sifting thru the early modern era

A PERSONAL HISTÓRY oF FLOMM so far     PART 3 of 10

“Books are the cheat code to life.”
—Tirzah Mon­eé John­son, for­mer stu­dent, en­tre­pre­neur, part­ner in the school we are open­ing in 2020
 

I learned how to skim whole books while learn­ing to be Ed­u­ca­tion Mas­ter. And I went thru many Mod­ern Art edi­tions, and I’m still read­ing new finds today.
 

read­ing is güd
I’d been a fan of books/magazines/publications since I was a child. 

Books Inc. at Hills­dale Mall in San Ma­teo, Cal­i­for­nia was where I’d ex­plore Padding­ton Bear, which was my fa­vorite for awhile.

Scholas­tic ‘AR­ROW’ Book Club pur­chas­es in el­e­men­tary school in­tro­duced me to some awe­some hu­mour books that snuck learn­ing in – tied into their own Dy­na­mite mag­a­zine, which had awe­some il­lus­tra­tor Sandy Huf­fak­er who I think also does triple duty as Bar­ry Blitt AND John Cu­neo – main­ly cause I’ve nev­er seen mor than one of them at any time in the same room together.
 

da fun­ny books
There were no com­ic book stores in the 1970s. If you want­ed a com­ic book, you took your chances with drug stores, news­stands, Woolworth’s and 7‑Eleven.

My un­cle used to shop at Ed’s Smoke Shop in San Car­los where I’d de­vour The Pink Pan­ther, Flint­stones and any­thing that was tied into wat I’d see on television. 

There weren’t a lot of tie ins – cor­po­ra­tions hadn’t quite fig­ured out how to sell lots of prod­uct to ob­ses­sive chil­dren un­til af­ter Star Wars (1977). And most­ly old­er non-su­per­hero ti­tles were my fa­vorite finds – my dad used to buy booths at lo­cal flea mar­kets to sell wa­t­ev­er junk he had ly­ing around (San Jose, Oak­land, San Ma­teo, Bris­bane). There he net­ted for me vin­tage Bull­win­kle, Jer­ry Lewis, E‑Man and Sad Sack comics. Sad Sack had a long his­to­ry go­ing back to World War 2.

And when I found the first batch of MAR­VEL Star Wars comics in a plas­tic bag at Toys-R-Us — then saw that af­ter is­sue 6, they went ‘Be­yond the Movie, Be­yond the Galaxy’ – I be­came to­tal­ly ad­dict­ed to col­lect­ing, buy­ing monthly. 

The Mi­cro­nauts were an awe­some toy tie in. Andy Helfer and Kyle Baker’s 1980s ver­sion of The Shad­ow, which de­stroyed the char­ac­ter in ways The Last Jedi nev­er thought to do – was my all time favourite.

And Bill Bixby’s In­cred­i­ble Hulk got me into the awe­some­ness that was MARVEL.

It was an ad­dic­tion that last­ed un­til the ear­ly 1990s when mul­ti­ple cov­ers and re­al­ly crap­py sto­ries de­signed to just move prod­uct burnt me out – and by then, I was start­ing to ex­plore MOR ex­per­i­men­tal ti­tles/un­der­ground comix/man­ga and oth­er un­usu­al takes on the art form – and then I fell in love with just plain ol nov­els. With­out all the pic­tures al­ready picked out for me.

(As a side note, my en­tire comics col­lec­tion from this time is avail­able for pur­chase at Obliv­ion Comics & Cof­fee in Sacra­men­to. An­oth­er Sacra­men­to hotspot owned by a cou­ple of flommists/former students.)

And I was read­ing wat I could on the train to SJSU – but not my text­books, of course. Be­cause rebellion.
 

“Com­ic books are the en­try lev­el drug to read­ing literature.”
—Me, I said this at one point
 

Com­ic books help train one’s imag­i­na­tion to ap­ply vi­su­als to the writ­ten word. 

And that’s how books come alive. And then it’s easy to jump into oth­er worlds. And if you didn’t like the book, maybe you weren’t in the right mind­set to read it. 

That was me with Oliv­er Twist (1839). I re­mem­ber read­ing every as­signed word in high school, but not re­tain­ing any of it.

But – once I learned to put my OCD in a box, I could bet­ter nav­i­gate heavy texts and dive in with weights on. My col­lec­tion of graph­ic de­sign books was about to be re­placed with many Mod­ern Art editions.
 

 

Which odd­ly enough, can be in­ex­pen­sive to own thanks to places like Friends of the Li­brary and oth­er re­cy­clable, used book sources. Mod­ern art books are every­where – tho – I found this out the hard way: It wasn’t re­al­ly un­til the late 1950s – with books such as Her­bert Read’s Mod­ern Paint­ing that some of the coolest stuff was be­ing referenced.

For most of the first half of the 20th Cen­tu­ry, books on Mod­ern Art cov­ered Im­pres­sion­ism, a whole lot of Van Gogh and you’d be lucky if Pi­cas­so would get a sen­tence here or there. Books pub­lished at the time by schol­ars, crit­ics and most mu­se­ums hadn’t quite fig­ured out wat they were look­ing at just yet. 

Mod­ern Art was THAT radical.
 

art his­to­ries
I found my­self grav­i­tat­ing to­wards books on the­o­ry, philoso­phies – how the artists were re­act­ing to their sit­u­a­tions – how all of this shaped wat they end­ed up doing.

That’s been a big part of my Graph­ic De­sign His­to­ry course – with­out the back­sto­ry and the hu­mans re­act­ing – it’s all just words and fig­ures, usu­al­ly pre­sent­ed as facts.

Fol­low­ing tra­di­tion was every­thing by the turn of the 20th cen­tu­ry – so the idea that a painter like Cézanne could ac­tu­al­ly show his brush strokes in­ten­tion­al­ly as his in­ter­pre­ta­tion of The Real World was a re­bel­lious concept. 

So re­bel­lious it got a bro named Picasso’s at­ten­tion. And when it came to the artists them­selves, he was a great start­ing point for me.
 

“Why the fuck are you famous?”
—De­von, in my mag­a­zine class, com­ing up with a hed­line for some­thing popular
 

Like, why the fuck is Pi­cas­so so fa­mous? Like, re­al­ly. Every­one knos his name, prob­a­bly mor than ANY OTH­ER MOD­ERN ARTIST. His name is syn­ony­mous with Art. Even An­tho­ny Hop­kins played him in a movie, which I did not see. 

And I was de­ter­mined to find out why this all was.
 

“When I was a child, my moth­er said to me, ‘If you are a sol­dier, you will be­come a gen­er­al. If you are a monk, you will be­come the Pope.’ In­stead, I was a painter, so I be­came Picasso.”
—Pablo Pi­cas­so (1881–1973)
 

And from Jack Flam’s ex­cel­lent Ma­tisse and Pi­cas­so: The Sto­ry of Their Ri­val­ry and Friend­ship (2003), it fell together.

Pi­cas­so was ob­sessed with NEW. Al­ways NEW. And while Cu­bism was in­spired by African Masks (which were to­tal­ly NEW be­cause they were ig­nored by Eu­ro­pean cul­ture at the time), he was able to push his art­work be­yond the vi­su­als every­one else was com­ing up with.
 

 

And when every­one else was do­ing Cu­bism, he de­cid­ed to change it up and do some­thing else. Hell, he’d lie in in­ter­views about wat his work habits were so no one would catch on. It was dis­cov­ered re­cent­ly that he was (al­leged­ly) us­ing house paint to get bright colours when no one else thought to.

I in­ter­pret it as a re­lent­less pur­suit of not do­ing wat every­one else is do­ing – con­stant­ly work­ing to rein­vent and cre­ate some­thing NEW.

And his work man­aged to catch on in the right cir­cles (Gertrude Stein had mon­ey and walls to fill), and he be­came fa­mous for it.
 

 

In­flu­ences are every­where. And while Pi­cas­so was in­flu­enced by Cézanne, he then be­came the in­flu­ence of others. 

And once – his­tor­i­cal­ly – the Mod­ern ‘Art doesn’t have to mim­ic re­al­i­ty’ cat clawed its way out of the tooth­paste tube, things were not go­ing to be as they were.
 

shock­ing
I love cur­mud­geons. And art crit­ic Robert Hugh­es was one. His Shock of the New (1980) Mod­ern Art his­to­ry doc­u­men­tary se­ries (above) – tho rather dat­ed to­day – is fuck­ing awesome. 

Warts and all is how I like my his­to­ry. Be­cause hu­mans be­ing hu­mans is wonderful.

All told thru Hugh­es’ opin­ion­at­ed, sar­don­ic, and al­ways ques­tion­ing wit.

He died right af­ter I fin­ished read­ing an old copy of The Shock of the New book, so my dream of him as crit­ic to­tal­ly de­stroy­ing THE BAT­TLE For MOD­eRN 1923 as ‘hor­ri­ble pas­tiche’ when re­leased nev­er hap­pened. (I did plan to troll him like crazy just to get a reaction)

Then two oth­er au­thors died af­ter I fin­ished read­ing their books. This was not a pat­tern I felt com­fort­able with at all.
 

war of the futurists
Then there was Marinet­ti and the Ital­ian Fu­tur­ists.

And a sideshoot­er is a war game. And Marinet­ti ad­vo­cat­ed WAR and vi­o­lence and speed and traf­fic ac­ci­dents and all sort of dan­ger­ous things.
 

“War is the only hy­giene of the world.”
—F.T. Marinet­ti
 

Marinet­ti went pub­lic with his Fu­tur­ist art move­ment while Pi­cas­so was still most­ly ex­per­i­ment­ing in his studio. 

The first Man­i­festo of Fu­tur­ism ap­peared in the pop­u­lar French news­pa­per Le Fi­garo 20 Feb­ru­ary 1909 be­cause Marinet­ti want­ed peo­ple to read it.

A pro­pa­gan­dist whose tech­niques are akin to Howard Stern’s shock jock days, F.T. Marinet­ti knew how to piss peo­ple off. So much that he’d at­tack any­one who need­ed to be shook up.

At one point, artists in­volved in the 1917 Russ­ian Rev­o­lu­tion took his call to war se­ri­ous­ly and ac­tu­al­ly had a war. They cre­at­ed rad­i­cal art­work be­yond any­thing at that point, call­ing them­selves The Russ­ian Fu­tur­ists and even in­vit­ed Marinet­ti to speak. 

And in his pro­to Howard Stern-es­que way, he de­clared (at a podi­um), “This is NOT Fu­tur­ism!” and had to be snuck out of the coun­try cause the crowd want­ed to, you kno, mur­der him.

The fash­ion in­dus­try loves to swipe from the Fu­tur­ists – ig­nor­ing their bla­tant sex­ism and how they helped con­tribute to the rise of Fas­cism in the 1920s.

But, I was go­ing to do the same with THE BAT­TLE For MOD­eRN 1923 – swipe huge swaths of Fu­tur­ism ap­proach­es to vi­su­als and the­o­ries – and we end­ed up us­ing a per­cus­sion heavy track by Chelsea Davis called Fire that I felt the Fu­tur­ists would be lis­ten­ing to IF mu­sic had evolved then to where it is now.

(Here’s her demo, which was recre­at­ed as an in­stru­men­tal for our game be­cause the orig­i­nal files died in a hard dri­ve dis­as­ter no one talks about these days)

And it was still 2009 – the 100th an­niver­sary of Marinetti’s Fu­tur­ist move­ment be­ing cel­e­brat­ed was just off my radar – and when the radar ping showed up, I saw the Ital­ian Con­sulate in San Fran­cis­co had a show go­ing of Fu­tur­ist graph­ic de­sign­er For­tu­na­to De­pero.

So I drove the 100 miles from Sacra­men­to to catch the ex­hi­bi­tion be­fore it closed, bought the cat­a­logue and just drooled over his dra­mat­ic ty­pog­ra­phy, ex­pres­sive ink wash­es and pen­cilled works.

There’s some­thing about see­ing the real art – in per­son – that books can nev­er replicate.
 

stand­outs
Even­tu­al­ly a Bib­li­og­ra­phy of all the books I went thru when work­ing on the game found a home on our web­site. In sec­tions by top­ic, with links and cap­sule reviews.

For wat I end­ed up craft­ing for the game, tho, these two were exceptional:

1.
I found Paul Fussell’s The Great War and Mod­ern Mem­o­ry: The Il­lus­trat­ed Edi­tion (2012) at the school li­brary. And it took apart – line by fuck­ing line – all the hero­ic, news re­ports, po­et­ry and au­to­bi­ogra­phies of WW1 and shat­ters how stu­pid The Great War ac­tu­al­ly was.

2.
And best book on all of this was one I spent over a year slug­ging my way thru: Mod­ris Ek­steins’ Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Mod­ern Age (2000).

It is a mas­sive dis­ser­ta­tion that takes his­to­ry to task and sets up ques­tions and in­ter­pre­ta­tions that’ll throw any­one on their ass. I loved every minute of it and it led to my in­ter­est in All Things Ear­ly Mod­ern – be­yond art and de­sign to the Russ­ian Bal­let to Monar­chies to Pol­i­tics to Ex­pres­sion­ist Cinema. 

It also posit­ed an an­swer to a decades old ques­tion I had about WWI: Why the hell did it happen? 

And my fi­nal take on all of it is: In­se­cure egos + sib­ling ri­val­ries of the rul­ing class­es. The grand­chil­dren of Queen Vic­to­ria – with the Unit­ed King­dom and Ger­many be­ing the op­posed ‘an­chor pow­ers’ in the con­flict (like an an­chor store at a mall) – were out to prove some­thing, so they start­ed a gi­ant piss­ing con­test where mil­lions had to die be­cause that’s wat In­ter­na­tion­al Tra­di­tion dictates. 

With Mod­ern in­ven­tions – from ma­chin­ery to pro­pa­gan­da – mak­ing the killing so much faster, ef­fi­cient and accepted.

Con­tro­ver­sial way of look­ing at it, but it makes fuck­ing sense. 

And this was go­ing to play a MA­JOR role in THE BAT­TLE For MOD­eRN 1923 and lat­er, the FLOMM move­ment itself.
 

but have i gone too far?
Well, with my OCD ful­ly func­tion­ing, I’m big on get­ting things ac­cu­rate, so to speak. And I wasn’t go­ing to do a half assed job with this game.

Hell, when I teach Graph­ic De­sign one of my big points is
No de­sign­er can do an ad­e­quate job on any project with­out do­ing re­search first. Oth­er­wise, you’re just spin­ning in the dark. And this is the MAIN rea­son most graph­ic de­sign pieces get rejected.
 

“Don’t let your taste get in the way of your work.”
—GOS“
 

That too. Pre­con­ceived views of things when ap­proach­ing a new project typ­i­cal­ly will fuck you up if you don’t kno any­thing about wat you’re approaching. 

And learn­ing could be tied into all of this. Which led to the very George Lu­cas-y ap­proach I was about to take.
 

con
tinue
read
ing —

                   forward to  PART 4   • • •

· · ·  back to  PART 2

—steve mehal­lo

Flom­mist Steve Mehal­lo is a graph­ic de­sign­er, il­lus­tra­tor, font de­sign­er, ed­u­ca­tor, food­ie and gad­fly. He is the cre­ator and founder of FLOMM!

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