Kinstler

I don’t mind admitting it: to me, art is magic. Anyone who can sketch, draw, paint, or anything like that and actually make it look like something might as well be a wizard as far as I’m concerned. That’s how utterly beyond comprehension the process is to me.

But just because I don’t know how they do it doesn’t mean that I don’t know what I like. (This is, of course, related to the old saying, “I don’t know much about art, but I know what I like.”) Which brings us around to the work of Everett Raymond Kinstler. It’s art, no doubt about that, and I like it.

Now known and widely respected as a portrait artist (he’s painted the official portraits of presidents and numerous other public figures), Kinstler got his start in the Forties as a comic book artist and later provided illustrations for pulp and paperback covers and dust jackets for hardcover books, in addition to many interior illustrations for pulp stories. This part of his life and career is examined in a beautiful new book from JVJ Publishing, EVERETT RAYMOND KINSTLER: THE ARTIST’S JOURNEY THROUGH POPULAR CULTURE, 1942 – 1962, written by Jim Vadeboncoeur Jr. and Kinstler himself.

The book begins with a long, well-written biographical essay that does a fine job of capturing the early years of a kid obsessed with art growing up in Manhattan during the Thirties. By the time he was sixteen, Kinstler was already a comics pro, starting out with inking other artists but quickly progressing to providing full art for various comics stories. He also managed to meet many of the major figures in the New York art world of the time, including giants such as James Montgomery Flagg. It makes for very interesting reading, even for someone like me who has never been artistically inclined.

Following that are sections that concentrate on the various aspects of Kinstler’s career, including comics, pulps, and paperbacks. There are page after page of beautifully reproduced illustrations, some of which prompted me to say to myself, “Hey! I have that book!” One of the most interesting features, at least to me, is a map of Manhattan in the Forties showing the locations of many of the comic book and pulp publishers located there.

Since the book concentrates on Kinstler’s work in popular culture, it wraps up as he is beginning his career as a portraitist. Impressively, Kinstler never tries to hide his background in pulps and comics. It seems that to him, it’s all art, regardless of where it appears, an attitude that I can certainly appreciate as a writer.

Before reading this book I was aware of Kinstler’s work, although not to the extent that I was of artists such as Frazetta, Krenkel, and my all-time favorite Robert McGinnis. I’d seen and enjoyed his art in many of the Western pulps I’ve read. Now I have an even greater appreciation for his work, and I’ll be looking for it from now on when I read pulps and vintage paperbacks. EVERETT RAYMOND KINSTLER is an excellent book, and congratulations to Jim Vadeboncoeur Jr. for producing it.