In the 1950s and 60s, many illustrated magazines went out of business and traditional opportunities for illustrators began to dry up. Illustrators searched doggedly for new outlets.
Few artists had ever considered illustrating corporate annual reports containing financial results for shareholders. There seemed to be little potential for creativity there:
But in the hands of imaginative artists, corporate reports turned out to offer surprising opportunities. Great illustrators such as Daniel Schwartz transformed annual reports, inserting poetry between consolidated balance sheets.
For example, the Board of Directors of United Foods bragged to its consumers and stockholders that it had hired “noted painter and sculptor” Daniel Schwartz to decorate the United Foods report especially for them:
Schwartz’s landscape for the cover for the Amfac Corporate report…
…was as loose and free as a Degas monoprint (except for the tiny Amfac truck Schwartz added in the corner):
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| Degas |
Schwartz brought the aesthetic of a fine artist and gallery painter to a corporate report:
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| detail from Schwartz’s Amfac cover |
With a little imagination, Schwartz was able to find as much latitude illustrating corporate reports as artists previously found illustrating fiction for popular magazines.
Ever since the 1960s each generation of illustrators seems to have fresh reasons to fear obsolescence. New technologies, economic downturns and evolving taste all cut into historical markets. Yet, the resourcefulness of talented artists has repeatedly been a source of inspiration. Often the paths they chart seem obvious in hindsight.
Craig Mullins, who came along after Schwartz, dabbled with Photoshop during his lunch hour and became one of the first to see the great potential of digital painting for video games, creating a gold rush for illustrators.
Nathan Fowkes, who I think is one of the most talented and genuine illustrators working today, gave an excellent lecture on how artists might continue to “stay relevant” by finding new ways to add value in the face of alarming new technological changes, such as artificial intelligence. That talk is available on You tube.
