Jellyfish

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Jaleen Grove, “Netting Jellyfish,” , Vol. 4, #3 ( June, 2012)

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has become. That is approximately what happened around 1950, when TV and better reproductive techniques for photography came along, coupled with a swing in fashion towards abstract art and critical media theory. When illustrators left the conversations with gallery-art people about what constituted ‘art’, and when they failed to defend themselves against academics’ attacks that equated commercial art with mass ma-nipulation and corporate exploitation, illustrators effectively silenced themselves and laid the profession open to ravage. Morris and Pyle would have been so disappointed in their heirs, but it is not all illustrators’ fault: academics and fine artists had retracted the ivory tower drawbridge and were not listening anyways. As a result, in North America it has become a cliché in the literature to lament how little work has been done on il-lustration, how biased the museums, how empty the archives, how misunderstood the field and how unremarked the poverty-stricken passing of once-celebrated illustrators. That is why we have not heard of ‘illustration research’ before.

Compare that legacy to that of graphic design. We used to be the same people: commercial artists. Fiction illustrators, valued as artists (thanks, Pyle), were responsible for devising their own layouts and spec’ing type. Then about 1940 the notion took root that since the whole was more important than the parts (thanks, Morris), the orches-trators of said wholes must also be more important. By the 1950s ‘graphic designers’ were calling the shots and illustrators filled orders like fast-food restaurants: ‘You want a side of red with that? Yes sir!’ Designers went on to intellectualize their work, and now there is a healthy field of Design Studies. I have often reflected that illustration ought to be thought of as , which would make apparent how much careful consideration goes into illustration quite equal to that of graphic or industrial design, but I digress.

Illustrator apathy aside, the main factor in why illustration research has been incomplete and neglected for so long may ironically be what I already suggested was its promise: interdisciplinarity. Found everywhere, illustration has belonged nowhere, because it constitutes only of other things and has therefore been treated as a marginal topic in science, art, media, literature, business and design. Even illustrators have been divided by the differences in their sub-professions as medical and scientific illustrators, picture-book makers, fashion illustrators, conceptual illustrators, story-board artists, technical illustrators and so on. Then there are the much-contested cate-gories, such as cartooning, animating, realistic gallery painting, motion graphics, street art and more, which may not be ‘illustration’ in its hardcore sense but which certainly share its characteristics and are called ‘illustration’ frequently enough. Scholars writing on illustration have been equally diverse, coming from various social sciences and hu-

Netting JellyfishA point of view on illustration research from

the United States and Canada

Jaleen Grove, State University of New York

AbstractAs researchers in illustration continue to develop what some call ‘illustration theory’, the need for a meta-perspective grows. What is illustration research? Who is doing it? Why are we doing it, and how? What opportunities, needs and pitfalls exist? Focussing on activity in The United States and Canada, this article offers a conceptual model of ‘illustration research’ in which three domains of cur-rent activity are surveyed: that of practitioners, that of connoisseurs and that of scholars. Strengths and weaknesses of each area are discussed, and suggestions regarding purpose and needs are made. A reference list representing work from the three domains follows.

‘Illustration research’ as a discipline is completely new in the United States and Cana-da, although the compiling of knowledge about illustration in its modern form has been going on since Victorian times. As an illustration historian, I see illustration research’s promise is to focus and galvanize disparate activities by illustrators, collectors, histori-ans, scholars and other stakeholders in a manner that will define and give purpose to the profession of illustration in a way not seen since the Golden Age, when William Morris redefined design and Howard Pyle unified and dignified illustration. But times have changed: Pyle and Morris never had to contend with marketers and scientists waving fMRI data, for instance. ‘Unity’ and ‘dignity’ will not manifest as they did back then, any more than we shall see heroic figures like Pyle or Morris able to change the entire field singlehandedly. Plurality will prevail, and illustration research, as an emerging dis-cipline, can allow multiple points of view to mingle, to sort out just what is happening in the manufacture and consumption of images past and present.

Mind you, input from those who know nothing of the creative practice of il-lustration but who write on it anyways will disrupt our artistic self-conceptions and egos, as they did in the past. It will be one of our chief challenges as creative practitio-ners to welcome conversations between disciplines, rather than to wall ourselves into our studios, sullenly commiserating with each other about how ridiculous the art world


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shared by our free-ranging school of jellyfish.I am choosing to highlight Williams’ and Newton’s scholarly work, inte-

grated with and based upon their professional practices and educational work, because I believe it to be an exemplar of the research paradigm ‘illustration re-search’ is trying to define for itself, based on my observation of the number of practitioners now finally beginning to theorize what they do (Pyle and Morris would be proud). Williams and Newton state their textbook’s purpose unambig-uously: ‘As scholars, artists, educators – and concerned citizens of this earth – we offer you [the young student] the means by which you can learn to discern and rectify imbalances within yourself, your community, and society at large for the common good of humankind’ (2007: xix). Whether one agrees with this specific mission statement is less important than recognizing that having a mission is necessary for any illustration researcher to define their goals, sustain attention and have an impact. As a group, we must realize that sense of collective goal is necessary for ‘illustration research’ to find itself as a discipline, as opposed to random individuals randomly working on more or less illustrative subjects with no concept of how they fit together or what the point to it all is. What is our mission for illustration research?

We can only discover this by sympathetically surveying what is out there, but this will not be easy. If interdisciplinarity is our strength, it is equally true that its weaknesses – fractures, isolation and competing worldviews between factions – have characterized the past and constitute immediate challenges go-ing forward. The very nuclear core of illustration, its visual–verbal fusion, is also Cain and Abel fission, because non-verbal thinking and verbal thinking are in-herently different, as Williams and Newton go to pains to demonstrate. Illustra-tion may be about bringing them together omniphasically, but much research on and practice in illustration necessarily must tear them apart, and research meltdown can result as easily as boundless energy might occur. Any practitioner will tell you there is a creative state that is beyond words, and any collector will say they cannot find words to express why they love a picture, but many a scholar or critic will attempt to find the words them and believe that they have suc-ceeded. Disagreement over ekphrasis has led to some of the more spectacular fallings-out between makers, consumers and scholars.

I once sent the connoisseur and blogger David Apatoff (who is a cor-porate lawyer by day) to see art historian Alexander Nemerov speak. Apatoff ’s response demonstrates such methodological differences:

manities disciplines as well as emerging from among practitioners and consumers. They do not always call it illustration, which retains negative stigma in some circles. Instead it is word and image, or visual culture, or infographics, or sequential images, or pictorial reportage or what have you. In the cases of media such as film, television, games, and even architecture, it all starts with concept sketches and storyboards. When you start thinking about it, you realize everything visual (except the most determinedly art-for-art’s sake of ‘fine’ art) illustrates in some capacity, and there is a plethora of correspond-ing research arms reaching in all directions. Suddenly our problem is not a dearth of illustration research, but netting an amorphous swarm of drifting jellyfish. I think this is why a satisfactory illustration history textbook has so long evaded us.

A sea change in how we think about visual-everything has made it possible to glimpse this formerly invisible-because-they-are-everywhere jellyfish swarm. The emergence of what we now call visual studies began it. In the related field of visual com-munication, photographer and professor Rick Williams has linked cultural study of the visual with new research in the hard sciences. Functional MRI and other new technol-ogy has now confirmed what cultural theorists, advertisers and illustrators knew years ago: that images affect the emotional parts of the brain before words and before ratio-nal thinking kicks in; that visuals influence thought before and without our conscious knowledge; that visuals – in conjunction with other senses, but with a significant edge over them – are integral to thought, learning and understanding (see Williams in Hope 2006). These discoveries have made it possible to invert the equation, to now conceive of as the centre and as marginal.

Williams and partner Julianne Newton have theorized just that, and have developed a textbook (2007) which teaches, in his words in an e-mail to me, ‘that visual art is the primary integrative component of education that spe-cifically integrates all cognitive modalities and all multiple intelligences in ways that enhance learning, creativity, critical thinking and problem solving and per-formance across all disciplines’. Williams wrote ‘visual art’, but the textbook’s skill-developing and critical-thinking exercises involve illustrative tasks: visu-alization, symbol-making, contour drawing, typography, layout, story-telling and picture-making in various graphic and photographic media. Williams and Newton have been successful in using it to change the curriculum of Oregon high schools to integrate visual practice, in recognition that what they call ‘in-tuitive literacy’ and omniphasic (whole brain, multiple intelligence) thinking are central to the human endeavour in practical and ethical terms. The hardwired omniphasic brain process – essentially a visual–verbal hybrid – is the nucleus


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I enjoyed the Nemerov talk, although I found it to be closer to a poetry recital than a lecture on art history. He is one eloquent son of a gun, and talks in a very thoughtful, lyrical way, adopting a manner of presentation usually reserved for po-ets reciting their own poetry – a theatrical, florid (sometimes bordering on unctu-ous) style. My personal preference is for a more flinty approach (I always want to be certain whether I am hearing cold fact or the author’s personal aesthetic response to the world). About 5 minutes into the talk, I felt like I was walking on a thick carpet of moss through a heavily perfumed tropical rain forest. That’s not what I came for, and I wasn’t sure I liked it, especially since the Ault paintings he was supposed to discuss were so austere and angular and spartan. But if you surrender to the notion that the lecture was really about Nemerov himself then it was fine. He was certainly eloquent and interesting enough to command center stage. So thanks for the recommendation. (Apatoff 2011)

I then mischievously sent him Nemerov’s controversial article ‘The boy in bed: The scene of reading in N. C. Wyeth’s “Wreck of the Covenant”’. Apatoff ’s reaction was explosive:

I read – or tried to read – the insufferable, pretentious horse crap that you sent me from Prof. Nemerov… such jejune persiflage… my safe distance from the profes-sion of art history enables me to speak candidly about such work without flinch-ing over conflicts of interest, professional retaliations, petty rivalries or economic dependencies. Ahhhh, freedom of speech – it’s wonderful! (Apatoff 2011

It might sooth him to know that the reaction from many of Nemerov’s art history peers was equally sceptical. The differences of approach are rooted in the history of cultural practices and institutional structures that themselves relate to the conflicts between verbal and visual thought, dating back to Plato’s cave and whether one trusts the visual versus the verbal to describe truth and to what degree. Resulting silos have isolated fan discourses from scholarly ones, hard sciences from humanities and practitioners from theorists. An interdisciplinary common space of illustration research can diffuse such fractures in our community by showing how neither visual nor verbal is dominant. Ei-ther can undermine OR reinforce the other depending on deployment. Apatoff ’s flinty approach and institutional critique and Nemerov’s poetic one and openness to creative theory both contribute usefully to our understanding of how that happens, along with other methods of old and recent vintages.

The most bitter contretemps of all has been between idea and implementation, better known as art versus craft, or reductively as painting versus ‘mere’ illustration,

mirroring another ancient western philosophical division between mind and body. This is what Morris and Pyle tried to heal in their separate ways, but the fission quickly be-came meltdown, as the power of combined verbal/non-verbal messaging got exploited for corporate gains, enabling art elites to equate even lofty illustration with moral de-basement. Who among us has not heard of what I have come to dub ‘the self-hating illustrator’? You know, the old boy (or girl) who is ashamed of his profession, who says he only did it to support his ‘real’ art, and who burned most of his illustrative works in the back yard. Sadly, Pyle’s chief protégé, the above mentioned N. C. Wyeth, was one (although I do not know if he burned anything), which makes me question the motive behind Pyle’s dictum that illustrators ought to be self-directed artists in their commis-sioned work. He was grasping onto that Romantic assumption that ‘Art’ was elevated above all else only when it was unique, autographic self-expression. Refreshingly, the idea this could be achieved in illustration liberated many illustrators and ennobled their work, making them valued creative participants in marketing and publishing. But the downside was that capital-A Art still stayed on top as an elite goal, erroneously thought to be immune to exploitation, instead of simply another mode of creative expression, equal but different. I might note that the dark blade of this double-edged sword that wants to ‘raise’ illustration to Art’s level is what undid Robert Weaver, an important spokesperson for illustration’s dignity who ended up destructively dissatisfied with both his commercial and his personal work – which is why I am rather suspicious of the recent press for ‘authorial illustration’. To dub self-directed illustration so is to risk promulgating the prejudicial presumption that often goes with it (unnecessarily, note) that illustrators who work in teams and for others’ delight are not authorial, that is, do not express individuality, make work of equal value or derive satisfaction from what they do. The dignity of art-in-service was the position of William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement, and had the advantage of celebrating the use-value of art in com-munal enterprises without sacrificing the individuality or authorial nature of the illus-trator. Let us be careful not to forget the purpose and self-respect of both Pyle’s and Morris’s modes of illustration work – let us look to our own profession’s history and values for our standards of excellence, and not give in to eagerness to make illustration cool in the context of the latest technology shifts and art theory fashions. Illustration research can help us avoid repeating mistakes and make visible to us our birthright and legacy.

Having set out what I feel illustration research can do, and why we did not have a sense of it before, let me now turn to visualizing present meaning-making in illustra-tion. Figure 1 attempts to net jellyfish.


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Figure 1

formal analysis

interpretationof symbols

+

PR

AC

TIC

E O

F IL

LUSTRATION

CONNOISSEURSHIP OF ILLU

ST

RA

TIO

N

SCHOLARSHIP OF ILLUSTRATION

history portrayed in illustration

consumption

design problemsolving

social effects

illustration business

teaching

nature of creativity

technical mastery

state of the !eld biography provenance

artistic in"uence

collecting

development of genres

exhibitions

text-imageinteraction

critical theory

non-verbal engagement

Gallerists/dealersAuctioneers

Collectors/fansArt historians

Cognitive & neuroscienceSociology

AnthropologyEducation

Media studies/EcologyVisual communication studies

Visual culture studies

IllustratorsEducators

Advertisers/marketersDesigners

Reps

science of vision

physical effects / affects

marketing of art objects

THREE DOMAINS OF MEANING-MAKING IN ILLUSTRATION RESEARCH

American/Canadian studiesLiterary criticism

Visual rhetoricHistory

Design HistoryArt history

Philosophy/Aesthetics

authentication

cultural theory

catalogues raisonées

practice-based research

history of the profession

portfolio showcasing

rhetoric

play / experimentation

bibliography

somaaesthetics

fan activity

style

technologydevelopment

conservation

history of tech / science

semiotics

perception

ethics

pedagogy

The nucleus is the black visual–verbal unit in the middle and the surrounding word bubbles – shapeshifting research foci – are our jellyfish, drifting out into three blur-ry domains. Funnily enough, the diagram resembles an eye – or a shotgun blast, one reviewer tells me. I have chosen the title instead of , because research carries rather limited preconceptions that are worth questioning. Meaning-making accommodates hands-on making to appreciating a collection to deep archival harvesting to complicated theorizing. The domains I identify are Practise Of Illustra-tion (cyan), Connoisseurship Of Illustration (yellow) and Scholarship Of Illustration (magenta), while things like Technical Mastery or Social Effects are examples of foci ‘jellyfish’. Each of those may also contain further subdivisions (jellyfish tentacles?) but they are not shown due to space. For instance, Social Effects could encompass literacy, buying habits, religious behaviour and so on. Of course there is considerable overlap, which is why each domain melts into the others; some foci sit in between domains, such as Exhibitions being part Connoisseurship-Of and part Practise-Of. The three domains are not equal in size because jellyfish in Scholarship Of Illustration contain more tenta-cles than the other two by far, as the long list of related disciplines suggests. The closer a bubble is to the centre, the more it is shared between all three domains; formal analysis and interpretation of symbolism – visual and verbal – are at the heart and shared by all except possibly the furthest outlying foci.

Ironically, one aspect difficult to capture this way is interdisciplinary research: Williams’s and Newton’s work, for instance, spans most of Practise-Of and Scholarship-Of, and some of Connoisseurship-Of, although if I were to pinpoint a spot for them it would lie about where Practise-Based Research is. There is also a flaw in that some foci are placed near each other that do not relate to one another, although usually the op-posite is true. On the other hand, some related ones find themselves rather spread apart due to their being relevant in different domains and therefore positioned equidistant between related foci in those different domains. In fact one could easily match foci on opposite extremes of the diagram – Non-verbal Engagement and Collecting, or Science of Vision and Exhibitions – and find sympathies between them. Finally, positions of the jellyfish-bubbles are in motion because the fields are evolving. Most teaching on and in illustration is currently practise-oriented, but since more curricula are beginning to in-tegrate humanities and science perspectives, and as more scholarly courses are offered that specialize in some aspect of illustration, the teaching-bubble should be viewed as travelling towards the centre and the Scholarship-Of domain.

While imperfect, the diagram still reveals some interesting relationships and points to gaps. Significantly, the lists of disciplines for Practise and Connoisseurship


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domains are mainly titles of professions. The Scholarship-Of domain by contrast is a list of university departments, and everyone working in those areas may be referred to as scholars. This difference points to the age-old split mentioned above between mind and body, or practice and theory, doers and thinkers, and carries with it the weight of historical class differences between those who pursued apprenticeships or business ver-sus elite education. It is relevant, because the baggage of that has affected the formula-tion of the intellectual bases of the Scholarship Of Illustration such that ‘Art’ continues to be privileged over ‘Craft’, meaning that many of the Scholarship-Of foci critique illustrations with no in-depth accounting for certain Practise-Of or Connoisseurship-Of realities and perspectives, or for Science of Vision. This is changing rapidly, but the privileging of ‘Art’ nevertheless continues to pressure the field of illustration because illustration coded as more ‘artistic’ since autonomous and original – Pyle’s values – con-tinues to be lauded over technically superb group work or traditional work – Morris’ values. And the academic value of verbal explications over silent experiential engage-ment also continues to be privileged. I suspect this is a factor in why the word illustra-tion is frequently substituted.

Space prohibits me from presenting a full literature review of every focus, so in-stead I will discuss the relative merits of the main disciplines of meaning-making. I will keep citations of specific Canadian and American authors to a minimum, concentrating only on a few key names with a bibliography at the end. Inevitably my selections will be a bit personal, because it is impossible and undesirable to pretend objectivity and mastery of all domains and foci, so I apologize for unintentional omissions in advance.

The Practise-Of domainIllustration would not exist without illustrators, so it is fitting to recognize the mean-ing-making of illustrators themselves in their material invention, refining and commu-nication as being the fundamental building block upon which all else is constructed. The creative process is probably the hardest thing to describe, since it is best under-stood in an innate way by participating. The trade magazines and YouTube this area of research – silent experiential engagement – better than I can speak to it. At risk of continuing to privilege the verbal (which may preserve the ‘magic’ of art in important ways, so it is not that bad), I will pass on by the studio windows and talk instead about practices that go verbal.

When illustrators like Howard Pyle, Robert Weaver, Brad Holland, Marshall Arisman, Sterling Hundley or James Gurney take an interest is advocating for the pro-

fession, their impact can be very profound in shifting the practice, conception and status of illustration. They make meaning primarily through their creative visual in-novation, and then couple that with verbalizing new ways of thinking about the busi-ness, the creation and the social relevance of what they and others do. The formation of the Illustrators Partnership of America is an example, which has gathered informa-tion for illustrators’ rights regarding stock art and the Orphan Works Bill that would lift copyright on unattributable illustration. Rarely, however, do practitioner advocates write footnoted essays. Interviews, public speaking, teaching and getting illustration into print are their modes of dissemination. The sacrifice is that academics tend to view such dissemination as primary source material from native informants, rather than as a different but equivalent form of published findings (in the sense of ‘made public’). An-other issue is that professionals overlook the importance and needs of scholarship: one problem in wholesale condemnation of the Orphan Works Bill is that scholars need ac-cess to orphaned works in order to develop knowledge about and respect for illustration.

Practitioners have also established online communities like illustrationmundo.com, supporting all manner of subjects from technical to legal help as well as showcases. In another area are practitioner-historians contributing mainly to the Connoisseurship-Of domain, where excellent factual knowledge is assembled through largely volunteer effort. Blogger David Apatoff began as an illustrator, and fellow blogger Leif Peng is a fulltime illustrator and college instructor. Walt Reed too was an illustrator, and Famous Artists School instructor. Murray Tinkelman and Howard Munce are other illustrators who have kept appreciative illustration history alive.

Practitioners who branch out into Scholarship-Of, and scholars who practise on the side are well positioned to bring insights and change in academia and the il-lustration profession equally, due to their fluency in the needs of both. In this category I would mention illustrator/educator Doug Dowd as an example of the former (but he eschews the ‘scholar’ designation, preferring instead ‘essayist-critic’), historian Joshua Brown as the latter, and Leslie Atzmon equally both. Dowd’s efforts include building working definitions of the branches of illustration, figuring out what illustration theory might be, curating, teaching, publishing scholarly creative work and compiling statisti-cal data. His efforts have contributed to the establishment of a relatively new research centre with illustrators’ fonds and illustration collection called the Modern Graphic History Library, at Washington University at St. Louis, MO. Unique among universi-ties, it is poised to lead the field of illustration research – if its administrators can be persuaded of the value.

The most prominent venues for researching contemporary illustration besides


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the web are Charles Hively’s magazine (which also conducts empirical research), design magazines, and the annual awards, exhibitions and directories issued by organi-zations such as the New York Society of Illustrators and other industry representatives.

While essential, the purpose of such entities is necessarily promotional, and unlike in the fine art scene, insider-critics of contemporary illustration are not consid-ered important. Why this is so, and whether insider-criticism would add or take away anything useful to the illustration world, is worth asking. I think it has been naively assumed that competitions and consumer popularity fulfill all the functions of good criticism, and the time has come to propose otherwise. Independent criticism could recognize important trends before the market is ready to accept them, could stimu-late thought, could bring diverse theories of illustration to bear on current work for the benefit of practitioners, and could raise the bar for more accurate books as well. It would also provide a theatre in which to answer back to hostile outsider-critics. Perhaps this is another hat for illustration research to try on.

The Connoisseurship-Of domainUnder the heading of connoisseurship I consider intensive activities by fans, collec-tors, amateurs and dealers to all qualify as illustration research. While unacademically trained people know little about formal theory and often could not care less, they are avid about fact, and can bring hifalutin’ theory down to the ground (often abruptly!) in real-world, material ways. Zines, collections of original works, publication of print col-lections, circulation of pirated copies, blogs, ‘guerilla libraries’, conventions, discussion boards and chatrooms, secondary market sleuthing, interviews with old masters, and preservation of archives, estates and ephemera all deserve credit but rarely do outside fan circles. Yet all these activities define knowledge and taste, make meaning and feed back into the production of future illustrative forms. Fandom is often where students begin who later become practitioners and scholars, and fandom is what makes it all eco-nomically viable for everyone else. Considering their meaning-making ‘research’ invites them to the table where their influence and impact can be better understood, assessed, appreciated and/or changed, instead of just shut out as it so often is.

Private collecting in Canada remains elusive and small scale, whereas it is quite active and high profile in the United States. In 2010 Hollywood directors George Lu-cas and Steven Spielberg made well-publicized loans of their Norman Rockwells to the Smithsonian. Richard Kelly has his collection hanging in a specially designed residence complete with library, archives, study and assistant, open to classes and researchers

by appointment. Operating in more modest circumstances are hundreds of collectors and fans of pulp and slick illustration and comics, who often compile bibliographies and catalogues raisonnés privately or online. Many are willing to provide information and scans to academic researchers. In illustration research they are frequently the only resource source, and they are also indispensible for insight into how print media was and is consumed and cherished. A few, such as Manuel Auad, have published books; or, like John Adcock, keep highly informative, connoisseurial blogs. , published by Dan Zimmer and contributed to by serious collectors and the odd scholar, is the primary print publication catering to fan discourse. Collecting is principally sup-ported by dealers, galleries and auction houses, including Walt and Roger Reed’s Il-lustration House, Fred Taraba; Laurence S. Cutler and Judy Goffman Cutler’s American Illustrators Gallery, Heritage Auctions, and innumerable smaller establishments and underground dealers specializing in various historic genres. Galleries selling contem-porary illustration have proliferated in the last decade, but I think the 25-year-old La Luz de Jesus gallery really broke the ground with their promotion of Pop Surrealism (and Lowbrow). Dealers in general have contributed provenance records, authentica-tion, bibliography, biography and conservation, although at some future point critical analyses of how market forces affect canon must be conducted (Gallery 1988’s collusion with Disney and other corporations comes to mind, but more subtle influences by col-lectors also deserve attention).

The Scholarship-Of domainIn passages above I gave an example of a methodological clash between poetic and flinty approaches, and I warned of the dangers of the theory–practise split and tendency of Scholarship-Of approaches to be biased against illustration. There are two things to say about this: first, not all scholars are biased; most are now actively deconstructing those biases. Second, investigating illustration from what I already called an outsider-critic’s point of view is just as important as insider-criticism because it is… disinterested, I almost said, except that nobody truly is, so I will say, uncompromised by the same market forces.

Say ‘semiotics’ or ‘deconstruction’ at a party and watch the fun-fur fly: there are plenty of illustrators who think ‘reading into it’ goes too far. On the other hand, in recent years insider-critics in design and advertising have managed to make ethics a part of students’ education – and ‘reading into it’ is how we remain vigilant about unin-tended or unconscious meanings. This has in fact largely trickled down from scholars as much as consumers and governments (and fellow creators). As illustrators we may sneer


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at what we feel is tweed-coat pontificating calculated to only impress other academics – theory for theory’s sake, I have sometimes called it; have a look at Pierre Bourdieu’s

for a critique of academia – but as artists, who among us has not expe-rienced the horror of having created something in which we just did not see it looked like? Just google ‘what were they thinking bad logos’ and you will be amazed. That is a simplistic version of what hifalutin’ theory is looking out for: not just pot-tymouth visual double entendres, but nuanced, often subliminal motivations behind why ordinary things look the way they do. At its extreme, it does indeed come off as complete conjecture, and therefore irrelevant. But as marketer turned whistleblower Martin Lindstrom is reporting based on recent cognitive science, the intuitive parts of the brain do make illogical connections that motivate complex symbolic interpreta-tions, with frightening potential consequences. If Alexander Nemerov suggests N. C. Wyeth’s painted ship’s sails represent Wyeth’s mother’s apron, should we be so quick to dismiss him? True, he may be imputing things to Wyeth’s psychological makeup with-out empirical proof, but to state what ought to be obvious but is often forgotten,

. The value of hypotheses is that their principles (if not their specificities) may

be applicable in other cases. Theory is about trying things on, and like clothing, not all fit well, but it is in the trying that we discover what does. Theory opens up new ways to think about how images work, just as messing about with a new paintbrush in the studio does. It behoves us to remember that the etymological breakdown of is ‘showing seeing’, – a visual process. Drawing is a visual theory – a hypothesis – of what something looks like, and a verbal theory is a hypothesis of meaning. My diagram is an example of both in one, and should be treated as just a proposal, not truth incarnate. I would hope, in illustration research, there is respect for both forms of creativity. We cannot afford to dismiss without careful consideration first what some tweed-coat says about illustration because, as we all know, once unleashed upon the world, images get interpreted and used in all sorts of unexpected ways. Theorists, whether they sound outlandish or not, are the early warning systems of how our output is signifying out there in the jungle, and we need that information in order to do our jobs conscien-tiously. I am sure the creators of the loathed character Jar Jar Binks wished they had consulted a few more culture critics first.

Inviting theorists to the illustrators’ party turns up a surprising number of scholars working on illustration, and many of them address academic bias against the commercial arts. The familiar complaint that illustration is misunderstood is about to be a thing of the past (except, perhaps, in certain areas of the fine art market where

‘Art’ is still dependent on a foil for its own definition). The area of American art history, John Davis explained in 2003, has felt itself to be marginalized by other art historians as ‘kitsch, retrograde, antimodernist, derivative, sentimental, and untheorised’ (Davis, John, 561) – epithets frequently hurled at illustration as well by avant-gardists. But eight years later historians of American art have done much to demonstrate why such ac-cusations are invalid. Among American art historians whose contributions to illustra-tion history are significant I would mention Georgia Barnhill, Michele Bogart, Michael Brown, Jennifer Greenhill, Patricia Mainardi, Alexander Nemerov, Joyce K. Schiller and Eric Segal (a highly incomplete list). In Canadian art, illustration research has not been so well supported, despite the valiant attempt by Alan Gowans in 1971 to rewrite the entire history of art from the point of view of illustrative principles. I would how-ever call attention to the late Robert Stacey and Angela Davis, to Dominic Hardy and Montreal’s , and to the thorough survey of Canadian children’s books by education faculty Judith Saltman and Gail Edwards.

John Ott e-mails to say,

It does seem to be a problem that many of us use art historical methodologies to analyze illustrations, few of which would have been viewed/read like salon paint-ings, as (1.) single images (2.) made by a sole creator and (3.) displayed for art-going audiences (4.) in the white cube of the museum. (2011)

I agree, and I have outlined some aspects peculiar to illustration in an essay titled ‘Eval-uating illustration aesthetically’ (Grove 2011b).

Study of American art (including illustration topics) is well supported in the United States by fellowships offered by numerous philanthropic organizations, and most large museums and libraries, such as the Henry Luce Foundation and Smithson-ian Institution. Funding for work on illustration is quite lacking. 2010 was the first year a fellowship programme was launched to support illustration research by the Rockwell Center for American Visual Studies located at the Norman Rockwell Mu-seum. The Rockwell is one of a very few public institutions with a mandate to exhibit illustration. Others with a long history of representing illustration are New Britain Mu-seum of American Art, Delaware Art Museum, Brandywine River Museum, Library of Congress, Cabinet of American Illustration and the New York Society of Illustrators’ Museum of American Illustration. The National Museum of American Illustration is also devoted to illustration, an outgrowth of the personal collection of dealers Laurence S. Cutler and Judy Goffman Cutler.

In Canada, the situation is much different. There are no large public institu-


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tions with a mandate to regularly exhibit illustration. The only museum with a sizable collection, the Glenbow, has now deaccessioned 90 per cent of the 3500 works (luckily the collection is expected to go to a non-museum home that will retain it for research purposes). Funding sources are mainly limited to the federal government’s Social Sci-ences and Humanities Research Council. The Canada Council for the Arts funds art-ists, but has always officially disqualified ‘commercial artists’ (while comics and graphic novels are eligible through the writing – not art – section). There are no institutions actively collecting contemporary or historic illustration for its own sake, and archives and examples are thin. The reasons for the disproportionate neglect are complex and have to do with the association of illustration with American culture, seen as a threat to Canadian cultural autonomy. As a result illustration has rarely figured in policy or discussion of Canada’s culture, and it is not surprising no group movement to redefine, develop or galvanize illustration in Canada has ever garnered national or provincial at-tention. Meant to protect Canadian art and culture, the neglect of Canadian commer-cial art has ironically resulted in greater reliance on American patronage and influence, perpetuating the very cultural imperialism to which it objected – but at the time of writing, at least two museums are planning or considering illustration exhibitions.

As academia opens up to illustration research, we would be well advised to ac-knowledge the political economy of funding apparatus. Museums, libraries and founda-tions are not neutral entities; they come with worldviews and indebtedness that are all the more pernicious for being clouded by a rhetoric of arm’s-length objectivity. They affect canon-formation and market value, while those whose careers rely on the amass-ing of grants, fellowships and appointments must be necessarily mindful of biting hands that feed them. The Practise-Of and Connoisseurship-Of commentators’ views and habits, so often dismissed as barbaric whimsy or philistinism, have an important role here as a check and balance against institutional hegemony.

Historical institutional neglect began to slowly change with critiques of art-prejudice from sociology of art and philosophy perspectives by Howard Becker, Janet Wolff and Larry Shiner. The efforts of Richard Shusterman to establish an entirely new branch of pragmatist aesthetics, with its component of somaesthetics, introduces a framework through which to theorize non-verbal knowledge, the unity of mind and body, and the positive ethics of popular cultural production. His work is already being picked up in design studies circles, but he remains practically unknown in art history.

Visual culture brought issues of how race, class and gender operate as structur-ing forces, and encouraged theorization of the nature and culture of sight, with au-thors highly relevant to the study of illustrated material including W. J. T. Mitchell and

Jonathan Crary, and dissident James Elkins. Many visual culture scholars came from art history and challenged art history’s traditional limits; it is still debated whether the two disciplines are one or separate, although in some universities the visual culture contin-gent focuses on media more than customary art. Visual culture has united researchers from art history, history (Brown 2006; Dippie 2001), English, American studies (Rawl-inson 2009), Canadian studies (Francis 2011) and popular culture, to name a few.

Closely related is visual communication, where researchers may range along a continuum from hard science to cultural studies, usually to theorize how images op-erate in conjunction with other media such as newspapers, advertising, television or the web. On one hand are marketers doing statistical and scientific research to figure out how to nail consumers as hard as possible, as Lindstrom discusses. At an extreme remove from them are a very large proportion of educators concerned with ethics. A great many come from professional backgrounds. Williams and Newton I have already mentioned but I may add Sut Jhally, Ann-Marie Barry, Paul Messaris and Smith, Mori-arty et al. In Canada Kim Sawchuk is doing excellent work on medical illustration, and Brian Rusted on western art and popular culture. Visual communication and English have combined to produce the research area of visual rhetoric, generally devoted to the analysis of propagandistic or especially persuasive visual texts like posters, advertis-ing and editorial cartoons. Writers here include Olson, Finnegan and Hope; Susan B. Barnes, Leslie Atzmon and Janis Edwards. Visual communication combined with visual culture has also nurtured offshoots such as visual pedagogy (Brian Goldfarb), visual so-ciology (Harper; Chaplin) and visual anthropology (Banks and Ruby 2011) – but all three of which, in my opinion, impoverish their enquiries by privileging photographic media over drawn and painted imagery.

From English departments have come studies more inclined to look at the in-teraction of image and text within print media, naturally from linguistic, semiotic or literary perspectives. The journal specializes in this sort of writing, and the recent book edited by John Dixon Hunt and Michael Corris collects a sampling (in-cluding a piece on William Blake, a perennial favourite hogging too much attention?). All of the subject matter is illustrative, but little of it is illustration as practitioners would think of it. Nevertheless, illustration researchers would find word–image theory and methodology absolutely indispensible to their work on illustration-proper.

J. Hillis Miller’s book remains a seminal example of literary theory applied to illustration. A preponderance of material on children’s picture-books and literacy (Cary 2004; Flood et al. 2007) or cultural representation makes me grateful for work on other illustrated texts. But here it seems there is a fondness for works of


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high literature such as that of Henry James. More research is needed on popular texts, anonymous or little-known creators and ephemera; Jarrod R. Waetjen’s recent disserta-tion on magazine fiction is a welcome intervention.

There also seems to be a need for more trans-Atlantic studies. Jennifer Green-hill has recently compared Charles Dana Gibson and George du Maurier (2011); simi-lar pairings could be made between Lucie Mabel Atwell and Rose O’Neill, or William Heath Robinson and Rube Goldberg. Too often illustrators are treated as isolated origi-nators rather than the highly connected and culturally-attuned mediators that they were and are.

Worthy of note in this vein is work by Lorraine Janzen Kooistra on nineteenth century English illustrated books and poetry. Kooistra is also conducting research on and digitization of and other 1890s periodicals, with colleague Den-nis Denisoff. They are among the few North American researchers in close contact with English counterparts doing what Kooistra calls ‘illustration studies’. Given that research on illustration largely originated in the burgeoning area of Victorian literature, I would, finally, recommend bringing illustration studies and other illustration research together.

Have I netted the jellyfish? I somehow doubt it. The problem seems to be contained within the word itself. Because of its polysemism, it is useful to distinguish between:

illustration (the object), as in, ‘This is an illustration of the President’s dog, cap-tioned Fido’, meaning a specific item and its internal workings between image and text and in picturing itself. It may be created and displayed as a work of ‘fine art’, or in a private letter, or made for a book and so on.

illustration (the adjective), as in ‘This painting is illustration!’ – meaning that it has illustrative properties associated with illustration (the object or the commodity).

illustration (the commodity), as in, ‘Deliver the illustration on time’, referring to something made as ‘an illustration’ in the sense of a commissioned visual item for (usually) mass reproduction. It can also be a plural: ‘That folder contains all the illustration for the job’.

illustration (the figure of speech), as in, ‘This is an illustration of political will!!’ – meaning that something is a manifestation, symbol or demonstration of a con-cept. There may be no actual item.

Researchers of various stripes may concentrate on only one of these at a time. Or, they may find connections between them. In the hypothetical case of a satirical painting of the supposed faithfulness of the President’s ‘dog’ Fido – picture what you will – all uses of the word illustration are present, and the work may be discussed from all corresponding points of view: for its iconography, its aesthetic operation, its circula-tion as a commodity, its ideological function and more. Coming to an awareness of what illustration research is means being alive to these different ways of conceiving what illustration is and does.

We may set knowledge back if we always work in isolation from each other. For instance, the practitioners Steven Heller and Seymour Chwast in

attempt to organize the whole of European and American illustration history since about 1860 into visual categories. Difficult to do, the exercise yields a visually pleasing reference book that lets us know how illustration history has been conceptual-ized vernacularly, at least by these two authors. But it contains many factual errors and muddles established taxonomies in way that will completely confuse students taking mainstream art history classes or studying other illustration histories, and it will de-prive them of a common language needed to speak with other illustration researchers from outside the Practise-Of domain. It is exactly the sort of book that should have been written collaboratively by representatives from all three domains.

My diagram’s intention is to make visible a multitude of researches going on, many of which have been so isolated or discounted by factions working for opposite goals – Pyle-esque auteurs versus Morris-esque teamworkers is one – that entire areas of knowledge and standards of what constitutes have been mutually overlooked or dismissed by those outside of it. It is not my intention to make everybody interdisci-plinary – we need Pyle-ish specialists, who constitute one tentacle of one jellyfish – but it is my desire that Morris-esque interdisciplinarians are there to connect tentacles use-fully in order to help the profession serve human needs better. If scientists argue that advertising imagery is becoming increasingly dangerous because tests prove a picture of x makes us buy y without our conscious knowledge, we need to take it into account on moral as well as creative grounds. Ignoring such criticisms as illustrators did in the past makes us weaker, not stronger. We makers, Pyles and Morrises, need to take responsi-bility for what we unleash – we consumers need to support makers in return – and we researchers can facilitate it all.


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AcknowledgmentsThis article was read over by a scholar, a practitioner and a collector. I am grateful for their feedback, and by not naming them I will spare them rotten tomatoes I may incur. Bouquets, on the other hand, I will be sure to pass along.

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