Illustration: America Twenty-Five Outstanding Portfolios

by D.K. Holland (Editor), Molly Ballentine (Contributor), Kim Sceili (Contributor)

The artists in America represent three decades of the "New Illustration," an umbrella term covering various styles, mannerisms and conceits, with the common thread of free expression within the strictures of professional media. Contemporary illustrators are often authors of ideas - as cartoonists, caricaturists, comic artists, satirists, visual commentators and storytellers they are not merely extensions of the advertising or editorial art director but visual thinkers in their own right. While they are not fine artists who answer only to their muses, they represent a tradition of individualism that has made American illustration as viable as any fine art form. Yet unlike the fine artist, they serve the marketplace as problem solvers who interpret a wide range of issues on the broad spectrum of old and new media - from the printed page (including books and magazines), to packages, to shop window displays, to CD-ROMs. The diversity of American media has allowed artists to push the limits, while developing unique personalities. Those whose bodies of work are exhibited in America represent the standard against which all American illustration is now judged, and what, in the future, the next wave of young illustrators will react to and rebel against.

Genres: Art

Hardcover

Published January 1, 1996