New Book About Artists Art Fitzpatrick and Van Kaufman

The Pontiac advertisement illustration above was part of a famous 1959-1972 series. The car was illustrated by Arthur M. Fitzpatrick (1919-2015), Wikipedia entry here.  The background was by Van Kaufman (1918-1995).  It is of the Monte Carlo casino in Monaco.

Early in his career Fitzpatrick worked as a car stylist at Briggs (which made bodies for carmakers) and Hudson as well as "Dutch" Darrin's California organization.  After World War 2 he shifted to automobile advertising art, delineating vehicles for advertisements and brochures.

Kaufman studied art in Los Angeles and worked for Walt Disney painting backgrounds and doing some animation work.  Following the war he went into freelance illustration and began working with Fitzpatrick in 1950.

A new book titled "Art Fitzpatrick & Van Kaufman: Masters of the Art of Automobile Advertising" arrived in my mailbox a few days ago.  Here is the cover:

 It is filled with illustrations of Pontiacs, Buicks, Mercurys and a few other brand cars.  It also has a good amount of text that describes the working methods of the artists.  I was fascinated, reading the book in one session.

The website for the book is here.

Illustration Magazine issue No. 73 has some material on "Fitz" and "Van" by the book's author. And the book's website has some sample pages for your inspection.

Book Review: "Fins" - About Harley Earl

A couple of months ago on a whim I bought the book "Fins: Harley Earl, the Rise of General Motors, and the Glory Days of Detroit" by William Knoedelseder (Amazon link here).

I see that it got a number of five-star reviews on its Amazon page.  I am more inclined to put it somewhere in the three-star range.

What I found most interesting were details of Earl's family background, youth, and his adult personal life.  Some of the quotations from GM Art & Colour stylists were new to me, so that was useful.

Otherwise, I found too much padding on its 277 pages.  The author doubtless justified writing about outside events in order to provide context to the subject of Earl and automobile styling.  Nothing wrong with that in principle.  Nevertheless, there was too much of that for my taste.  One example was a fair amount of space devoted to the decline and fall of Detroit as a city.  Yes, that was happening, but I find it hard to fathom how that affected the styling of General Motors automobiles.

Another gripe has to do with the writer including too much 21st century sociopolitical perspective.  I prefer histories grounded in the times being dealt with because that was the context of the lives as being lived, not those lives in the context of present times.

In a work of any size there will be mistakes.  I make them, maybe you make them.  Even so, they can be annoying.  Too many can render a book worthless to a reader because one has to wonder how many unrecognized mistakes there might be.  Two mistakes that bothered me were: (1) John Tjaarda, whose designs led to the Lincoln Zephyr, was called "Tom Tjaarda," the name of John's son; (2) Edmund Anderson, who later directed American Motors styling is called "Elwood Anderson."  The author seems to have had Elwood Engel of Ford and Chrysler on his mind.

I'm not telling you to avoid the book.  I suggest you buy the cheaper Kindle version, a price more in line with its worth.

Book Reviews: Pininfarina and Touring

The Italian publishing house Giorgio Nada Editore not long ago launched a series of books about some of the country's most famous carrozziari.  I happened to stumble across one about Touring while browsing a Feltrinelli bookstore in Rome a few months ago.  Upon my return home I ordered one about Pininfarina.  My reaction to these is the subject of this post.

Cover designs and links to Amazon:

Pininfarina: Masterpieces of Style

Touring: Masterpieces of Style
Amazon cites Luciano Greggio as the author of both books, though on the books' information pages he is listed as "Texts edited by" -- whatever that might mean.

I bought the books because I wanted reference material on Italian coachbuilders, especially their work from the mid-1920s to 1965 or thereabouts, a period that interests me greatly.  I was very pleased with the Touring book because that firm was active from 1926 to 1966, almost exactly hitting my time criterion.  (The name was resurrected in recent years, but that firm's work is not covered in the book.)  It is an excellent research tool for my purposes.

The Pininfarina book is another matter, partly because the firm has been active since 1930, nearly 90 years, requiring a similar-sized book to deal with a greater time span.  I did find the pre-1965 material useful, and the information regarding more recent designs should also be helpful researching material for this blog.

One disappointment with the Pininfarina book was that its text struck me as being more like an extended press release than a scholarly presentation.  Here are two examples.

1984 Ferrari Testarossa
Text on page 148 includes the following:

"The second [1984] event instead concerned the presentation of the Testarossa berlinetta, unveiled in October 1984 by Sergio Pininfarina himself in the glamorous setting of the Paris Lido; this was a car with an extraordinary presence and stood out above all for the conspicuous slatted lateral air intakes in a softly rounded composition rich in aerodynamic appendages and the fruit of highly sophisticated research."

Not factually wrong, but there is a real public relations feel to it that I found annoying.

1995 Honda Argento Vivo
Part of the book's caption (page 177) for this photo reads:

"The Argento Vivo from 1995, an authentic star in terms of research and materials used, the car was born out [of] an emotive and technological research project by Pininfarina in collaboration with Honda...."

This is rather gushy, but care was taken not to say that the car was attractive -- I consider it something of a mess, styling-wise.

One serious (for me) defect in both books was that the actual stylists of the cars presented were not mentioned or at best only hinted at.

Also available at present is a book about Zagato that I am considering buying.  Forthcoming are books about Bertone, Ghia and Vignale.