I’m sure the illustrator Robert McGinness was at one time the most successful American illustrator, he seems to have been everywhere and done everything for everyone. His catalogue is replete with prestige clients, magazines, film productions as well as the bread and butter work, which is as what we all know, is what really pays the bills. He was at the top of his game, to my mind, in the sixties and seventies producing work in the painterly style that had been the look for illustration since about the fifties. McGinness’s work though, is stylistically rather more versatile, he seems to be able to wander across the line between stylisation and realism at will. It’s generally possible to put one’s finger on a particular talent an artist has and say I like this or that about their work, the way they paint flesh or pose figures. It’s harder to do that with McGinness because he doesn’t rely on style to sell the picture.
McGinness had quite a prominent association with the James Bond film franchise doing poster work and it seems from these examples, pre-production visualisations. In case you’re not familiar with the concept of pre-production visuals, they’re often used to sell a prospective idea to would be investors but they’re also passed around, shared between a creative team to get them working in the same direction. I have my doubts about these examples, especially the one with Bond perched on coral, it seems a little too after the fact to be pre-production but that’s just conjecture. It’s also a slightly odd painting though, it’s odd because it’s rendered like a studio photograph. The figures look as though they’re standing in front of a photographer’s wall, even so far as the seamless junction between floor and wall. Illustrators are or were used for visuals because they don’t suffer the limitations of photography, they can make pictures up and draw or paint them. Oh look let’s give the Pharaoh lots of gold ornamentation, let’s make King Kong reach out at the plane, that kind of thing, so what purpose is there to painting a dreary studio wall, you might as well take a snap. I suppose though, Connery being a star, wouldn’t be available for photo shoots without some stiff financial incentive.
There is also some eroticism here, Domino in the midst of hoiking her knickers off, or on but she has a strange and asymmetric face that reminds me of a kipper. She stares perpendicular to the picture plane with a vacant gaze. Bond though is attentive and alert, what’s that a would be assassin amid the palms – no it’s just a mouse peeking through the photographers skirting board. He definitely looks as though he’s finished but she’s caressing that phallus as though business still needs attending. What is that thing anyway, don’t tell me that it’s a spear gun harpoon, since when did they come gold plated. It seems like I’m being critical doesn’t it, which is odd because I’m a McGinnis fan and fans are supposed to regard the object of their fanishness with uncritical fascination, oh well – bill me.
Although a somewhat less finished effort, the other picture, the one with the couple cavorting in the ocean, is more satisfactory. It doesn’t seem to me to be realistic, I would expect more angular and contorted tangle of limbs for a pair sinking in the ocean. Then there’s the myopia of the aquatic environment that would make staring into your lover’s eyes or even in their general direction – quite difficult. It’s a fantasy though, so these things don’t matter, the water is there just to give context. The foam and spray evoke a sense of motion as well as a lend a suggestion of passion, while foreshadowing the culmination of their union.
McGinnis gives great extremity, hands feet, legs arms there’s always some elegance and poise about them, sometimes his figures remind me of birds, the structure of their limbs being delineated so finely. Here he’s opted to use the background colour in Domino’s legs giving them a feel of translucence or iridescence. Of course, she’s a fish in her element not the cold kipper served up on a slab in the other picture. Interestingly, although Bond’s figure is more solid, more in water than of it, this translucency is also present in his torso.
There you go I hope you enjoyed the pictures, I know it seemed like I hated the one with Bond seated but I don’t really, I actually quite like it and I think it’s a fine piece of technique, it’s just that my thoughts on it tend towards the critical.
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