Exercise 1. Influential Practitioners and Other Histories

1. Influential Practitioners 

The first part of this exercise invites us to choose three from a list of 30 practitioners of graphic design and/or illustration and to investigate what kind of work they created and the contexts in which they work/ed. I began by doing a Google image search on all thirty to gain a quick visual impression of the scope and style of their work, and selected the three that made me most curious. These are: Lynda Barry, Jim Flora and Corita Kent. 

I then read a bit about each of them, drawing on online articles about them and their own/officially maintained websites, where they exist. From there I selected a few quotes and some copyywrite-free images from Creative Commons which I think exemplify the main work of these practitioners. 

Lynda Barry

“Two questions. Is this good? Does this suck? I’m not sure when these two questions became the only two questions I had about my work, or when making pictures and stories turned into something I call work…I just know I’d stopped enjoying it and instead began to dread it.” (Barry, L, 2021).

"Lynda Barry Visits NASA Goddard" by NASA Goddard Photo and Video is licensed under CC BY 2.0

I was drawn to Lynda Barry’s work initially by her colourful yet muted colour palette, and the way that she combines images and text so that each is an inextricable part of the other. Born in 1956, Barry is best known in her native USA for her cartoons, but she’s also been creating comics and graphic novels since 1977. She also teaches writing, and the book from which this quote is taken is one of several books Barry has created about the creative process of writing and drawing. While her books and cartoons fall mostly within the area of illustration, rather than always responding to an external brief, she increasingly creates content based on her own meaning-making and the ideas she wants to convey. 

From http://thegreatcomicbookheroes.blogspot.com/2013/12/lynda-barrys-two-questions.html

I find her work interesting because it challenges my understanding of what comics are. As a child I sometimes looked at my brothers’ comics but never found them particularly appealing. The writing and imagery seemed banal, even as a child. In most part the images were sequential and told a story, and were intended to be funny. These features can equally be found in some of Barry’s work, although her audience is a more discerning adult one. However, many of her pieces stand alone, or form a body of work that is more conceptual than sequential. As someone who has done a lot of art journaling, I find this approach engaging. As with art journaling, Barry draws on the material of her life to tell stories in both image and word. 

A question that arises for me is about the initial impetus for illustration. Illustration and graphic design are often portrayed as being more design-oriented than fine art, in that they solve a problem presented by a brief. The course materials suggest that this brief tends to be externally generated, with the illustrator or graphic designer collaborating with those who initiate the brief. With both Barry, and, as we will see, with Corita Kent, the brief often arises within the artist herself, and she responds creatively to her own generation of ideas. 

Jim Flora

“When I came back from Mexico in 1952, and got into freelancing in New York, I quickly found out that I had then could find no market for things like this [the older Columbia style], art directors didn’t want it. I had to start modifying it in order to get work. So I started things like that and I got work.” (Flora, J, 1990).

"Found this GREAT album cover by Jim Flora at @halfpricebooks today. We HAVE to frame this one!" by Jake Fowler is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Jim Flora (1914-1998) was a prolific artist and designer whose work evolved over decades and encompassed different genres. He worked across media, using painting, letterpress, woodcuts and linocuts to achieve his varying art forms. He began by designing and illustrating small publications with his colleague, Robert Lowry. He then made a career of creating album covers, which somewhat overlapped his next venture into illustrating quite a number of children’s books. In between these different genres, Flora and his wife lived in Mexico where Flora, who had previously progressed to the role of Advertising Manager - for him a frustrating role in which he could make no art - returned to painting his own choice of themes. They then moved to New York and Flora worked freelance from then on. In retirement he returned to a more fine art style of painting, creating nautical scenes with tiny people performing erotic acts. Visitors to his exhibitions were provided with magnifying glasses so that they could see the tiny people within the large canvases. 

Little Man Press exhibit at Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, ahttps://www.jimflora.com/galleries/littlemanpress/ 

I was drawn to Flora’s work due to his stylised creatures which, though different in subject matter and use of colour, remind me of African and other folk art. I find the deceptively naive style appealing, and am intrigued by the use of such a style to convey some more edgy themes both at the beginning and end of Flora’s creative output. 

As I researched Jim Flora’s life and work, I wondered about how we judge the nature of an artist’s work. The quote at the beginning of this section shows that, like many artists, Flora modified his work to make it more marketable. So, when looking at the work of such a prolific artist, how do we decide whether he was an illustrator, graphic designer or fine artist? Do we judge according to the images he make from his own desires or the products that were most successful? 

Another question that I’m pondering, having looked at the work of both Jim Flora and Corita Kent, is how the available technology, at their time and ours, influences our classification of people as graphic designers. Where now we might design in Photoshop or Illustrator, the technology of the mid 20th Century had no such possibilities. Printmaking would be the nearest approximation then of what is possible digitally now. So perhaps when we judge whether a practitioner was/is an illustrator or a graphic designer, we need to look at the purpose and context of their work more than at the techniques used.

Corita Kent

“Someone remarked that the newspapers or the news magazines are the same as the psalms except that the names changed in the stories. Maybe you can't understand the psalms without understanding the newspaper and the other way around.” Kent, C. (1965).

When I did my initial Google image search on all of the 30 practitioners, I was immediately drawn to find out more about Corita Kent because she was a nun as well as an artist. As I am a monk who makes art, I was curious to find out how these distinct vocations of artist and monastic interwove (or didn’t) in her life. 
Corita Kent (1918-1986) entered the Community of the Immaculate Heart of Mary at the age of 18, where she also pursued her education as an artist. Initially her artwork explored religious themes and was more figurative in style than her more widely known body of work. 

"Corita Kent" by Thomas Hawk is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

Then, in 1962 two things coalesced to prompt Kent to work in an entirely new way. Firstly, her commitment to social justice was echoed by the beginning of Vatican II, which set a new agenda for the Roman Catholic Church incorporating liberation theologies and a renewed focus on social justice. Secondly, Kent saw Andy Warhol’s “Soup Cans” at Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles and it became a major influence in the art she produced from then on. She began to create pop art using slogans and typefaces from contemporary adverts, then subverting them by adding her own text and imagery. Perhaps she was part of the inspiration for the activist practice of subvertising that has flourished in recent decades. This shift also embodies a shift in focus from illustration to graphic design. 

Her creative practice continued to be largely based on screen printing, as with her earlier work. It’s possible to see a continuum between her early religious artwork which often illustrates Biblical themes, and the predominantly political pieces she produced in later life. In between, her designs present a unified theology and politics based on social justice, with the theology gradually losing purchase. Her change in focus as an artist was reflected in her monastic life as she began the process to be released from her vows in 1968. 

"Corita Kent" by Thomas Hawk is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

Her later body of work became almost entirely text-based, combining the instant  bright attraction of pop art with text that is often reversed or upside down, so that the viewer needs to work a bit to see what she’s saying. This combination of well-known logos with her slightly hidden subtext is a powerful form of communication. 

Interestingly, Kent’s work, whilst highly thought of, never commanded the attention of other pop artists. Perhaps this is due in part to her refusal to give her work financial value. She sold it cheaply and at the same price whether it was of a limited edition or not. In this way her political stance was reflected not only in her creative practice but also in her approach to generating income from her work.
Study of all three of these practitioners raises questions regarding how far they are willing to move from the art they want to create towards the art that people want. Perhaps this is a dilemma for all who do creative work. The practice of illustration and graphic design seems to go some way to addressing this by the making of images which still speak in the voice of their creators but are created intentionally to fulfil a defined function and purpose. And perhaps many creative practitioners working in this way still need to find some time and space to make the art that comes from the brief of their own life. 

Barry, L. (2021), “What It Is”, Montreal, Drawn and Quarterly.

Flora, J. (1990), in Grant, A, “Jim Flora: The Unedited Interview”. (Available at: https://angelynngrant.com/jim-flora-the-unedited-1990-interview/ (Accessed: 3 December 2012).

Kent, C. (1965), “Choose LIFE or Assign a Sign or Begin a Conversation”, Living Lightly (3) 1, (Spring 1966), Public Domain.