L’Indochine Française

An outstanding part of Vincent Lam’s recent novel of Vietnam, The Headmaster’s Wager, set during the long years of the country’s colonial history involving the French, Japanese and Americans, is description of French influence in Saigon and the nearby Chinese community of Cholon. There are perhaps many who are unaware of just how beautiful the city was during the 1940s and 50s before it all began to crumble under external pressure. Looking for further images of Saigon during those years I came upon a site devoted to the history and culture of Vietnam across the years and it turned out to house a treasure of impressive ads popular during the French hegemony in that country. For those willing to challenge the French language, there are a dozen or more pages filled with pictures and ads from the old Vietnam. 

Since I do not read French very well, my guess is the above graphic is an undated political propaganda poster by Jean Picard extolling the French as aides in the south’s war against the northern communists.

A fine example of French graphic art, extolling the beauty of Chinese Creek in Saigon.

The poster above advertises a popular tobacco company in Saigon during the period, one producing both cigars and cigarettes. One more superb graphic design.  

In this poster we see a line of workers carrying harvested rice up a slope in the Tonkin Delta of northern Vietnam. The area is known for its rice production.

Poster for a French airline carrying passengers between Hanoi and Saigon

Another poster advertising the natural beauty of north Vietnam’s Baie de Ha Long, written in French as Baie d’Along

This ad for a garage is especially charming with its drawing of a black man. Interesting to note that such images were extremely popular in French graphic art during the early twentieth century.

The Art of Yuko Shimizu

Yuko Shimizu is a freelance illustrator living and working in New York City and an instructor at the School of Visual Arts. She was born and grew up in Tokyo always dreaming of becoming an artist. As a woman, the pursuit of that dream was made difficult by growing up in a traditional Japanese family. She studied marketing and advertising at prestigious Waseda University and following graduation worked in advertising in Tokyo for ten years until deciding it was time to make a change and do what she really wanted to do. She left Japan in 1999 to study at the School of Visual Arts in New York. And as they say, the rest is history.

“Panda Bear Girl—The First Asian American Superheroine”—illustration included in the book Artistic Utopia

Since finishing her studies at the School of Visual Arts Ms Shimizu has worked full-time in illustration. Her work has been published in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Spain, Turkey and Japan, and her client list is filled with names like The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, Interview Magazine, Esquire and Financial Times Magazine. She also finds time to teach in the Illustration and Cartooning Department at the School of Visual Arts.

Outside magazine March 2006; illustration for an article on species that have the fastest growing populations. Beautifully rendered blackbirds stare with a puzzled expression at the creatures inside eggs of an exquisite robin’s egg blue. Note the tree branches drawn in the ink wash style of fifteenth-century Japanese landscape painter Sesshû Tôyô.

Shimizu works in a Manhattan studio, a space she shares with two artists whom she thinks of as her New York family. She loves to travel and usually for two months of the year visits different cities and countries, lecturing at art schools and events, meeting other artists and teachers.

Utne Magazine February 2005 Cover; a totally bizarre illustration showing a young Japanese kamikaze pilot riding a harnessed snail over New York City.

One of three billboards created for a Tiger Beer ad campaign; here in what resembles the design of an old postcard we see a modern container ship loaded with Tiger Beer. Created for billboards, the three illustrations are huge.

With her strong Japanese heritage, it probably is not at all unusual that Shimizu’s illustrations harken back to Japanese woodcuts. With its artful mixture of old and new, in another way her work brings comparisons to modern poet Tawara Machi, who shocks the reader with unexpected combinations. Like the poet, within tradition there is a strong sense of modern sophistication, evidence of a life fed by the color and electric throb of New York City. One magazine cover may include cell phones and iPods beneath falling cherry blossoms with Mt Fuji in the background, while another will show a full moon over an arched bridge straight out of Hiroshige and a half-clothed tattooed woman holding a boom box.

Cover for the October 2007 issue of Word magazine (UK) monthly supplement CD Now Hear This!

A personal favorite is the magazine cover inspired by the Clint Eastwood film, Letters from Iwo Jima. The foreground is framed by a Japanese army officer handing over a letter to a demure Japanese woman—wife or mother. In the middle ground Japanese soldiers toil through curling waves, while in the background Iwo Jima stands against the Rising Sun flag and bombers fly through blossoming cherry trees. Two panels in the top right display the name of the film and the director.

Entertainment Weekly year end Issue 2006; cover illustration for the movie, Letters from Iwo Jima.

In creating a new design, Shimizu reads the attached article, sometimes as many as twenty pages, or in some instances a mere sentence from which she must extract an idea. First comes research before making several free sketches with pen and pencil to help solidify ideas. Having settled upon a basic design, she makes a drawing in the actual size stipulated by the client. She traces the drawing on a light box using pencil and ink, with brush and India ink for any Japanese calligraphy. After the drawing is complete, she scans it and adds color using Photoshop.

Theater poster for the Stephen Sondheim-Amon Miyamoto production of Pacific Overtures, Kanagawa Art Theater, June-July 2011; a gigantic and redheaded Commodore Matthew Perry forces his way through the doors into Japan. The fusuma doors are a clever twist on the opening of the country to foreigners in 1854.

Yuko Shimizu is a fairly common name in Japan and one or two other figures in the limelight share the name. The Yuko Shimizu here is not to be mistaken with another Yuko Shimizu known for designing the well-known Hello Kitty icon for Sanrio.

For an excellent and informative Interview with the illustrator look here.

From Montana to London

Montana-born artist Edward McKnight Kauffer (1890–1954) ranks as one of the most significant designers of the twentieth century, noted for his avant garde graphic design and poster art. With long years of living in London, connections to the artistic avant-garde in Britain and France put Kauffer at the forefront of developments in the visual language of advertising during the 1930s. Retrospective exhibitions of the artist’s work have been held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

Two airbrush illustrations from the 1930 book, World Polity in 2030; both illustrations show the artist working in the style of vorticism which favored machine-like forms.

A Lithograph titled Cricketer done in 1923

By the age of twenty Kauffer was living in San Francisco and studying art at the Mark Hopkins Art Institute. Through connections at the Art Institute, Professor Joseph McKnight of the University of Utah became aware of Kauffer and his work and chose to sponsor the young artist, paying for further study in Paris. In gratitude, Kauffer took his sponsor’s name as his own middle name.

Flea; Lithograph done in 1926 for the London Underground

Before leaving for Paris Kauffer studied briefly at the Art Institute of Chicago. While there he attended the much heralded Armory Show which introduced post-modernism to American audiences. The exhibition had a major impact on Kauffer, and many of the same styles showed up in his later career. He arrived in Paris in 1913 and studied at the Académie Moderne until 1914. He moved to London with the start of the World War, and remained there for the next twenty-six years. After only a year in London he had already become an extremely influential designer of posters, theatre costume, exhibition designs, murals, book illustrations, carpets and textiles. He and his wife-to-be Marion Dorn, also a designer, were a dynamic, glamorous couple in London’s art scene.

On the left is a lithograph from 1924 for Eno’s Fruit Salt; the right shows a lithograph for Gilbey’s Invalid Port done in 1933.

Kauffer is perhaps best known for the posters he produced for London Underground, and later London Transport. Those posters span a number of styles: many show abstract influences that include futurism, cubism, and vorticism, while others evoke the impressionist influence of Japanese woodcuts.

One in a series of illustrations done in 1946 for a 2-volume set on Edgar Allan Poe

The Lodger, 1926; tempura on paper

The artist returned to New York City in 1940 and sought work in advertising. He managed a few jobs designing posters for war relief agencies and the United Nations, but the atmosphere of the New York art world at the time was highly competitive and Kauffer struggled until 1947 when he was asked to do a series of posters for American Airlines. The airline continued to be his primary client until his death in 1954.

1931 lithograph, You Can Be Sure of Shell