Comics and modern American advertising exploded into the public conscious at much the same time in the early 20th century. Collected now for the first time, the comics, cartoons, and illustrations from the OTHER career of comics creators Jack Davis, Al Capp, John Romita, Mort Meskin, Ross Andru, Sheldon Moldoff, Neal Adams, Noel Sickles, Stan Drake, Joe Simon, Basil Wolverton, Dik Browne, Clifford McBride, Hank Ketcham, Lou Fine, Daniel Clowes, and many more.
The first book to consider the importance of commercial art and design for Ed Ruscha's work Ed Ruscha (b. 1937) emerged onto the Los Angeles art scene with paintings that incorporated consumer products, such as Spam and SunMaid raisins. In this revelatory book, Jennifer Quick looks at Ruscha's work through the tools, techniques, and habits of mind of commercial art and design, showing how his training and early work as a commercial artist helped him become an incisive commentator on the presence and role of design in the modern world. The book explores how Ruscha mobilized commercial design techniques of scale, paste-up layout, and perspective as he developed his singular artistic style. Beginning with his formative design education and focusing on the first decade of his career, Quick analyzes previously unseen works from the Ruscha archives alongside his celebrated paintings, prints, and books, demonstrating how Ruscha's engagement with commercial art has been foundational to his practice. Through this insightful lens, Quick affirms Ruscha as a powerful and witty observer of the vast network of imagery that permeates visual culture and offers new perspectives on Pop and conceptual art.
From the Publisher: While critics have long disparaged commercial television as a vast wasteland, TV has surprising links to the urbane world of modern art that stretch back to the 1950s and '60s during that era, the rapid rise of commercial television coincided with dynamic new movements in the visual arts-a potent combination that precipitated a major shift in the way Americans experienced the world visually. TV by Design uncovers this captivating story of how modernism and network television converged and intertwined in their mutual ascent during the decades of the cold war. Whereas most histories of television focus on the way older forms of entertainment were recycled for the new medium, Lynn Spigel shows how TV was instrumental in introducing the public to the latest trends in art and design. Abstract expressionism, pop art, art cinema, modern architecture, and cutting-edge graphic design were all mined for staging techniques, scenic designs, and an ever-growing number of commercials. As a result, TV helped fuel the public craze for trendy modern products, such as tailfin cars and boomerang coffee tables, that was vital to the burgeoning postwar economy. And along with influencing the look of television, many artists-including Eero Saarinen, Ben Shahn, Saul Bass, William Golden, and Richard Avedon-also participated in its creation as the networks put them to work designing everything from their corporate headquarters to their company cufflinks. Dizzy Gillespie, Ernie Kovacs, Duke Ellington, and Andy Warhol all stop by in this imaginative and winning account of the ways in which art, television, and commerce merged in the first decades of the TV age.
Catalog of the exhibition held Nov. 21, 1975-Jan. 4, 1976 at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Feb. 2-Mar. 19, 1976 at Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston.; Apr. 1-May 2, 1976 at Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago; May 22-June 31, 1976 at Grey Art Gallery and Study Center, New York University, New York; and autumn 1976-throughout 1977 at several European cities.
