CSotD: Mastery
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(Ann Telnaes, 2016)
(Pat Oliphant, 2012)
For the past week, I've been sitting on an article in the Columbia Journalism Review by Ann Telnaes on the topic of Pat Oliphant in part because I didn't want to just toss it in with other things and in part because it wouldn't simply slip into place like the final piece of a jigsaw puzzle anyway.
It would be a much shorter and easier conversation had she spoken to him and provided the answer, not so much as to why he hasn't (apparently) done a cartoon in a year and a half, but why he simply slipped away without (apparently) any stories about retirement.
It's not as if he'd been JD Salinger all along: He was quite open about cutting back on production while he did an artist-in-residency at a college.
I'd have been happy to learn the answer and I'd have posted the article here with some kind words about both artists and moved on, but that wasn't what the article was about at all, and what it is about takes considerably more pondering.
Here's that link again: You should really go read it yourself.
What stuck in my brain, rattling around insistently, was this passage and appreciation of Oliphant's turn to formal art training, which Telnaes compares to her own experience:
As art students, we were taught that a successful drawing must be built on a firm foundation—all the shading and pretty details were superfluous if the drawing underneath wasn’t solid. We were required to take basic art classes—color and design, perspective, and figure drawing—for two years, and just one actual animation class per semester. Those foundational classes are where I truly learned to draw, and they still influence my work today. So I have a deep appreciation for the mastery within an Oliphant drawing. In geeky cartoonist terms, his drawings were so solid you could stomp on one, jump up and down, and it wouldn’t crumble.
And, a bit later:
In art, there is no better way to develop one’s drawing skills than to understand and to practice sketching the human figure.
It hit me on a couple of levels.
The first was that I was delighted to get some confirmation on a vague principle of my own from an artist whose work I admire.
I can't draw, and that isn't modesty but a simple assessment of the way I perceive the physical world: It doesn't translate graphically. But I write, and I understand that, while I don't write sonnets of either the Petrarchan or Shakespearean sort, I wouldn't write as well as I do if I hadn't studied those and tried a few myself.
But in college, when as part of our Philosopher King training we were required to take an art course, I asked the professor if an art student should be required to know how to paint The Last Supper before he were allowed to fling paint at a canvas, and he strongly denied it.
Well, he hadn't read Ann's article about Oliphant.
And the second, confirmatory part of that is that she worked as a Disney artist and has a line that is both strong and what I would call "minimalist" but which is perhaps better described as "smooth and uncluttered." And yet, as she suggests, it shows a knowledge of the human form that is as solid as a more detailed painting would be.
That, in turn, confirms something I used to say to high school students when, in the course of a traveling lecture on political cartoons, I would show them this 2004 Telnaes classic.
After discussing her philosophical/political point, I would also suggest they look at the postures of these seemingly simple figures:
The man not only shows curiosity in his facial expression, but it is clear from his back, from his neck, from the way he holds his coffee cup, that he was walking through the room and has paused suddenly to look at the TV.
It is equally clear from the woman's expression and posture that she has not only been watching, but has been worn down and discouraged by what she has seen.
Some of this is instinctive and cannot be taught. But instinct can be schooled and shaped and disciplined and however you learn it, it doesn't just happen.
Even without the full figure, this knowledge of the human form comes through in another Telnaes classic, this one a celebration of the murder of a dissident journalist on Vladimir Putin's birthday, in which the slouch, the sideglance, the smiling leer, the very posture of his hand on the cake knife, all speak to his self-satisfaction and lack of innocence.
Similarly, when Oliphant, a notedly bitter recovering Catholic, commented on Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" — described by David Edelstein as a "two-hour-and-six-minute snuff movie" — little Mel perfectly suggests an inspired masochist, while his classmates cower and are appalled by what they have seen.
Neither artist is inclined to pull their punches, which makes it even more important that neither artist allow mediocre graphics to make their intentions unclear. Those who are offended must be offended for the right reasons.
There are, of course, self-taught artists, at least to a degree.
Not every cartoonist takes those classes, and there are probably some who manage to learn these things, not "instinctively" but by close observation of other people's work.
And you cannot learn to have instinct, you cannot learn the unspoken connections that distinguish the artist from the craftsman.
But instinct alone is not enough, and you must somehow find ways to learn your chops, if you want to rise to mastery.
And, for those of us who will never have the instinct and who will never try to draw anything, the chance to hear one master analyze the work of another is still a gift not to be ignored.
By the way, here's why I miss Pat Oliphant's work right now.
And here's a non-cartooning example of how even already-great artists never lose their desire to learn:
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