Have you ever heard of an artist named Haddon Sundblom? No? Well you’ve seen his work. You could say he’s one of the most famous character designers ever. He created the iconic Santa we know and love. He based him on Clement Clark Moore’s 1822 Poem “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas”. Sundblom had his friend Lou Prentiss, a retired salesman model for the initial painting.

The illustration above was a commission from Coca-Cola for an ad that ran in a 1932 issue of The Saturday Evening Post, and later ran in Ladies Home Journal, National Geographic, The New Yorker and others. Sundblom continued painting Santa for Coke for the next 32 years.

According to Coca-Cola’s : 5 Things You Never Knew About Santa Claus and Coca-Cola:

The Santa Claus we all know and love — that big, jolly man in the red suit with a white beard — didn’t always look that way. In fact, many people are surprised to learn that prior to 1931, Santa was depicted as everything from a tall gaunt man to a spooky-looking elf. He has donned a bishop’s robe and a Norse huntsman’s animal skin.

In fact, when Civil War cartoonist Thomas Nast drew Santa Claus for Harper’s Weekly in 1862, Santa was a small elflike figure who supported the Union.

Haddon Sundbloom painted Santa from 1932 -1964. Coca-Cola advertising continues to feature images of Santa based on Sundblom’s original works. These paintings are some of the most prized pieces in the art collection in the company’s archives department and have been on exhibit around the world, in famous locales including the Louvre in Paris, the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, the Isetan Department Store in Tokyo, and the NK Department Store in Stockholm. Many of the original paintings can be seen on display at World of Coca-Cola in Atlanta, Ga.

So this holiday season, raise a glass of eggnog (or Coke), or eggnog with rum (or rum and coke) to Haddon Sundblom, the forgotten father of father Christmas (and a freelance illustrator).

Written by Cojo “Art Juggernaut”

(via. artiholics via. coca-cola, header photo via. love hate advertising)

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Each year at this time I make the trip to my childhood home and stare at a refrigerator full of holiday cards from distant relatives and old family friends. Many of these cards include an annual photo, each year the same people in the same configuration, in front of the same fireplace, or a new vacation location. In the spirit of the season, here are fifteen artworld family photos.

Merry Christmas from the Impressionists

1. Above is the painting A Studio in the Batignolles by Henri Fantin-Latour. This image depicts a bunch of the French Impressionists, including Manet, Renoir, Monet, and the critic Emile Zola. An oil painting of an artist’s friends and colleagues that probably took weeks to complete really makes you appreciate the immediacy of Instagram.

Let It Snow, the Futurists

2. This is a Futurist banquet in Tunis with Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, author of the Futurist Manifesto, front and center. (image via)

Winter Greetings, The Ashcan School

3. Here we have the Ashcan School artists at the painter John French Sloan’s Philadelphia Studio in 1898. The original “Philadelphia Five,” included the great American artists George Bellows and Edward Hopper, among others. (image via)

Spreading Holiday Cheer, the Stieglitz’s

4. Meanwhile, over in New York is the Steiglitz Circle. This is an early photo, so Alfred is in there, but not Georgia O’Keeffe or Arthur Dove.  (image via)

Peace, Love & Joy from Weimar

5. This is a photograph from the Meeting of the Contstructivists and Dadaists in Weimar, 1922. Pictured here are some of the movements’ heavy hitters like Theo van Doesburg in the middle with his makeshift hat, El Lissitsky, Tristan Tzara, Hans Arp, and Hans Richter. (image via)

Happy Holidays from The Bauhaus

6. Here are members of the Bauhaus on the roof of their building, 1926.From left: Josef Albers, Hinnerk Scheper, Georg Muche, László Moholy-Nagy, Herbert Bayer, Joost Schmidt, Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Lyonel Feininger, Gunta Stölzl, Oskar Schlemmer.(image via)

Seasons Greetings from The Surrealists

7. And here are the Surrealists – among them, Tristan Tzara, Andre Breton, Salvador Dalí, Jean Arp, Yves Tanguy, Max Ernst, and Man Ray.

Feliz Navidad!

8. While Frida and Diego have a variety of options to choose from for their annual holiday greeting card, we need at least three people to fit in our group theme. Here they are with architect Albert Khan. (image via)

Celebrate The Season with The Irascibles!

9. Can you imagine what their Christmas party would have been like? Everyone drunk, night ending with fist fights and arguing over representation. From left, rear: Willem de Kooning, Adolph Gottleib, Ad Reinhardt, Hedda Sterne;(next row) Richard Pousette-Dart, William Baziotes, Jimmy Ernst (w. bow tie), Jackson Pollock (in striped jacket), James Brooks, Clyfford Still (leaning on knee), Robert Motherwell, Bradley Walker Tomlin; (in foreground) Theodoros Stamos (on bench), Barnett Newman (on stool), Mark Rothko (with glasses). (image via)

Merry Fuckin’ X-Mas from The Factory

10. This Richard Avedon portrait of the Warhol Factory, “Andy Warhol and members of The Factory, New York, October 30, 1969”, would actually be a really amazing thing to see on your mom’s ‘fridge. In addition to some beautiful feathered 1970’s hair and a whole lotta D, this photo features the fabulous Warhol Superstars Viva, Candy Darling, and Brigid Berlin. (image via)

Happy New Year from the Castelli Family

11. This is an invitation to the birthday party of legendary galleriest Leo Castelli by Hans Namuth in 1985 with Castelli and  his artists: Ellsworth Kelly, Dan Flavin, Joseph Kosuth, Richard Serra, Lawrence Weiner, Nassos Daphnis, Jasper Johns, Claes Oldenburg, Salvatore Scarpitta, Richard Artschwager, Mia Westerlund Roosen, Cletus Johnson, Keith Sonnier, Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Edward Ruscha, James Rosenquist, and Robert Barry.(image via)

Christmas Greetings from Mr. Chow’s

12. Here is another group shot that includes man-about-town Andy Warhol. The staged group photo seemed to be a popular format in the late 80s. (image via)

Fort Greene Felicitations

13. This image which features artists from music and film as well as art such as Lorna Simpson and Spike Lee. You can see these people featured in the documentary Brooklyn Boheme, which is available on Netflix. (image via)

Holiday Greetings from Christie’s

14. While flipping through a recent Art in America print issue, I clocked this double page spread which is not a cover photo for a feature on the auction house, but an advertisement. An advertisement for what, exactly? Well I’m not quite sure other than that these Christie’s staff are serious, they have names, and they sure seem to like hanging around on installation equipment. It mostly bums me out, thinking about the art handlers who had to unpack, move, place, and then re-crate those big Basquiat and Mark Grotjahn paintings in the background for this casual photoshoot. (image – author scan from Art In America November 2013)

Warm Winter Wishes from Work of Art!

15. And finally, everyone’s favorite bunch of reality artists – the cast of Work of Art Season 1. Just kidding! (image via)

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Ok, I feel robbed…the other day I was watching Science Channel.  It was a show about how science fiction writers have effected reality, when they mention hydrogen fuel cells for cars.

I made a model of a hydrogen powered car in the late 80s for a school science fair project. The simple beauty is that water is made up of hydrogen and oxygen so if you separate the gases through electrolysis you have pure hydrogen gas to burn in an engine as fuel and oxygen to breathe …and the only thing that comes out of the exhaust pipe when you burn hydrogen would be liquid water. Now this car is set to be mass produced by 2020…. I got a C on this project, and the diorama was good too..WTF!!?

They were talking about filling your car with hydrogen at a hydrogen gas station, with the electrolysis being done in these large machines, my concept was more self contained. The electrolysis would happen within the engine, so your car would run on hydrogen gas, the Oxygen would be breathable air released into the atmosphere, and you would only pour water into your tank, never to have to pay for gas again.  The exhaust pipe could even be hardwired back into the engine so the water vapor produced could be reused as fuel.

Going on Youtube I found many videos of a man named Stan Meyers who as early as the 1970s had started experimenting with water powered cars, and by the early 90s had developed a prototype and had filed dozens of pattens.

As witnessed in this news report, the pentagon was interested in his invention.  So if he invented it so long ago, why doesn’t this exist en masse? …If you journey down the rabbit hole you find, yes, it’s fucked up.  Before the cars could be mass produced, Stan died of mysterious causes.

There are tons of videos of amateur tinkerers and inventors building off of Stan’s concepts, creating water based, or hydrogen based prototypes and posting their results on Youtube.

Written by Cojo “Art Juggernaut”

The post Youtube Art School: Designing A Car That Runs On Water appeared first on Artiholics.

New York, NY – Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Racism is a tough subject to explain to a kid.  This video from 1970 of a 3rd grade teacher, teaching the ignorance of racism to her students by tricking them into hating each other is pure brilliance.

Realizing how it felt to be hated or treated differently for having a different color eyes, something which only a day before meant nothing, transformed normally civil children into hierarchical-minded evil discriminating brats, hurting each others feelings and even starting fights with children of different eye colors.  It’s an amazing to watch.

It makes me think of the Maya Angelou quote I’ve seen posted  on Facebook a dozen times.

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

– Maya Angelou

These children will forget the teacher’s name.  They will forget their fellow student’s names and what they were called each other during the experiment, but for the rest of their lives they will remember how it felt to be shat upon.  To be treated as a lesser human being for just having a different colored eye.

The sad thing is that I don’t know if this sort of experiment could be done today.  The first kid that told his parent’s about them “being bullied” for the color of their eyes, and mentioned the teacher told them they were worth less because of their eyes and for the other children to treat them differently because of it, and that teacher would be on their ass with their desk emptied into a cardboard box before the next school day.

It’s a shame because it’s  life altering lessons like this, that if taught young, could make a huge impact in a child’s life, which would ripple on to their kids, and their kids, for generations.  World altering lessons.

While viewing this video I was reminded of the Starbelly Sneetches.  Not the Starbelly Sneetches video below, the book (which I was read as a child), but the sentiment is the same- but packaged in Sneetch form.

My toddler self learned a lot about morality, fairness, racism, and the golden rule as a byproduct of being a Dr. Seuss Fan.  You get sucked in by the fantastical worlds, bizarre rhyming speech patterns, and amazing art; the subliminal lessons and morals don’t beat you over the head, but he would gently and poetically whisper to you in Seussian alliteration.

Why don’t more things I love as an adult also have subliminally positive side effects?

Written by Cojo “Art Juggernaut”

[via Upworthy]

The post Do You Remember The Starbelly Sneetches? Explaining Racism With Art: YOUtube Art School appeared first on Artiholics.

Manchester, England – Monday, June 24, 2013

In a bizarre, as-of-yet *unexplained ancient art phenomena, a statue dedicated to Osiris, the god of death, in an enclosed museum display case in Manchester, England is spinning like a top…a very, very, slow top.  *(well, not conclusively)

“[Physicist Brian Cox] thinks it’s ‘differential friction,'” Price told The Daily Mail, referring to the process by which two surfaces — in this case the statue’s stone and the glass shelf, “cause a subtle vibration which is making the statuette turn.” Cox believes foot traffic or vibrations from the street outside are causing the mysterious movement, but Price refutes that theory. “It has been on those surfaces since we have had it and it has never moved before,” he said.

I’ve always thought a Pharoah’s curse involved something outside of the five elements of hip-hop.  If this is all the ancient Egyptians were afraid of, yo that’s kinda funny – Ra’s got fat base lines like Russell Simmons steals money.

My best guess is that another one of the statues Stepped-up, and Osiris had to pull out some killer, thriller moves.

My advice for any statue who doesn’t want to get smoked by Osiris…

Try throwing in a windmill, it’s always impressive.

Written by Cojo “Art Juggernaut”

[via Gawker via DailyMail]

The post Osiris Just Brought It… Anubis,You’ve Been Served! appeared first on Artiholics.

This amazing 1938 Disney rejection letter (below- click to enlarge) to a female artist named Mary V.Ford from Arkansas shows how far we’ve come as a society.

They mentioned in this rejection letter that the only work she could get would be in the ink and paint department as girls merely filled in the color and lines that the young men were trained to draw.  You silly twist, what did you think a dame could draw?  How would she hold the animation celluloid down when she has a babe in one arm and an iron in the other?  Absurd! 🙂

Fyi, the celluloid was later dunked in a chemical bath so it could be reused on other animation projects, so there is very little of the women who worked in the ink and paint department’s art still remaining.

Oddly enough, in a related personal story, in the mid 1990s when I was starting out at SVA I had just finished a two year high school internship at Marvel Comics (long before they were owned by Disney) where I had learned how to color and was now coloring comic book pages to pay my bills.

A Disney rep happened to visit our school to take a look at the portfolios of some of the Juniors and Seniors.  During a Q & A session I told them that I was coloring for Marvel and that I was wondering whom I should send my coloring samples to at Disney,  to possibly color for animation.

The guy had a confused look on his face, and then said, that he believed that would be the ink and paint department.  His advice was “I think I remember that it is made up entirely of women,  so you might not get very far with that.  Maybe you could try sending it to the department that deals with background painting.”

I do have to hand it to prehistoric pre-women’s lib Disney though, they had a woman employee hand type this rejection letter.  I have a stack of rejection letters from when I was first starting out that are little more than a photocopied form letter.  If you were lucky they would have taken the time to put a check-mark next to the reason (which there were several possible) for why you were rejected.

The least informative of my rejection letters was this one from Acclaim Comics (whom I later worked with).

Written by Cojo “Art Juggernaut”

[via Retronaut]

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