Gone, Baby, Gaughan: The Art of Jack Gaughan
Jack Gaughan would've turned ninety years old today. He didn't even make it to fifty-five. I almost wrote a post on Jack back in July for the thirty-fifth anniversary of his death, but that didn't quite work out. Thus, this post, which uses the title meant for the July post because I didn't want to waste it. Jack--whose surname rhymes with "gone" and the similar Irish surname, Vaughan--did create some pretty gonzo art in his time, so there ya go.
Jack Gaughan is barely remembered today. Like many other fantasy artists of the '60s and '70s, Gaughan's art didn't make it past the Great Divide of 1980. Around that date, art directors started demanding more "photo-realistic" art, such as was peddled by the likes of Boris, Rowena etc.
Gaughan certainly had a respectable resume going into 1980. As the SF Encyclopedia site puts it:
"Gaughan made his first professional sale while still in school at the Dayton Art Institute; he went full-time in the mid-1950s. Prolific in both covers and interior art, he was most closely associated with Galaxy Science Fiction, for which he was Art Editor 1969-1972 and painted 38 covers [for that magazine] over the years; he also did 29 covers for If, 11 covers for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, seven for Asimov's and others for many other magazines. But, although his cover work was more than competent, it was his spare, often nearly abstract black-and-white interior Illustrations that dominated the field in the 1960s. He worked for paperback and hardcover book publishers, too, most notably Ace Books. Famous for his generosity in donating artwork to Fanzines, he is the only illustrator to have won Hugos for both Best Fan Artist and Best Professional Artist in the same year (1967); he won the Professional Artist award again in 1968 and 1969."
Publishers Weekly had this to say in memory of Jack:
"Between the 1950s and '70s, Jack Gaughan (pronounced "Gone") shaped the look of fantasy and science fiction for readers of countless magazines and mass market paperbacks that bore his artwork. Influenced by pulp masters Virgil Finlay and Hannes Bok (whom he knew personally), Gaughan transcended the fan publishing field, where he first gained traction, to become a regular contributor of interiors and covers for Galaxy, Amazing, If, Fantastic, and other leading SF publications. Though some top editors dismissed his quasi-abstract compositions and cartoonish spot illustrations as 'second class,' his work articulated a postpulp sensibility that spoke to the realities as well as fantasies of the dawning space age."
I won't lie, I bagged on Gaughan's work for a long time. Some/much of his art can certainly be described as "crude", "quasi-abstract" or "cartoonish". However, thanks to the nudges from people like Morgan Holmes, I've taken another look at Gaughan's body of work these last few years.
Here are some of my thoughts about the man and his art.
As SFE mentioned above, Jack was a generous guy. He gave tons of free artwork to various fanzines for several decades, despite having a Hugo--back when that meant something--for Best Professional Artist on his mantel. Gaughan came from SFF fandom and he never forgot his roots.
I've never had much use for "primitivism" in art, but most such art just depicts somebody planting a garden or pushing a cart down the street or whatever. There's no power there, no dynamism. The best of Jack Gaughan's work has power and dynamism to burn. Some of his compositions--the placement of elements within the picture--can stand up to many artists considered far better nowadays. Also, Jack was utterly unafraid of using a bold palette of colors to make his paintings leap out at the viewer.
While looking at pic after pic of Gaughan's art, a kinship with another artist's work kept nagging me, but I couldn't put my finger on it. Finally, back in July when I first intended to write this post, it struck me: some of Jack Gaughan's best fantasy work reminds me of Nicholas Roerich's art. Check out this link, compare and then make your own judgement. I have been unable to find any mention of Roerich by Gaughan, who was an admitted fan of Finlay and Bok.
The thing is, not all of Gaughan's work can be described as "primitive", “abstract” or "cartoonish". The portfolio he did for the 27th Worldcon in 1969 belies all that.
Jack was a fan of the Good Old Stuff. He drew these scenes “from memory” depicting Haggard’s She and Rohmer’s Fu Manchu. Gaughan also did the cover for President Fu Manchu in 1963.
Those plates show that Jack could do detailed, realistic work in the same vein as artists like Hugh Rankin or even Roy G. Krenkel. Frankly, what his Fu Manchu illos suggest to me, more than anything, are Joseph Clement Coll’s classic illustrations for The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu. Not too shabby. Gaughan’s cover for King of the World's Edge could be by Tim Kirk, Kelly Freas or maybe Tom Barber. Obviously, Gaughan made intentional decisions as an artist to draw and paint the way he did for many of his other works. In that regard, he reminds me a little bit of Ed "Emsh" Emshwiller.
Gaughan used elements of surrealism, cubism and abstraction to convey some of the truly wild concepts that his art illustrated. I have a low tolerance for such things, but Jack--sometimes, anyway--made it work, in my opinion.
Gaughan was "there first" in several key instances. He was the first artist to paint a cover for a single--as opposed to an "Ace Double"--Robert E. Howard paperback novel. That would be Almuric from Ace Books. Soon after, he painted the cover for the first paperback edition of The Fellowship of the Ring. Thirteen years later, he painted the cover for Andre Norton's Quag Keep, the first novel ever based on Dungeons & Dragons. Jack had several more firsts having to do with sword and sorcery, but I'll save those for a later "Savage Swords of Jack Gaughan" post.
This Jack Gaughan cover sold well over one hundred thousand copies in its first year of publication. JRRT said he preferred it to the Remington cover for the later Ballantine edition. The Frazetta-covered Lancer edition of Conan the Adventurer didn’t sell more than one hundred thousand copies in its first twelve months. Does that mean we get to say that “Jack Gaughan ‘made’ LotR/Tolkien”?
