Jeffrey Catherine Jones: The Good Draftsman

Posted on May 23, 2011 by Mahendra Singh

The late Jeffrey Catherine Jones (authorized website
here) was not only one of the best painters in North America, she was one of the best draftsmen of the North American comix scene. Idyl and I’m Age, which appeared in the National Lampoon and Heavy Metal, were high-water marks in the now-ebbing comix cult of beautiful draftsmanship. The modern comix renaissance, at least in North America, still prefers to focus on story instead of art and younger readers might be surprised by the bravura virtuosity of Jones’ work. She demonstrated over and over that Beauty was not a shell to put stories into, it could be the story itself.

Why are so many contemporary comix so ugly to look at? Why is there so little pleasure in drawing anymore? Comix artists take such pains in devising interesting, clever plots but visually they’re often rather … disinterested might be the politest way to put it. Perhaps minimalism is the new baroque and Beauty is passé; perhaps it’s a business decision, drawing with one eye on the clock and not worrying about giving readers full value for their money.

Some of these readers are probably wringing their hands over this insinuation that Beauty can be objective. Doesn’t this author know that self-expression has no rules, that we’ve evolved into a brave new world where you can just do it® and be all that you can be® and have it your way®?

But the Bitch Goddess of Art is sparing with her favors and she accepts only one sort of offering at her infamous altar: the development of talent through endless study and practice. An abundant faith in oneself, by itself, means nothing to her, especially in these times when everyone’s above average. Good draftsmanship requires knowledge, skill and a faith in Beauty. The latter is not as subjective as some think. It’s wired into our genes; our eyes and hands do it instinctively if circumstance lets them. And this is not about merely looking pretty. On the contrary, Beauty in art is always harmonious, even when the subject is grotesque or ugly.

Jeffery Catherine Jones’ comix were few but extraordinarily beautiful. She moved fast around slow shapes, letting the physical happiness of drawing suffuse every mark she made on paper. The contrast of loose gestures atop thoroughly composed panels gave her pages a languid, musical dissonance, the connoisseur’s dissonance of Betty Carter or Leos Janacek in their late prime. And unlike most of us ink-stained wretches, her inking and draftsmanship were seamless and in effect, the same thing. This economy of means is the very essence of good draftsmanship.

Making and recognizing good draftsmanship means possessing what’s called a good eye, the ability to see the universal grammar of the visual world. A good eye is not wholly intuitive, it needs to be nurtured through constant exposure to good art.

And there’s the rub — never before in human history have so many artists been so unrelentingly exposed to so much visual rubbish from childhood onwards. As adults, they’re doomed to making marks on paper which are devoid of visual meaning. This is no accident, it is marketing. If one exposes kids to nothing but crap, they will grow up loving crap, talking fervently about crap and passionately defending its crappy reputation, usually with an obligatory dollop of hipster irony. This pop-culture irony, unlike its literary ancestor, reveals nothing of interest though, for it’s a stance without meaning or history or even relevance.

We are what we look at. If we look at garbage we will make garbage and in time, the cycle will close and become self-perpetuating, an endless karmic hell of breakfast-cereal cartoon super-heroes and high-school yearbook doodlings papering over the abyss of a forgotten, glorious past.

Jones’ comix drew deeply from the heady well of fin de siècle Symbolism, the Salon Pompiers, Art Nouveau and the Golden Age of American illustration. This is what her personality and taste preferred although her eye was above illustrative fashions and gimmicks. Good draftsmanship is most timeless when the draftsman understands their past.

This may seem an odd way to eulogize someone but it’s not, it is the best way to celebrate a great draftsman. Life is short for everyone and for comix artists and illustrators, the money is laughable and the hours dreadful. Doing hack work for money is something we’ve all done but to throw up our hands in cynical despair and make it into the dominant fashion of modern comix — why bother to make art at all then, if it’s all about being practical?

So why not go broke with style? Why not make comix that are fun to look at? Why not make comix that make young people want to draw and read and think, instead of becoming cynical about art and craftsmanship and Beauty?

Why not draw like hell, like you really mean it, as if your life and reputation are on the line? Because they are. That’s the essence of being a good draftsman, of using your good eye: everything counts and everything makes it onto the page. Jeffrey Catherine Jones may be gone but her work is glorious, it is a bravura, draftsman’s performance and her comix still make me feel that drawing is worth doing well.

121 thoughts on “Jeffrey Catherine Jones: The Good Draftsman”

Mike Hunter on May 23, 2011 at 8:09 am said:

An outstanding appreciation, even if I’m counting the minutes ’til someone throws a fit over the usage of “draftsMAN.”*

This observation ought to be written in blazing letters a hundred feet high:

———————
…never before in human history have so many artists been so unrelentingly exposed to so much visual rubbish from childhood onwards. As adults, they’re doomed to making marks on paper which are devoid of visual meaning. This is no accident, it is marketing. If one exposes kids to nothing but crap, they will grow up loving crap, talking fervently about crap and passionately defending its crappy reputation, usually with an obligatory dollop of hipster irony. This pop-culture irony, unlike its literary ancestor, reveals nothing of interest though, for it’s a stance without meaning or history or even relevance.

We are what we look at. If we look at garbage we will make garbage and in time, the cycle will close and become self-perpetuating, an endless karmic hell of breakfast-cereal cartoon super-heroes and high-school yearbook doodlings papering over the abyss of a forgotten, glorious past.
———————-

Though I’d add that marketing is not solely to blame; there’s the anti-elitist “everybody gets a gold star” attitude, the utter jettisoning of standards; the attitude that everything is a matter of opinion, whether it be the greatness/awfulness of George W. Bush or “Transformers 2”: all is subjective and therefore equally valid.

* Hey, I’m old enough to remember when there was a lot of fit-throwing over “history,” despite the fact the etymology of the word had nothing to do with the male gender. (See http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/history )
Marcus on May 23, 2011 at 8:22 am said:

Why is it that objective standards of beauty always seem to involve undressed white women with large breasts?
Jacob Canfield on May 23, 2011 at 8:31 am said:

It’s funny, I actually find Jones’ art much less exploitative or off-putting than most. Compare what she does to what Frank Cho does, for instance. Both of them feature white women with large breasts, but Jones does it in a way that’s so matter-of-fact and reminiscent of art nouveau. Nothing about his art is ‘cheesecake’ to me, but maybe I’m not being critical enough.
Jacob Canfield on May 23, 2011 at 8:32 am said:

Her art, excuse me.
funnyanimalbooks on May 23, 2011 at 8:35 am said:

I don’t know how contrary it’s appropriate to be in response to what is a beautifully written, heartfelt eulogy.

Perhaps I’ll ask that when I kick the bucket years down the line, I hope someone writes fondly about my generation of artists for their democracy and open-mindedness, without any kvetching or doomsaying.
mahendra singh on May 23, 2011 at 8:46 am said:

you’re right, it should be draughtsman. Marcus’ point is excellent but believe me, plenty of great draftsmen have drawn whatever naked woman (or man) was at hand, and with considerable gusto. The human body is the hardest thing to draw well, it’s a good gauge of skill.

Gauguin, Michelangelo, the Khajurao sculptors (goodsculpture & draftsmanship are basically the same) come to mind.

the large breasts are just a dodge, gets the mullahs extra worked up
Domingos Isabelinho on May 23, 2011 at 9:14 am said:

So, I was right when I said in another thread that, and I quote myself: “I’m all in favor of visual analysis, but in comics’ case I feel that there’s a Pompier problem.” I find these comics incredibly kitsch (not to mention sexist and escapist; in short: eye candy for horny kids)…
Noah Berlatsky on May 23, 2011 at 9:18 am said:

Surely the large breasts are intended to get everyone worked up? She wasn’t just drawing for radical muslims….

I’d like to think that you could be irritated by a lack of craft or care without necessarily claiming that there have to be objective standards of beauty. This isn’t an example of good draftsmanship in the sense that Mahendra is talking about, but it’s not lazy or ugly.

Conversely, slick draftsmanship for its own sake can seem tacky or vapid. I’m not superfamiliar with Jones’ art but…though she was obviously extremely talented, I do find it a little off-putting on those grounds, I hate to say.
Domingos Isabelinho on May 23, 2011 at 9:30 am said:

I don’t find it a little off-putting, I find it extremely off-putting. This kind of art in context always reminds me of what Bill Griffith said in 1973: “Hey! I wanta know what’s “underground” about rotting corpses! Besides buryin’ ’em, huh? And inflated rubber women with bulbous, 48-inch chests? And all that half-baked, crackpot science fiction creeping onto the racks that was pathetic back in the ’50s when it was at least new? […] When an artist’s central characters and/or protagonists are depicted as overly developed, seminude musclemen, or robots, or cute humanoids with beguiling eyes, the line between what’s loosely defined as “the concerns of underground comix” and simple escapist fiction with, perhaps, a facade of “relevance” becomes more than hazy. It disappears entirely. And, aside from the explicit sex and the use of naughty words, it falls into the “above-ground” category with ease. Which is probably where it belongs and, most likely, will end up.”
cbren on May 23, 2011 at 9:39 am said:

the artist just died, get over yourself…
Marcus on May 23, 2011 at 9:46 am said:

I do wish this had been two articles, because as it is, a heartfelt eulogy to the dead has been combined with a very aggressive polemic sttack. Which makes responding to it or defending against it awkward at best.
mahendra singh on May 23, 2011 at 9:48 am said:

Domingo has a good point. He thinks it’s kitsch. But that’s beside the point I was trying to make, which is that Jones’ skill was rare today. There’s plenty of badly drawn kitsch for that matter.

Frankly, I have never really thought too much about her subject matter in comix. It’s somewhat irrelevant to me. For me, this is about why can’t artists bother to draw anymore?

And those Pompiers could draw like angels, mostly. That’s why they’re kitsch, ideologically. Theory and art don’t mix well.

If it looks good, it is good.
Domingos Isabelinho on May 23, 2011 at 9:48 am said:

Thanks for reminding me: Jeffrey Catherine Jones was a Juno! One of the artistic giantesses of the 20th and 21th centuries! Better?…
Domingos Isabelinho on May 23, 2011 at 9:55 am said:

Mahendra: isn’t yours a lame analysis, then? I made this point in my Monthly Stumble about Hergé. How can we praise how he says it and forget what he’s saying? Kitsch always looks good, by the way (badly drawn kitsch doesn’t fulfil its purpose).
cbren on May 23, 2011 at 10:05 am said:

i am sure mike hunter, the preemptive defender of all that is anti-p.c., will jump all over me for his, but “lame” is ableist. …anyways, i don’t have a longstanding engagement with jones’ work, but i did notice that, besides the drawings, which people seem to object to, the dialogue in the pages included with this article is pretty interesting, and mit akes me want to read more… i like it a lot more than, for example, vaughn bodé’s writing. which is to say, not all kitsch is the same…
mahendra singh on May 23, 2011 at 10:18 am said:

Domingo is still pursuing the heart of the matter and I’m glad of it. There is badly-drawn kitsch. Most modern american popular art is badly drawn kitsch. Perhaps we’re talking about a different kitsch, maybe european versus american?

Herge was not a good draftsman, he was adequate to his purpose. Bob de Moor was better but still not up to the mark. Clair Ligne is cheating anyway, it’s what we used to call technical illustration. It’s well-composed diagrams.

I think being aggressive against this piece has nothing to do with JCJ’s memory, on the contrary. There’s no better time to hash out some issues, such as, why is theory hostile to beauty? Why are american public tastes declining so rapidly?
Domingos Isabelinho on May 23, 2011 at 10:18 am said:

Thanks for reminding me: Mahendra: isn’t your analysis 50 % of a complete analysis? Better?…
mahendra singh on May 23, 2011 at 10:27 am said:

yes, 50% perhaps but I’m also focussing on a practical issue as an illustrator/comix person. If we keep making artwork that doesn’t appeal to the eyes, we are going to lose our jobs even faster than we are now.

And yes, this can lead to kitsch. But it can also lead to good art. It’s a tough choice but right now most illustrators I see in print are making diagrams, not drawings.

Why the fear of drawing? Is it fear of making an aesthetic decision to pursue and believe in Beauty? Such a pursuit may appear to some to be a repudiation of modernism, post modernism, etc etc but it really isn’t. It’s a repudiation of an aesthetic system based on solpsism.

But theory makes me nervous. I’d rather look at good drawings. Preferably a human nude.
Mike Hunter on May 23, 2011 at 10:27 am said:

—————
Domingos Isabelinho says:
…This kind of art in context always reminds me of what Bill Griffith said in 1973: “Hey! I wanta know what’s “underground” about rotting corpses! Besides buryin’ ‘em, huh? And inflated rubber women with bulbous, 48-inch chests? And all that half-baked, crackpot science fiction creeping onto the racks that was pathetic back in the ’50s when it was at least new? […] When an artist’s central characters and/or protagonists are depicted as overly developed, seminude musclemen, or robots, or cute humanoids with beguiling eyes, the line between what’s loosely defined as “the concerns of underground comix” and simple escapist fiction with, perhaps, a facade of “relevance” becomes more than hazy. It disappears entirely…
——————

As opposed to the Beats, the Hippie era (I remember it well, even if as an observer rather than a participant) was quite un-intellectual and utterly awash with nostalgia. Posters of W.C. Fields, the Marx Brothers, Bogie, and Alphonse Mucha’s insipidly pretty Nouveau women were as ubiquitous as the psychedelic variety. Tolkien was HUGE.

There was plenty of “backwards-looking” among underground comix creators, who revered the ECs and related to their irreverent attitude, that they ended up victims of The Man. (Spain drew one strip where Wertham ended up mangled by rotting corpses. “Good Lord! Choke!”) The influence of and homage to ECs is writ large in those comix. And sure, much was brainless escapist fare, with “relevance” and extreme sexuality & violence splashed on. Though there was also intelligent political commentary, the ecological concern of “Slow Death”…

(Crumb’s own comix of that time were also, needless to say, part of this “nostalgic” attitude, though going farther back for his influences.)

Jones’ paperback cover paintings were mostly fantasy/SF fare, where as typical with such, of course the heroes would be handsome and brawny, the women beautiful and voluptuous. And the approach went along with that “nostalgia” vibe; not only hearkening back to Nouveau but to Pyle and N.C. Wyeth.

Dunno whether Jones would’ve preferred to draw emaciated hags or grossly obese women for “Idyl” and “I’m Age,” but surely that would’ve been a commercially disastrous choice. Few are the artists who can afford to wholly ignore popular tastes.

But where Jones the writer had a hand in, the results are hardly kitsch; there’s a weirdly offbeat, deadpan sense of humor on display…
cbren on May 23, 2011 at 10:30 am said:

yeah! the writing is great!
Domingos Isabelinho on May 23, 2011 at 10:34 am said:

Mahendra: this is getting interesting… Hergé would agree with you. He repeatedly compared himself with Franquin saying that he wasn’t half the draftsman that Franquin was. I suppose that people just thought that he was being modest, but I don’t think so… He also outgrew his character and loathed his work later in his career. So, I learned to admire the man while thinking that he was absolutely right about Tintin and he was highly overrated as an artist (he made millions and people always worship the sacred golden cow). However: take someone like Chris Ware who views drawing for comics as a kind of diagrammatic writing. That point of view makes perfect sense to me, but I don’t think that it must exclude other approaches. I like John Porcellino’s work, for instance (I even think that he’s a great draftsman; he just “forgets” some aspects of naturalism, that’s all), but I also like Edmond Baudoin’s work.
As for kitsch: I’m just saying that if kitsch isn’t well done it fails as kitsch. Kitsch is candy. If candy doesn’t have the highest appeal where does it stand?
Noah Berlatsky on May 23, 2011 at 10:38 am said:

“If it looks good, it is good.”

Franklin would kill me, but that’s a theory. It t’s capitalism basically, or utilitarianism; if it makes you happy, it’s good. “Just do it.”

What looks good is embedded in what we think about what looks good. Beauty standards vary widely even as far as body types, much less marks on paper. Jones’ drawings actually don’t look all that good to me because of their connection to kitsch. I find it off-putting. I can overcome that to some extent because I also enjoy the technical skill…but the argument isn’t between people who say it looks good and people who say it isn’t theoretically up to snuff. The two positions can’t be separated that easily.

“I do wish this had been two articles, because as it is, a heartfelt eulogy to the dead has been combined with a very aggressive polemic sttack. Which makes responding to it or defending against it awkward at best.”

It is awkward…but I don’t think it’s an insult to an artist’s memory to take their work seriously, even if that means criticizing it.
Domingos Isabelinho on May 23, 2011 at 10:40 am said:

You made me curious and I want to reread _Idyl_, but where is it? Buried deeply under tons of other things, I suppose. The archeologist in me must start digging right now, but I don’t have much hope…
Noah Berlatsky on May 23, 2011 at 10:41 am said:

“why is theory hostile to beauty?”

I don’t think it is…? Do you really think the ugliness of Jeffrey Brown’s comix has anything to do with theory? It has to do with punk aesthetics and DIY, but that’s not Derrida.

Theory arguably has something to do with conceptual art, but conceptual art doesn’t have a ton to do with why comix are ugly. I feel like you’re conflating different things here.
Mike Hunter on May 23, 2011 at 10:42 am said:

——————
mahendra singh says:
…Domingo is still pursuing the heart of the matter and I’m glad of it. There is badly-drawn kitsch. Most modern american popular art is badly drawn kitsch. Perhaps we’re talking about a different kitsch, maybe european versus american?
——————-

Strangely, I’m more offended by the kitsch of European genre comics (exquisitely rendered art in the service of utterly moronic stories or soft-core porn) than crudely-drawn American stuff, where at least there’s a consistency on display.

(And, it’s DomingoS…)

Some more Jones stuff: http://www.johncoulthart.com/feuilleton/2011/05/20/jeffrey-catherine-jones-1944%E2%80%932011/
Marcus on May 23, 2011 at 10:49 am said:

“Which is that Jones’ skill was rare today.”

Do you mean in comix specifically? Because in art in general it’s not rare at all, I could name a dozen draughtspeople better than her off the top of my head, half of whom haven’t even left art school.

‘If it looks good, it is good.’
So fascist propaganda art is just as good as any other art as long as it’s aesthetically pleasing?
Noah Berlatsky on May 23, 2011 at 10:50 am said:

Sorry one more; you ask why the “fear of drawing.” But what you allow to count as drawing seems really limited. Herge doesn’t count…does Schulz? Does Herriman? Does Ware? Does that Japanese ink drawing I posted a link to? Craft is great, but claiming that only one kind of craft counts and then bewailing the fall of craft seems pretty silly. Naturalistic anatomical drawing just isn’t automatically better than everything else, nor does it necessarily define “beauty,” no matter how much you jump up and down and claim it does.
Benjamin D. Brucke on May 23, 2011 at 10:53 am said:

“You made me curious and I want to reread _Idyl_, but where is it?”

Here it is: http://comic-historietas.blogspot.com/2009/10/los-que-huyeron-del-comic-2-jeff-jones.html
Domingos Isabelinho on May 23, 2011 at 10:56 am said:

Mike: “Strangely, I’m more offended by the kitsch of European genre comics (exquisitely rendered art in the service of utterly moronic stories or soft-core porn)”

I can easily agree with that.

“(And, it’s DomingoS…)”

Thanks for the correction. “Domingo” is a Spanish name, so, being Spanish almost an official language of the United States the mistake is only natural.
Domingos Isabelinho on May 23, 2011 at 11:06 am said:

Thanks, Benjamin!…
Mike Hunter on May 23, 2011 at 11:31 am said:

“I saw a bat last night. He was on my face.” http://www.comicartfans.com/gallerypiece.asp?piece=691389&gsub=92009

Poking fun at what the “National Lampoon” editors must’ve thought about the elliptical, barely-there narratives, in one the perpetually-preggers protagonist wondered, “I wonder when they’re going to ask for a doughnut to go around the hole?” (Quoted from memory.)

More Jones art and a couple of “Wonder Woman” covers at http://museotbo.blogspot.com/2006/09/jeff-jones-el-olvidado.html (I’ve got those comics stashed somewhere; bought ’em for the covers!)

A huge selection of Jones paperback covers (and links to related sites, including this very thread) at http://www.raggedclaws.com/home/tag/jeffrey-jones/ …

…Where I found (hoo hah!) a link to http://comic-historietas.blogspot.com/2009/10/los-que-huyeron-del-comic-2-jeff-jones.html , which features some outstanding enlargeable comics pages by Jones, including a book’s worth of “Idyl” strips!

(Returning to HU to excitedly announce my “find”: dagnabbit, Benjamin beat me to it!)
Robert Stanley Martin on May 23, 2011 at 11:34 am said:

I grant that a lot of Jones’ work had appeal to the crowd that hungers after male-potency-anxiety material, but her figure drawing was so terrific in terms of observation that I really don’t care. There’s a big difference between her and, say, Corben.
Robert Stanley Martin on May 23, 2011 at 11:37 am said:

And I still find several of Jones’ more conspicuously Frazetta- and bondage-inspired stuff distasteful junk. Just in case someone feels compelled to dig up a past quote…
mahendra singh on May 23, 2011 at 11:44 am said:

apologies to Domingos, I am a very bad orthographiste

here’s a thought: the europeans have always had great art & crappy stories and the north americans have always preferred great stories and crappy art. Comix-wise.

could it be that story-telling skills can survive american cultural amnesia but the craft of drawing cannot? Because much of what passes for American craftsmanship is simply flashiness. And this is genre.

Messers Ware & Schulz & even Herriman are competent draftsmen (and far better than I, thats for certain) but if you took away their strong story lines, what would be left?
Noah Berlatsky on May 23, 2011 at 11:50 am said:

In Schulz’s case, at least his early work, you’d have a lot of really lovely drawing. Really, I’d rather look at Schulz’s work than Frazetta or Jones’ most days. Ware too; much of his artwork is beautiful, though he’s more focused on color and design than draftsmanship. I’m not super into Herriman or anything, but his work is quite enjoyable to look at I think.

That’s besides the question of why exactly you’d want to set aside their stories in the first place…?

There’s been good pulpy American artists too, surely. Berni Wrightson, Jim Aparo…do they qualify?
cbren on May 23, 2011 at 12:01 pm said:

with some of my favorite american comics , if you take away the story there isn’t much left. and since these are mostly horror, science fiction comics… and the individual stories are wispy and barely there… what that means is that if you take away the GENRE, not much is left. i wouldn’t say “long live kitsch”, because the “kitsch” for me signifies the point at which genre stops being good. but i appreciate artists where it is necessary to appreciate the context and have a, certain suspension of “taste”… there is often surprising stuff lurking underneath the tacky, unappealing surface…something that belongs to the collective, and affects readers unconsciously, although i think the individual artist is often cannily aware of it…there’s something that when it is isn’t there, it’s possible to tell the difference. for me, “kitsch” means bad, but in the terms of the debate happening here, i’m very suspicious of the blanket condemnation of things deemed “kitsch”… unfair?
Marcus on May 23, 2011 at 12:01 pm said:

Don’t forget Pushwagner, Lar Fiske and David B. All of whom I discovered before I could even read what they were writing about.
mahendra singh on May 23, 2011 at 12:07 pm said:

we’re handicapping now! Berni Wrightson is a superior drafstman, as are all the ex-members of the Studio. Must have been the water in NYC at the time.

Some of those pulp guys were magnificent. They had to be, that’s my point. ADs used to often be lllustrators, they had to have an eye and they had to keep their readers eyes engaged on the page or cover.

It still goes back to the human figure and lots of life drawing. The naked body is still ground zero for the great drafstmen and women.

I de-emphasize stories because in comix, there seems to be a trend of using literary theory instead of looking at the art itself. And academic art theory has become very deformed.
Alex on May 23, 2011 at 12:08 pm said:

Domingos:

“I don’t find it a little off-putting, I find it extremely off-putting. This kind of art in context always reminds me of what Bill Griffith said in 1973: “Hey! I wanta know what’s “underground” about rotting corpses! Besides buryin’ ‘em, huh? And inflated rubber women with bulbous, 48-inch chests? And all that half-baked, crackpot science fiction creeping onto the racks that was pathetic back in the ’50s when it was at least new? […] When an artist’s central characters and/or protagonists are depicted as overly developed, seminude musclemen, or robots, or cute humanoids with beguiling eyes, the line between what’s loosely defined as “the concerns of underground comix” and simple escapist fiction with, perhaps, a facade of “relevance” becomes more than hazy. It disappears entirely. And, aside from the explicit sex and the use of naughty words, it falls into the “above-ground” category with ease. Which is probably where it belongs and, most likely, will end up.”

NONE of that applies to Jones’ work at all. It is disingenuous– to be polite– even to suggest that’s so. Griffith would be horrified at this twisting of his words to attack Jones.

Others on this thread attack Jones for depicting large naked breasts. Hey, people, wake up. These aren’t the pneumatic pseudo-porn teats that are the norm in today’s sad mainstream;

They are real woman’s breasts. Jones drew women that were real, sexual, beautiful, and empowered.

I advise readers to check out ‘Spasm’, ‘Idyll’, and ‘I’m Age’ for themselves, and ignore the opportunistic nay-sayers.
Noah Berlatsky on May 23, 2011 at 12:23 pm said:

“there seems to be a trend of using literary theory instead of looking at the art itself.”

Among whom?

I’m not trying to be cute; I’m really having difficulty figuring out what critics/artists you’re down on. Is it Spiegelman/Ware/Clowes that irritates you? Are you talking about critics? Providing some names would definitely be helpful here….
Marcus on May 23, 2011 at 12:32 pm said:

‘They are real woman’s breasts. Jones drew women that were real, sexual, beautiful, and empowered.’

You’re kidding right?

https://hoodedutilitarian.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/HU_Singh_JCJones_2.jpg

Look at panel 4, her breasts have somehow magically enlarged themselves between panels, becoming so large that they spill over her torso that is utterly lacking in body fat besides said breasts. Her torso looks ready to snap in half.

She pulls her hands over her head, coquettishly posing, averting her eyes from the gaze of the viewer in a show of submissive sexual performance (her eyes incidentally, have been exaggerated and enlarged and her face rounded, giving her a childish appearance common to pin-up models at the time, she’s even wearing make-up to accentuate the size of her eyes). Why is she doing that? What purpose does it serve to adopt an obvious pin-up pose while one is contemplating industrial barrels? How is specifically taking a submissive pose that acknowledges blatantly that the viewer has power over her empowering at all? For that matter, why is she wearing the skimpiest underwear ever created? How is that natural?

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_gcL3M2YdAm8/StRbHbE6inI/AAAAAAAAD2c/-64SYcuJoVs/s1600-h/08-IDYL.jpg

Look at the second panel, why has she gone from climbing a tree to luxuriating and gazing submissively at the viewer while a disembodied gorilla enjoys her ass?
Marcus on May 23, 2011 at 12:37 pm said:

‘http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_gcL3M2YdAm8/StRbHC02obI/AAAAAAAAD2U/FCQQYG7H4rA/s1600-h/09-IDYL.jpg’

In this comic, our heroine appears to be so turned on by the memory of a bat attacking her face and giving her horrible diseases that she cannot help but fondle and caress herself while making bedroom eyes at the reader.
Marcus on May 23, 2011 at 12:40 pm said:

Reading it over, I actually like the writing in idyll, it’s a shame that the art actually impedes it, since instead of enjoying the dry, absurd humour I get distracted wondering why everything seems to arouse the main character and why she can’t stop looking out at me and posing instead of acting natural.
mahendra singh on May 23, 2011 at 12:58 pm said:

I don’t think you can discuss draftsmanship in terms of sexism or story or genre or any of that. It’s a technical quality in art which is either there or not.

I think Messers Speigelmann/Ware/Clowes are good enough artists & storytellers to be the first to tell anyone who cares that their work is not built on bravura drafstmanship. And I don’t think their audience cares, which is fine, they are popular because of their stories.
Why treat comix as a literary form is perhaps a distillation of what I’m saying. And I am puzzled by this because without the art, comix are quite mundane in nature, european or american.

In fact, one can make a sucessful comix out of stick figures, that’s how unimportant the art is now.
Domingos Isabelinho on May 23, 2011 at 1:29 pm said:

Well, Mahendra, you can also do a great wordless comic. What you can’t do is a great sexist, racist, etc… comic (that’s my opinion anyway).
About my name, no worries!…

Well said Marcus: great analysis!
After rereading _Idyl_ I like it more than before. I can appreciate the irony of telling absurdist jokes over sexist art. It reminded me of Chris Ware’s “I Guess,” but while Chris Ware uses the surface of a macho genre to tell an autobiographical story about his father actually connecting two autobio aspects of his childhood (I suppose that he read superhero comics back then) I fail to see the point in _Idyl_. Are we supposed to be aroused while laughing?
Ben on May 23, 2011 at 1:34 pm said:

If you cant discuss draftsmanship in terms of story or genre, then I’m intrigued by what purpose there is in discussing it at all?

Comics are not gallery level art, they’re a narrative form, and thus the tools within them are slave to the narrative surely? Comix art is ‘good’ when the art compliments or advances the narrative. I don’t think thats viewing comix as a ‘literary form’, its just treating them as narrative, and I find that hard to disagree with. Criticising folks like Clowes et al for poor draftsmanship is like criticising Rushdie or DBC Pierre for not using perfect grammar, its true but its sort of irrelevant. It seems that discussing the draughtsmanship without concern for the overall piece is as much an error as emphasising literary theory without concern for the art, which you condemn. Its all about the ensemble surely?

Having said that, its the first I’ve seen of Jones’ art and its pretty striking. Though every bit as disturbing as Marcus says.
Noah Berlatsky on May 23, 2011 at 1:35 pm said:

But the comic isn’t just its draftsmanship, surely? Even paintings aren’t just the draftsmanship. Draftsmanship is (one element of) style. It seems perfectly reasonable to say that the draftsmanship is used in the interest of sexism, or that it actually detracts from what she’s trying to do with the story.

Similarly…there’s a difference between “not built on bravura draftsmanship” and not reliant in important respects on art. Lord knows I have problems with Chris Ware, but he absolutely cares about the art, and his work wouldn’t function without it. It’s just that the aspects of art he works with are design rather than draftsmanship in your sense. You seem to feel that design isn’t really art? Or something? That seems bizarre to me; layout seems just as valid as figure drawing — it’s a tool which can be used with originality or verve or not.

And hey! No harshing on stick figure art! Seriously, there’s no reason why you can’t make pretty art out of stick figures. Leonora Carrington is just scads cooler than Alex Ross…or than Jeffrey Jones, at least IMO.

You’ve got these binaries set up — practice/theory, beautiful/ugly, art/story. And they just seem incredibly confused to me, partially because the real binary appears to be draftsmanship/all-other-aspects-of-art. It just seems like a really reductive and largely useless approach which conflates and confuses a lot more than it illuminates.

Just for example…if nude figure drawing is the ideal, and you are largely impervious to the charms of layout or story, it seems really unclear why you want to bother with comics at all.
Marcus on May 23, 2011 at 1:41 pm said:

So draughtsmanship is beauty and beauty is technique, but only western techniques, which are naturally and objectively beautiful despite other cultures using completely different techniques and having different standards of beautiful art, and this beauty is good solely because of the technique, but not because of composition, choice of image and what you’re representing, what the image communicates and implies, how you use the image or how your images work with one another.

Everyone should strive towards this technical ability which is beautiful because it is technically accomplished and technically accomplished because it has been declared beautiful, and art and culture are going down the toilet, and all the images these other artists make are mediocre and full of meaningless lines, as opposed to the lines of beautiful art which are meaningful although you’re not allowed to actually use their meaning as part of your judgement of their beauty. Have I got that about right? Because that’s what you seem to be implying.
Sean Michael Robinson on May 23, 2011 at 1:42 pm said:

Marcus,

>>>o you mean in comix specifically? Because in art in general it’s not rare at all, I could name a dozen draughtspeople better than her off the top of my head, half of whom haven’t even left art school.>>>

Please do, especially if any of these dozen have the all-too-rare combination of underlying drawing skill and surface verve on display here. These aren’t just “correct” figures–especially the examples sited by Mahendra have a liveliness to the line that’s particularly unusual with someone also capable of the more analytical work of figure construction. At least, that’s my take.
mahendra singh on May 23, 2011 at 1:58 pm said:

Laughter and arousal would be the same in the best of all possible worlds.

The issue is not really a binary, it is that a fundamental component of art/comix is no longer in play commercially. The pendulum has swung too far towards one pole and the art-form would benefit from more of a middling position between story & art. Right now story is completely dominant. In illustration, the same.

And good design and drawing are almost the same. You might even say that good drawing is the designed arrangement of reality, or even better, the revealing of the design that has always been there to be begin with.
Ben on May 23, 2011 at 2:14 pm said:

Forgive me, but isn’t that still a binary? You’re still contrasting story and art. Even if you accept a compromise, its still a binary viewpoint. A non-binary would be to accept that art and story are neither opposed nor independant but complementary and codependant.

On a larger point, why should comics be on your pendulum between draughtsmanship and art? If this thread has demonstrated anything it is that the ‘old masters’ (reopening the canon debate…) of comics such as Herge etc, were not draughtsmen in the way you describe. Given that, what grounds do we have for considering formal art standards as appropriate for comics as a medium? Your ‘pendulum’ comment seems to suggest a golden age where draughtsmanship was celebrated over story, but I’m unsure if that ever really existed. Comics are narrative. Even in Lynne Ward books, (which I love as formal art) the art is secondary to narrative.
mahendra singh on May 23, 2011 at 2:28 pm said:

Then you’ve unhooked comix entirely from the visual arts which is my earleir point, that comix seem to be all about literary theory/form/critique, whatever.

Judge any comix by the same visual standards as a Egyptian ba-relief or a Hogarth engraving or even a Raphael cartoon and suddenly the word draftsmanship looms very large.

If you divorce comix from visual standards of the past, it is a de fact admission that they cannot withstand scrutiny.

And franjkly, I think Chris Ware or Clowes, just as much as JCJ would score pretty well in such a system.
Noah Berlatsky on May 23, 2011 at 2:36 pm said:

I’d agree that comics don’t need to emphasize the narrative. There’s something like this for example. And LIttle Nemo was more about the art than about the very tenuous narratives.

I don’t agree that Clowes stands up all that well if you look at the art though. And I think, contra Ben, that that does actually matter….
mahendra singh on May 23, 2011 at 2:43 pm said:

thanks, I had completely forgotten McCay. Stunning drafstmanship, vapid story. It never bothered me. It was visually sensuous, and that’s my point. We’re not sensuous anymore, we’re Puritan comix artists
Mike Hunter on May 23, 2011 at 2:44 pm said:

————————
Marcus says:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_gcL3M2YdAm8/StRbHC02obI/AAAAAAAAD2U/FCQQYG7H4rA/s1600-h/09-IDYL.jpg

In this comic, our heroine appears to be so turned on by the memory of a bat attacking her face and giving her horrible diseases that she cannot help but fondle and caress herself while making bedroom eyes at the reader.
————————-

Once you go bat, you never go back!

————————–
Marcus says:
… instead of enjoying the dry, absurd humour I get distracted wondering why everything seems to arouse the main character and why she can’t stop looking out at me and posing instead of acting natural.
————————–

I’m reminded of Barry Windsor-Smith writing, about “Withering” ( http://www.illustrationartgallery.com/acatalog/BWSmithWith.jpg ), that he’d rather have drawn the trees by themselves, but he wanted to sell the prints, and no way would they have been remotely as appealing to his fantasy-minded audience.

So, surely Jones would’ve been aware overtly sexy poses and figures would appeal to the overwhelmingly young, male “National Lampoon” audience; not exactly of the same tastes as, say, “New York Review of Books” readers.

—————————
mahendra singh says:
Laughter and arousal would be the same in the best of all possible worlds.
—————————-

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/21/28678277_bd771371ca.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3138/2940317291_16d968e7f0.jpg (A go-go dancer; in California, where else?)

And… http://i475.photobucket.com/albums/rr112/denimcg/J4C/clown.jpg

Alas, we’re not in the best of all…

But, wait!

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-j7UtRj21PmI/Tb2C8pH65bI/AAAAAAAAB2U/BtZfIFLO2sg/s1600/Sexy%2BClown%2B%2B2.jpg

http://www.stratecomm.net/~fritz/gallery/albums/scb/11212006i.jpg
Derik Badman on May 23, 2011 at 2:54 pm said:

Comics are not gallery level art, they’re a narrative form, and thus the tools within them are slave to the narrative surely? Comix art is ‘good’ when the art compliments or advances the narrative. I don’t think thats viewing comix as a ‘literary form’, its just treating them as narrative, and I find that hard to disagree with.

Ben: I find it very easy to disagree with. I’ve read and made quite a number of comics that are non-narrative. For instance:

http://madinkbeard.com/archives/elements-by-grom
http://thepanelists.org/2011/01/brickbrickbrick-by-mark-laliberte/
http://thepanelists.org/2011/01/one-page-criticism-magic-forest-by-blaise-larmee/

(those are all by other people, I might also point out a series of still life comics I made earlier this year: http://madinkbeard.com/archives/still-life-february-2011 )

There is a whole realm of possibility in non-narrative comics. And there certainly a slew of narrative comics that include moments where the narrative falls away and we are left with just images that are to be appreciated for their style, arrangement, pacing, etc.
Derik Badman on May 23, 2011 at 2:57 pm said:

Judge any comix by the same visual standards as a Egyptian ba-relief or a Hogarth engraving or even a Raphael cartoon and suddenly the word draftsmanship looms very large.

Mahendra: Replace “comix” (uggh) with “painting by…”: Twombly, Rothko, Guston, etc.
Derik Badman on May 23, 2011 at 2:59 pm said:

Does that mean they can’t withstand scrutiny?
Marcus on May 23, 2011 at 2:59 pm said:

‘Then you’ve unhooked comix entirely from the visual arts which is my earleir point, that comix seem to be all about literary theory/form/critique, whatever.

Judge any comix by the same visual standards as a Egyptian ba-relief or a Hogarth engraving or even a Raphael cartoon and suddenly the word draftsmanship looms very large.’

Except that in visual art the meaning and content of the picture is also important. That’s why Hogarth’s remembered and not the reams of equally technically talented engravers of the time. Because of what he depicted and how he depicted it and what messages he communicated to his audience. If Hogarth had spent his time making engravings of sexy women in pin-up poses I doubt he’d be the cornerstone of British art culture he is today.

‘Please do’
Lucien Freud, Paula Rego, Jim Woodring, Pushwagner, Evie Kitt, Lya Nagado, Viktor Timofeev, Marius O’Shea, Sol Kjok, Layla Kearney, Piotr Kurka, Yuta Onada.
Sean Michael Robinson on May 23, 2011 at 3:23 pm said:

Well, the first two are painters, which is quite the difference from working linearly. And certainly L.Freud is a consummate draftsman. But would you really hold Pushwagner up to the same light? I mean, the pieces available online I find very beautiful and compelling, but that has little to do with any drawing skill–they’re more like road maps than drafted images, at least in the schema we seem to be discussing here. Although much much less so, I’d say that applies to a lot of Jim Woodring’s work as well, further towards schematic. I love his work, but I wouldn’t say he’s quite the same level of draftsman as JCJ, and I doubt he would claim that for himself either. It’s a different kind of thing. Evie Kitt’s, at least from the mini images I can find, looks too beholden to photographs to really judge her actual draftsmanship, were she to be freed from those flattening constraints. I think part of the tension here is a tension between the pictorial and the diagrammatic. I’d argue we’re certainly in the midst of a pretty strong shift towards the diagrammatic, but as this article might point to, there will always be people interested in both extremes.
Marcus on May 23, 2011 at 4:02 pm said:

The pictures of Evie Kitt’s online are from last year when she was 17 and in high school (well, british college).
Marcus on May 23, 2011 at 4:06 pm said:

Also uuuh both Freud and Rego have an extensive body of work on paper, dismissing them because they’re painters means dismissing Jones as well (she’s a painter too remember?) Hell Mahendra cited Gaguin (a painter, and not a very accomplished technical drawer at all) and Michelangelo (a painter and sculptor) skilled draftspeople.
mahendra singh on May 23, 2011 at 4:13 pm said:

the clown cleavage makes me think of running away to the circus and chucking this illustration gig

SMR has put it perfectly, it’s a diagrammatic-pictorial thing and the former is in ascendance. It’s much easier to teach in art schools, much cheaper for ADs to purchase on tight deadline and requires little knowledge of history or technique.

It is a genre that focusses solely on the mental. There is no physical thrill involved, no visual frisson of delight.

It’s comix back-engineered into words, really.
Sean Michael Robinson on May 23, 2011 at 4:14 pm said:

Yeah, that’s pretty silly of me. I just associate both of them with painting before anything else, which of course doesn’t mean they don’t have those skills…

I happen to love this L. Freud image, which is certainly an interesting drawing from a technical standpoint as well, specifically the lack of convergence– http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.harpersbazaar.com/cm/harpersbazaar/images/7-lucian-freud-rabbit-on-chair-de-46022326.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.harpersbazaar.com/magazine/hot-list/hot-list-february-0209&usg=__29LV8xsNwcPQyOV6A2MO00S62UQ=&h=460&w=360&sz=87&hl=en&start=0&zoom=1&tbnid=6jF_K5qrwzfNhM:&tbnh=162&tbnw=138&ei=i-naTaqyM6Tk0QGQu4n8Aw&prev=/search%3Fq%3DLucien%2BFreud%2Bdrawing%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26sa%3DX%26biw%3D1024%26bih%3D677%26tbm%3Disch%26prmd%3Divnso&itbs=1&iact=rc&dur=402&sqi=2&page=1&ndsp=15&ved=1t:429,r:5,s:0&tx=77&ty=66
Marcus on May 23, 2011 at 4:29 pm said:

“SMR has put it perfectly, it’s a diagrammatic-pictorial thing and the former is in ascendance. It’s much easier to teach in art schools, much cheaper for ADs to purchase on tight deadline and requires little knowledge of history or technique.

It is a genre that focusses solely on the mental. There is no physical thrill involved, no visual frisson of delight.

It’s comix back-engineered into words, really.”

http://www.visuelt.org/media/ida-lund-bjornsen/n1641nymerzpla1272460345_450x.jpg

http://creativeface.net/files/mag/12084410680.jpg

http://us.muttpop.com/var/us/storage/images/muttpop-blog/epileptic-graphic-novel-by-david-b/51999-1-eng-US/Epileptic-Graphic-Novel-by-David-B.gif

Yep, no visual frisson of delight here.

Also what are you even talking about, there isn’t a single art school in my country that teaches diagrammatic drawing.

(hilariously enough if you search frisson on google images you get almost nothing but pictures of women’s breasts and asses. So I guess google images agrees with your definition of what creates frisson.)
Domingos Isabelinho on May 23, 2011 at 5:20 pm said:

Marcus: “Except that in visual art the meaning and content of the picture is also important. That’s why Hogarth’s remembered and not the reams of equally technically talented engravers of the time. Because of what he depicted and how he depicted it and what messages he communicated to his audience. If Hogarth had spent his time making engravings of sexy women in pin-up poses I doubt he’d be the cornerstone of British art culture he is today.”

Exactly! Ditto for Goya (the disasters of war, the caprichos) or Michelangelo (the Sistine Chapel) or any other great artists that you can think of, really. But I understand what Mahendra means now. He means, this: http://tinyurl.com/oukgw

I don’t disagree with Susan Sontag. It’s just that the sensuous appeal of a work of art (its aesthetic pleasure) is fragile and personal and can’t be discussed.(May I remind you as well that it is as private as an intimate relationship?) It’s fragile because we may feel it one day and not the next… It can’t be discussed because in front of the same object or music or whatever a person may feel it and the next person may not. We can’t discuss what’s irrational.

Apart from that, just when we thought that we were way from theory, a name pops suddenly up, of course: Immanuel Kant and his aristocratic theory of beauty (beauty and not art because I’m convinced that he didn’t like art at all).
Domingos Isabelinho on May 23, 2011 at 5:27 pm said:

“away” not “way from theory”

Oh and, in comics, the images are the story too. No one can deny that Hogarth told stories in the Rake’s and Harlot’s progresses.

Not that comics need to tell stories, though…
Noah Berlatsky on May 23, 2011 at 6:08 pm said:

I’m interested in the diagrammatic/illustration distinction — it seems like an interesting contrast at least with form/content and art/story binaries. I’m still not seeing who the bad guys are, though. You like Clowes, you seem to appreciate Ware and Spiegelman…so who’s the enemy? Alison Bechdel? Dilbert? Kate Beaton? Jeffrey Brown? manga?
Eddie Campbell on May 23, 2011 at 8:32 pm said:

“so who’s the enemy?”

Surely you’re looking for the enemy in the wrong place; the most potent line in the essay appears to have been overlooked:

“And there’s the rub — never before in human history have so many artists been so unrelentingly exposed to so much visual rubbish from childhood onwards.”

I presume what is being indicated there is the pictorial culture of the last half century, of saturday morning animation, second rate comic books and bland daily strips, brainless pop videos, and the general decline of illustration and the work of the illustrator.
there’s a bookshop where I occasionally wait for a bus. It has tables of second hand romance paperbacks out front. I often browse there and think how that was that last stand for the old style illustrator. I wonder if that’s still a going thing?
Mike Hunter on May 24, 2011 at 4:03 am said:

———————–
Sean Michael Robinson says:
….I happen to love this L. Freud image….
————————

Holy shit, that’s a big URL! So long, one part actually ran off the “page” and disappeared into the greyzone beyond. Might I highly recommend… http://tinyurl.com/

————————-
Derik Badman says:
…I’ve read and made quite a number of comics that are non-narrative. For instance…

http://madinkbeard.com/archives/elements-by-grom
http://thepanelists.org/2011/01/brickbrickbrick-by-mark-laliberte/
http://thepanelists.org/2011/01/one-page-criticism-magic-forest-by-blaise-larmee/

…I might also point out a series of still life comics I made earlier this year: http://madinkbeard.com/archives/still-life-february-2011 …
————————–

All fine work! Re the last, am reminded of the Crumb one-page comic (“Bo Bo Belinski,” I think it was called) that was simply different views of the subject, as he sat motionless in a chair.

Though people on those other sites are calling them “non-narrative” comics, didn’t McCloud say that the very juxtaposition, even in two utterly unrelated images, makes us imagine a narrative sequence? (I imagine that question’s been addressed already, but no time right now to go searching…)

There’s the attitude of the observer at work; if you label something “comics” and he/she/whatever looks at, say, a Mondrian or “A few of my favorite things” page from a scrapbook (with photos of kittens, sunrises, apple pie and such), wouldn’t the viewer be thus predisposed to feel there’s a sequential connection there?

Take the “comics” label off http://grandpapier.org/recadrage?lang=en , and most would just see it as a piece of abstract art. Period.
Noah Berlatsky on May 24, 2011 at 4:35 am said:

Hey Eddie! The decline in visual culture makes sense as the enemy I guess…but it just seems like that should be reflected in important comics that are not seen as crap too. If the most criticially acclaimed comics are things Mahendra likes and feels show good draftsmanship, then the crisis doesn’t seem like that much of a crisis…. Saturday morning animation, second rate comics books, and bland daily strips are generally thought of as crap, aren’t they?
Derik Badman on May 24, 2011 at 7:00 am said:

Though people on those other sites are calling them “non-narrative” comics, didn’t McCloud say that the very juxtaposition, even in two utterly unrelated images, makes us imagine a narrative sequence?

Mike: Well it’s all me at those other sites… To a certain (limited) extent McCloud might be right, but still the narrative becomes then only a kind of byproduct of the images. A reversal of what Ben was talking about.
mahendra singh on May 24, 2011 at 7:36 am said:

Thanks for the URL, Domingos, looks good & I’ll read carefully when I have more time.

Eddie Campbell (and Domingos) have hit my rusty bent nail on the head. My step-father was an illustrator and he drummed it into me that attention to detail and drawing chops were the ticket. When we looked at stuff together we literally looked at it, really looked at it, design, drawing, technique, short-cuts, gimmicks, the whole visual performance. I don’t think some readers quite grasp this process, it’s not really an academic critique, it’s more results-oriented (how can we rip-off this guy, what’s his secret recipe, what makes them hot, or not, etc). This was the way that everyone in the biz looked at stuff, it wasn’t a theoretical exercise. It was not intellectual but it wasn’t as subjective as Domingos thinks.

I really don’t see much action like that in either illo or comix biz. I do see ADs buying art only because they saw it in a bigger magazine elsewhere, ie. they do not trust their own eyes.

The illustrators Eddie wonders about are mostly dead or really burned out. Venues are dwindling. Pay rates are a joke. I don’t do painting jobs but for line art it’s the same. Younger ADs are so used to clip art that they often steer you to copy the look.

Commercial art is a business and like any other business, once the professional standards are discarded, Gresham’s Law kicks in.

When time permits, I’d like to do another essay, a recreation of a 1970s/1980s-style anatomy of some pages, with coffee mugs topped up with bourbon and the studio full of cigarette smoke and diazo fumes. I think it would be very instructive and probably quite infuriating for some.

And no, it’s not about nostalgia, quite the opposite.
Domingos Isabelinho on May 24, 2011 at 12:28 pm said:

Mahendra:

we’re talking about two different things. I’m talking about pleasure, you’re talking about technical chops (that we can discuss).

I think that Eddie also misses the enemy. Crap always existed. The enemy is the lack of nature observation. I did a lot of life drawing, but before my generation visual artists went to medical school to dissect corpses. What do people do in this department in art school today? I really don’t know, but whatever it is the results aren’t exactly stellar.

On the other hand life drawing isn’t enough, of course. I love perspective, for instance. I also love texture (Alberto Burri is one of my all time favorite painters). Not to mention color theory (anyone remembers those Itten books?). Visual art is a complex business, no doubt about it…
Reese on May 24, 2011 at 12:53 pm said:

Marcus:

“‘They are real woman’s breasts. Jones drew women that were real, sexual, beautiful, and empowered.’

You’re kidding right?

https://hoodedutilitarian.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/HU_Singh_JCJones_2.jpg

Look at panel 4, her breasts have somehow magically enlarged themselves between panels, becoming so large that they spill over her torso that is utterly lacking in body fat besides said breasts. Her torso looks ready to snap in half.”

No, those are utterly normal-sized breasts, compatible with those shown in the preceding panels. They are pretty breasts, but natural, not the unbelievable conic structures current so-called “good girl” art displays.

“She pulls her hands over her head, coquettishly posing, averting her eyes from the gaze of the viewer in a show of submissive sexual performance (her eyes incidentally, have been exaggerated and enlarged and her face rounded, giving her a childish appearance common to pin-up models at the time, she’s even wearing make-up to accentuate the size of her eyes). Why is she doing that? What purpose does it serve to adopt an obvious pin-up pose while one is contemplating industrial barrels? How is specifically taking a submissive pose that acknowledges blatantly that the viewer has power over her empowering at all? For that matter, why is she wearing the skimpiest underwear ever created? How is that natural?”

It’s natural because it occurs in nature, of course. It’s the universal reflex of stretching, which is beautiful both in men and in women. Posing? No. It’s an erotically charged gesture that comes naturally.

She “wears make-up”? Why, the hussy!

“http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_gcL3M2YdAm8/StRbHbE6inI/AAAAAAAAD2c/-64SYcuJoVs/s1600-h/08-IDYL.jpg

Look at the second panel, why has she gone from climbing a tree to luxuriating and gazing submissively at the viewer while a disembodied gorilla enjoys her ass?”

Well, this may sound like nit-picking, but it isn’t. That’s NOT a gorilla. It’s a chimpanzee. So what, you may ask? So it shows that Marcus’ detailed inspection of these pages is actually lazy and perfunctory.

For example, in the panel he cites, the woman is NOT “gazing submissively at the viewer” at all. The line of sight is straight from her eyes to the chimp’s.

Marcus takes umbrage at the eroticism of Jones’ pages. But, as Kenneth Clarke pointed out, an erotic response to a nude is mandatory for a full, honest aesthetic appreciation of it. It’s right to be turned on by Goya’s ‘Maya desnuda’ or by Manet’s ‘Olympia’.

(This is independant of orientation or gender; I’m hetero, but when I look at Michelangelo’s David, I’m gay.)

True, there’s a line somewhere between sleazy sexist exploitation and erotic beauty. The line is hard to draw, given that much pornography is art, and that much ‘respectable’ imagery is exploitation.

I suppose that Marcus and I fall on other sides of that line. But that doesn’t mean that goodwill and attention shouldn’t be exercised, pace Isabelinho.
mahendra singh on May 24, 2011 at 1:14 pm said:

Ha, Itten color theory, yes, I do remember. I think you can derive pleasure from technical chops and it’s a useful thing to discuss. I am getting the feeling that a lot of this is more generational than I thought at first. And also cultural?

If you cannot enjoy a nude human being, you’re really not going to enjoy art. And that’s the excluded middle at work!

BTW, the mainstream comix penchant for conical breasts is a classic symptom of bad draftsmanship, substituting a symbol for careful observation. In fact, this is the heart of my entire argument: learn to draw by removing crutches and cribs, esp. the short-cuts of pop culture.
Noah Berlatsky on May 24, 2011 at 1:33 pm said:

I don’t know Reese…it looks like gratuitous soft-core eroticism to me.

I don’t actually have a problem with gratuitous soft-core eroticism per se, necessarily. Like most things, it depends on how it’s used and what’s being done with it. This seems like it’s supposed to be cutesy/humorous; somewhat artsy random narrative along with winking cheesecake. I think Domingos was right that we’re supposed to be amused and aroused. On the downside, the subhuman/beautiful woman juxtaposition is tired and irritating, and I find the smug artsy adult teasing fairly grating. On the plus side, it’s nicely drawn, and the art pretensions are pretty clearly just supposed to be there to amuse rather than to say anything in particular.

It’s self-conscious, very well-executed, vapid trash. It’s certainly not as daring for its time and place as Manet’s Olympia, nor does it raise the kind of questions about individuality and exploitation that that piece does — though I think the argument that Olympia is exploitive is pretty strong . Jones certainly is not as smart or thoughtful or imaginative as something like “Switchblade Sisters,” which is exploitation crap that is also great art (or so I’d argue anyway.)

I’d be open to an argument that there’s more going on in Jones’ work than I’m seeing in it. But starting from a point where you claim, “this isn’t prurient trash” — I’m sorry, that’s just not convincing. It’s prurient trash. The line you’re trying to draw between sleazy exploitation and erotic beauty? It may be fuzzy, but this falls quite clearly on the sleazy exploitation side of the line. If you want to defend it on those grounds — by, for example, claiming it does something interesting with its exploitative imagery, as Manet does or as Jack Hill does — I’m willing to listen. But to claim that the exploitative element isn’t there just seems willfully misguided.
mahendra singh on May 24, 2011 at 2:13 pm said:

JCJ vs Manet, they both look pretty good to me. He was a good draftsman, BTW, although he didn’t have to draw to deadline or for the camera. Nor did he have an AD breathing down his neck.

Let’s be honest, at least 50% of good art is gratuitous soft-core eroticism. If you can fit in a joke about Aristotle into it, it’s pure gravy.
Noah Berlatsky on May 24, 2011 at 2:54 pm said:

“Let’s be honest, at least 50% of good art is gratuitous soft-core eroticism.”

That’s maybe true if you think good art is defined as figure drawing!
Domingos Isabelinho on May 24, 2011 at 3:43 pm said:

This is my reading, but I think that the point of Manet’s Olympia is the cat, not Olympia herself. Olympia is a real woman (Victorine Meurent) not some Pompier imitation and someone (or each and everyone) that Manet knew would also attend the Salon brought her flowers. The cat doesn’t like said person (he shows it by arching his back). In this blog post the blogger acknowledges the cat’s reaction, but fails to put the painting in context: http://tinyurl.com/44ohzwj The scandal and distaste for the painting was perfectly understandable.
Domingos Isabelinho on May 24, 2011 at 3:55 pm said:

Another thing: this game between a character inside the painting (the cat) and the viewer is typical of Manet’s favorite painter: Diego Velazquez.
mahendra singh on May 24, 2011 at 4:10 pm said:

Now we’re talking serious technical chops … Velazquez …

we’re finally leaving comix and getting to the common denominator which the article was about … celebrating the superior artists and learning from them. Why study 2nd rate when you can study Velazquez? He’s relevant to comix, to illustration.

I feel the same physical and mental joy when I look at his work as when I study JCJ’s draftsmanship.

it bears repeating: figure drawing is the acid test of technique & draftsmanship.
Noah Berlatsky on May 24, 2011 at 4:48 pm said:

…but I actually get more pleasure looking at Leonora Carrington’s work than I do at Velazquez’s. More looking at Peanuts than at JCJ. More looking at (some of) Chris Ware than at Frazetta.

And what seems to me the shallowness of JCJ’s work interfered with my physical and mental joy when looking at it.

Draftsmanship is great and great draftsmanship is certainly a major pleasure in art — but it just isn’t the be all and end all of art for me personally.

I’m looking forward to your best of list, though, Mahendra. (You’re going to do a list for our poll, right? Right?!)
mahendra singh on May 24, 2011 at 5:10 pm said:

I look forward to perplexing you with my list!

I will concur that Carrington is a really superior artist but Velazquez … he’s in my Pantheon with Messers Rubens and Bernini

Better take my medication now
Domingos Isabelinho on May 24, 2011 at 5:35 pm said:

I agree with Noah. Technical chops are needed to convey things, but it’s what one has to say that really matters. Conversely, if an artist has no technical chops a distorted (or boring or inadequate, etc…) message arrives to the intended destination.

Velazquez was not a great painter just because he painted beautifully. Velazquez was a great painter because he did great characterizations http://tinyurl.com/3cqzjhn and carefully constructed complex conceptual (conceptist?) baroque spacial games (I mentioned one already: Velazquez played with the space outside of the paiting – look at the soldier on the left: http://tinyurl.com/3rbb5k9 plus: can you imagine a greater gesture in a moment of victory?). One of his last paintings, for instance, is a sublime allegory (it’s also a comic): http://tinyurl.com/3ucudn7

On another thread Mike Hunter quoted Kim Thompson: “Paul seems to have swallowed the whole sophomoric nonsense about narrative art being somehow “validated” only by the “realism” or “complexity” of the characters, whether or not the material addresses “significant issues,” and so on. By which standard, of course, the worst movie made by John Sayles, the most trivial “intimate character portrait” piece of piffle to come out of Sundance, is better than the best movie made by Howard Hawks — and any second-rate piece of modern “serious” fiction is better than a P.G. Wodehouse novel. And THREE FINGERS is better than POPEYE.”

This is an attack on the usual straw man. It assumes that defending serious art instead of mainstream stupid comics nonsense means something like: forget form, forget technique, just look at the dead serious and important content. It’s not so, of course…

Also: Velazquez was great, but so was Saul Steinberg, methinks…
Domingos Isabelinho on May 24, 2011 at 5:43 pm said:

Bernini: http://tinyurl.com/3m4st5r
Noah Berlatsky on May 24, 2011 at 6:51 pm said:

That Bernini drawing is awesome. Thanks Domingos.
cbren on May 24, 2011 at 10:07 pm said:

Check out the charming comment by “Jack Offinson” (clever) on the tcj site. Unless you’re sensitive to violent prejudice against trans people, in which case, don’t.

Am I wrong in thinking that tcj is a fully moderated site? Or is it just my comments which require approval. I can’t believe that something as obviously hateful and damaging as that would be approved by any moderator. But I guess people think that it’s ok to try to erase people’s identities as soon as they’re dead just because it offends their preconcieved notions as a professional shithead.
jackie on May 24, 2011 at 10:23 pm said:

what the fuck… this is not cool. those who try to erase her female identity are just trying to claim ownership of her identity by claiming that those that honor her identity are doing the exploiting.
it’s disgusting how people reconstruct people after they’re dead… often actually going against the dead person’s lived expression of their life.
Marcus on May 24, 2011 at 11:04 pm said:

Reese you just made so many bad faith arguments that I don’t know where to begin.

“No, those are utterly normal-sized breasts, compatible with those shown in the preceding panels. They are pretty breasts, but natural, not the unbelievable conic structures current so-called “good girl” art displays.”
They’re bigger than her head yet she has absolutely no fat on either her sides or arms, perhaps you have never actually encountered a woman in real life, but that is not natural. Incidentally, it’s a shame you appear to know nothing about your favourite artist, jeffrey jones made Idyll in the 70’s, about 20 years or so after conical bras and breasts went out of fashion. In the 70’s, large, round breasts like Jeffrey draws were in fashion in pin-ups and pornography.

“It’s natural because it occurs in nature, of course. It’s the universal reflex of stretching, which is beautiful both in men and in women. Posing? No. It’s an erotically charged gesture that comes naturally.”

If that is meant to be a ‘natural stretch’ then you’ve just made a case for Jones being a shitty naturalist, no one stretches like that, that pose doesn’t even stretch anything, in fact, that pose isn’t really possible, her left arm is far too short and the foreshortening doesn’t work at all. Not only that, but the tattoo on her ‘natural’ breasts doesn’t make sense, despite crossing over on to her bigger than her head ‘natural’ breasts it doesn’t change shape or distort at all, it’s perfectly flat. facing the viewer, despite the fact that her torso is turned away.

In addition, it took literally a few seconds of google searching to find almost that exact pose repeated over and over and over in sexy photographs and nowhere else, because it’s not a natural pose. It’s very specifically a porn pose because it accentuates the breasts and thrusts them out for the viewer’s eye.

“She “wears make-up”? Why, the hussy!”

Quoting half a sentence to completely change the meaning of its implication is a really bad faith move and shows you have absolutely no real arguments. I said she was wearing make-up specifically to enhance and exaggerate the size of her eyes to give her a childish face common to pin-up models at the time. Also, is she natural or is she wearing thick make-up, fetish underwear and tattoos? I’m confused about which one she’s meant to be and how it’s possible to argue in good faith for both.

“http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_gcL3M2YdAm8/StRbHbE6inI/AAAAAAAAD2c/-64SYcuJoVs/s1600-h/08-IDYL.jpg

Well, this may sound like nit-picking, but it isn’t. That’s NOT a gorilla. It’s a chimpanzee. So what, you may ask? So it shows that Marcus’ detailed inspection of these pages is actually lazy and perfunctory.”
Actually that really is nit-picking, that is literally the definition of nit-picking. Incidentally, that ‘chimpanzee’ has terrible, shifting, inconsistent anatomy, especially in that profile shot. The nose is too prominent and too far forward and the whole mouth/snout area is the wrong shape, making it look far more like a gorilla than a chimpanzee.

“For example, in the panel he cites, the woman is NOT “gazing submissively at the viewer” at all. The line of sight is straight from her eyes to the chimp’s.”
The chimp/gorilla/who knows its anatomy changes constantly is gazing down with its eyes half closed, straight at her ass. the woman, if you draw a line from the woman’s eyes, as I have done below for your viewing pleasure, she’s clearly not looking at the chimp’s eyes, in fact, unless she was gazing out of the side of her pupil. it’s physically impossible for her to be meeting the chimp’s eyes.
http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b171/CatFishEnFuego/08-IDYL.jpg

“Marcus takes umbrage at the eroticism of Jones’ pages. But, as Kenneth Clarke pointed out, an erotic response to a nude is mandatory for a full, honest aesthetic appreciation of it. It’s right to be turned on by Goya’s ‘Maya desnuda’ or by Manet’s ‘Olympia’.

(This is independant of orientation or gender; I’m hetero, but when I look at Michelangelo’s David, I’m gay.)”

I want to bring this up because it’s part of a consistent sexist myth brought up by De Beauvoir and other gender scholars, t hat of the ‘natural’ woman. Your examples are particularly telling, the two female examples are of women luxuriating, lying down lower than the viewer, sexual in their entirety and engaging the viewer’s gaze in a sultry manner. Michelangelo’s David on the other hand, your example of a natural male nude, is a figure specifically exaggerated to be the epitome of power, of superiority, of action, his muscles and veins bulge and tense as if preparing for an action, the figure itself looms above the viewer, one cannot meet the gaze of David, cannot do anything but stand beneath his colossal, implacable mass. It says a lot about you that Jeffrey, Goya and Manet are the Natural woman erotic but Michelangelo’s David who is power, nude but unsexualised is the natural nude male erotic.
Marcus on May 24, 2011 at 11:36 pm said:

I also disagree with Clark’s quote (btw you might want to spell his name right, since Kenneth Clarke is a conservative politician who made incredibly offensive comments about rape). I don’t feel I need an erotic thrill to honestly appreciate nude art. In fact, it’s pretty creepy to demand how people erotically react to things and accuse them of dishonesty if they don’t.

Ask almost any artist what they feel when doing nude figure studies and an erotic thrill isn’t going to be one of them (hell ask me, my tumblr’s full of nude figure studies at the moment). I prefer to get my erotic thrills from actual, living autonomous human beings, I certainly don’t get a halfie when thinking about a giant stone symbol of male power.
Domingos Isabelinho on May 25, 2011 at 2:01 am said:

Donatello is my favorite sculptor. I find his David a lot more appropriate because David was a symbol of the weak (the city of Florence) defeating powerful enemies with the help of god.
mahendra singh on May 25, 2011 at 4:48 am said:

Yes, Donatello’s David is very tasty and it is a good example of what I mean by superior draftsmanship. The form is harmonious in all ways & senses.

Nothing improves drawing like doing sculpture.

And nothing is more silly than to think that realism or figural art is automatically better. But drawing people, sculpting people, that’s the best way to educate a person into drawing well.
Noah Berlatsky on May 25, 2011 at 5:09 am said:

I didn’t realize comments needed approval at tcj…they’ve changed their protocols since I’ve been commenting over there…. (Edit: I mean they may have changed them; don’t know for sure.)

It’s nice to see that virtually everybody piled on to tell Mr. Offinson he was an idiot, though….
Pingback: Time to Remember Jeffrey Catherine Jones « Nuts & Bolts: A Project to End Transmisogyny
Aaron White on May 25, 2011 at 8:24 am said:

So what’s the difference between “Beauty” and “Prettiness”?
Mike Hunter on May 25, 2011 at 8:32 am said:

——————-
Derik Badman says:
… To a certain (limited) extent McCloud might be right, but still the narrative becomes then only a kind of byproduct of the images. …
——————

True, true…

——————
mahendra singh says:
…Commercial art is a business and like any other business, once the professional standards are discarded, Gresham’s Law kicks in…
——————-

Yes; in “Memoirs of a Geisha” (the movie, anyway) the heroine told how after WW II, in Japan “every prostitute with a kimono called herself a geisha.” Nowadays, anybody with a PC and Microsoft Word & Publisher thinks of themselves as a “graphic designer,” and are taken as such by visual illiterates.

In my wife’s designer job for the Florida state government, Style Guidelines were established, with limited choices and dumbed-dowm parameters. Circumscribing the talented, but meant to prevent the designer wanna-be’s from creating something overly atrocious.

——————–
Domingos Isabelinho says:
…I think that Eddie also misses the enemy. Crap always existed.
——————–

Yes; but was it so overwhelmingly prevalent? Why learn to draw, if the “South Park” guys can become massively successful and rich?

——————–
…On another thread Mike Hunter quoted Kim Thompson: “Paul seems to have swallowed the whole sophomoric nonsense about narrative art being somehow “validated” only by the “realism” or “complexity” of the characters, whether or not the material addresses “significant issues,” and so on. By which standard, of course, the worst movie made by John Sayles, the most trivial “intimate character portrait” piece of piffle to come out of Sundance, is better than the best movie made by Howard Hawks — and any second-rate piece of modern “serious” fiction is better than a P.G. Wodehouse novel. And THREE FINGERS is better than POPEYE.”

This is an attack on the usual straw man. It assumes that defending serious art instead of mainstream stupid comics nonsense means something like: forget form, forget technique, just look at the dead serious and important content. It’s not so, of course…
———————

Reread what Thompson said: “…the whole sophomoric nonsense about narrative art being somehow “validated” only by the ‘realism’ or ‘complexity’ of the characters, whether or not the material addresses ‘significant issues,’ and so on…” (Emphasis added)

For certain, the ideal is when substantial content is conveyed with technical mastery and artistry. And indeed, both Velazquez and Saul Steinberg brilliantly qualify there.

But Thompson’s argument is simply that a trivial subject dealt with by a talented creator yields better results than an **IMPORTANT** subject dealt with by a mediocre creator. (I’d hardly rank John Sayles in that group, though…)

——————–
Noah Berlatsky says:
…it looks like gratuitous soft-core eroticism to me.

I don’t actually have a problem with gratuitous soft-core eroticism per se, necessarily. Like most things, it depends on how it’s used and what’s being done with it. This seems like it’s supposed to be cutesy/humorous; somewhat artsy random narrative along with winking cheesecake. I think Domingos was right that we’re supposed to be amused and aroused. On the downside, the subhuman/beautiful woman juxtaposition is tired and irritating, and I find the smug artsy adult teasing fairly grating. On the plus side, it’s nicely drawn, and the art pretensions are pretty clearly just supposed to be there to amuse rather than to say anything in particular.

I’d be open to an argument that there’s more going on in Jones’ work than I’m seeing in it. But starting from a point where you claim, “this isn’t prurient trash” — I’m sorry, that’s just not convincing. It’s prurient trash. The line you’re trying to draw between sleazy exploitation and erotic beauty? It may be fuzzy, but this falls quite clearly on the sleazy exploitation side of the line. If you want to defend it on those grounds — by, for example, claiming it does something interesting with its exploitative imagery, as Manet does or as Jack Hill does — I’m willing to listen. But to claim that the exploitative element isn’t there just seems willfully misguided.
———————–

No, I don’t think there’s a great deal there in “Idyl”; and for sure, there’s plenty of “gratuitous soft-core eroticism” and “exploitative imagery,” though I’d reserve “sleazy” for far less artful work. As I’d mentioned, surely Jones was aware that starring good-looking nekkid women in that strip and “I’m Age” would be greatly appreciated by the readership, therefore help keep those nicely-paying, steady gigs going.

What I overwhelmingly appreciate in Jones’ strips is the visual/verbal rhythm going on. Light and shadow; shifts in composition and perspective; wordless pauses and negative space…

Sure, the “subhuman/beautiful woman juxtaposition” is a cliché, there’s plenty of cheesy pinup posturing, and the main character is dumb as a fencepost. But to me there’s something sublime in the interplay of flowing line and wet black shadow, sinuous shapes and clear emptiness, borderline-Surrealist verbiage that stops and goes:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_gcL3M2YdAm8/StRbHC02obI/AAAAAAAAD2U/FCQQYG7H4rA/s1600-h/09-IDYL.jpg

Why, it’s a textbook example of a “a trivial subject dealt with by a talented creator”!
Noah Berlatsky on May 25, 2011 at 8:35 am said:

“Why, it’s a textbook example of a “a trivial subject dealt with by a talented creator”!”

That’s an entirely reasonable defense.
Mike Hunter on May 25, 2011 at 8:47 am said:

——————-
Aaron White says:
So what’s the difference between “Beauty” and “Prettiness”?
——————-

http://www.terminartors.com/files/artworks/5/8/1/58142/Turner_Joseph_Mallord_William-Buttermere_Lake_with_Part_of_Cromackwater_Cumberland_a_Shower.jpg

http://files.myopera.com/sonya/albums/176922/Thomas%20Kinkade%20-%20Candlelight%20Cottage.jpg
Domingos Isabelinho on May 25, 2011 at 8:58 am said:

Mike: “Reread what Thompson said: “…the whole sophomoric nonsense about narrative art being somehow “validated” only by the ‘realism’ or ‘complexity’ of the characters, whether or not the material addresses ‘significant issues,’ and so on…”

I don’t know about Paul, whoever that is, but who defends such a thing? Very stupid straw men?
Domingos Isabelinho on May 25, 2011 at 9:10 am said:

Ugh! I find that second link incredibly ugly!

Mahendra:

That’s a good point. Modernism created a huge problem to Western art schools. They don’t want to teach old fashioned technical chops prefering to go all intellectual and conceptual and whatnot. But I would advise the Mondrian approach: http://tinyurl.com/4ydjkaj People who don’t know what nature is can’t simplify it.
Marcus on May 25, 2011 at 9:44 am said:

Best advice I ever got was from one of the artists I listed in the dozen, Lya Nagado, she told me ‘study from everyone and everywhere you can’.
mahendra singh on May 25, 2011 at 10:20 am said:

Beauty is always pleasing to the eye and hand, even when the subject is visually grotesque or ugly. Pretty is what Domingos calls kitsch. And a quick scan of the Susan Sontag piece tells me that she said is what I tried to say, buts she’s a heck of a lot better and more precise. Thanks!

My favorite advice from my illustration teacher was:
if you can’t draw something, put a bush in front of it.
Reese on May 26, 2011 at 1:06 pm said:

https://hoodedutilitarian.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/HU_Singh_JCJones_2.jpg

Marcus:

“Reese you just made so many bad faith arguments that I don’t know where to begin.”

Actually, as I shall demonstrate, these words apply far, far more fittingly to you, Marcus.

“No, those are utterly normal-sized breasts, compatible with those shown in the preceding panels. They are pretty breasts, but natural, not the unbelievable conic structures current so-called “good girl” art displays.”
They’re bigger than her head yet she has absolutely no fat on either her sides or arms, perhaps you have never actually encountered a woman in real life, but that is not natural.”

Untrue; her fat-to-body ratio is absolutely normal for a healthy young woman.

“Incidentally, it’s a shame you appear to know nothing about your favourite artist, jeffrey jones made Idyll in the 70?s, about 20 years or so after conical bras and breasts went out of fashion.”

Little boy, I bought those Lampoon issues WHEN THEY CAME OUT, having been a Jones fan for YEARS before ‘Idyll’ appeared. I was born in the fifties, boy, so don’t presume to lecture me with your fake take on the evolution of breast representation.

“In the 70?s, large, round breasts like Jeffrey draws were in fashion in pin-ups and pornography.”

Um, excuse me? Women’s breasts have, you know, this tendency to be round when they’re large. But “pin-ups and pornography”, to use your damnation-by-association-ploy phrase, never showed realistic breasts such as Jones drew.

“It’s natural because it occurs in nature, of course. It’s the universal reflex of stretching, which is beautiful both in men and in women. Posing? No. It’s an erotically charged gesture that comes naturally.”

If that is meant to be a ‘natural stretch’ then you’ve just made a case for Jones being a shitty naturalist, no one stretches like that, that pose doesn’t even stretch anything, in fact, that pose isn’t really possible, her left arm is far too short and the foreshortening doesn’t work at all.”

Are you functionally blind, or just malicious? That example of foreshortening is a magnificently bravura piece of draftsmanship, so virtuoso that it’s showing off.

“Not only that, but the tattoo on her ‘natural’ breasts doesn’t make sense, despite crossing over on to her bigger than her head ‘natural’ breasts it doesn’t change shape or distort at all, it’s perfectly flat.”

Her breasts are not “bigger than her head”, as any fool can see.

The tattoo is ‘flat’ (not really:look at the picture) because she has raised her arms over her head. that flattens the breasts, as both men and women can find out simply by mimicking her actions.

“facing the viewer, despite the fact that her torso is turned away.”

No, as anybody can see, the tattoo is perfectly consistent with the woman’s posture and position.

“In addition, it took literally a few seconds of google searching to find almost that exact pose repeated over and over and over in sexy photographs and nowhere else, because it’s not a natural pose.”

It’s a very natural pose, both for men and women. It’s reaching up to rearrange one’s hair. It’s a pose that’s found in the visual art of every culture over the past millenia.

By the way, what were your search terms, Mr Puremind?

“It’s very specifically a porn pose because it accentuates the breasts and thrusts them out for the viewer’s eye.”

Wrong, the opposite is true; instead of being “thrust out”, the breasts are flattened! You should think before you write.

“She “wears make-up”? Why, the hussy!”

“Quoting half a sentence to completely change the meaning of its implication is a really bad faith move and shows you have absolutely no real arguments. I said she was wearing make-up specifically to enhance and exaggerate the size of her eyes to give her a childish face common to pin-up models at the time.”

Makeup is typical of adults, not of children.

“Also, is she natural or is she wearing thick make-up, fetish underwear and tattoos? I’m confused about which one she’s meant to be and how it’s possible to argue in good faith for both.”

I think your confusion may well have been intended by the artist.

“http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_gcL3M2YdAm8/StRbHbE6inI/AAAAAAAAD2c/-64SYcuJoVs/s1600-h/08-IDYL.jpg

Well, this may sound like nit-picking, but it isn’t. That’s NOT a gorilla. It’s a chimpanzee. So what, you may ask? So it shows that Marcus’ detailed inspection of these pages is actually lazy and perfunctory.”
Actually that really is nit-picking, that is literally the definition of nit-picking. Incidentally, that ‘chimpanzee’ has terrible, shifting, inconsistent anatomy, especially in that profile shot.”
No, it’s an excellent chimp picture.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_gcL3M2YdAm8/StRbHbE6inI/AAAAAAAAD2c/-64SYcuJoVs/s1600-h/08-IDYL.

“The nose is too prominent and too far forward and the whole mouth/snout area is the wrong shape, making it look far more like a gorilla than a chimpanzee.”

Are you trying to kill me by making me laugh to death? Yep, gorillas are REALLY, REALLY FAMOUS for their PROMINENT NOSES.

Look, you scewed up here; man up.

“For example, in the panel he cites, the woman is NOT “gazing submissively at the viewer” at all. The line of sight is straight from her eyes to the chimp’s.”
The chimp/gorilla/who knows its anatomy changes constantly is gazing down with its eyes half closed, straight at her ass. the woman, if you draw a line from the woman’s eyes, as I have done below for your viewing pleasure, she’s clearly not looking at the chimp’s eyes, in fact, unless she was gazing out of the side of her pupil. it’s physically impossible for her to be meeting the chimp’s eyes.
http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b171/CatFishEnFuego/08-IDYL.jpg”

So what? She’s NOT looking at the reader, as you claimed. She’s looking at the chimp. Case closed.

“Marcus takes umbrage at the eroticism of Jones’ pages. But, as Kenneth Clarke pointed out, an erotic response to a nude is mandatory for a full, honest aesthetic appreciation of it. It’s right to be turned on by Goya’s ‘Maya desnuda’ or by Manet’s ‘Olympia’.

(This is independant of orientation or gender; I’m hetero, but when I look at Michelangelo’s David, I’m gay.)”

I want to bring this up because it’s part of a consistent sexist myth brought up by De Beauvoir and other gender scholars, t hat of the ‘natural’ woman. Your examples are particularly telling, the two female examples are of women luxuriating, lying down lower than the viewer, sexual in their entirety and engaging the viewer’s gaze in a sultry manner. Michelangelo’s David on the other hand, your example of a natural male nude, is a figure specifically exaggerated to be the epitome of power, of superiority, of action, his muscles and veins bulge and tense as if preparing for an action, the figure itself looms above the viewer, one cannot meet the gaze of David, cannot do anything but stand beneath his colossal, implacable mass. It says a lot about you that Jeffrey, Goya and Manet are the Natural woman erotic but Michelangelo’s David who is power, nude but unsexualised is the natural nude male erotic.”

Yep, you’re right. Goya and Michelangelo can go to Hell. That’s not art, that’s oppression!
Noah Berlatsky on May 26, 2011 at 1:34 pm said:

This is an interesting argument…but you’re both edging towards being significantly nastier than you need to be. You can argue about how naturalistic the drawing is or how successful it is without engaging in a flame war, surely? Just…deep breaths or something, huh?
Marcus on May 26, 2011 at 10:47 pm said:

Okay I’m not even going to answer you, when you look at this:

http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b171/CatFishEnFuego/08-IDYL.jpg

and claim she’s looking at the chimp, you are either blind or mentally damaged, possibly from senility or the heat from generating the sheer bullshit you just tried to pull out of your ass.
Marcus on May 26, 2011 at 10:59 pm said:

P.S. You probably wouldn’t know this not having actually seen a woman in real life, especially one with a tattoo on her chest, but no, a tattoo cannot stay flat like that to a viewer when a torso is turned away and your arms are raised above your head, unless you have carefully designed your tattoo to be anamorphic for exactly that view ie. The skull in The Ambassadors.
Anja Flower on May 26, 2011 at 11:26 pm said:

Marcus, I understand you’re disagreeing pretty heatedly here, but can we not use blindness and mental illness as insults? That’s pretty fucked up.

I haven’t been able to read the enormous argument that’s gone around this, so if anyone else has pulled that shit, likewise for them as well.
Marcus on May 26, 2011 at 11:50 pm said:

You’re right Anja, I will instead say that he must be living in a bizarro earth where one is able to see lines pointing away from something and claim it’s lines pointing toward something. More fitting for the blog too.
Anja Flower on May 27, 2011 at 1:55 am said:

Seems like a fine alternative to me. I have no investment in this argument either way; I just really detest seeing things like “blind,” “deaf,” “crazy” etc. used as insults.

The argument you’re having is exceedingly nerdy, by the way. I just thought that should be said. :D
Marcus on May 27, 2011 at 2:34 am said:

I like to get my didactic art and gender nerdery out on the internet so I can make it through gallery openings safely :P
Mike Hunter on May 27, 2011 at 6:11 am said:

———————–
Marcus says:
You’re right Anja, I will instead say that he must be living in a bizarro earth where one is able to see lines pointing away from something and claim it’s lines pointing toward something. …
————————

————————
Anja Flower says:
Seems like a fine alternative to me.
————————

Hey, fictional characters have feelings too:

http://i1123.photobucket.com/albums/l542/Mike_59_Hunter/Bizarrosad.jpg
Anja Flower on May 27, 2011 at 11:38 am said:

Marcus – Hah! That’s great. I’m actually one of those gallery opening-avoiding types, although that may change, as I recently found out that I live a few blocks away from Crown Point Press, and I’m a sucker for printmaking (and Pat Steir). I actually went to an opening there! It was veeeery uncomfortable. Here are all these older Aaahtist guys in jackets with elbow patches and bow ties, accompanied by rather wealthy-looking women, and I’m standing there nervously in combat boots with one side of my head shaven wondering if I even speak the same language they do.
Reese on May 27, 2011 at 12:07 pm said:

Marcus:

“Okay I’m not even going to answer you, when you look at this:

http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b171/CatFishEnFuego/08-IDYL.jpg

and claim she’s looking at the chimp, you are either blind or mentally damaged, possibly from senility or the heat from generating the sheer bullshit you just tried to pull out of your ass.”

That was ill-advised, Marcus, as anybody can now see how incomptent you are at visual analysis. I’ll say no more on this point: your linked image depressingly speaks for itself.

Berlatsky is right, though, one page isn’t worth such scrutiny and hostility.

Let me sum up with generalities: Jones’ female nudes are so far away from the standard attitude in comics towards such– one of ignorance and misogyny. Jones’ drawings tell me that he actually liked women, that he didn’t reduce them to plastic pneumatic toys. His women are strong, natural, real. They sweat and burp and menstruate. And they dominate his comics.

This affection for the real that he observed is patent throughout his comics work; not content with drawing his women from life, Jones invested stones, trees, clouds with the intense appreciative wonder of a true artist.

Waiting for her death to score PC brownie points is…well, I shan’t say, as this is a family-friendly blog.
Reese on May 27, 2011 at 12:11 pm said:

Anja Flower:

“Seems like a fine alternative to me. I have no investment in this argument either way; I just really detest seeing things like “blind,” “deaf,” “crazy” etc. used as insults.”

I agree, obviously… but what about this other charmer from Marcus:

“[…]possibly from senility or the heat from generating the sheer bullshit you just tried to pull out of your ass.”

Ageism is a pretty disgusting disease of comics. I trust you’d not condone it.
Noah Berlatsky on May 27, 2011 at 12:30 pm said:

“Let me sum up with generalities: Jones’ female nudes are so far away from the standard attitude in comics towards such– one of ignorance and misogyny.”

I don’t deny that. The problem is that “standard attitude in comics” is a really, really, really low bar.
Domingos Isabelinho on May 27, 2011 at 4:03 pm said:

Cheesecake as feminist art… Will wonders never cease?
Noah Berlatsky on May 27, 2011 at 4:11 pm said:

I think there is some respect for woman shown in approaching the drawing of individual woman with care and genius. I don’t think it really makes it feminist, but it’s certainly better than many alternatives.
Domingos Isabelinho on May 27, 2011 at 6:06 pm said:

Hmmm “feministsploitation” and the “objectification of the Empowerment of Women.” For years I wondered what Barbarella was… Thanks, Noah!… I still don’t like it though…
Noah Berlatsky on May 27, 2011 at 6:09 pm said:

It would be really bizarre if you liked it! My paradigm would be rocked.
Noah Berlatsky on May 27, 2011 at 8:05 pm said:

Marcus, I deleted that last one. Cut it out.

Edit: In fact, I deleted that other one two, after reading it over. And I’m going to close the thread.

Comments are closed.

The Hooded Utilitarian

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Jeffrey Catherine Jones: The Good Draftsman

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