Subject
Nabokov and Commercial Art
From
Date
Body
EDNOTE. In answer to Ole Nyegaard's question below, Gerard de Vries (together with Gavrie Shapiro and myself) are working on a volume devoted to the visual arts in VN's work. The subject of commercial art has not been systematically treated and is a fertile area for investigation. A good topic for a web page -- although there might be copyright complications. As just reported on NABOKV-L Nabokov bibliographer Michael Juliar has launched the site "What Nabokov Read" (WHR) -- an on-going compilation of materials VN is known to have read. Something similar should be done for the visual arts.
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----- Original Message -----
From: Ole Nyegaard
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
Sent: Monday, June 16, 2003 5:31 AM
Subject: Re. the Conquering Hero & VN and idealize Americana images
Well, the robe is a Viyella Robe, the breakfast-set by Wedgwood; And Alfred Appel shows it in the Annotated Lolita, which in the Penguin edition (I haven't seen the Vintage edition) is hardly readable or perceivable, but plain miserable, a smudged black and grey reproduction - owing to the deplorable bad printing (there should be a medal for anyone going through the Penguin edition of The Gift more than once!- let alone Lolita).
Anyway,on p. 86 in Ogilvy on Advertising (NewYork: Crown,1983.) there is a readable reproduction in colour, Appel refers to it. What I originally wondered about was: whether these pictures, the ads and the paintings alluded to in Lolita, or elsewhere in Nabokov's fiction for that matter, were available - or could be made availabe for perusal on a website, or any such thing? It took me a week to get Ogilvy home from the university library.
There are guides to Nabokov's Butterflies, Nabokov's Berlin, and a list of what he read is being made - all very informative; I can't help dreaming of someone (connected to a generous publisher) who writes a Guide to Nabokov's Art and Ads. Nabokov was one of the most visually gifted writers of the 20th. century and his works teem with refenrences to the visual arts.
Ole Nyegaard, Aarhus, Denmark.
----- Original Message -----
From: D. Barton Johnson
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Sent: Monday, June 16, 2003 4:58 AM
Subject: Fw: VN and idealize Americana images
EDNOTE. Appeal and Boyd have both pointed to particular images from magazines as icons of idealized American life (a.k.a. poshlost').
If you have such images please notify Mr. Brown and NABOKV-L.
----- Original Message -----
From: Andrew Brown
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
Sent: Sunday, June 15, 2003 5:01 PM
Subject: Re: VN and idealize Americana images
Several years ago, after my father's death, I inherited a collection that my grandmother had compiled over the years -- a series of covers, and a few inside pages, of The Saturday Evening Post, from the 1930s into the 1960s. Many of these covers are original Norman Rockwells.
Rockwell, as you may know, was an American illustrator who had a talent for capturing characteristic though idealized scenes of American life. I've seen in this collection what I believe to be many of the "set piece" images Nabokov may have been inspired by as "starting points for his own ironic, and more realistic view of American life, with all its commerciality, its ever-present subtext of eroticism, particularly of girls, and male figures who were recognizeable American types, drawn up to rather heroic proportions.
I'm going to be looking through this box of covers shortly, in order to have some framed as prints for family members and friends, and will keep in mind the print advertisement Nabokov refers to. Nabokov also refers often to popular American photographic images from the original, and very-good- for-its-kind, American family illustrated news magazine, Life -- I mean the original Life, not the present revived but inferior publication
I've seen several ad illustrations of disheveled but handsome hubbies with breakfast trays in this collection, and will give you the brand name of the product if I run across it. Companies often have much of their advertising archived, and you may be able to obtain a print, if it's from a company that maintains a good public relations staff.
Unfortunately, since the American economy was hijacked by executives who felt they needed seven and eight figure salaries, some of the first departments and staff to be cut were the corporate library and archive personnel. These departments were "overhead," and when operating budgets are slashed, they are usually among the first to go -- and decades of advertising images are dumped into the trash.
AB
---- Original Message -----
From: Andrew Brown
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
Sent: Saturday, June 14, 2003 2:01 PM
Subject: Re: The conquering hero?
I need to clarify the following:
"I've seen in this collection what I believe to be many of the "set piece" images Nabokov may have been inspired by as "starting points for his own ironic, and more realistic view of American life...",
Nabokov certainly did not need The Saturday Evening Post or any other magazine as a "starting point" for anything. I meant that his "take" on America brilliantly revealed the strange, yet more real and more beautiful soul, for which Norman Rockwell's art served as a scrubbed, Sunday dressed, anodyne commercial.
----- Original Message -----
From: D. Barton Johnson
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Sent: Friday, June 13, 2003 11:50 PM
Subject: Fw: The conquering hero?
----- Original Message -----
From: Ole Nyegaard
To: Nabokov Listserver
Sent: Monday, June 09, 2003 2:23 AM
Subject: The conquering hero?
The ad which Dolores Haze has hung on her wall ("...a dark-haired young husband with a kind of drained look in his Irish eyes. He was modeling a robe by So-and So and holding a bridgelike tray by So-and So, with breakfast for two".), and Appel has reproduced in his anntotations, is it available somewhere on the internet - or somewhere else, for that matter?
And now I'm at it, is René Prinet's "Kreutzer Sonata" to be found anywhere? The only thing I found was a smudged little thing called "The Kiss", which fits with the description given by V.N. in Appel's notes ("an ill-groomed girl pianist rising like a wave from her stool after completing the duo, and being kissed by a hirsute violinist").
Best wishes
Ole Nyegaard, Aarhus, Denmark.
-------------------------------------------
----- Original Message -----
From: Ole Nyegaard
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
Sent: Monday, June 16, 2003 5:31 AM
Subject: Re. the Conquering Hero & VN and idealize Americana images
Well, the robe is a Viyella Robe, the breakfast-set by Wedgwood; And Alfred Appel shows it in the Annotated Lolita, which in the Penguin edition (I haven't seen the Vintage edition) is hardly readable or perceivable, but plain miserable, a smudged black and grey reproduction - owing to the deplorable bad printing (there should be a medal for anyone going through the Penguin edition of The Gift more than once!- let alone Lolita).
Anyway,on p. 86 in Ogilvy on Advertising (NewYork: Crown,1983.) there is a readable reproduction in colour, Appel refers to it. What I originally wondered about was: whether these pictures, the ads and the paintings alluded to in Lolita, or elsewhere in Nabokov's fiction for that matter, were available - or could be made availabe for perusal on a website, or any such thing? It took me a week to get Ogilvy home from the university library.
There are guides to Nabokov's Butterflies, Nabokov's Berlin, and a list of what he read is being made - all very informative; I can't help dreaming of someone (connected to a generous publisher) who writes a Guide to Nabokov's Art and Ads. Nabokov was one of the most visually gifted writers of the 20th. century and his works teem with refenrences to the visual arts.
Ole Nyegaard, Aarhus, Denmark.
----- Original Message -----
From: D. Barton Johnson
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Sent: Monday, June 16, 2003 4:58 AM
Subject: Fw: VN and idealize Americana images
EDNOTE. Appeal and Boyd have both pointed to particular images from magazines as icons of idealized American life (a.k.a. poshlost').
If you have such images please notify Mr. Brown and NABOKV-L.
----- Original Message -----
From: Andrew Brown
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
Sent: Sunday, June 15, 2003 5:01 PM
Subject: Re: VN and idealize Americana images
Several years ago, after my father's death, I inherited a collection that my grandmother had compiled over the years -- a series of covers, and a few inside pages, of The Saturday Evening Post, from the 1930s into the 1960s. Many of these covers are original Norman Rockwells.
Rockwell, as you may know, was an American illustrator who had a talent for capturing characteristic though idealized scenes of American life. I've seen in this collection what I believe to be many of the "set piece" images Nabokov may have been inspired by as "starting points for his own ironic, and more realistic view of American life, with all its commerciality, its ever-present subtext of eroticism, particularly of girls, and male figures who were recognizeable American types, drawn up to rather heroic proportions.
I'm going to be looking through this box of covers shortly, in order to have some framed as prints for family members and friends, and will keep in mind the print advertisement Nabokov refers to. Nabokov also refers often to popular American photographic images from the original, and very-good- for-its-kind, American family illustrated news magazine, Life -- I mean the original Life, not the present revived but inferior publication
I've seen several ad illustrations of disheveled but handsome hubbies with breakfast trays in this collection, and will give you the brand name of the product if I run across it. Companies often have much of their advertising archived, and you may be able to obtain a print, if it's from a company that maintains a good public relations staff.
Unfortunately, since the American economy was hijacked by executives who felt they needed seven and eight figure salaries, some of the first departments and staff to be cut were the corporate library and archive personnel. These departments were "overhead," and when operating budgets are slashed, they are usually among the first to go -- and decades of advertising images are dumped into the trash.
AB
---- Original Message -----
From: Andrew Brown
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
Sent: Saturday, June 14, 2003 2:01 PM
Subject: Re: The conquering hero?
I need to clarify the following:
"I've seen in this collection what I believe to be many of the "set piece" images Nabokov may have been inspired by as "starting points for his own ironic, and more realistic view of American life...",
Nabokov certainly did not need The Saturday Evening Post or any other magazine as a "starting point" for anything. I meant that his "take" on America brilliantly revealed the strange, yet more real and more beautiful soul, for which Norman Rockwell's art served as a scrubbed, Sunday dressed, anodyne commercial.
----- Original Message -----
From: D. Barton Johnson
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Sent: Friday, June 13, 2003 11:50 PM
Subject: Fw: The conquering hero?
----- Original Message -----
From: Ole Nyegaard
To: Nabokov Listserver
Sent: Monday, June 09, 2003 2:23 AM
Subject: The conquering hero?
The ad which Dolores Haze has hung on her wall ("...a dark-haired young husband with a kind of drained look in his Irish eyes. He was modeling a robe by So-and So and holding a bridgelike tray by So-and So, with breakfast for two".), and Appel has reproduced in his anntotations, is it available somewhere on the internet - or somewhere else, for that matter?
And now I'm at it, is René Prinet's "Kreutzer Sonata" to be found anywhere? The only thing I found was a smudged little thing called "The Kiss", which fits with the description given by V.N. in Appel's notes ("an ill-groomed girl pianist rising like a wave from her stool after completing the duo, and being kissed by a hirsute violinist").
Best wishes
Ole Nyegaard, Aarhus, Denmark.