Frazetta: The Last Of His Kind

Rob Pistella sent me a link to a very interesting essay by Jesse Hamm concerning the early training of Frazetta and how this affected and molded his career. He is making the same point about Frazetta's incredible uniqueness, but he is doing it from a different perspective. I contacted Jesse and asked him if I could share his thoughts on my blog. He kindly agreed. Here is that essay:

And now, an exchange at BoingBoing:

Post #14: "As sad as this is, there is no end to the amount of amazing

artists alive and currently working in Frazetta's field of illustration.

To say that 'they sure don't make 'em like that anymore' is a pretty bold

insult to Frazetta's current colleagues."

Post #15: "They sure don't make 'em like that anymore."

Ah, internet snark.

Chuckles aside, it got me thinking. Do they make 'em like

that anymore? In regard to Frazetta's schooling, I'd say:

no, they don't.

Permit me a brief stroll through art history. During the Renaissance,

painters were taught through the apprentice system. A master would invite

a few young pupils to perform menial work in his studio in exchange for

personal tutelage, Mr. Miyagi-style. Once a pupil had achieved mastery,

he would form his own studio, and repeat the process. This training method

was very effective, but slow.

Eventually, the growing demand for painters gave rise to state-funded

academies, where schooling was standardized and "masters" were trained

en masse. This standardization quickened the training process at the

expense of artistic liberty. Building on all that came before, artistic

technique progressed to amazing heights, but with it grew the academies'

power to ensure conformity. (Think Disney.)

By the late 19th century, artists had begun to rebel against the academies'

strictures, and to splinter off into movements like Impressionism,

Expressionism, Fauvism, and so forth. Academic expertise was tossed out like

water from a poisoned well, and artists happily adopted primitive approaches which

lacked the rigor (and therefore the stench) of the academies. By the 1930s,

abstract and non-representational art were paramount; academic realism and

the training it required were a bad memory. Artists who had received and

embraced traditional academic training* were relegated to the periphery of

the fine art scene, where they catered to the elderly and parochial, or gave

lessons to hobbyists. And that is where we meet Frazetta's art teacher,

Michele Falanga.

Born in Italy in 1870, Falanga came of age in the late 1880s, at which

point he probably received the traditional academic education that was

still common for aspiring artists of the period. He eventually immigrated

to Brooklyn, where he set up a tiny art school, teaching locals of all

ages. There, around 1936, he enrolled 8-year-old Frank Frazetta.

Frazetta began in the traditional academic manner: drawing and painting

plaster casts of statues. According to academy protocol, students would

draw -- and later, paint -- statue after statue, for years ("Wax-on,

wax-off!"), before attempting to draw from a live model. This ensured a

mastery of tools, and how to accurately record shapes and the various

shadows which define them. These years of training granted the already-

talented Frazetta an exceptional grasp of light and form. (Here's an example

of such a drawing. Not by Frazetta, but he'd have done similar exercises.

For years.)

When he was 12, Frazetta progressed to the drawing of nude models.

However, instead of drawing them with the precision he brought to his

still lifes and statues, he was encouraged to take a highly gestural

approach. Falanga was unconcerned with bones and muscles per se; he

wanted his students to capture the models' movements and attitudes,

as expressed through posture and body language. Rapid, scribbly, sweeping

sketches, aimed at recording the spirit of the models' oft-changing poses,

refined the students' grasp of how a body moves and bends and struggles

against gravity. (This is probably where the stiffness of the academies

gave way to the healthier, more idiosyncratic mode of Renaissance

apprenticeship. Falanga's freeform approach to life drawing** spared

Frazetta from the rigid formalism of his artistic forebears. It's also

worth noting that Frazetta counted Segar as a major early influence.) This

phase of Frazetta's training continued for about two years.

At about this time, Falanga formed a plan: the teenaged Frazetta would be

sent to attend art school in Italy. What's curious about this plan is its

apparent redundancy. Wasn't New York a major center of the art world at

that time? Weren't there respected art schools in New York that Frazetta

could attend without leaving home, or struggling with an unfamiliar language?

Why send the boy so far? My guess is that Falanga knew what awaited

Frazetta in the New York art scene, and disdained it. Probably he had

rosy memories of the rigorous training he had received in Italy in the

1890s -- training which far excelled the self-indulgent scribblings he

saw in the American art world of the 1940s. He was a master of a

lost art, sending his star pupil to a far-off land to complete his training where

the master had himself been taught -- at the feet of some even-greater master.

Ironically, the schooling that (I'm guessing) Falanga remembered may have

disappeared from Italy, too, by the '40s. Either way, he wouldn't live to

find out; he died when Frazetta was 14 and too young to be sent abroad.

Falanga's influence was not in vain, however; he had poured the foundation

that would undergird his pupil's approach for the rest of Frazetta's life.

And when the student was ready, a new master did emerge: Hal Foster.

Foster was Frazetta's biggest "art hero." Though he eventually met the older

artist at least once, the lessons Frazetta took from Foster came indirectly: from

copying Foster's comic strips. But that was enough. The value studies and

life drawing Frazetta had practiced at Falanga's were ushered into maturity

under Foster's sublime influence. A fitting scenario, because among cartoonists

of the period, Foster was perhaps alone in having received traditional

academic training (or something like it). Foster was much older than

his adventure strip peers, and had enrolled at the Chicago Academy of fine

Arts in 1919 -- before non-representationalism would have taken hold.

I don't know how closely his school resembled Europe's 19th century

traditional academic model, but the work of fellow student Grant "American

Gothic" Wood suggests realism was still a priority there. In any case,

Foster favored the complex, balanced compositions and accurate drawing of

19th century masters, and unlike most of his fellow cartoonists, he used shadows

to define forms, rather than "wire-framing" their structures with lines.

This gave his work a solidity and a sun-baked glow that Frazetta, raised

on similar methods, could emulate more easily than others his age.

All of this gave Frazetta a massive advantage over his peers. Many were

unschooled in art, and even those who had attended art school would have

learned from teachers who themselves hadn't the benefit of traditional

academic training. By the '60s, anyone competing with Frazetta was essentially

pitting makeshift tools against a centuries-old mountain of tradition. His

paintings stand among theirs like Mad Max among the children of Thunderdome:

a witness to a culture that died before they were born.

Now, these are heavy claims for art whose spiritual kin is monster trucks

and skull-bongs. But Frazetta's lowly metier makes his popularity even more

impressive. After all, his appeal isn't limited to metal-heads and comics

geeks. Repeatedly, in the blogs that have appeared since his death, I see

this refrain:

"I grew out of this macho crap when I was 12, BUT...."

BUT?

"...but even now, decades after I outgrew his subject matter,

I find it necessary to memorialize this man whose work still haunts me."

Bloggers who have absolutely no use for axe-wielding barbarians or their

big-breasted leg-candy are, for some reason, still awed by these paintings.

Why?

One might speculate that it's because the subject matter represents some

primitive archetype buried deep in these folks' brains. If that were true,

though, they would also add the reverent "BUT..." to their reminiscences

of He-Man, Willow, and Beastmaster. (They don't.)

I prefer to think that their rejection of Frazetta's subject matter is

wholehearted, and that their reluctant fascination with his work has a

simpler basis: Frazetta's pictures represent a tradition of advanced

artistry that has all but disappeared. Not merely accurate rendering

(which still thrives in the world of paperback covers, and which in much

of Frazetta's work is more interpretive than mimetic, anyway),

but a potent way of arranging colors, shapes, darks & lights,

precision & ambiguity, and body language that most of the

art world turned its back on a century ago.

In short, they just don't make 'em like that anymore.

Excerpted from:

http://sirspamdalot.livejournal.com/68453.html

All text is (c)2010 by Jesse Hamm