The Things you Didn't Know you Didn't Know...about Charles Front

My Dad said, when I visited him a few weeks ago, "that thing Rumsfeld said about the 'unknown unknowns', the things 'we do not know we don’t know'; it's starting to make sense to me". I can't remember the context he (my Dad) said it in, but despite the fact that it made me laugh, it does make sense, dealing as it does with the philosophical concept of the unknown known. The Slovenian philosopher and critical theorist Slavoj Žižek describes it as "that which we don't know, or intentionally refuse to acknowledge that we know...". Which, if you think about it in the context Rumsfeld was using it, WMDs, really suggests that he might just be admitting that he "sort of knew" there were no WMDs, but kept it from himself. Oh heck, talk about a digression; let's get back on track.

Yesterday, Saturday July 31st 2010, I was looking through The Times and I spotted a big story about ex-Oasis front-man Liam Gallagher's new clothing line, and shop, Pretty Green (which, being an old Suedehead/Mod I'm into, by the way), and right there, staring me in the face, was a new twist that just impossibly, through sheer serendipity, segued into my blog post about the illustrator Charles Front. You see the logo for Pretty Green is a bit of a Beatle-hat tip to Charles Front, whether those concerned know it or not.





You see, Charles Front was the young illustrator who designed the lettering on The Beatles Rubber Soul album. Back in 1965, Art Director Charles Front was asked by Bob Freeman, the Beatles' photographer, to create artwork for a new album sleeve; Rubber Soul. Front's design, squeezing the words Rubber Soul into a shape that resembled the drip of rubber from a milked- rubber-tree (an early example of playful bubble-shaped lettering) quickly became a template for the poster art of the period, and would slowly, very slowly, influence the design of more creative forms of typography over the coming decades.



A cursory glance at the Beatles album designs around, and even after Front's design, reveal that whilst album covers became increasingly innovative, vivid, and colourful, the typography was more often than not less adventurous. And the fact that the influence of that iconic design can still be detected today, with very few people knowing a great deal about the designer himself, speaks volumes about the quality of the work.









This is where the "not knowing what you don't know" part comes into the equation. If you look at the work of the cartooning-godfather of graffiti art, Vaughn Bode, with no knowledge of the Rubber Soul design, then the only illustrator who produced typography that could have influenced today's Urban Art, beginning with the bubble lettering, "Softies", of PHASE2 on the streets of New York in 1972, is Bode. Indeed Bode, who used balloon lettering in his strips Deadbone, in Cavalier Magazine in 1969, and later in Cheech Wizard, is acknowledged as an influence on that movement.











When you look at the lettering on Rubber Soul again though, and think of the popularity of the Beatles, then it is not impossible to imagine that Charles Front's iconic Rubber Soul font, might also have been an influence on that Art form. It is, I would suggest, a possible cultural influence that you had no idea you knew existed.



Although other artists who worked with the Beatles are better known, you will surely be hard-pushed to find more t-shirts, logos, key-rings, and the like, out there devoted to a Beatle-related image, than the Rubber Soul typography designed by Front. In fact it is pretty rare to see an album typeface, other than the later YES designs, take on a life of it's own in this fashion.










Indeed, the only other really daringly playful use of typography on a Beatles album, can be seen on Magical Mystery Tour, released in the US in November 1967, and that album also uses bubble writing, but in a more conventional way. And whilst Peter Blake's cover for Sergeant Pepper (Jun, 1967) is pretty spectacular, the lettering is incorporated into the drum in the image and is therefore, more or less, pretty conventional.

I would argue that nobody who worked on the Beatles's album art played the kind of daring game that Charles Front played with the text, in fact very few artists of the period seemed to have been daring enough to try. Even the late Heinz Edelmann, brilliant creator of the hallucinogenic landscape of Pepperland as art director for the 1968 animated Beatles film Yellow Submarine, who like Charles Front also produced artwork for albums, never produced typographic design as innovative as his album cover art.

Outside the Beatles hit-factory there was also a dearth of daring typographical design, and even the great Andy Warhol was producing covers with unadventurous lettering.

One of the few artists who who worked on album art, and who did experiment with typography, including bubble-lettering (most famously on Keep on Truckin' (1968))alongside colourful, playful, artwork, was Robert Crumb, who, coincidentally, worked alongside Vaugh Bode back in the day. Again though, Crumb could be a little conventional with the typeface, and it is surely a little fanciful to see that big upturned shoe sole that appears in much of Crumb's artwork, as slightly reminiscent of the shape of Charles Front's Rubber Soul design.

If you search for "Rubber Soul" on Google, and check out those images you will see some evidence of the influence of Charles Front's innovative design. You will also see little or no mention of Charles Front, the man who created the design. I took some advice in regard to the copyright of the Rubber Soul font, and of the design in general, those in the know, Nate Piekos and Daniel Poeira, are of the opinion that Apple would be responsible for establishing rights. My feeling though is that there is certainly a case for moral rights belonging to Charles Front, and of course it very much matters what his original deal with the company was. In the meantime, it would be a nice gesture to acknowledge Charles Front as the original creator of what is very clearly a popular design. I mean, how many people have seen their artwork adorn a Beatles cover, countless t-shirts, influence Urban Art, and act as a backdrop for The Righteous Brothers? Respect.

As a caveat, bear in mind this post makes no mention of the many books Charles Front illustrated, and the fact that while you were young you enjoyed his drawings on Jackanory. Now there's a thought, you saw his work in books, on TV, and sitting there in your big brother or sister's or even your parent's record collection. It was influencing you, and you didn't know it. More things you didn't know you didn't know about Charles Front.

The images here are copyright their respective copyright holders. If you have any questions, ask me.

Comic Book Cultures: France

I've looked enviously at the French love affair with comics several times over the years. When I was very young, before I was interested enough in comics to discover that Herge was from Belgium and not France, I thought all the major cartoonists were born there; the European ones at least. Of course I later found out that many major European cartoonists, and those from further afield, had simply, naturally, gravitated toward France, a natural home for artists, and, it seems, a natural home for cartoonists. From Herge, to Hugo Pratt, to Ronald Searle, to Crumb, and to Gilbert Shelton, that migration toward the place continues even today.

In the UK, we cartoonists, perhaps with two exceptions (no more), are artistic pariahs. The lone arts programme on independent terrestrial television, The South Bank Show, now cancelled, was more likely to feature a dancing-bear as an artist, than a cartoonist. Like Newsnight Review, our "other" arts programme, from the BBC, The South Bank Show figured there were maybe two or three cartoonists in the UK, Ronald Searle (living in France), Scarfe, and Posey. They are, of course, two very different sorts of arts programme, The South Bank show, chaired by Melvin Bragg, focused on one artist or movement at a time, whilst the BBC programme consists of a panel of arty-types, almost always journalists, poets, authors, or sculptures, curiously enough. Think, the London/Notting Hill village and you will have a mental picture of the usual panelists.

Newsnight Review is more of an arts magazine, and more like the French model of discursive TV, and it constantly reviews movies and TV shows based on comic book characters. Now, you might think that on the odd occasion the show actually does feature the work of cartoonists that it might have the odd cartoonist on the panel discussing the merits of the work, but no, it just doesn't happen. In fact, I have my doubts that the researchers even realise that much of the material these poets and journalists and sculptures review is written and drawn by UK cartoonists. As I said, we cartoonists are the pariahs of the arts world.

The position of cartoonists in the UK is solidified by the absence of cartoonists and cartoons not just from Britain's art shows on TV, and newspapers and magazines (with obvious exceptions), but also from artistic debates, art magazines and galleries. With the exception of Computer Arts, which occasionally mentions maybe Peanuts in a passing article on merchandising, I can't really think of one magazine that has ever devoted time and space to the artform. Oh there has been the odd review and even the odd 4 or even 8 page piece on French or US cartoonists, like Sempe or Chris Ware in the broadsheets over here, but those are mainly puff-pieces by trendy hipster journalists trying to appear geekily cool. The same people ensure that lots of ill-informed column inches are devoted to the most talked-about graphic novels and even manga, but those always seem to have been squeezed in for novelty value amongst the "real" literature.

Over in France, meanwhile, The Musée de la Bande Dessinée, in Angoulème, the town that hosts the celebrated comic book festival every January, has been granted full status as a Museum of France; so it ranks alongside The Louvre, not just in the public imagination but also in officialdom. Not that there has ever been a great distinction between comic art and any other art in France. Indeed, The Louvre itself recently celebrated comics art, the 'ninth art', with an exhibition of original drawings and paintings by some very famous bédéistes (Bande Dessinées creators). The new museum, with thousands of original drawings and more than 100,000 magazines and comic books, will also function as a reference library, storing every comics publication published in France. And fortunately for the museum's director, not all the 34 million graphic publications the French consume every year are published there.

In France, there is no suggestion at all that cartoons are such low art that neither they nor their creators should be seen and heard. The French magazine, Beaux Arts is the sort of publication I imagine we will never see in the UK. It is an arts and culture magazine that will discuss Fauvism in one issue, Expressionism in another, Bande Dessinee (graphic novels) in another, and Manga in another. It is simply accepted that cartoons are art and that the cartoonists who create the work are artists.

It is the recent manga edition of Beaux Arts hors serie, Qu'est-Ce Que le manga? that, for me, really illustrates the lack of interest in cartoons, of respect for cartoonists, and of inquisitiveness and interest about the artform amongst the literati in the UK. It is, perhaps, this manga edition, more than those that have focused on Band Dessinee that illustrates the poverty of Britain's art scene. It is unimaginable that such a magazine with such an in depth discussion of the history and role of manga would be published in the UK.

Edited by Claude Pommereau, the manga edition of the magazine celebrates the artform looking back at the history of manga, and forward to the new wave of mangaka. From an examination of the ubiquitous role of manga in Japanese life and culture, the magazine looks at different genres and looks back to link the art of Hokusai with the venerable movement. The overview of the artform, in this context, makes it almost impossible to argue that comic books are not art and it goes some way to illustrating the poverty of thinking on these shores.

In addition to an examination of the culture of manga, and a small history of manga there are liberal illustrated examples, including a gorgeous reproduction of a Walking Man piece, by Jiro Taniguchi and an episode of Osamu Tezuka's Black Jack, both of which are 'un-mirrored' and should be read right to left. In addition, they are printed backwards through the magazine - better to enjoy the real Japanese-style experience of reading manga. The 'Walking Man' page below, is the final page of this excerpt.

Like Walking Man, this wonderful Black Jack adventure, the tattoo man or man with tattoo, ends with the first page you see. For die-hard Tezuka fans this excerpt is a delight, and there is little doubt in my mind that it looks so fresh and vibrant that it must also serve to bring new fans to worship at the feet of 'the god of manga'.

With some excellent pieces on the masters of manga, the current crop of young masters, and the enfent terribles of manga, this edition of the magazine goes some way to explaining why you seldom hear any French cartoonists say 'I don't like manga', as many of their British and American counterparts do. Let me explain what I mean by that, whenever a cartoonist from Britain or America says 'I don't like manga' they invariably mean they do not like a particular genre of manga and, unsurprisngly, that genre is usually the genre of manga created for young girls aged 8-13. It is difficult to imagine the well-informed French cartoonist, and no doubt a good deal of the wider comics loving French public, if this magazine is anything to go by, mistaking one genre of manga for all Japanese comic books.

Beaux Arts magazine really does bring home to me that there is an almost unbridgeable chasm here in the UK, not between the reading public and the creators of comic books, graphic novels, BD and manga, but between the gatekeepers of the British Art World (including publishers) and the rest of the planet. Britain is fast becoming a cultural wasteland, obsessed with the sort of ephemeral souless art that the toxic banks hung in their foyers, and the prattle-filled thoughts of celebrity "authors". No wonder our cartoonists and illustrators and writers increasingly look elsewhere for support. You'll have noticed, I hope, that while the French have 'les bédéistes', and the Japanese have 'mangaka', Britain has no word to describe a cartoonist or illustrator who is skilled and experienced in the creation of comic art.