “The history of ugliness shows that there is no such thing.” And for artist Oskar Kokoschka’s thoughts, see “On Making Ugly Art.”
* “Beauty belongs to the sphere of the simple, the ordinary, whilst ugliness is something extraordinary, and there is no question but that every ardent imagination prefers in lubricity, the extraordinary to the commonplace”
― Marquis de Sade
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As we gaze into our mirrors, we might recall that it was on this date in 1852 that “Uncle Sam” first appeared as a cartoon figure in the New York Lantern weekly newspaper. Thomas Nast, the famed Harpers cartoonist who created the political party mascots and Santa Claus, is widely– but incorrectly– credited with creating the Uncle Sam archetype. While Nast certainly helped create the modern impression of the character, and popularize it, he was just 12 years old when the original cartoon appeared. It was the creation of Frank Bellew.
“Films are 50 percent visual and 50 percent sound. Sometimes sound even overplays the visual”*…
Though routinely credited, as above, as “Film Editor,” Tregoweth Edmond “Treg” Brown was the genius sound-effects wizard responsible for sound editing the Warner Brothers’ Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons starting in 1936…
His musique concrète artistry worked directly in conjunction with Carl Stalling‘s hyper-active left-field orchestral scores to create the soundtrack to generations of kids lives. So many of these sounds are completely ingrained into our collective pop-culture (un)consciousness. So much so, that reviewing some of the old Looney Tunes cartoons as an adult, you tend to ignore how utterly ridiculous the doinks and twangs are, for they sound totally natural in context—a testament to Brown’s flawless editing of sounds demanded by the images.
In addition to his incredible sound design which won him a Sound Effects Oscar in 1965 for The Great Race, Brown is also credited with giving legendary Warner Brothers’ voice actor Mel Blanc his big break…
More at “The Sound Effects Madman Behind the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies Cartoons.” And much more– with wonderful examples– in this short documentary (part 2 here):
email readers click here for video
* David Lynch
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As we perk up our ears, we might send melodic birthday greetings to Jerrald King “Jerry” Goldsmith; he was born on this date in 1929. One of film and television”s most accomplished composers and conductors, Goldsmith scored such noteworthy films as The Sand Pebbles, Logan’s Run, Planet of the Apes, Patton, Papillon, Chinatown, The Wind and the Lion, The Omen, The Boys from Brazil, Alien, Poltergeist, The Secret of NIMH, Gremlins, Hoosiers, Total Recall, Basic Instinct, Rudy, Air Force One, L.A. Confidential, Mulan, The Mummy, three Rambo films, and five Star Trek films– in a career during which he was nominated for six Grammy Awards, five Primetime Emmy Awards, nine Golden Globe Awards, four British Academy Film Awards, and eighteen Academy Awards. In 1976, he was awarded an Oscar for The Omen.
While presenting Goldsmith with a Career Achievement Award from the Society for the Preservation of Film Music in 1993, fellow composer Henry Mancini (Breakfast at Tiffany’s, The Pink Panther) said of Goldsmith, “… he has instilled two things in his colleagues in this town. One thing he does, he keeps us honest. And the second one is he scares the hell out of us.”
“I like physics, but I love cartoons”*…
From “Shitty New Yorker Cartoon Captions“…
“An imbecile desperately tries to win the New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest”– many more at “Shitty New Yorker Cartoon Captions.”
* Stephen Hawking
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As we chortle, we might send scathingly funny birthday greetings to William Claude Dukenfield; he was born on this date in 1880. Better known by his stage name, W.C. Fields, he was first a successful vaudeville juggler, then a film and radio comedy star famous for his misanthropic wit. Instantly recognizable both visually (his face was one-of-a-kind) and audibly (his drawl and grandiloquent vocabulary were trademarks), he became everyone’s favorite scoundrel.
Check out a trio of his short films here; then the last feature film that he wrote and headlined, Never Give a Sucker an Even Break.”
“To thine own self be true”*…
Readers may recall an earlier entry on what was thought to be the very first selfie… and indeed, it may be (at least insofar as that particular form of self-snap is concerned). But as Susan Zalkind reports, self-portraits date back further…
My great-great-great-grandfather, Edward Linley Sambourne (1844–1910), known as “Sammy,” was the principal cartoonist for Punch. Sammy set up a studio at his home in Kensington, London, and photographed not only his servants and children, but also himself—thousands of times! “The Rhodes Colossus,” depicting British colonialist Cecil Rhodes with one foot in Cairo and the other in Cape Town, is his most iconic drawing.
More at “Grandfather of the Selfie.”
* William Shakespeare
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As we watch the birdie, we might recall that it was on this date in 1888 that the National Geographic Society was incorporated. Two weeks earlier, the 33 founders of the Society had first met at the Cosmos Club in Washington, D.C. to agree to plans; nine months later, the first issue of National Geographic Magazine was published.
This 1963 painting depicts the founders signing their names to the new organizations’s charter. The table in the painting is in use today in the Society’s Hubbard Hall.
“It is wonderful to be here in the great state of Chicago”*…
The first of 11 questions designed to test “How well do you really know your country?”
Choose any one of 33 countries, then take the quiz.
* Dan C. Quayle (campaigning for the Vice Presidency in 1988)
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As we prune our preconceptions, we might spare a thought for Rube Goldberg; he died on this date in 1970. A cartoonist, sculptor, author, engineer, and inventor, he is best remembered as a satirist of the American obsession with technology; his series of “Invention” cartoons used a string of outlandish tools, people, plants, and steps to accomplish simple, everyday tasks in the most complicated possible way. (His work has inspired a number of “Rube Goldberg competitions,” the best-known of which, readers may recall, has been profiled here.)
Goldberg was a founder and the first president of the National Cartoonists Society, and he is the namesake of the Reuben Award, which the organization awards to the Cartoonist of the Year.
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