Comments on: Victor Haboush

by: Amid

Thu, 02 Feb 2006 10:41:48 +0000

Gerit - Thanks for your eloquent thoughts. Very nicely put. There are very few things in art that are completely original. Fifties animation design wasn’t created in a vacuum. It was influenced by everything that the artists saw around them—the modern art movements, the jazz music that they listened to, the illustrations in all the magazines of the period. Today, people who blatantly copy work from that era always fall flat because it’s dishonest, none of those other elements surround us today that surrounded the designers of that period. Having said that, there’s also a lot of great designers who take the work from that era and build on it, add something of their own to it. Sometimes the lines blur, and it’s hard to tell who is simply copying the work and who is being original. Certainly, with digital technology, there are things that we can do today that are as innovative and groundbreaking as the work of 50s animation designers. It won’t look exactly like 50s design, but it shouldn’t. We have to use the great art of the past and build upon it to create a new expression of our time.

by: Gerit

Tue, 31 Jan 2006 16:43:29 +0000

Interesting that you mention Shag or anyone else whose work so directly apes this style. There seems to be an energy and drive for experimentation during this phase of art, which in its subtlety and innocence, can only be mimicked but not fully realized by most of today’s celebrated hipsters. It’s like I could always do a work of art influenced by Picasso, but in the end it will always point to him and wind up being a tribute (or an embarrassing failure pointing back to me). It makes me wonder if there’s a crises of our time where so many pivotal art and music movements are so diffused or diluted in our culture that all we can do is romanticize on their original purity and wish we could ride a similar wave. As we distance ourselves further from the tools of pencil, paintbrush and paper, I’m sure that looking back and seeing how certain people who truly mastered those skills without a crutch of any sort, will only reveal their genius more and more.

by: Ward

Fri, 20 Jan 2006 22:42:05 +0000

Ummm, too good to be true! These are fantastic, Amid! Many thanks.

by: Jenny

Tue, 17 Jan 2006 15:44:09 +0000

Gawd almighty!!!!
Tasty stuff. I hope for the record you do find out what they were for. A pity they couldn’t go in the book.

by: Thorsten Hasenkamm

Tue, 17 Jan 2006 14:14:53 +0000

These are great, I like them more than his recent work…

by: Will Kane

Tue, 17 Jan 2006 01:17:40 +0000

I wish I had something more insightful or original to say other than “Wow, these are fantastic!”
But I don’t, so that’ll have to do.