The 1960 Dodge Trucks Campaign

In 1960 Dodge Trucks ran an ad campaign that was very forward-looking. Smart, colourful, stylized illustrations were featured in a series of magazine ads (and for related brochures and catalogues) positioning Dodge trucks in a distinctive, contemporary light.



Kudos to the art director who sold the client on this approach - and to Dodge for going out on a limb by agreeing to such a unique presentation of their product line! This must surely have been a risky decision.



Risky because the style of these illustrations - as beautiful as I think it is - doesn't strike me as terribly appealing to what I imagine as the typical 1950s truck purchaser.



The three ads above were previously presented here on Today's Inspiration. Recently I unearthed two more of these gorgeous, innovatively executed ads.





Seeing that there was in fact a fairly large group of these ads, I searched online and discovered scans of even more images from the series!







What a spectacular series.



And what a beautiful and distinctive style!



And yet I have never come across it anywhere else... who could this mysterious artist have been?

And then I recalled the work of Albert Pucci, whom we recently looked at.



Could Pucci have been the artist behind the 1960 Dodge trucks campaign?

* Thanks to Flickr members Alden Jewell and thisisengage for providing the last two Dodge Trucks scans in today's post!

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James R. Bingham: "Art was his life and the rest of it was sometimes a strain."

Some artists are so focused - so driven to create - that they seem to live for nothing else. James R. Bingham was such an artist. During one 9-year stretch of his career in the '40s, he took only 11 days of vacation. When asked what he would do if he had time for a hobby, he said "paint."



Because he was so single-minded of purpose, so prolific, because he had such a facility for such a diverse range of subject matter - and because he was just so damn good - James R. Bingham has become in my mind - not a heroic figure, exactly - but something of a larger-than-life character.



Bingham was an artist from the get-go. He made that decision at age 3 (beating out Al Dorne, who made it at age 5).



His son, James Bingham Jr. told me, "Dad did artwork for the yearbooks for all the years he was in high school. He would draw on anything... when Dad's family got together they all used to complain about having black bottoms... Dad used to go to the bathroom and draw on the toilet paper then roll it back up!"



Young artists looking to break into the business are often advised, "Draw. Draw everything... and all the time." Bingham must have innately understood this. His industrious nature - and, of course, his talent - served him well. After just two semester of art college he was offered a teaching position. He chose instead to go to New York, where he immediately found an art rep and steady work as an illustrator.



I asked Jim Jr. if his dad got involved with the Society of Illustrators. He replied, "The Society of Illustrators approached my Dad to become active,but he was so busy with work, home assisting with rearing kids, and having a social life, he didn't think he had the time. Also there were monetary requirements he thought were excessive."



Perhaps more telling about why he chose not to join the SI is Bingham's attitude about the distinction between fine and commercial art... and his perception of his role in its creation. Jim Jr. wrote, "Many of the artists in the Society were what Dad considered not illustrators, but fine artists. Some, for example, took months to complete an assignment whereas Dad, in the same amount of time, would complete many assignments."



James R. Bingham clearly had an admirable work ethic. Like many artists of his generation, he also clearly saw himself as a craftsman first - working at a skilled trade he had a natural affinity for - and working hard to provide for his family. There is, however, a down-side to the type of personality that almost obsessively immerses itself in this type of lifestyle.

Jim Jr. told me, "Dad didn't garner a lot of attention as he always worked at home or in a private studio. The illustrators of the Society in some ways shunned Dad for not being available for functions and other things."



"He, as with a lot of artists, was a loner in most of the trappings of life. Art was his life and the rest of it was sometimes a strain."

Like so many other East Coast illustrators, the Binghams lived for a time in the artist's mecca of Westport, CT, which suggests that Bingham was at least to some degree seeking out the company of his peers. But, Jim Jr. says, "In '49 we experienced a Noreaster storm. The snow was up to the second floor windows. M&D decided to have a storm party, snowed in for 10 days with a dozen other people in the house. No heat, cooking over the fireplace in the living room, and no facilities other than "out back."



"By the time we could get out M&D never wanted to see their house guests again and vowed never another snow storm!"



Jim Jr. continues, "Dad and my uncle Bob took a fact finding trip to Florida and it was love at first sight for both of them. In 1950 it was off to sunny Fl."





This was the decade when Bingham became the regular artist on two major ongoing Saturday Evening Post series: Perry Mason...



... and Tugboat Annie.



Jim Jr. said, "After we moved to Florida in 1950, Dad continued working with Seymour Thompson [in New York]." Below, The Thompson Reps ad from the 1952 New York Art Directors Annual shows Bingham in fine company among some of the best, most successful illustrators of the 1950s.



Bingham was also picking up work locally in Florida. Jim Jr. doesn't recall exactly when, but at some point Seymour Thompson retired...however, "by then Dad was doing a land office business with architectural renderings. For a while I think Dad did just about every high rise ever envisioned for south Fl. He also did work for Niemam & Marcus and yearly did the Chris-Craft catalog as their corporate office was just north of us in Pompano Beach, Fl."



"His work for Chris Craft are perfection when reduced for advertising."*



Jim Jr. shared with me the story of his father's death:

"He was in the middle of the Chris Craft work when he had a stroke."



"This occurred just after Mom's death. He went to the doctor and died the day his results came back from the doctor's office."



"At that time I was acting as an artist rep. for the area artists. His death took the wind out of my sails and I moved away from the representation."



"Just before his death he had decided to start fine art and completed some studies... but I didn't understand them."



"They seemed to be dark & complex... very compelling."



"But that just wasn't to be."



James R. Bingham died in 1971.

Many thanks to James Bingham Jr. for sharing the story of his father's life and career with us. Thanks also to Bruce Hettema of P&H Creative Group, Heritage Auctions, James Vaughn, and KOdama on Flickr and John, the owner of 1959Cadillac.com for sharing their James R. Bingham images with me for this series of posts.

* Note: I was unable to get confirmation that the Chris-Craft illustrations in today's post, found online, are definitely by James R. Bingham - but they are from the correct time period and look very much like they could be by Bingham. ~ Leif

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The Noir Stylings of James R. Bingham

Despite the obvious range of subject matter that James R. Bingham was clearly capable of handling with great proficiency, his work during the 1950s is, for me, epitomized by a long-running series he illustrated for the Saturday Evening Post...



Erle Stanley Gardner's "Perry Mason."



Here Bingham's work truly captured the sumptuous atmospheric stylings of the best of film noir.



Bingham's flair for portraying all the grit and guts of classic hard-boiled crime fiction makes this decade-long series of illustrations, in my opinion, one of the finest - yet most under-appreciated - of the genre.





But there's another deeper wrinkle - and one I'd only recently considered - in Bingham's Perry Mason art. Have a look at this dramatic piece by Bingham. Once you're ready to move beyond the obviously disturbing events unfolding in the subject matter of the story Bingham is illustrating...



... you discover a composition - really, a work of art - worthy of far greater contemplation. Here I see such careful consideration of the picture elements, such sophisticated appreciation of how to create a sense of ambiance, so much more than just a captured moment of a pulp fiction story... I'm floored by Bingham's masterful juxtaposition of the necessary violence of the story within a larger scene that quietly breathes with a strange sense of serenity.

I find there is an Edward Hopper-esque quality to Bingham's work during this period that I had not previously noticed. Set aside the crime drama subject matter and you will see in this series a quiet, contemplative examination of some intriguingly familiar urban landscapes.



This quality is, I think, the real genius of much of James R. Bingham's Perry Mason art, as seen in these examples below.







In the early years of the series, Bingham seems to have created his Perry Mason from personal vision. In fact his son, Jim Jr., told me "because he didn't have anything but a story line to work with, he developed [the look] on his own from the story and it seemed to work. Dad had very few corrections. And I know he enjoyed it, in fact in a lot of the work he used family faces & postures (but didn't pay fair rates, often in ice cream & movies)."

But around 1957, Bingham's Perry Mason began to look very much like the actor, Raymond Burr.



This only makes sense, as Burr had begun portraying Mason that year in what would become a popular television series that ran until 1966.



Bingham continued to employ his successful fully-painted style to these illustrations until 1959...



... when he abruptly switched gears and introduced readers to an impactful, modern line style he seemingly created out of whole cloth.



Whether this change was self-motivated or a request from the Post's editors is unknown.



But it strikes me as obvious that Bingham's earlier, painterly style was becoming dated and that this new look was an attempt to keep the series looking fresh, stylish and contemporary.



After all, illustrators and the magazine business were facing a new decade and new challenges. Tomorrow, we'll see how James R. Bingham fared in those changing times.

* Many thanks to TI list member Bruce Hettema, owner of P&H Creative Group, who sent me a huge package of old tearsheets from the early days of his studio, when it was known as Patterson & Hall, a San Francisco-based advertising art studio. Among those tearsheets were some of the images you see in todays post - most importantly, the full colour piece which was so revelatory for me.

* Thanks also to Bill Peckmann, who sent a note the other day - perfect timing! - pointing me to an Edward Hopper post he contributed to Michael Sporn's Splog. Check it out and see if you agree with me that Hopper may very well have been an influence on James R. Bingham.

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