This might fall under the category of a rant, but it's something that's a major pet peeve for me, and others, and sort of gets back to a little of what I was talking about in the Illustration Academy entry. Bear with me. I know I'll probably sound like an old fart and all, but this problem is fairly epidemic.

Why is it that art students today seem so unmotivated to dig up the past, to educate themselves to what came before? I just don't understand their apathy, their ennui. They spend so much more time watching movies and going out drinking than I ever did in school. They only work when they have an assignment and even then they rarely have that. They don't even seem to care that it affects their grades. Hell I could care less about the grades, but what about their work? It affects their chances of ever getting to do this for a living.

I count myself lucky that I grew up when I did. As I mentioned before in an earlier post, my father had grown up in the Great Depression and cut his teeth on the old Pulp magazines. He passed his love of these things on to me and it stuck in a major way. I think my generation was one of the last to get that sense of the old cliffhanger mentality, the pulp aesthetic, if you will. Heroes were larger than life and they really stood for something. They weren't these anti-heroes of today. But that's another story. I was hungry for those tales, for the covers of those tales, for the thrill of hunting that stuff down and eating it up with all of my senses. I was not alone in this hunger, this mania. Talking with so many of my buddies who grew up when I did, they all confirm the need to get as much of this stuff as they could.

In Beaumont, Texas, where I grew up, there wasn't a lot that kids could do. The world didn't revolve around kids like it does today. So much of our culture is aimed specifically at our kids, all the various age groups. But back then you had to make your fun. It might be inventing games outside, playing stickball (or foil ball), exploring the woods and the oil fields, chasing the "bug man" (the insect truck spewing God knows what), or whatever. No one was going to entertain you. And the television was not an option. We got to watch television, but not all the time. You only had three channels that barely came in, and for the longest time it was all in black and white (yeah, I'm old). There were plenty of neat shows to watch, and I did watch them. But I spent scads of time being alone and discovering what the limited world around my home had to offer, and it was a lot, actually. We did a good amount of living.

But where I spent most of my time, when I wasn't out running the woods and ditches, was at my drawing board or reading my books and comics. I lived for those comics! They took me places I could never have imagined. And the art! I could not get enough of it. The artists meant something to me, they were individuals with separate voices and directions. I couldn't wait for each issue of a book to come out. I followed the stories, to be sure, but the art was what it was all about. It got to where I could easily distinguish the various artists by their styles, their deft use of a brush or pen. This is something that still surprises my wife. She doesn't know how I can remember all these artists and their styles. But I'm certainly not unique, most of my peers are the same way.

I haunted bookstores for rare comics, old books and magazines. I remember a place called Noah's Ark. Filled floor to ceiling with books, magazines, comics, ephemera of all kinds. Teetering stacks of musty old paper. It was a dingy heaven, and was owned and operated by this creepy old guy, Noah, I guess, with one of those tracheotomy voice box things. Scared the living shit out me and my best friend Lum. But we braved it out to try and unearth the treasures that were definitely buried in that place. Creepy and Eerie magazines, old comics, neat old paperbacks with those wonderful covers by Bob McGinnis, Jeff Jones, Frank Frazetta, etc. We were giddy with excitement when we hit one of these places.

The journey, the discovery was the point. That was as much about learning how to be an artist and developing sensibilities and aesthetics as going to art school and learning to recite a bunch of bland art history notes. I couldn't stand art history in art school because it was just dates and some names. But my own reading of the history of art was full of stories about why the artists did what they did, what kind of personalities they had, how they world affected what they were doing. The history of art suddenly was about people, and that made all the difference in the world to me. They became flesh and blood figures, not lofty giants striding where few mortals would dare to tread. They were goofballs and assholes and, yes, there were some great, great men and women among them as well. But they put their pants on one leg at a time and sat on the toilet surrounded by their own funk just like you and me.

I remember hitting the city library and digging through the art section, as well as the bound copies of Time Magazine and others. There was so much to see and learn from. Diving into books insures that you will discover something in the search. Doing a Google search is only good if you have a name to go by, and can spell it correctly. It's about as effective as a dictionary to someone who cannot read. But the pictures in the books tell their own story, who did the work, and how they did it.

Nothing beats "discovering" Bill Mauldin's Willie and Joe comics, or his memoirs (The Brass Ring) of his time in WWII doing those pieces and getting chewed out by General Patton. Nothing compares to freaking out over the Brandywine school of illustrators (Howard Pyle, NC Wyeth, Harvey Dunn, Frank Schoonover, et al), then finding their students and loving up on that work. There's an endless trove of art and artists out there, most almost entirely forgotten but for the love of a few professionals. Get out there and find this stuff!

Paintings and drawings do not lie. Everything you need to know about them is right there for you to see and work with. Your job is to try to understand the lessons there, decipher the information and then decide what applies to your own work, your own direction. But looking up the work, discovering these artists that so many have forgotten is exhilarating.

Why would anyone not want to know as much about the history of the thing they love? Why must students be dragged kicking and screaming to delve into the rich history of art, whether it is fine art, comics, illustration or whatever? It makes no sense to me. If I didn't love art so much I wouldn't have cared enough to dig deeper every chance I got. Hell, I'm still digging, still loving the thrill of the hunt. The discovery is what it's all about. The quickening of the pulse, the mad sweats when you uncover some gem of an artist all but forgotten.

Now, however, when I ask a student to name, say, five artists that have influenced them, jazzed them, I get a dead stare. Are you kidding me? They ostensibly want to be illustrators, but they can't name five illustrators. I rattle off a list of illustrators working today, huge names, important names, and they shake their heads — never heard of them. It takes the wind out of my sails, like a gut punch.

The only glimmer of hope I get is that there is always one or two, possibly three students who "get it." I can see that the connection gets made and they become hungry too. The lights go on. They look back on those golden years of illustration and see the wonderful work that came before and it hits them where they live. They catch the fever. It shows in their demeanor and in their work, which suddenly has made a jump in complexity. It's also not so self-referential, it tackles things larger than their smaller world. It turns them from naval lint inspectors to universal beings. There are greater brains at work, greater artists than we will ever be. It's humbling and that's a good thing. They'll no longer need the jaws of life to get their heads through the door frame.

It's great that some students will be inspired by whatever art is current. Anything that will get them interested is fantastic. It's amazing that we have the opportunity to see art by people today that serves up a smörgåsbord of influences. But don't take their word for how cool someone's work was. You're getting a diluted version of the thing at best. Go to the source, the well-spring and get the original. See what it looks like in its purest form. This will help you to understand why artist's did what they did.

The reason you're turned on by a certain artist's work is because there's something of you in there that you recognize, but can't put a name to. The trick is to study the work of these people and boil it down to the essence, find the thing that's ringing your bell and then inject that into your work.

Some books that help take the rose-colored glasses off of the artists and render them much more human are:

Rembrandt's Monkey:And Other Tales from the Secret Lives of the Great Artists by Alexandra Connor. This book is filled with crazy stories about artists through the years.

Depths of Glory by Irving Stone. The life of Camille Pissarro.

Rembrandt's Eyes by Simon Schama. The life of Rembrandt.

Goya by Robert Hughes.

My Adventures as an Illustrator by Norman Rockwell. Rockwell is so unpretentious, so like his work that this is a wonderful read.

The Gentle Art of Making Enemies by James McNeil Whistler. This book can come off as somewhat pretentious were it not for Whistler's rye wit. Also the transcript of his famous battle with Ruskin makes for fantastic reading. There are also many good biographies on Whistler worth reading, notably Whistler by Stanley Weintraub.

A Painter's Pilgrimage by Raphael Soyer. I found this book inscribed by Soyer in an old bookshop in New York. I couldn't believe my luck. His observations about the paintings of the great masters is incredibly insightful. His notes on being an artist also as memorable.

Up Front and The Brass Ring by Bill Mauldin.