Robert Weaver: "The artist... should be the reactor"

Not surprising to see that Weaver's work and words provoked some powerful reactions from readers yesterday - and how interesting to see enmity juxtaposed with admiration! Truly, Robert Weaver's polarizing effect on readers (especially those who are illustrators) reflects how each of us sees ourselves and our personal esthetic.

For those who are at this point incensed, I again encourage you try to keep an open mind and see where this week takes us.

Personally, there's very little about Weaver's artwork that appeals to me. But there's a lot in his philosophy and advocacy of the merit of illustration that I find extremely compelling, and its his words that have made me see his work in a new light.


In his 1959 interview in American Artist magazine, Weaver said, "If as an illustrator I say what is wrong with contemporary 'serious' painting, it is because I see no reason why an illustrator should not see himself as a serious contemporary painter."

"The artist should not merely reflect; in an atomic era he should be the reactor."


Speaking to the then popular trend in fine art toward abstract expressionism, Weaver chastised the 'serious' art world with this powerful criticism:

"On the simplest level it is an incredible oversight on the part of the artist that he neglects to use his eyes. A true avant-garde might today proclaim the return of subject matter!"

"In my own teaching I am trying to remedy this deficiency by ordering students out onto the streets with sketchpads. Once the initial shock of life wears off the student can begin to discover the magnitude of the world."


A laudable attitude - and one that even the most conservative-minded traditionalist illustrator would surely agree with. But for those content to maintain the status quo, Weaver qualified his statement:

"But just as he cannot afford to ignore the world he cannot afford to turn his back on the good things in our modern painting."



"While there is the obvious omission of life in our contemporary art, there are far graver deficiencies in what little conservative painting of merit is still being attempted. we cannot go back or retrench, as some would urge. Art, as life, evolves. If we think we can disguise the fact that a new generation is coming into being that rejects what we think is important by calling it 'the beat generation' we are kidding ourselves."


"Conservatism may be sound policy in fiscal matters, but the artist who ignores his time does so at great peril to his usefulness."

* My Robert Weaver Flickr set.

Robert Weaver: "Illustration is an essential to great painting."

As predicted, yesterday's post provoked some strong reactions - some enthusiastic, others a bit ornery. Readers asked, "why the controversy?" and wanted to take me to task for suggesting Robert Weaver might be somehow better (or even just different) than NC Wyeth.

In fact, my real intent was misread - I have little doubt that Robert Weaver could have admired NC Wyeth's (or Howard Pyle's) work and that these artists actually had more in common than we might expect at a glance.


That being said, the elephant in the room that has to be acknowledged is that the classical style of illustration, the tradition that came down by way of NC Wyeth and a thousand commercial artists who 'descended' from him, was, by the mid-century period, becoming irrelevant.


By the mid-1950s traditional, 'realistic' illustration was no longer fashionable, desirable or meaningful to the larger graphic arts industry or, frankly, even to many of the artists employed in making commercial pictures.(1)


While Robert Weaver may have admired Wyeth and Pyle, I get the feeling he had little more than disdain for their 'descendants' - for the Sundblom Santas and the Whitmore 'clinches'. Describing his take on the state of illustration in a 1959 interview in American Artist magazine Weaver said, "Many illustrators of today are too little concerned with the actualities of their time."


"Too often they merely aid and abet the pre-sold illusion of the age. The illustrator, who should be outside momentary surface illusions observing, is himself observed as part of the phenomena by more serious students of the time."


By "serious students", Weaver was not referring to the contemporary fine artists of the day, by the way. Of that crowd, he said, "Today's artist finds himself unattached to society. There is no mutual sense of responsibility He is 'free.' He likes it that way."

"Is it not that very freedom that has robbed art of its raison d'etre? I have noticed that abstract expressionism carried to the most reckless extremes no longer has the power to shock and disturb even the most conservative audiences. Ennui sets in."


"How can there be vitality without meaning? A much more intellectually challenging field of painting is that which includes illustration but is not limited by it." (emphasis Weaver's)


"Illustration is an essential to great painting. Abstractness cannot be equated with it; it is merely the grammar. Color, texture, design, etc. are tools to be applied to a purpose. 'Self expression' is not a purpose, it is an inevitable by-product of that purpose. It is at this point that the illustrator-painter should realize his opportunities."


"That he has not realized them is borne out by the low opinion in which the illustrator is held in the general art world."

* My Robert Weaver Flickr set.

(1) By example, consider the story of Murray Tinkelman luring, one by one, the Cooper studio artists away to Reuben Tam's painting class at the Brooklyn Museum. In Neil Shapiro's article in Illustration Magazine # 16, Cooper artist Don Crowley described Murray's influence (somewhat facetiously) on the Cooper staff as "[getting] those guys dissatisfied with what they were doing... they weren't happy doing illustrations any more. They wanted to be fine artists."