Robert J. Lee: "My own background is right out of John Steinbeck."

In 1968 the editors of American Artist magazine presented the work of illustrator Robert J. Lee. Accompanying his art they compiled interviews, correspondences and "several pages of informal notes" into a single 'digest' of Lee's thoughts on a broad range of topics related to his life as an artist.



Here is the 2nd excerpt:

"My own background is right out of John Steinbeck: field hand, cannery worker. Yet I couldn't possibly paint these things. At present I find myself involved in inventing Victorian interiors in very subdued color, or fantasy paintings involving animals, birds and symbols."



"I'll leave the last to the psychiatrists."



"Social content or commentary in painting seems to be missing entirely from the present scene, with the exception of a few artists."



"Let's talk about reality, a word that can mean just about anything one wishes it to be. We are living in a time when a run-of-the-mill illustrator takes a commercial label from a can of food, projects it onto a canvas, traces it, fills it in with colour and is acclaimed by the "taste makers" in American art to be the new Messiah!"



"Another hero of the "in" crowd copies the very worst of our comic strips. Curiously enough, the designer who did the original can label and the comic strip artist are not considered artists by anyone. Please understand, I do not deny the right of anyone to paint or construct anything he wishes, but I do resent the attitude of narrow-mindedness which seems to laud ridiculous efforts."



"Radicals of any persuasion seem to take the stance that those who do not go along with them are morons and beneath notice. One happy thought however: if you are a bit sick of the current art scene, just be very thankful that we are not faced by something as overpowering as the French Academy of the nineteenth century. We are truly free to create work in any style or idiom we wish, and there are certainly more places to exhibit such elections than ever before."



"I have read articles which stated that easel painting as we know it is just about over, or will be in the next 50 years. I do not know if this will come to pass or not. It doesn't trouble me, one way or the other."



* Continued tomorrow

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Robert J. Lee: "I never stop painting mentally"

For some time now I've been quite taken by the work of a mid-20th century illustrator named Robert J. Lee. I first encountered it in a book I found several years ago at a thrift shop.



Lee's distinctive style, so richly colourful and swirling with painterly energy, seems perfect for fantastical stories of magic and mythology.



Until recently I knew very little about Robert J. Lee (I had 'set him aside' so to speak, while focusing on learning about other illustrators) then a search online turned up a biography, a photo, and some interesting details.



Even better, an old issue of American Artist magazine from 1968 features an article on Lee wherein he speaks extensively on a variety of subjects. It turns out Lee was a very interesting guy with a lot on his mind!



This week I'll be sharing images by the artist - both from my collection of old books and magazines and some found online - and accompany them with excerpts from the article in American Artist.



Back in 1968, the editors at the magazine described Lee as "spirited," and "effervescent" and said their questions had been answered with "forceful statements." Ultimately the editors felt it would be best to simply compile his thoughts and conversations into a stand-alone digest and run it over several pages.



And so I shall do the same...


"I have always been rather suspicious of articulate painters, but maybe the reason lies in the fact that an artist's life is, by necessity, one of being alone most of the time and communication with words is difficult. Perhaps one's work should be enough without talking about it, but I seldom turn down lecture requests even though it's terribly hard work. I find the questions from the audience, whether it be an adult art organization or a group of students, to be about the same in California as in New York. How did I 'get started'; what schools did I attend; how does one develop a style. Occasionally I get an original question. A lady, on viewing one of my three foot high oil paintings for Heroes of the Bible asked "Is the book really going to be that large?"



"They also ask what I like and dislike, as if an artist has some magic words of wisdom, or lives in a world apart. I never stop painting mentally so that my surroundings or the people in it seem a bit cloudy in retrospect. Perhaps the only reality is in the working. No, I have no hobbies, really. I love nature inordinately, I feed birds, I garden a bit. Gold is for some other breed or species."



"In the area I live in I have seen a harmless ten pound bobcat, dead, tied proudly to some idiot's fender. I once saw two black bear cubs, tied in bloody bundles on top of a station wagon. I loathe these "sportsmen."



* Continued tomorrow

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Much More from Mitchell Hooks

Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame inductee (for 1999) Mitchell Hooks passed away last weekend. Here are some examples of his tremendous talent, from various volumes of Readers Digest Condensed Books from the '60s, '70s and '80s.








































* Much more of Mitchell Hooks artwork in my Mitchell Hooks Flickr set.

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Good-bye Mitchell Hooks (1923 - 2013)

A couple of days ago on Facebook, Dan Zimmer of Illustration Magazine shared some sad news: last weekend, Mitchell Hooks passed away.



How particularly strange to hear Mitch was gone, having just featured his work once again only a couple of weeks ago right here on the TI blog. I had some wonderful phone conversations with Mitch and, in 2010, I actually got to meet him, talk with him in person over a long lunch at the Society of Illustrators and shake the hand of one of my illustration idols. I will always cherish those memories. Mitchell Hooks was a spectacularly talented artist and a warm, humble and generous person.



The illustration at the top was published in Redbook magazine in July 1961. The one immediately below in April '61.



Here are a few more pieces by Mitchell that I haven't previously presented. These are from Reader's Digest Condensed Books, circa 1980.






In Mitchell's memory, I'm re-presenting Part 1 of my interview from 2008...


Mitchell Hooks: "I always drew..."
(First presented on Tuesday, September 09, 2008)

Mitchell Hooks was born in 1923 in Detroit. He didn't come from a particularly artistic family, though he did have an uncle whom he describes as 'quite a good self-taught artist' who encouraged his interest in art. Says Mitch, "I always drew."


His earliest influences were the adventure strips in the newspaper, especially Alex Raymond's Flash Gordon, Jungle Jim and Secret Agent X-9. "As a boy, I followed Raymond's work avidly," chuckles the artist today, "even to the point of clipping out the strips and keeping them in a scrapbook. I'd meticulously cut out the figures of Flash, Dale and Dr. Zarkov."

"I've always had an affinity for anatomical drawing and, in retrospect, I can attribute my abilities to the long hours spent studying Raymond's beautiful drawings."


Mitch attended CAS Technical High School in Detroit, "A marvelous school," that had been created for those city kids who really had no hope of ever attending college."The way we grew up," says Mitch, "we didn't even know how to spell 'college'."



"CAS was loaded with professional illustrators, designers and such, just great people, who taught us everything we needed to know to get a job in the profession."

"I was thrown in with a bunch of kids who were really enthusiastic about illustration. We all knew what was going on out there in the magazines... knew about Al Parker and the Cooper guys and all that, and CAS prepared us to go out in the field - and we did - we all went out and got jobs in the field, straight out of high school!"



"CAS was where I made my big leap from Alex Raymond to wanting to be a professional illustrator, and I knew I wanted to be in New York."



When Mitch graduated from CAS he first found a job at General Motors. The war was on, GM had been converted to supplying the American army with equipment, and Mitch was assigned to take two dimensional blueprints and convert them to three dimensional drawings. "It was important work," says Mitch, "and I hated it."



Hated it so much that just a couple of years later, when he joined the army, he made sure they knew nothing about his artistic abilities. "I was so afraid that they'd assign me to do more of those drawings that I intentionally flunked any tests that might reveal my skills." Mitch decided he's rather risk the shooting war than get stuck doing any more dreaded blueprint drawings! He became an infantryman in 1944 - and served as a second lieutenant with the U.S. occupation forces in Germany after the war ended.



Upon his return to the States, he made his way to New York. He had freelanced in Detroit for a year or so after leaving GM, and had diligently prepared a portfolio of samples he hoped would land him the sort of work he wanted to do. A previous visit to the the Big Apple before his army service had resulted in an opportunity with a minor studio called T.J. Peters. "Peters had a small bullpen of artists and I got on staff there," says Mitch. But all the while he was looking for something bigger, and that came in the form of freelance work done on the side for Al Chaite.



Chaite would go on to form, with artist Harry Fredman, one of the major players in the New York commercial art scene: the high-profile Fredman/Chaite Studios... but for now he was managing a smaller operation called Trager-Phillips. Mitch, while working at Peters, found plenty of freelance opportunities with Trager-Phillips, and "it caused a small conflict with my boss at T.J. Peters."



You can read what became of that conflict - and much, much more - in the remaining three instalments of my 2008 interview with Mitchell Hooks:

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

* Tomorrow I'll present a raft of illustrations by Mitchell from Reader's Digest Condensed Books.

*More art in my Mitchell Hooks Flickr set.

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