ALL THE WORLD'S A FAIR

Artist: Robert M. ('Bob') Peak (1927-1992)

Sixty years ago, in 1964, I was 15 years old and fixated on all things American – art, literature and music, politics and pop-culture (especially humour, cartoons and comic books) and, of course, TV and movies. 

 

Coverage in the British press of the opening on this day of the New York World’s Fair 1964-65 was was hardly extensive, but wherever it appeared I found and devoured it.

 

The concept was visionary and the realisation looked awesome. Everything about it was new, vital and stimulating: a contemporary re-embodiment of those British extravaganzas, The Great Exhibition of 1851 about which I’d read and, from a century later, the Festival of Britain of which I had a few toddler memories. 

 

I was particularly obsessed by the NYWF because my idol, Walt Disney, was responsible for creating a quartet of attractions for the Fair’s pavilions, including the first manifestations of Disney’s ‘audio-animatronics’ including prehistoric landscapes of robot dinosaurs and an address from an android Abraham Lincoln.

 

Six decades on, the New York World’s Fair has lost none of its fascination for me and ‘memories’ of this event that I never attended have continued to fuel my fascination with the art and mechanics of theme parks – especially those engineered by Mr Disney and his successors. 

 

Perhaps this selection of posters – several by noted artists and all redolent of 60’s graphic art and design – will convey something of the sense of excitement experienced by my teenage-self!

 

 

 

Artist: David Klein (1918-2005)

 

 

Artist: Henry Benscathy (1909-1996)  

 

Artist: Unknown  

 

 

  

Artist: Dallasta

 

Artist: Unknown

 

 

 

Artist: Robert M. ('Bob') Peak (1927-1992)

 

Artist: Robert M. ('Bob') Peak (1927-1992)

 
 

 

 

Artist: Disney Studio

 

 Artist: Unknown

 

 

 Artist: Robert M. ('Bob') Peak (1927-1992)

 

 

 

 

Artist:  Whitney Darrow Jnr. (1909-1999)

 

 

WEIRD AND WONDERFUL

 

Here's great piece of great art by Al Feldstein (1925-2014) for Weird Fantasy Vol. 1, # 17 (January 1953) featuring dinosaurs, a spacecraft and the name of a man familiar with both: Ray Bradbury! 

 

In fact, the Bradbury story included in this issue, 'There Will Come Soft Rains', had nothing to do with either space-travel or prehistoric life, because Weird Fantasy covers were invariably generic, featuring images guaranteed to catch the eye and raise the pulse of the potential reader: rockets, robots, aliens, monsters, dinosaurs and (wherever and whenever possible) scantily-dressed females in peril! 

 

Nevertheless, this could so easily have been an image for Bradbury's legendary dino-saga, 'A Sound of Thunder'. 

 

And, anyway, I just love it!

PACIFIC PERSPECTIVE

I am much struck and deeply moved by this extraordinary 1967 painting, 'Pacific': the work of Alex Colville (1920-2013), a Canadian artist and print-maker, responsible for works of Magical Realism that confront the viewer with mysterious imagery that beg questions and provoke propositions. 

 

There is so much discipline in its composition: the precision of painting: the geometrically-tiled floor; the table (with its curious measuring rule – establishing a formal sense of order, control or, perhaps, indices of time and space) and the portentous pistol carelessly, or precisely, abandoned or just waiting; the louvered window and the seascape beyond all contrasted with the figure of the shirtless man, turned from us, head and features unseen, watching, we presume, the gentle breaking of a single wave...

A LETTER FROM MARS

 

Fifty years ago, today, RAY BRADBURY, visionary American writer of fantasy and sci-fi classics – think The Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451 – sat down at his typewriter in Beverly Hills and replied to a fan-letter from a 25-year-old guy in Britain who had sent him some provoking questions about a mutual idol – Walt Disney...

 

 

 

 

 

This remarkable letter was to be the beginning of a wonderful friendship that would last for almost 40 years and only ended with Ray’s death in 2012. 

 

Only a few days before he died, I received – by email, via his daughter, Zee, who latterly served as his amanuensis – a final missive…

 

 

**********************************

 

Dear Brian,

 

Thanks for your wonderful note; it's always great to hear from you.

 

Zee read your email to me and I cannot believe what you and David have to go through. [We had to vacate our flat for a year during repairs to the building] 

 

Of course, now that you've had to dig through all your treasures, perhaps we should get you two here to take care of this out-of-control homestead of mine!!!! I love this old house of mine and even if I didn't, I think I'd be stuck here because there's just so much stuff.

 

I'm glad to hear of your new book and I do hope you'll send me a copy of it when it comes out.

 

I think Zee told you that I had been in the hospital, but this old Martian is doing fine, so don't you worry.

 

I send you and David much love,

 

Ray

 

**********************************

 

My discovery, in my early teens, of the extraordinary worlds of Ray Bradbury was a fiery baptism in the waters of metaphor and simile, in the rip-tide of allusions and illusions, in the great wave of allegory and analogy. 

 

His books were like gathering the Golden Apples of the Sun; getting drunk on Dandelion Wine in the shade of the Halloween Tree in the October Country; or finding a prescription for a Medicine for Melancholy whenever Something Wicked This Way Comes.

 

Our correspondence and, later, our meetings in London, California and Florida, were treasured like the rarest and richest gifts stolen from a dragon-horde or from seemingly commonplace pebbles and shells found shimmering along new-washed shoreline in the first light of dawn.

 

To engage with Ray on any topic of conversation was nothing short of thrilling: invigorating, enlightening, challenging and inspiring. Never more so than when talk turned to shared passions and obsessions. 

 

Cue a topic; any one: Disney (especially Fantasia and the wonders of Disneyland); dinosaurs and robots; Charles Dickens and A Christmas Carol; comic books (Flash Gordon, John Carter of Mars and the ‘pulp poets’ of the ‘fifties); cinematic classics (The Phantom of the Opera, Citizen Kane and La Strada); the monsters of moviedom (from King Kong to the beasts of Ray Harryhausen); Hollywood’s funny men (Stan and Ollie, Buster Keaton and Chaplin); artists (especially Piranesi, Eyvind Earle and, his own frequent illustrator, Joe Mugnani) and then more Disney and so much more of anything and everything.

 

Ray became my mentor and critic, my goad and guide, source of inspiration and spur to my imagination; but he was also ever the challenger to my preconceptions and debunker of my hypocrisies. We talked about joys and sorrows, origins and destinations, risings and fallings, dreams and nightmare, realities and masquerades, every shade of love, hate and whatever lay between. 

 

Our thirty-eight years of friendship was, as I grew up and he grew older, a love-affair of ponderings and speculations. I miss him as much today, as I did twelve years ago, when that ‘Old Martian’ (as he called himself in his last email) set off on his last great exploration of the Great Unknown that, again and again, he celebrated throughout his life…

A BIG ISSUE

 

It's Donald Duck's 90th Birthday and yet he is as belligerent as ever...

 

ANGRY DUCK: 'It's all very well saying "Don't mention it", but it really IS – IN THE ROOM!'

'WHAT DID YOU DO IN THE WAR, DISNEY?'

 

A rare item of Disneyana: a 1944 WWII poster designed by the Disney Studio for the US Government's War Manpower Commission.

 

A mean, salivating grasshopper clutches a handful of dollars and a lunchbox as he hops from job to job in search of higher wages. Disney's artwork thematically references the studio's 1934 'Silly Symphony', The Grasshopper and the Ants, that (with its popular song 'The World Owes Me a Living') would have been familiar to many Americans of working-age. During WWII, American unemployment levels dropped to 1.4% due to the influx of production jobs for the war effort. This poster sought to dissuade defense workers from using the labor shortage to 'job hop'

 

Walt Disney Studios was in difficult financial straits when WWII broke out due to animators enlisting to serve in the forces and the loss of European revues from their films. Following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Disney's massive studio lot in Burbank, California was commandeered by the US Army and many of Walt's animators were moved from making entertainment cartoons to making training films for the Navy. By 1943, almost 90% of Disney's work was related to the war effort, from powerful propaganda films to posters such as this one.

"THEY'D EATEN EVERY ONE!"

Angry Duck:  

"What do you mean: 'WHAT OYSTERS?'"

VISIONS OF HOPE

From the covers of the American television-listings magazine, TV GUIDE, across four decades, here are seven portraits of comedy legend, BOB HOPE – as depicted by the pens and paintbrushes of six masters of cartoon and illustration.

 

Hope's familiar features – the chin, nose, forehead and eyebrows – are brilliantly captured in caricatures by Hirschfeld, Searle. Scarfe and Davis, portraiture by Bernard Fuchs and the photo-realistic artwork by Richard Amsel.

 

 

TV GUIDE, January 26, 1957 by Al HIRSCHFELD (1903-2003)

 

 TV GUIDE, January 16, 1965 by Ronald SEARLE (1920-2011)

TV GUIDE, January 11, 1969 – Gerald SCARFE (b. 1936)

 

TV GUIDE, January 11, 1969 by Gerald SCARFE (b. 1936)

 

  TV GUIDE, April 10, 1971by Jack DAVIS (1924-2016)

 

TV GUIDE, February 28, 1976 by Bernard FUCHS [Again!] (1932-2009)

TV GUIDE, May 21, 1983 by Richard AMSEL (1947-1985)

 

CAT BURGLAR

 

Angry Duck:

"GET YOUR CHESHIRE PAWS –– OUT –– OF –– MY –– COMIC-BOOKS!"

THE PORTRAITS OF A LADY

The Royal Academy of Arts is currently celebrating the work of Angelica Kauffman RA (1741-1807), a Swiss Neoclassical painter who had a highly successful career in London and Rome. Remembered primarily as a history painter, Kauffman was also skilled portraitist, landscape painter. She was, along with Mary Moser, one of only two female painters who were among the 34 founding members of the Royal Academy of Art at its inception in 1768. 

 

In this 'Self-portrait in al'antica Dress' Angelica Kauffman chooses to show herself not just as an 'artist' (she holds a tablet and stylus and has her painters impedimenta within reach) but also as an idealised image of femininity. The rustic costume and the classical setting – columns, swagged curtaining and an idyllic country vista in the background – complete the romantic mood and, in doing so, effectively, effortlessly – and, perhaps, ironically – conceal the labour of the painter's craft.

There is a major focus Kauffman's portraiture in this exhibition and, in addition to the self-portrait above, I'm sharing just three works which show her very considerable talent.

 

DAVID GARRICK (1717-1779); English actor, playwright, theatre manager and producer who influenced nearly all aspects of European theatrical practice throughout the 18th century. Painted in 1764, Kauffman boldly portrays Garrick with unexpected – indeed, uncommon – informality. Garrick turns on his chair to look back at the observer, eschewing the frequently-adopted 'dramatic' pose used in the depiction of thespians! This air of being 'at ease with life', combined with the intensity of his look and the hint of a wry smile, makes for a compelling portrait.

 

 
Sir JOSHUA REYNOLDS, PRA, FRS, FRSA, (1723-1792); English painter who, himself, specialised in portraits. He promoted the 'Grand Style' in painting, which depended on idealisation of the imperfect. He was a founder and first president of the Royal Academy of Arts and was knighted by George III in 1769. This portrait of a portraitist (dating from 1767) combines the sense of a man of considerable public importance – the associated trappings provided by the studio setting with its easel, books, papers and an antique bust of Michelangelo, whom Reynolds so much admired – with a contemplative pose that reflects, perhaps, his friendship with Kauffman and, even, his acknowledgement of her worth as a fellow artist.

 

JOHANN JOACHIM WINCKELMANN (1717-1768); German art historian, one of the founders of scientific archaeology and considered by many as the father of the discipline of 'art history'. He was one of the first scholars to arrange Greek Art into specific periods, and time classifications. Kauffman depicts Winckelmann, pen in hand but looking away from what he is writing (and the observer), as if he were caught in a moment of reverie. The simple, uncluttered staging and the sitter's reflective expression suggests a man with an ordered mind who primarily seeks to bring order to the chaos of history.


The exhibition, 'Angelica Kauffman', remains on display at The Royal Academy, Piccadilly, London, until 30 June 2024.

[Photos: David Weeks]