Thursday, October 23, 2008

The Fanciful Fred Siebel

For several years in the late 1940's Fred Siebel illustrated a fanciful series of ads for Textron. One of those ads made it into the 1948 Art Directors Annual.


The male-oriented Textron ads were often pretty hoaky and personally I've never given them much regard. But as I compiled a bunch for this post, I had to admit they are worth a closer look.


Siebel tucked a lot of interesting and amusing details into the backgrounds of these ads.


The Textron ads aimed at women were another thing entirely. Can you believe that the same artist who did the Collier's cover of Stalin we looked at on Monday did these?

Frankly, Siebel's Textron ads for women never much appealed to me at all. Again, it wasn't until I began preparing them for this post that I gave them closer consideration.

You get a new perspective when you've scanned something and accidentally see it cropped and close up. It struck me that Siebel really succeeded in evoking a wonderful mood in these dream-like scenes of femininity.


Sometimes its the simple sublety of a breeze wafting through a deep, leafy forest...



... or a foot dipped in the cooling waters of a seaside pool...




Other times its the amusing kitchiness of cartoonish cupids...


... but it could also be the wonderment...


... of a magical midsummer night's dream.


Like so much of what Frederick Siebel did, these ads represent only one tiny facet of his remarkable range.

* My Fred Siebel Flickr set.

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