Midcentury Modern Illustration: 1974 Golden Round-the-World Calendar by Dan Lawler

 

I was at an estate sale on the border of Maine and New Hampshire this weekend. That's where I walked into a large shed and picked up a few what they call "paper ephemera" items, including the 1974 Golden Round-the-World Calendar "with Language Fun and Travel Facts." What a grand piece of Midcentury Modern art. It wasn't until I bought it and took it home that I saw the credit that it was illustrated by Dan Lawler. It's rare that an illustrator gets credit for something like this, so that was an unexpectedly welcome thing to see.

Dan Lawler (1918 - 2018) was best known as the creator and artist for hundreds of covers for Humpty Dumpty magazine, as well as Parents Magazine and cartoons for Reader's Digest. He designed the iconic clock above the NYC FAO Schwartz Toy Store entrance. He passed away in 2018 at the age of 100, survived by his four children and eleven grandkids.

"Dan was a scholarship graduate of the Minneapolis School of Art. He won a fellowship to study in New York City with a master portraitist. His studies were interrupted by World War II where he was deployed with the Army to the European Theater. He landed on Utah Beach on D-Day and fought in the Normandy campaign as a recon platoon sergeant. While on a scouting mission, months after D-Day, his whole patrol was ambushed, and Dan was wounded and taken prisoner. He survived a prisoner of war column heading east towards Germany. His German captors, whom Dan later praised for their mercy, deposited Dan and other wounded soldiers in the town of Tournai, Belgium, where the townspeople treated their wounds and provided shelter for them.

"Dan was later transferred to the VA hospital at Battle Creek, Michigan. His young wife Jeanne joined him there and they were inseparable ever afterwards. Dan and Jeanne were long-time residents of Centerport, L.I., N.Y. They celebrated their 50th anniversary there in 1993. Jeanne died of Parkinson’s disease at Chandler Hall in Newtown in 2003.

"Dan was a long-time artist for Parents Magazine in New York City. He loved art and he loved the Great City. Dan had great charm, imagination, and skill. There was little that he could not create to entertain his beloved wife, children, relatives, grandchildren, and friends, from personalized, humorous anniversary cards every June 18th to rope swings and rocking horses for the children."

-- Joseph A. Fluehr III Funeral Home Inc. obituary

 

 More:

Childs Gallery profile

John K Stuff blog: Humpty Dumpty Magazine - Dan Lawler Illustrations

Daily Cartoonist: AI Now Scraping Signatures As Well As Cartoonists’ Styles

 

Above: AI is not only taking cartoonists' styles and generating images, but it's also aping their signatures. Above on the left, an AI generated image of an Emily Flake cartoon. One of her actual real cartoons on the right. This side by side visual is from D.D. Degg's DailyCartoonist article "AI Now Scraping Signatures As Well As Cartoonists’ Styles."

 

I was reading this week about a comic book illustrator (I forget who, but it was on a social media platform) who uses "just a little bit of AI" for their work. "Just to help out," was the excuse. 

I also read a WSJ article about the artist Taryn Simon, whose new show at the Guggenheim used AI for part of her show. (I don't have a link. I was reading the actual paper.)

 AI was created by big tech, which scraped images off of the internet to "learn" how to "create." It was theft, taken without the permission of artists, mashed into a program, and sold back to people who, as one fellow posted online, "never had the time to learn to draw." Fellow artists, this comic book artist and Taryn Simon and others, are normalizing the use of AI. I feel angry and that they are not just wrong, but betraying the nature of creating.

 

The Garden As of Early October

Above: the driveway with the garden to the right in the middle-ground.


The garden as of early October. How does your garden grow? Not much! Here’s the last of the tomatoes, peppers, runner beans, etc. The first frost warning is this week. Leaves and pine cones are falling. It’s dark before 7pm. By next month, it’ll be dark before five.

 

'The Masses' and the Importance of Political Cartoonists During WWI

 

A cartoon by Robert Minor for The Masses magazine.

Derf Backderf has a new graphic novel, The Dissidents, which is the true story of a group of political cartoonists that were jailed for their cartoons. More than once. It all happened just over 100 years ago and they all worked at The Masses, a magazine with a small circulation but it had a big impact. 

Here's Derf talking on The Chris Hedges Show.

Sketches for Thursday

 

Some sketches from the sketchbook today. Above is our late, beloved Dexter, who showed up one day in the woods and (after months and months of wooing) became a happy indoor kitty. He was a sweet, bit orange fellow. 

And here are some more, drawn from travels or from imagination. Some well executed, some not -- because that's the way it is with a sketchbook. 

In winter, I shovel paths to the bird feeders. It's good cardio!

This is a true story. One day I was calling some people I know and no one was picking up. When I called a cartoonist (Bill Woodman) he picked up on the first ring since he was, of course, right there in his studio, drawing. He was a great cartoonist and much missed. We could chat for a long time.

Sketches for Wednesday

 

Some years back, my Mom was clearing out her art studio. She handed me a sketchbook. "Could you use this?" she asked. Yes, of course. The first thing I drew was a self-portrait of me laughing at my own drawing, and my then-studio car Dropcloth, who is much missed. (So is Mom.) Like George Booth told me, If you laugh at your own drawings, then you are on to something. Ha ha. Well, here are some drawings -- drawn from imagination and life. Some funny, some not, some just slice of life observations. A lot are not meant to be seen and are just doodles. One is a full-fledged story. I have paperwork to do for now, and a couple of presentations I need to prep, so I thought I would just offer up some more of my sketches, which I don't share enough. Now I need to go.

Above: the deli counter at Heinen's in Westlake, OH.

These guys were way into sharing recipes on that bumpy bus.

Art critic John Berger back in 1972. (Check out his Ways of Seeing series.)

Cats in fezzes. Just because.