Images from here, here, and here.

I find most contemporary illustration to be too gimmicky these days to be appealing, so it’s had me doing a little poking around looking at illustrators from the past. (Of course, that isn’t to say that there wasn’t plenty of artifice in past illustration.) Anyway, illustration doesn’t get the respect that fine art does because of the primary intent of illustrative work, but it’s silly when you think about how heavily reliant the contemporary art world is on commodification and yes, gimmickry as well. Superficiality can be found across all mediums of artistic expression. This subject warrants a deeper discussion, but that’s not the point of this post.

Robert Weaver, born in Pittsburgh, PA (home sweet home-ha ha) in 1924, was a dominant illustrator in the 1950s and 60s whose work was regularly published in Life, The New York Times, Sports Illustrated, Esquire, and other major publications. Weaver’s work has a depth that goes far beyond performing simply as colourful accompaniment to text. There is a freedom and expression in his line that moves it beyond being flatly representational that I find impelling.

There’s a quite bit of discussion about Weaver’s work and his contemporaries scattered across the internet. If you feel like doing some reading, check out the write-ups here and here. Interesting stuff.

You can see more from this great flickr set, and the NYT has a slideshow of his baseball illustrations. All images from the flickr set, and the first blog link listed in the preceding paragraph.

Carolin lerch, who is the founder of clothing line, Pelican Avenue, and a former assistant to Bernhard Willhelm, doesn’t produce clothing simply for the sake of fashion. She states on the website that, “The label’s intention is to question conventional codes of fashion, to propose a different approach, to avoid stagnation and complacency. Pelican avenue tries to form an opposition to constantly changing trends and the destructive attitude of hypes.”

Lerch is another designer who strays from convention by integrating video, performance, photography, and installation into the presentation of her pieces. Her work has more in common with fine art than it does fashion, which I think ads appeal and depth to her pieces.

I’ve posted pieces from her four most recent projects/collections.