Perlin Exhibit: the countdown continues ...

Above are three of the 40+ pages of the exhibit booklet we're putting together for Bernard Perlin: An Artist Goes to War. Notice how skimpy the Special Thanks page is looking. You guys need to make a pledge!

The page size is roughly 7" x 10". The fun part is deciding which illustrations to put in the text and which deserve a page of their own -- a "plate" to be all official about it. Decisions like that will be made until the very last minute.

Perlin exhibit: April update

Plans are rolling right along for Bernard Perlin: An Artist Goes to War.

A pleasant discovery was finding the location of several works Perlin created for Life magazine in 1944. I had stumbled across the PBS documentary, They Drew Fire, which focuses on war artists, and something I need to go back and watch. What puzzled me was the attribution of a work we know Perlin has in his possession to the US Army Center of Military History.

In 1960, Life gave the hundreds and hundreds of works they had relating to their war art program to the Defense Department, which then transferred them to the US Army Center of Military History. This art covers all military branches, so don't be surprised if something documenting naval operations is in the Army Center.

Given the crazy leads I've been chasing down for my Resorts at Sea project, a quick email to the US Army Center would be cake. Lo and behold, they wrote back about a week later saying they have ten works by Bernard Perlin. Perlin did three articles for Life, and I have one of them; from February 1945. The art at the Army Center makes up the bulk of that article.

Ambush, Island of Samos, 1944 and Mountain Operations, 1944.

Courtesy of the Army Art Collection, US Army Center of Military History.

To me, the art shown here is an early ancestor to today's graphic novels. I even see some style similarities with Genndy Tartakovsky's groundbreaking animated series Samurai Jack.

Watch this space for further updates!

Plan B

A few weeks back, I wrote about co-organizing and designing for an exhibit planned for the fall, a career retrospective of Bernard Perlin. Shortly after I posted, the numbers started coming in regarding what it would cost to borrow various works from various institutions. Yowza. There is such a barrier to entry, no wonder many people write off art as only being for the elites.

A quick regrouping and Plan B was formulated. Perlin's work for Life and Fortune magazines is actually his first major body of work, and one where we can see an artist grow and develop. And the bulk of the material is in one spot, with very little borrowing involved.

Design 101 (for me, anyway) dictates that a strong graphic will make your look. The one utilized here is called Patrol Disembarks. Coupled with the title "an artist goes to war," the linkage is undeniable. A mockup of the poster in on the left, the bones of a newspaper ad on the right.

Still have to raise money, though, but it's less than Plan A, so it should be easier. (Knock on wood.)

Designs for an Exhibit

For those who haven’t been paying attention, I’ve been teasing about an art exhibit. This project is linked to my Resorts at Sea study. I’ve mentioned I’ve been in contact with a few of the artists who created art for American-built passenger ships. I’ve also said it’s been hard not to delve into the other works of these artists: the non-commercial art, the art for art’s sake; not the art for hire.

Bernard Perlin is 94 years old. He entered a national design competition sponsored by the Section of Fine Arts and the U.S. Maritime Commission in the spring of 1940. During the summer of that year, he was notified he won two commissions for the President Hayes, the third ship in the President Jackson-class of American President Lines.

Last summer, after I had found a good number of the artists involved in this study, I started gathering biographical material. I was stunned to find Mr. Perlin was still alive. (I shouldn’t have been, one grandma passed six months shy of 100, the other is still going strong, about to turn 93.) I wrote him, sending along a couple articles to jog his memory. A few weeks later, he wrote back!

I called him, but there was one heck of a thunderstorm blowing on his end, then his phone died. After several tries to get him back, I gave up. I reached his machine the next day, and that weekend, he called me back. If I live to be his age, I hope to be half as sharp as he is. Stories flowed as if they happened yesterday, and I am truly touched he took the time to share them with me.

He gave me the name of a man in Chicago who’s been working on his life story for further details, admitting he may have missed some things. And that’s how Michael Schreiber and I became acquainted. Michael has taken on the Herculean task of giving Mr. Perlin’s career a second look. After diving into a Flickr page with hundreds of shots of a wide variety of works, I was blown away. An exhibit had to be organized. Over the holidays, Michael and I decided "to do this thing."

Michael has also been shopping around a Perlin biography, and has been given many excuses as to why it’s a bad idea. Most publishers would do it, but it'd have to be in conjunction with an exhibit, which wasn’t happening because institutions wouldn’t take it on for this, that, and the other reasons.

Frequent readers know I do a lot of work for the Kirksville Arts Association. Kirksville is in Missouri. Actor and art aficionado Vincent Price was born in St. Louis and later in life was a frequent speaker in the Lyceum Series at what is now Truman State University in Kirksville. Price met Perlin at the 1938 Kosciusko Foundation Ball in New York. They struck up a friendship, with Price giving Perlin a commission: a mural in his tiny apartment. Price spoke highly of Perlin in his 1959 book I Like What I Know.

Perlin was also great friends with Missouri natives Edna Fischel Gellhorn, a St. Louis civic leader and a founder and the first vice president of the National League of Women Voters, and her daughter, Martha Gellhorn, one of the first female war correspondents, and third wife of Ernest Hemingway.

I could go on and on, and still not do Mr. Perlin any justice. So let’s focus on the exhibit.

Trying to arrange an artist’s career output – in this case, a 75-year career – with a handful of pieces is harder than I could’ve imagined. It’s akin to waking up one morning and deciding to take up cliff diving, and twenty feet before you hit the water, you’re trying to remember if you know how to swim.

Playing with groupings.

 

I started with the works at a 1/4 inch scale, moving them around, seeing what groups worked and those that didn't. Then Michael and I sat down on the phone to winnow the list down. And here’s the arrangement so far …

 Pages from the planning docs showing wall elevations. 

Along with arranging the pieces, the exhibit needs to be publicized. I chose a self portrait from 1937, when he was 19. (Image top right at the beginning of this post.) It scales pretty well for most poster and ad sizes with minor cropping required.

And every exhibit needs a catalogue with essays and loads of images. If I told you who I’m talking with in arranging the printing, you wouldn’t believe me, so we’ll wait until it’s done.

Front cover and sample pages for exhibit catalogue. (I told you the poster graphic scales and crops nicely.) 

But above all else, in order to make this go, we need funding. Options are being explored.

This is a fun project, and I hope Michael and I can bring it to fruition.