Treasures and Musings @ Modern Graphic History Library

Father's Day Gift Ideas from MGHL

Don't forget that this Sunday is Father's Day.  If you are still looking for a gift to give your dad, why not go with a tried and true, traditional gift: a necktie!

Al Parker fiction illustration for Girl With A Briefcase by Ruth Lyons for Good Housekeeping, September 1956.

Solid colors provide nice accents of color...

T.D. Skidmore fiction illustration  for A Diamond Setting by Octavus Roy Cohen from American Weekly, January 1932.

Diagonal stripes are also very classy...

Illustration of unidentified man by Robert Weaver, undated.

 Small polka-dotted patterns are also fashionable...

Illustration of unidentified man by Jack Unruh, undated. 

For those wanting more color, there's always multi-colored checkered...

llustration of unidentified man by Robert Andrew Parker, undated.

Just remember, the color and pattern of the tie should coordinate with the shirt and jacket.

Old Gold Cigarette advertisement by Robert O. Reid, Colliers, November 15, 1941.

Best of luck to you in your tie selecting.  Happy Father's Day!

Credits:

The T.D. Skidmore and Robert O. Reid illustrations are from the Charles Craver Collection.  The remaining images are from the Al Parker Collection, the Robert Andrew Parker Collection, the Jack Unruh Collection, and the Robert Weaver Collection.

Thrill Seekers Exhibit Now Available Online

Remember that exhibit we mentioned a few weeks ago? Well, in case you aren't able to visit Olin Library, you can now view Thrill Seekers: The Rise of Men's Magazines online.

Like the in-person exhibit, the digital companion features the original artwork, tear sheets, and whole issues of mid-century magazines like Esquire, Playboy, Sports Illustrated, and Fortune, as well as lesser-known pulp fiction titles and girlie magazines. The exhibit draws on several of MGHL's collections and includes items like Robert Andrew Parker's illustrations for Vladimir Nabokov's fiction, Al Parker's take on the Monaco Grand Prix, 1930's ads from Esquire, Robert Weaver's illustrations for James Bond stories, and Ernest Trova's version of the Playboy bunny. The digital exhibit contains over 60 images -- some of which we weren't able to include in the in-person exhibit -- as well as a few additional features like recommending reading and relevant digital resources.

Below is one of our favorites -- an original Robert Andrew Parker watercolor for a Nabokov story that appeared in a 1965 issue of Playboy. To see more, check out Thrill Seekers online.

MGHL's Exhibit Thrill Seekers at Olin Library

MGHL's exhibit Thrill Seekers: The Rise of Men's Magazines opens today at Washington University's Olin Library. The exhibit charts the growth of men's magazines from the 1940s to the 1960s, and highlights original artwork, tear sheets, and whole issues of Esquire, Playboy, Sports Illustrated, and Fortune, as well as pulp fiction and girlie magazines. Artists featured include Al Parker, Robert Weaver, Ernest Trova, and Robert Andrew Parker, among others. The exhibit will be on display in the Ginkgo Reading Room and Grand Staircase Lobby until January 4, 2013. A digital version of the exhibit is forthcoming, but in the meantime, you can check out a few highlights below.

This Stetson hat advertisement, illustrated by Edwin Georgi, appeared in the June 1939 issue of Esquire

1950 issue of the pulp magazine Adventure

1966 issue of Debonair

 August 1957 cover of Fortune by Robert Andrew Parker

This article, illustrated by Robert Weaver, appeared in the April 1959 issue of Esquire

The December 1979 issue of Playboy featured this three-panel "Do It Yourself" insert by Ernest Trova

Race, Ethnicity, & Identity at the Modern Graphic History Library

We've created a new research guide for anyone interested in researching race and ethnicity in the Modern Graphic History Library's collections. It provides an overview of what kind of materials and images we have and how to find them, relevant digital image collections, and recommended books. The guide draws from four different collections and highlights relevant original artwork, magazines, tear sheets, children's books, comic books, graphic novels, and zines.

A few images, along with more information about the collections represented in the guide, are included below. Check out the Race, Ethnicity, and Identity at MGHL research guide to see more, and don't forget to take a look at our recent guides about Advertisements and Women in Popular Culture if you haven't already.

Illustration from the Robert Weaver Collection. Weaver was dedicated to capturing the changing social and cultural climate of his times, and this collection is particularly strong in mid-century depictions of African Americans.

Illustration from A Great Miracle Happened There: A Chanukah Story, part of the Robert Andrew Parker Collection. Parker has illustrated over 40 children's books, several of which deal with race and ethnicity. The collection contains original artwork as well as published books.

The above comic is part of the Center for the Humanities Comics Collection which is comprised of thousands of comic books, predominantly published between 1960 and 2000. The collection contains a particularly strong selection of titles featuring African American super heroes and protagonists. This collection also includes graphic novels, magazines, and zines dealing with race and ethnicity.

Illustration by Stevan Dohanos, from the Charles Craver Collection. This collection contains hundreds of tear sheets of illustrated fiction, nonfiction, and advertisements from the 1930s to the 1950s by dozens of important mid-century illustrators. A list of illustrators relevant to researchers of race and ethnicity is available on the Craver page of the research guide.

Robert Weaver's Spring Training Sketchbook

Now that it's baseball season, we wanted to share with you some of the most popular images from the Robert Weaver Collection: the spring training sketchbook. The work below was done on assignment for Sports Illustrated in 1962. Many more of these sketches are available through LUNA. (You will need your WUSTL key to log in; if you're not affiliated with Washington University and would like to see more, you can contact us.)

This Day in History: Robert Weaver's Society of Illustrators' Hall of Fame Letter

In 1985, Robert Weaver was inducted into the Society of Illustrators' Hall of Fame. Check out the letter informing him of the good news, written twenty-seven years ago today, below. For more about Weaver, see the finding aid for the Robert Weaver Collection or this blog post about him.

Four Views of Winter

One of the benefits of the MGHL having such a diverse collection is seeing the different ways  illustrators portray a particular subject. With that in mind, today we're highlighting a few winter scenes by Robert Andrew Parker, Al Parker, Jack Unruh, and Robert Weaver. Links to the finding aids are below.

An illustration from the children's book Piano Starts Here: The Young Art Tatum, written and illustrated by Robert Andrew Parker

A greeting card illustrated by Jack Unruh

Magazine illustration by Robert Weaver

February 1938 cover of The Country Home by Al Parker

Robert Weaver's Brief Lives

"You can look at real things...and you can make art out of it.  There is drama in the most ordinary things if you just pay close attention."
- Robert Weaver, quote from 1985 Society of Illustrators President's Dinner and Hall of Fame Presentation.

Images from Brief Lives,  an artist's book compilation of urban juxtapositions, circa 1970s.