Video Game Art

No, it's not a Jackson Pollock original, but a montage combining just a small
fraction of today's video gaming characters. How many can you recognize?

Very few generations have been privileged to see their world of art change as much as ours. Actually, in contemplating the changes that have occurred just in my own lifetime, I'm more accurately talking about two or three generations. But, be that as it may, the point is that, since I was born...since the end of World War II in 1945, we've gone from Jackson Pollock to Boris Vallejo and Julie Bell, not to mention some guy calling himself Driedzone. Take a quick look at the image above. At first glance, one might mistake it for a "drip-dried" Pollock, but actually it's a digitally composed montage of a representative sample of the animated gaming characters alive and well, and entertaining children of all ages today.

 

How did get from Pac-man and Space Invaders to Superman Returns?

Few would argue that there has been a tremendous evolution in all the media and art forms of today during the past seventy years since the end of WW II. They, alone, are quite remarkable. But when we start talking about gaming art, and the broader category of digital art under which it falls, the changes have been so relatively rapid and extensive as to constitute not evolution but revolution. Back about 1980, I bought one of the first home video games. It was called Pong, made by Magnavox. It plugged into the back of any TV set. So far as I know, it still works. As for it's gaming artwork...well, a WW II radar screen had more going for it in that regard. As the name suggests, it was electronic ping pong. Shortly thereafter computer games all migrated to the crude conventions of home computers or the stand-alone video game consoles of shopping mall arcades. The "art" of Pac-Man and Space Invaders (above), such as it was, rose barely beyond that of cave painting.

The art of Boris Vallejo and Julie Bell (top) and Driedzone (bottom)

Gaming art has a deep and long
fascination with the nude and erotic.

During the 1990s, as computing power doubled and redoubled in accordance with Moore's Law (Intel founder, Gordon Moore, that is), much to some parents' surprise, the world did not end. The earth kept revolving and the world of digital graphics did likewise. The revolution grew more flabbergasting with every new generation of Intel chips and each new version of Windows. Gaming split into dozens of different compartments from the erotic to the horrific (above), to the sophomoric, the juvenile, even to include the pre-school Speak and Spell. In each case gaming artists rose to the occasion, restrained only by the limits of available memory and processing speed. Today, gaming art reflects the fact that both of those concerns are of little concern. Game designers innovate, while gaming artists illustrate, each inspiring the other in a revolving spiral of digital creativity that theoretically knows no bounds. Virtual reality is now, or soon will be a...virtual reality.

Superman Returns (top) to find Gotham City can also soar skyward.

Despite the technical differences and the totally different tools involved, gaming art has a surprising amount in common with all other art content areas. We find awe inspiring urban art (above) and poignant, even dismal wilderness art (below). Both serve to underline the fact that gaming art has been gradually changing our concepts of beauty.

Art from the games Lost (top) and Resident Evil (bottom).

It would be rather passé to note that virtually every type of art from the past has a digital equivalent today as seen in the White Tiger (below) and the automotive art (below that). What is far more remarkable is that just about every possible era and content area from the past also has a gaming equivalent today. Keep in mind, all the images in this post come not from online digital art galleries but from actual video games. They may appear here as "stills," but believe me, there is nothing static about them. They are all blockbusting animated entities. Even my own contribution (bottom) was created using the simulation video games, Sims 3. I seldom actually play the game, but I do enjoy it's features allowing the creation of 3-D architectural environments which permit me to, not only design and landscape the exterior but to also furnish and decorate the interior, then take a virtual video "camera" inside each house and look around. It feels almost like living there.

From the video game, The White Tiger.

From the video game, Split Second

Copyright, Jim Lane

Cantilevered Beach House, Jim Lane,
Created using the video simulation game, Sims 3.

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Animation created using Maschina software:

 

                                                               The sleigh must be computer driven.
                                                                  Merry Christmas





















 

Waiting for Santa

Waiting for Santa--one of the best and brightest versions. I was unable to ascertain the artist.

Waiting for Santa from a drawing
by Emille Benson Knipe

It's fascinating to choose a subject or pick a frequently used painting title then observe how painters of various stripes have handled a given content area at any given time, or in some cases, down through the centuries. I've done so with topics such as the resurrection, cats, dogs, birds, cars, cities, and quite a number of other topics. At Christmas time, it's appropriate to observe how various artists have painted the nativity, or the magi. Having "been there, done that" from a religious point of view in past years, this Christmas I've chosen a secular content area with a single, almost universal title: "Waiting for Santa." In pursuing the topic, I was amazed at the sheer number of artists who have explored this Christmas Eve scene, and not always as a purely juvenile perspective. I was also somewhat surprised by the fact that the overwhelming majority of these artists were women. One of the earliest versions (left) by Emille Benson Knipe is undated, but judging from the style, I'm guessing it dates from before 1900. Although I've often painted scenes involving Santa Claus, I've never painted using that precise title. Maybe I should sometime, though it would be exceedingly difficult to come up with any kind of fresh approach to the subject. It would seem the topic has already been "done to death."

Jan Hunt's in-depth exploration of the excruciating midnight ritual.

Dating a work of art by it's style is always a risky endeavor. Artists very frequently work using "retro" styles, such as that of a whole series on the Waiting for Santa genre by the contemporary artist, Jan Hunt (above). The style is very much reminiscent of 19th-century etchings though the art and artist are very much 21st-century. On the other hand, if one is familiar with the artist, it's pretty safe to bet as to dates, as seen in the three versions of the same scene by the quintessential Christmas artist, Norman Rockwell (below).



1923 Literary Digest Cover (top, left), Fred Waring Christmas Album, 1955 (top, right),
Life Magazine Cover, 1920 (bottom, left)

Sometimes, the "Waiting for Santa" images can be so similar in style, handling, and composition as to suggest they were done by the same artist. When I first noticed the Haddon Sundblom version of Waiting for Santa (below), I first attributed it to Rockwell. I'm not sure whether Rockwell or Sundblom painted the scene first, but it's apparent that one influenced the other, whatever the case. Sundblom is most famous as the Coca-Cola Christmas artist from 1931 through 1964, and as one of the prime originators of our present-day image of Santa Claus

Waiting for Santa, Haddon Sundblom

In the vast majority of "Waiting for Santa" paintings, it's not Santa, but the children who are the star of the show as seen in Donna Green's Waiting for Santa (left) or the painting of the same title by the Boston impressionist painter, Candace Lovely (below). Although undated (as are most Christmas paintings), Green's work appears to be from the 1940s as to style but is actually a 21st-century painting. I'm guessing that Lovely's version dates from around 1990 or after. The painting depicts the artist's niece as she succumbed to the same temptation confronting all those who wait up for Santa. Candace Lovely also painted the official White House portrait of Barbara Bush.

Waiting for Santa, Candace Lovely

Another, somewhat surprising Waiting for Santa theme revolves around various pets (but mostly kittens and puppies (below) as they presumably wait to nibble at any leftover milk and cookie crumbs left for Santa.

Christmas pets patiently waiting.

On a totally different level from the cutesy kids, kittens, and puppy dogs, quite a number of pin-up artists from the glory days of risqué calendar art have also latched onto the "Waiting for Santa" theme as seen below by artists Gil Elvgren (below, left) and R. Fuggetta (below, right).

This is what you get when men visualize "Waiting for Santa."

Waiting for Santa, a watercolor by Donna Lakes

 

Kurt Trampedach

Kurt Trampedach and his wife.

It's no doubt an open question as to the psychological importance of the artist's act of creation. As if the act itself were not subject to dozens, perhaps hundreds, of variables, it pales in comparison to the complex psychological mindset of the artist. The range might vary from extremely literal and well-grounded in reality to one barely subsisting on the fringe of lunacy. Likewise the creative effort could range from simply converting an image from one medium to another as in faithfully copying a color photo to an oil painting of the same size; all the way to one of abstract expressionism in which the total input to the artist's output comes totally from that artist's psyche. Those are, of course, extremes. Most artists work safely and productively well within such boundaries. As for myself, I can't imagine an existence in which I was not in some way creative on a daily basis, though I've found the content, methods, and media matter little. During the past several years, I've freely substituted literary output for my previous painting binges. I fine both psychologically satisfying; it just takes a thousand times more words than it did pictures.



Trampedach's self-portrait faces often have a Neanderthal quality.

A Trampedach baby picture.

The Danish painter and sculptor, Kurt Trampedach, like a great many artists (perhaps most artists), was introspective (as opposed to extrospective, I guess). As a result, we know little about the man's childhood except for what we can read through his art. We know he was born in 1943 in the midst of the German occupation, and grew up near Hillerød, Denmark (a little north of Copenhagen). Like nearly all Danish artists, young Trampedach studied at the Danish Academy of Fine Arts. He graduated in 1969. Unlike nearly all Danish artists, Trampedach's breakthrough came rather quickly. He began painting self-portraits, usually in the dark, earthen tones of Rembrandt, and usually in a highly distorted, highly personal, highly introspective manner. He also specialized in portraits of his wife (top), horses (bottom), and big-headed babies (right). With a repertoire like that, I guess you could say he was versatile.

Nadver Billede (Communion Picture), 1969, Kurt Trampedach

Trampedach cared little for the world outside his mind and still less for that outside his home. One look at his paintings such as Nadver Billede (Communion Picture, above), from 1969, and you come to realize you're looking into the mind of an Expressionist, but one who never fully adopted the typical, painterly style of Expressionism. Compositionally, the painting owes a modest debt to Leonardo, though colored as if by Rembrandt, yet distinctly modeled by Trampedach. With those two minimal exceptions, the world of Danish art readily came to realize they had an "original" in the midst. At the age of eighteen, the National Gallery of Art bought one of his first works. In the years that followed, most important Danish art galleries followed suit, acquiring both paintings and his sculptures. Trampedach's work was often compared to the figurative style of dark subject matter associated with the existential essence of life, and the Norse tradition of pictorial heritage of Rembrandt and Goya.

The Bus Stop, 1972-73, Kurt Trampedach

Walking Man, 1973, Kurt Trampedach

A more apt comparison, psychologically, might well have included van Gogh and Gauguin. Trampedach would have none of the traditional trappings which usually come with success in the world of art. He and his wife moved to the south of France...not the Riviera, but the southwestern Basque region of the Pyrenees Mountains bordering Spain. They settled in the small town of Sare where Trampedach build a home and studio of native stone. He also maintained a studio in Copenhagen which was set on fire in 1983, burning many of his paintings. There were rumors Trampedach may have set the fire himself. The following year brought Trampedach back into the limelight again as the winner of Denmark's century-old Eckersberg Medal.


Morning, Kurt Trampedach

Kurt Trampedach, a face unknown
(by me at least), possibly his wife.

The thought of an artist burning his or her own studio to the ground, especially when doing so meant losing a substantial number of paintings, might seem farfetched. But nearly all his life Trampedach struggled with frequent bouts of depression and mania. Some who knew him might contend that only his art, and the mental regimen in creating it, kept Trampedach sane. In any case, when, in 2002, his home in France was also the victim of arson, the senseless act of wanton destruction drove him over the edge. He never painted again. Kurt Trampedach died suddenly of a heart attack in 2013 at the age of seventy.

A Trampedach horse, of course.

 

George Cukor's My Fair Lady

The hat, the dress, the lady who wore them, and the man behind her.

My Fair Lady's composer, Frederick Loewe,
and Alan J. Lerner, screenwriter and lyricist.

It was hard to title this one. Normally, when I deal with a mo-tion picture masterpiece, I give top billing to the director, which is the case in this case. However, I could just as easily have given top billing to producer, Jack L. Warner, or the musical team of Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, who so flawlessly blended their talents to bring to life George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion. And what would My Fair Lady be without Rex Harrison as Pro-fessor Henry Higgins? I won't get into the controversy as to whether Julie Andrews should have been brought to Hollywood to retain her starring Broadway role or whether Audrey Hepburn made a better Eliza Doolittle. Suffice to say no one I can think of could have replace Stanley Holloway as her father. Hollywood saw to it Andrews got her Oscar for Mary Poppins while Audrey Hepburn was not even nominated. My Fair Lady garnered eight of the coveted golden statuettes including one for best picture of 1964. Cukor earned the Best Director award, and Rex Harrison was named Best Actor.

The artists at Warner Bros. art department had a field day promoting My Fair Lady.
The most popular fell to the one on the far right.

Audrey Hepburn's Eliza, mistaken
for a Hungarian princess.

Hollywood thought screen mogul, Jack L. Warner was out of his mind paying the record price of $5-million for the screen rights to Lerner and Loewe's Broadway hit musical. Worse than that, he could retain them for only seven years before they would become the property of CBS (which owned the Broadway rights). As if to confirm their suspicions as to his mental state, Warner directed another seventeen million Warner Bros. dollars into the production budget. Conventional wisdom had it that even if the film was an astounding, unmitigated success, the company would suffer an unmitigated loss. No movie musical in history had ever earned that kind of money. Today, the film has grossed some $72-million. By way of comparison, Disney shot Mary Poppins about the same time for a total of $4.4-million, to see it gross a total of $102-million since then. Quite apart from the hoopla regarding the casting of the leading ladies, the two films are quite comparable in many other respects as well. However, when it came to theater broadsides, My Fair Lady (above) wins, hands down. The same goes for the costumes (above, right)by Cecil Beaton.

A Cockney flower seller becomes a British high society lady the hard way--by enduring the gross insensitivities of England's premier expert on diction, grammar, and elocution.

In case you've never seen My Fair Lady, or need your memory refreshed, the film might be summed up by saying it's about the "makeover" to end all makeovers. Beyond that, it's the story of a wager between two Edwardian English gentlemen, one Professor Henry Higgins and his house guest, Colonel Pickering, who bets him the cost of his "experiment" on the girl neither of the care much about, that he cannot pass her off as a lady. Eliza Doolittle (Hepburn), hoping only for free lessons to improve her speech enough that she might work in a ladies' flower shop, somewhat reluctantly agrees, not realizing that far more than her lower-class accent is also about to change. Beyond that, maybe the still shots from the movie, or the film's "trailer" (bottom) will provide a clue as to why virtually everything about this undertaking rises to near perfection.

How to make a lady in 170 musical minutes.

Professor Henry Higgins (below) sees himself as an "ordinary man"; and despite the fact he's not much of a singer, chooses to reveal himself by talking his way though a song or two. When not singing, brilliant as he may be in his field, Higgins has all the subtlety and sensitivity of a bulldozer, inexplicably combined with the patience of a saint. A few months ago there was talk of a My Fair Lady remake with George Clooney as Higgins. Nothing ever came of it. Clooney was deemed too charming for the role. Eliza Doolittle is not quite what you'd term a "quick study." But once she begins to understand the terrain and precipitation in Spain, she begins to come around. Her father, Alfred Doolittle, played on Broadway and in the film by Stanley Holloway, comes around too, in search of a bit of remuneration for his daughter's efforts. He asks only five pounds, refusing any more, lest he risk becoming "respeckable." The man is also a thief. He steals every scene he comes near.

Professor Henry Higgins in his two-story library lair.
Despite his signature song, there's nothing ordinary about him.

Just get him to the church on time.

Cartoonist, Al Hirschfield's take on the Ascot sequence.

Besides the gregarious Hollo-way (above), his character opposite is Higgin's friend from India, Colonel Hugh Pickering (below, left). Played by Wilfrid Hyde-White, the Colonel is an admirer of Higgins as well as his eager partner-in-crime, responsible for Eliza's physical makeover following her sudden linguistic breakthrough. The two men decided to dress up their newly-refined, doll-like play-thing and "try her out" by taking her to the races on the Ascot opening day. On top of his spectacular, formfitting, ribbon-bedecked, frock and ludicrously elaborate millinery creation, worn by Hepburn, costume designer, Cecil Beaton, pulled out all the stops in satirizing turn-of-the-century British tastes in high fashion.

Eliza discovers small talk, wealthy friends, and a boyfriend.

Will she marry Freddy?

Eliza's hilarious horserace outburst "Move you're bloom-in' arse!" marking the end of the Ascot segment, also marks roughly the half-way point in the movie. The rest deals with Eliza's eventual triumph, her "handler's" self-congratulations, and her grad-ual realization that she has been changed to such a degree that she no longer fits in the world from which she arose nor that in which she finds herself. The grand ex-periment has wrought chan-ges far deeper and broader than even Henry Higgins could have imagined. Has he fallen in love or simply "Grown Accustomed to Her Face?" Cukor, Warner, and Lerner wisely resist the urge to tie up all the loose ends topped with an outsized, Cecil Beaton black and white bow. Were they hoping for a sequel? No, they simply refused to choose or pursue any of the myriad possibilities. Will she marry boyfriend, Freddy? Or perhaps Higgins? Maybe the Colonel will set her up with her own flower shop. The only thing certain is, nothing will ever be the same.

George Cukor and his cast, before, during, and after My Fair Lady.

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For more details on the movie, click the video below:




The movie's official trailer:























 

Over Decorating Christmas

It's not Christmas decoration but holiday clutter; and it doesn't celebrate Christmas, but desecrates it.

We've all seen them. Driving down the road, we round a curve and suddenly behold an entire front yard lit up with every possible Christmas image imaginable, with the house decorated to the hilt, aflame with cascades of multi-colored lights intended to form an appropriate backdrop. In spite of ourselves, our first instinct is to go "OOOOhhhhhh! WOW!" Then, a moment later, those of us with any experience in the arts, or even a modicum of good taste, does an instantaneous about-face, winces, cringes, and/or laughs out loud at why anyone would go to such expense and incredible effort to display such bad taste for all the world to see.

After some point, more is not better. The hard part is recognizing that
point, then exercising the self-discipline of restraint in not going beyond it.

The answer boils down to the old adage, "There's no accounting for tastes." That's especially true for bad taste. And when it comes to Christmas decorations, that's especially true. Very often we see it's most horrendous examples right out front in the yard (above). Bad as that might be, even those who should know better, decorators and other professionals, perhaps with a higher level of taste, are still prone to over decorating, starting at the front door (below) and marching straight inside to the Christmas tree, the fireplace, the table set for the holiday feast, even going so far as to decorate that which should never be decorated, regardless of the occasion.


Try not to overwhelm your guests before they even get in the front door.

My wife glanced at the decorated portals above and asked, what's wrong with those? The answer I gave was that whoever went to all that trouble simply did not know when to stop, when to say "enough is enough." If a festoon of lighted greenery over the door looks nice, twice as much running down on both sides would look twice as nice. And if an 18-inch wreath looks good, a 24-inch would look even better. And some matching evergreen shrubbery (real or unreal) on either side of the steps will serve to frame the entry. That sort of reasoning theoretically has no end, at least until the neighbors complain about sightseers obstructing traffic or the electrical circuit breakers balk at the increased load.

Really? There's a tree inside all that glitter and glitz.

Vintage Christmas tree, ca .1930-1960

Inside, the next likely object of this over-decorating mindset is, not surprisingly, the tree. A good part of this tendency derives from our childhood when Christmas trees were often so sparse and misshapen they literally needed all the help they could get. Though probably not impossible, some fifty years ago, it would have been quite difficult to over decorate the iconic tree. Today, if you find yourself risking life and limb (left) in festooning the boughs with tinsel, or if the tree completely disappears beneath the layers of lights, ornaments, garland, bows, and baubles (above), you know you've gone too far.

Fireplace...fireplace...ahh, yes, there it is, right behind
the Poinsettia (which are not fond of direct heat).

The next place to beware, if for no other reason than a possible fire hazard, is the traditional fireplace, especially if you plan to use it, either to keep warm or for its visually comforting effects on your Christmas spirits. The best rule of thumb comes down to this: If you have to conduct a visual search for it, you've likely gone to far in decorating it. Or, as in the red room (above, left), if you start your holiday decorating by painting the walls cranberry red to match your crystal stemware, you're probably off to a bad start down the rocky road of "too much is not enough."


An over decorated office is distracting, deters productivity, and often simply gets
in the way to the point of becoming a nuisance. An over decorated cubical reminds
your boss you don't have enough work to keep you otherwise occupied.

Unfortunately, the tendency to over decorate in celebrating Christmas does not begin nor end at hearth and home. Of course, some places of business virtually demand extensive holiday decorations. Offices, do not. That's not to say a small, countertop tree, modestly adorned with a string of colored lights, is inappropriate in a business setting. However, going much beyond that (as with mistletoe hung over a doorway) risks going "over the top" very quickly. Office workers should especially beware of decorating their "cubical" for Christmas, especially if fellow workers forego the urge. Doing so singles out the occupant as having way too much time on his or her hands.

Animals are atheists, they have a right to forego Christmas holidays. Decorating cars and
trucks is an unsafe driving distraction, and probably illegal in many states (or should be).

Clothing items to be avoided at all costs.

And finally, there are any number of everyday objects with which we come in contact that should never (for any number of excellent reasons) be decorated for Christmas. That includes animals, motor vehicles, toilets, ceilings, swimming pools, and especially Sherman tanks (above, left), even if adorned with a sign urging "Peace on Earth." Also, high on the often over decorated list is people. Ugly Christmas sweaters are bad enough, but if there's involved a suit and tie, comes with a slip of paper saying "batteries not included," or makes the wearer feel like a Christmas tree, that's heading off the deep end (left). I might also add that in Christmas event planning the temptation to wildly exceed the bounds of good tastes almost goes with the territory. That's especially true of Christmas weddings. Keep in mind that churches are very often somewhat over decorated to start with. Decking the halls with boughs of holly might be acceptable, but adding a multitude of the heavenly hosts dangling from the ceiling strikes me as overkill.

Decorating the church for December nuptials is fraught with intense temptations to go too far.

Another cause to join.