Anthony Saris: "Perfectionist Experimenter"

Usually I present the work of an illustrator chronologically so that we can see his style mature over the course of his career. This week, just for fun, I reversed the order. On Day I we saw Anthony Saris' work from 1967... On Day 2 from 1963... yesterday we looked at his mid-to-late '50's style, and today, we see some of the earliest Saris work I could find. Below, Saris pieces from 1951 and '52, respectively.


Anthony Saris was born in Joliet, Illinios and moved to New York from Chicago at age 11. He studied illustration at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and graduated in 1947.

You are looking at the kind of work he did about 5 years into his professional career.


This makes his mid-'50s stylistic development seem all the more remarkable. Below, a Saris piece for Collier's from 1954.


Saris did occasionally do his finished drawings in pencil, and this looks like it may have been one of those occasions.

"Sometimes," Saris said in his 1959 American Artist interview," I use colored crayons instead of ink, or any other expedient that may come to mind. I am willing to try anything new."


Below, a 1955 Collier's piece that dramatically shows the artist's work at the point of transition: Saris does part of this piece in his then new straight-to-ink line style, is beginning to experiment with his frisket resist technique and employing a more traditional painting method from his earlier days.


Saris, the "perfectionist experimenter", was described as "technically ... a rapid worker."

But his illustration production was relatively slow. Saris said that he would work on an image for quite some time in his mind before beginning to draw. As well, he said he would pose himself in a mirror or study passers-by. "Snapshots are helpful, principally to show detail," he said, "as well as sketches, and needless to say I have a sizable file of study material such as all illustrators assemble."

"In the case of important figures for an illustration, I prepare a separate and carefully planned drawing, photo or example from which I can make my finished ink drawing without hesitation."


Less than 10 years into a successful freelance illustration career Anthony Saris began teaching fourth-year illustration courses at his old alma mater, Pratt. No doubt he taught his students what he himself had so rapidly learned from experience: "The changeover from study to production usually provides a severe jolt for the graduate," said Saris, "caused by the sudden and largely unforeseen reversal of direction or goal. In school the laurels are awarded for the accumulation of knowledge, but when one enters the field of industry the emphasis shifts instantly to the use of knowledge. Employers are seldom impressed by our erudition, but they are interested in what we can do with it for them."

"In school we are fired with idealistic zeal, while at the same time we sense that commercialism has a slightly sordid connotation. We are afraid that 'they' will try to make commercial hacks of us. We must be true to our art and keep it pure, but nevertheless we need money."

"After I first established myself as a free-lance illustrator I resolved to devote my weekends to landscape painting, and I followed that resolution for a while. The purpose was to improve my art - as well as to enjoy myself - but principally, I suspect, to salve my artistic conscience, for the term 'commercial' still annoyed me. Then I realized I was foolishly competing with myself. I began to see the only difference between 'fine' and 'commercial' art is in the mind of the artist himself; that he becomes a hack only if he allows others to so convert him."

"If he follows an uncompromising course in art ethics and production his output can be esthetically pure."

* My Anthony Saris Flickr set.

Anthony Saris: "... an open mind and a flexible viewpoint."

In yesterday's post, Anthony Saris described how he would sometimes paint with liquid frisket to create complex white "line art", paint colour over the page and then peel away the frisket to reveal an "unmechanical, fortuitous result." Here is probably the most advanced example of that technique I could find... pretty spectacular, in my opinion! (Click the image to see a much larger version)


As a neophyte illustrator, Saris (who considered himself an artist foremost and loathed the term "commercial art") initially had a wide-ranging portfolio with samples done in may styles and mediums.


He found that his line drawings with colour garnered the most favourable reaction from the art directors he visited. He also sensed that ADs were looking for artists with distinctly individual styles. Saris quickly revamped his portfolio so that it contained only line drawings with one colour added. What a refreshingly pragmatic attitude!


Keeping in mind both the the practical consideration of fulfilling the wishes of his client and his personal desire as an artist to experiment and express himself, Saris would then look for ways to enhance the basic process of line with colour. here, for example, he incorporated an actual section of a police fingerprint document...


... as well as some actual sections of a state map, montaged onto the underlying hand drawn artwork.


The results reflect a thoughtful philosophy of creative process that Saris described thus: "In my work I try not to impose my own convictions or concepts upon the project, but prefer contrarily that the situation be permitted to show the way so that I may follow with an open mind and a flexible viewpoint."


"This is an important point in my philosophy - that the job, and not I, dictate the procedure."


What initially was undertaken out of pragmatism ( Saris saw ink line drawings as his only shot at landing assignments ) became in time a sincere love for a medium. Because Saris applied himself so passionately to developing his specialty, he was kept busy with ink drawings for a huge variety of clients for many years.


Saris cited the work of Ben Shahn, Paul Klee, George Grosz among those he most admired and studied. He said he regretted not discovering the work of Arthur Rackham sooner, but included him and Edwin Austin Abbey and inspirations.


Asked at the time of his America Artist interview (1959) why he thought he was enjoying such success, Saris said the key was the rise of photography in commercial picture-making. Literal realism in painted illustration simply could not compete because it was too closely related to what could be achieved with a photograph. Saris felt the key to his success was to create artwork that was as different from photography as possible "within reason."


"At present," said Saris, "the line-and-color method seems to meet these specifications best."

* My Anthony Saris Flickr set

Anthony Saris Explains His Process

From the March 1959 issue of American Artist magazine

"I start each drawing as though it were to be a 'finish'. If it develops unsatisfactorily, I start another. Often I make several starts. I draw quickly and my style is such that this re-doing system is not much more time-consuming than the preliminary pencil sketch method would be."


"My illustrations are all based upon drawings in ink. Some are straight black and whites..."


"... but even those in color are essentially drawings..."


"... over which tints are applied."


"In making illustrations I seldom use a pencil for preliminary guidance, preferring to draw directly with the pen. The drawing is done purely in outline. When that seems satisfactory, I put in the important dramatic, solid black areas and the half-tone values."


"In a colored illustration the pigment is applied over the ink."


"Later, I insert the smaller, incidental blacks. Colored inks are my basic color source."


"Basically, my method is as simple as the preceeding paragraph states, but as each step permits unlimited variation, the procedure can become as elaborate as desired."


"I believe in experimentation, and whenever feasible, I test new methods for novel incidental effects. For example... in adding the color (colored inks) I may employ a brush or an ink roller like those used in block printing."


"It is used, of course, only to cover large, simple areas. The other shapes must be masked out. I use frisket paper for the large expanses and liquid frisket for details."


"Drawing ink, of course, is much thinner than printing ink and of different composition and does not lend itself to flat, even coloring, but as I am always alert for fortunate accidentals, this offers quite an advantage in my eyes."


"I make many experimental variations with frisket in solid masses and in line. Let us imagine the subject is a figure clothed in decorative costume. The elaborate line drawing may be made with frisket on plain white paper. Color as desired is then applied over the drawing, and when the frisket is removed and the white line design is modulated suitably, the result is striking and unusual. True, a similar effect might be achieved by drawing the outline design with white ink..."


"... but to me the unmechanical, fortuitous result of the first method is infinitely to be desired from an artistic point of view."

* My Anthony Saris Flickr set.

* Charlie Allen's latest CAWS - a dozen amazing b/w ink-line drawings from the '50s and '60s - not to be missed!

Anthony Saris and the Beautiful Contradiction

When I was in art college, some 20-odd years ago, my Conceptual Art instructor, Frank Neufeld loved to say to us, "Everything I tell you is the truth... and everything I tell you is a lie." At the time I didn't really understand what he meant and it frustrated the hell out of me, especially because he always said it with a mischievous smirk and a glint in his eye. But as time goes by and I learn more and more I think perhaps I have come to grasp at least a part of that cryptic remark Frank was so fond of.

Which brings us to Anthony Saris.


Last week we looked at Fletcher Martin and learned that he had some deeply held beliefs about how one should make pictures. Martin hardly fit the mold of "illustrator", but during his career he did a lot of commercial art for both editorial and advertising clients. Similarly Anthony Saris (who was a younger man but worked during the same mid-century period) drew mostly for commercial clients, but abhorred the term "commercial artist". Saris believed there was no distinction between what he called "applied art" and gallery painting. Like Martin, he believed the artist should have unrestricted creative freedom to devise as original and imaginative a solution to his assignment as possible.

Fletcher Martin didn't really plan his pictures in advance - he let them evolve on the canvas. "When I approach the painting," Martin explained, "I never begin with a fixed idea of how the painting will look. I find the painting while doing it."

Similarly, Anthony Saris would begin a picture without what he described as "the common practice of making small pencil layouts to try out the composition. With a fresh paper before me," he said, "I begin drawing, in ink, that which I have decided is to be the principle feature of the design."

Saris would then add surrounding elements until he was satisfied with the results. He would often discard a picture part way through if it began to show signs of an unsatisfactory conclusion. "In my mental background," said Saris, "I retain an image of the shape I must fill, and the illustration gradually approximates it, though the size of the drawing develops as it will, depending on whether I decide the design is complete. The finished drawing may turn out to be from two to four times the size of the reproduction-to-be."


Isn't it remarkable that two artist with such similar philosophies would produce such dramatically different results. That's because in one area these two had opposing points of view: Martin saw no merit in using photo reference for his work. "If you can draw it on the spot you can draw it later," was how he put it. "The tyranny of the model, " said Fletcher Martin, "is a terrible thing."

Anthony Saris, meanwhile, was adamant about the value of his photo reference: "I do not believe in drawing figures from memory," he said, "for thus I would miss those many subtleties and unique arrangements that often present themselves in actuality but which can never be imagined."

This, my friends, is the beautiful contradiction of art. Its why everything I tell you is the truth...


... and everything I tell you is a lie.

* My Anthony Saris Flickr set.

Fletcher Martin: "what your eye gives you and what your heart responds to is all-important."

Fletcher Martin was interviewed in the Winter, 1962 issue of Famous Artists Magazine. Interviewer Mary Anne Guitar began, "Although you are a painter of great versatility you are best known for your vigorous sports scenes. Do you think these paintings represent your work at its best?"


Martin replied, "There was a period when I did a lot of fight things - bullfights and prize fights. At this time I was getting a lot of attention as a new artist... Life described me as an ex-sailor, ex-fighter, who had turned painter. This kind of myth fit my appearance. I don't mean to say it was totally inaccurate. I am very much interested in sports but I like to paint other things as well."


Explaining further, Martin continued, "You can make a hell of a painting about anything, but it is absolutely essential that it interests you. The more interested you are the better, provided your interest is esthetic and not just sentimental. When sentimentality permeates the picture it fails."

"[This] may sound like a contradiction but it isn't really... instead of sentimental involvement the painter should have an empathetic involvement."

Guitar pointed out that Martin had made a remarkably tender and very real painting of mother-and-child for the cover of that issue of Famous Artists Magazine, to which the artist replied, "To have an empathy doesn't mean that you must literally step into that person's shoes. You must understand, deeply and sympathetically, how the other person feels."


"I don't have to be a matador to paint bullfights. But I understand what the show is, what the conflict is, what the drama should be. To make an action picture you should feel the action. And when you understand fully you can be discriminating. The tourist who has never seen a bullfight before may respond only to the blood."


"The good things in a bullfight are the subtle relationships between the beast and the man. This is why the sport is exciting."


Fletcher Martin's two favourite subjects - sports and women - raised the question of how he would explain the curious contradiction - the tough and the tender - that seem to be central to his psyche. Martin replied, "The female figure just interests me. Whether it was erotic or not in the beginning I don't know."


Asked about his process, Martin explained, "I find the painting while doing it. The basic conception is usually a felt thing. Then it must be established."


"I sometimes make drawings, many drawings of the subject I'm going to do, in order to find the attitudes which will work. I have an idea about the order of the picture, but in the course of making it many changes occur."


"One should always be willing to make the changes. However proud one is of any painting, it should be expendable. One should work on the whole picture - and every day. One shouldn't get too involved with any particular detail or live in the occurrence depicted. The picture itself is an object."


"A person should draw all the time, like he eats and sleeps. Every day I draw, and it doesn't have to be a drawing for something. One's power of observation should be made as acute as possible so that anything you understand you can get down without having the subject right in front of you. The tyranny of the model is a terrible thing. It is a tremendously hampering thing. When you understand the human figure you can draw the figure. You don't need a model."


"I discovered that what your eye gives you and what your heart responds to is all-important. When I go through the material I have gathered on a trip and pick up any sketch at random, I can feel the weather, smell the smells, hear the sounds that were there because I made it, no matter how long ago. It is real to me because I lived there a little while, maybe a minute, maybe an hour, but intensely."

"The good pictures, the ones you like, are always an experience."

* My Fletcher Martin Flickr set.

* For those who missed my previous posts on Fletcher Martin's career, you can read them at these links:

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part5

* Fletcher Martin's work is represented by The Fletcher Gallery

Fletcher Martin: "Good pictures are always an experience"

In the broad scheme of things, its unlikely that one would categorize Fletcher Martin as an illustrator. He was truly a fine arts painter who occasionally took on illustration assignments. Here is one of the earliest I've ever seen - found online - from 1942.


Martin firmly believed in painting what he knew, what he had experienced, and considering his youth and early adulthood, wandering hobo-like through Depression era America, the Shell ad seems more than appropriate subject matter for him.

Martin had hopped freight trains, worked as a day labourer picking fruit, done highway construction jobs and been a lumberjack. He had joined the Navy and sailed the oceans of the world... he was an ex-prize fighter. So years later when he said in an interview, "In painting a prize fight, for example, you need to know what it feels like to fight. Before you can draw and order a thing you need to get the feel of it. Good pictures come out of one's experience, out of one's life."


Asked how he consolidated his inclination for painting what he chose to paint with the needs of a commercial client, he replied, "There was never any problem for me because there was never any art direction involved. I was not restricted. I brought in the drawings and they chose those they wanted me to develop into paintings."


Hard for most illustrators to imagine - having such complete freedom!

Fletcher Martin was hardly as prolific an advertising illustrator as many others we've looked at here, but the trade-off of complete creative freedom was clearly too essential for him to compromise. Martin said, "I could have been much more solvent doing something else. Being an artist has been a difficult thing, but I paint because it has been my major interest ever since I can remember."

"I never even thought of being anything else but an artist. As a kid I didn't know exactly what I wanted to be but there was an awareness that I was longing for something. Art satisfied that longing."


Art directors clearly appreciated Fletcher Martin's commitment to his personal vision. His work was included in several volumes of the New York Art Directors Club Annuals during the '40s and '50s... and advertising assignments from major national corporations were offered time and again.


Even so, to those who would follow in his footsteps Martin proffered this qualifier: "The freedom to do what you want to do doesn't automatically produce a good thing. I don't suffer, because I enjoy the whole trial and tribulation of the problem."

"But a commission has a much more positive and definable goal than a painting that you're just doing to please yourself. Freedom is desirable..."


" ... but it can be an adversary too."

* My Fletcher Martin Flickr set.

* For those who missed yesterday's comments, Joyce K. Schiller, Curator at the Norman Rockwell Center for American Visual Studies wrote to tell us that the study drawing for the December 27, 1943 cover of Life magazine by Fletcher Martin was a recent gift to the Norman Rockwell Museum collections and is currently hanging in a gallery called "Curator's Choice: Selections from the Norman Rockwell Museum Collections."

What a great opportunity for those within striking distance of the NRM! Thanks for the heads-up, Joyce.

*Also: Be sure to drop by Charlie Allen's Blog for the latest CAWS - wherein Charlie concludes his adventures in "duck stamping".

*And finally: A new post at Storyboard Central showcasing more amazing artwork by Italian illustrator, Roberto Molino.

Fletcher Martin: The Art of War

In June 2007 I spent a week showcasing the work and career of Fletcher Martin. Among the biographical details we covered was a brief passage about Martin's experience as an artist-correspondent on assignment for Life magazine during W.W. II. I mentioned in passing that his December 1943 cover and 13-page article for Life brought him national recognition. Earlier this year I acquired that issue of Life. On this Remembrance Day (Veteran's Day in the U.S.) I'm pleased to present to you all of the Fletcher Martin material from that issue.




















* If You never saw my previous posts on this remarkable artist, you can read them at these links:

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part5

* Fletcher Martin's work is represented by The Fletcher Gallery

* My Fletcher Martin Flickr set