I will admit with some shame that though I greatly admire the craft and technical skill of the illustrators in this era… things sometimes get a little boring, no?
(~~~Controversial Opinion Alert Please Don’t Kill Me Jeff Thank You~~~)
Now before the torches and pitchforks come out in force, what I mean by this is that we’re now two decades in with a very conservative dominated style of illustration that doesn’t seem all that hot on breaking any molds. As far as the eye can see, slick, clean cut and conventionally beautiful white people are the overwhelming majority amongst the compositions of commercial illustrators. Idyllic Americana rules the stage, and I have to wonder… where are the weirdos?
Certainly, the world of Fine Art is a veritable fountain of them at this point, but I was surprised at how safe much of what we saw in the illustration world was at this point. Consider me pleasantly surprised then, to find a voice like Leonard’s while working through this decade.
Tormented Man from Baskin’s own Gehenna Press, a printing endeavour he founded at Yale in 1942. In comparison to much of the popular work of the time, I find this wonderfully striking and uncompromising. The scratched and scrawling linework, particularly in the bird is incredibly evocative, bringing me back to childhood terrors of colossal smoking monsters, swallowing the horizon with billowing wings of ash. There’s something baleful and all encompassing about it, and I love what he’s pulled off here. It has teeth, and isn’t afraid to show them.
Printmaking is something I’ve longed to do for a good while now, and it’s exciting to see someone like Leonard rally the DIY punk attitude of just having at it and starting a printing house by himself.
Boar no. 304 from his Six Wood Engravings series. Simple and straightforward, but beautifully stylized and lush with satisfying textures. I’d love to try my hand at some work like this in both pen and ink and relief printing.
Much of his work seems to revolve around themes of the human condition and mortality, something that he notedly refused to compromise as much of the fine art world moved into abstraction.
Death Among the Thistles. Interesting layering, this has a somewhat Baskin/Gorey crossover feeling to it. I love how dense this becomes without being muddy and indistinct.
From Baskins Raptors series. The collection is fascinating, with every rendering of each bird wildly out of conventional proportion but somehow filled with the predatory menace that is their namesake. Eagles with turgid, muscled thighs, brooding falcons with enormous square shoulders reaching to the top of the page, and this one above. Bloated, only a hint of form, none of the sleekness of a bird of prey, but the curve of the beak and the eye make it distinctly clear this is a frightening predator.
Just unsettling, emaciated and haunting but awfully human at the same time, right down to the slightly unfocused eyes. Loose linework and lovely texturing, I found this to be a favorite as it went through his drawings.
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