James Avati’s cover illustration for Deathworld, published in 1964.
Strange new worlds, life forms and civilizations have arrived at the Chazen Museum of Art. There are also strange old worlds, old friends and fairytales.
Fantastic Illustration from the Korshak Collection, on display through Feb. 4, includes original art from classic storybooks as well as disposable science fiction and fantasy.
“Disposable” in the sense that many of the works were created for magazines published on cheap “pulp” paper from the 1890s through 1950s. They had slick covers, sometimes with outrageous illustrations, but pulp magazines were made to be thrown away.
“This is often incredibly competent work,” says Drew Stevens, the museum’s curator of prints, drawings and photographs. “It’s an integral part of our culture. A lot of us are actually quite familiar with the imagery, and yet we never give it its due.”
The works are drawn from the extensive collection of Chicago native Stephen Korshak, an author, developer and attorney whose lively 94-year-old father, Erle Korshak, was a pioneering science fiction publisher.
“I’m hoping that shows like this will expose these illustrators to a whole new generation,” Stephen Korshak says from his Orlando office. In addition to attracting students and pop-culture fans, Korshak hopes that people involved with Madison’s professional gaming industry will be interested and inspired by the show.
Fantastic Illustration is two exhibits in one, American and European. The old world is represented by art created for lavish “gift books,” with elaborate covers and lush interior illustration. Many of the artists will be familiar to fans of children’s books: Aubrey Beardsley, Arthur Rackham and the brilliant British cartoonist William Heath Robinson.
Contemporary artist Brian Froud is perhaps best known for his Faeries book, created with Alan Lee in 1978. Gustav Doré is included, as is Disney-trained Gustag Tenggren, a Swedish-born animator who worked on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Pinocchio. Tenggren also illustrated bestselling children’s books, including The Poky Little Puppy.
American artists are best represented by magazine illustrations whose titles are less ingenious than the illustrations themselves: Marvel Science Fiction, Fantasy and Science Fiction, Fantastic Adventures, Astounding Science Fiction, Other Worlds Science Fiction. The works of James Allen St. John, Frank Frazetta and N.C. Wyeth are among the highlights, which include original cover art for Edgar Rice Burroughs novels.
“Burroughs says at one point that he was sure that the images on his covers really helped with his sales,” says Stevens. “One time he said, ‘The costumes — or lack of them — will be just as timely 10 years from now as today.’”
And that’s one of the prescient fascinations of the exhibit. “There’s so much to think about with regard to gender roles here,” says Stevens. Art depicting swords and sorcery portrays muscle-bound males in loincloth. In science fiction, shapely alien women are thinly clad, while spacemen heroes are bottled up in pressure suits with accordion elbows.
There are exceptions. The May 1954 cover of Planet Stories by Frank Kelly Freas shows a powerful woman radiating pulses of energy, washing over devastated aliens with pig faces and 12 fingers.
Stanley Meltzoff’s 1952 book cover for Robert Heinlein’s The Green Hills of Earth shows three astro-heroes, rayguns ready, on the literal precipice of adventure. In the background is a rocket ship shaped like a rifle bullet.
It’s only recently that such works have been acknowledged by the art world. “This is really an opportunity to look back and take these things quite seriously,” says Stevens. “That’s our goal at the museum. We like things that we know are art. But our question, as always, is, ‘Well gee, is this art, too?’ And if not, why not?”
On Dec. 2 from noon-3 p.m., Madison College animation instructor Ed Binkley will visit the exhibit to share his work and illustration process. Local artist Glenn Watson will lead hands-on activities featuring original science fiction characters. The event is free and open to the public.
