Helen Dryden

Helen Dryden (born 26. November 1882 / 1883 / 1887 in Baltimore , Maryland , died October 1972 / 1981 in Brentwood, New York ) was an American illustrator , graphic designer and industrial designer .

Live and act

Helen Dryden was already designing and selling clothes for paper dolls as a teenager. When these were featured in a fashion magazine, this earned her her first assignment, as an illustrator for Anne Rittenhouse ’s fashion items for the Philadelphia Public Ledger and The Philadelphia Press . Her training consisted of a 4-year study of landscape painting with Hugh Breckenridge and a summer course at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts . She herself viewed this short training, which was far removed from her later profession, as an advantage, as it enabled her to create something of her own - free of role models. In 1909 she moved to New York City to market her idea in the major women's magazines of the time. In the first year she met with rejection, as she described in an interview:

"They would look over my things then show me what they wanted, which was exactly what everyone else was doing. Still, I couldn't help feeling that there must be someone in the magazine business with imagination, some place where they would try something new ... I knew that my women were smart. I knew they had chic. And being a very determined young person, I kept trying to sell them. "

In the commercial graphics sector , she became known for her Art Deco- anticipating title designs and advertisements. Since the style of contemporary fashion drawings did not meet her expectations, she developed her own, which is now considered typical of the 1920s. This new, reduced style initially found little recognition, even Vogue , whose cover design was influenced by Dryden from 1909 to 1922, initially rejected their designs and only the Condé Nast publishing house recognized the quality of their drawings. When she left Vogue after thirteen years, she worked as a freelancer a. a. regularly the front pages of Delineator magazine. Parallel to her work as a commercial artist, she worked successfully as a costume designer, a. a. for Broadway , and later turned to industrial design , particularly automotive design. Her salary of $ 100,000 a year earned her the title "the highest-paid female artist in the country" in the New York Times . The position she subsequently took up as art director for Dura was also well paid - but later she lived in poor circumstances.

style

Traditionally, fashion illustration was worked in detail. Dryden, on the other hand, preferred a simplified representation that depicts her characters in such a way that it gives an impression of the interaction of the garment with the body. Her illustrations were inspired by European trends in modern art, adding a sense of effortless style to the model and clothing they portrayed. In her dissertation on the designer, Sarah Marie Horne describes and analyzes the peculiarities of Helen Dryden's style: ›Dryden's Vogue covers typically show women in fashionable clothing or historicizing figures wearing robes that are reminiscent of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Dryden often portrayed individual characters in her Vogue cover designs, but it was not uncommon for her to portray a small group of two or three women or a woman accompanied by a suitor. Her work for Vogue in the 1910s traditionally appears in the portrayal of women at leisure, but her work in the 1920s became a bit more evocative with her portrayal of fashion trends associated with the New Woman and the flappers of the era. Heavily influenced by European sources, Dryden's designs have a poster-like quality. It uses bold, flat swatches of color in combination with a well thought-out pattern. Dryden's depictions of printed textiles demonstrate her keen understanding of design through the ingenious juxtaposition of contrasting colors and patterns and the use of curved shapes to create a tableau that is bold and feminine at the same time. The main subject of Dryden's illustrations is the modern American woman, although the style in which she portrays these characters has evolved over the course of her career. Dryden incorporates Asian-inspired elements such as the parasol, which continue the oriental style popular in the West since the mid-19th century. The influence of modern poster art can also be seen in the heavy use of lines and flat areas of color, which in turn go back to the works of the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists after the Japanese woodcut was introduced in Europe in the 1860s. ‹

Dryden's Delineator covers show, according to Sarah Marie Horne in her dissertation on the designer, that she was no longer inspired by the masters of painting of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but turned to new developments in Europe. Her work for The Delineator showed a stronger influence of avant-garde art, because her long-necked, hollow-eyed figures with their cool expressions and sharp features are strikingly reminiscent of works by Amedeo Modigliani . These bindings exclusively depict modern women, instead of historicizing figures, and their facial features are even simpler than Dryden's illustrations for Vogue . The women often appear with very pale or patchy white skin, a few simple lines to define the eyes, nose, and lips, and boldly contrasting blotches of pink and black to illustrate the character's aggressive use of makeup. With their simple facial features, the women on Dryden's Delineator covers can hardly be distinguished. They lack some of the individuality and character present in some of Dryden's earlier Vogue work, and instead appear as dispassionate icons of modern femininity.

"Helen Dryden ... is one of the most important women in American art. Her influence, with that of others as adventurous as she, is credited with having had a great deal to do with revolutionizing standards of illustrating and fashion design and broadening the field of art for women. "

reception

Her advertisements for Lux Soap are particularly well-known , which are even known in Germany and are shown in large format and in color in the renowned trade journal Nutzgraphik . In 1925, the authors of the Biographical Cyclopaedia of American Women wanted to identify Dryden as the pioneer of a new style at the magazine stands, in fashion drawing , poster and ad design, but Dryden rejected this and instead showed numerous other influences, such as the Russian ballet and the general overcoming of the naturalistic style. The authors commented:

"Be that as it may, she is directly responsible for the decorative magazine covers, and her fashion drawings were the first to embody stylistic features into the imaginative, exquisitely executed pieces of sophistication that adorn the modern fashion periodicals."

Dryden stated that she had no problem being known as a commercial artist:

"[a] rt is the same whether the picture decorates a gallery or an advertisement for soap. Today an effort is being made to beautify everything, from shop windows to newspaper advertising. This is wonderful progress. It makes room, too, for more and more artists. Hundreds of young women are now able to support themselves doing work they love, where in the old days a woman artist starved while she waited for sitters who might want their portraits done in oil. "

She received national attention for her ideas about the future of automotive design after she published an article titled Car Design in Modern Terms that was published in Automobile Topics. In the article, Dryden discusses the state of automotive design and laments the tendency of some designers to adopt motifs from stagecoach design in the automobile. She designed metal objects for Revere and worked for Studebaker , where her designs for the Studebaker President and Dictator from 1936 finally established her. Their work there was reported:

"She went into a factory to study and work. She donned overalls and climbed underneath cars; examined machinery; watched various automobile parts being manufactured; saw cars assembled and tested; discussed market demands; sales; price range with company executives."

Works

As the lead illustrator for Vogue , Dryden created around 100 different covers and a large number of fashion and editorial illustrations that have appeared on the magazine's pages over the years. Characteristic of Dryden's fashion illustrations is a sketch that the artist depicted of the American actress Ina Clare in an evening cloak designed by Henri Bendel . It appeared in the November 15, 1921 issue of Vogue .

Dryden posters were featured in the Folsom Gallery's American Humor in Art exhibition in 1915, along with works by George Luks , John Sloan, and George Bellows, and others. a. shown. In 1921 the Museum of French Art presented an exhibition of Dryden's watercolors depicting her costume designs for the play "Clair le Lune". Her work was also included in a charity exhibition by Greenwich Village artists in 1926 , along with a variety of works by both emerging artists and established figures such as Edward Hopper .

Web links

• Papers and articles on the Washington University Library in St. Louis website
• Working on artnet.de
• Article about Dryden as a pioneer in the male-dominated automotive sector

literature

• Nutzgraphik, Vol. 5, H. 9, 1928, pp. 29, 35
• Mable Ward Cameron / Erma Conkling Lee: The Biographical Cyclopedia of American Women. 2 vol., New York 1924/25

swell

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i} Sarah Marie Horne: “IT'S STYLED BY HELEN DRYDEN” THE FINE ART OF GOOD TASTE. (PDF) December 2018, accessed on December 20, 2019 . 
2. ↑ Elizabeth Broman: HELEN WHO ?? HER LIFE AS A FASHION ILLUSTRATOR, COSTUME DESIGNER, AND ... (PART ONE). In: Cooper Hewitt. March 19, 2016, accessed December 20, 2019 . 
3. ↑ Julia Meer: Dryden, Helen. Short biography. In: Gerda Breuer, Julia Meer (eds.): Women in Graphic Design 1890–2012 . Jovis, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-86859-153-8 , pp. 435 .
4. ^ Rose McInerney: Helen Dryden: Roaring the Engines of Art and Design. In: Womanscape. September 3, 2018, accessed December 20, 2019 . 
5. ↑ Julia Meer: Dryden, Helen. Short biography. In: Gerda Breuer, Julia Meer (eds.): Women in Graphic Design 1890–2012 . Jovis, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-86859-153-8 , pp. 435 .
6. ^ US Social Security Death Index
7. ↑ Julia Meer: Dryden, Helen. Short biography. In: Gerda Breuer, Julia Meer (eds.): Women in Graphic Design 1890–2012 . Jovis, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-86859-153-8 , pp. 435 .
8. ↑ Frances Drewry McMullen: Making a Career of Art: Helen Dryden, Illustrator and Designer, Tells Her Own Story . In: The Forecast . December 1930.
9. ^ Rose McInerney: Helen Dryden: Roaring the Engines of Art and Design. In: Womanscape. September 3, 2018, accessed December 20, 2019 . 
10. ^ Christopher Gray: New York Architecture. Retrieved December 20, 2019 . 
11. ^ McMullen: Making a Career of Art: Helen Dryden, Illustrator and Designer, Tells Her Own Story. In: The Forecast . December 1930.
12. ↑ Mable Ward Cameron / Erma Conkling Lee: Dryden, Helen. In: Mable Ward Cameron / Erma Conkling Lee (Eds.): The Biographical Cyclopedia of American Women. New York 1924.
13. ^ Anne Ayres: A Young Woman with Organized Brains: The story of Helen Dryden, America's highest paid woman artist . In: Psychology . May 1930, p. 27 .
14. ↑ Ethel M. Gold: Feminine Touch given to New Auto Models by Helen Dryden, Designer . In: North Tonawanda Evening News . November 14, 1936.
15. ↑ American Humor in Art: Works of Bellows, Young, Glackens, and Others to Be Shown . In: New York Times . April 14, 1915.
16. ↑ Random Impressions in Current Exhibitions . In: New York Tribune . May 22, 1921.
17. ^ Greenwich Village Art Exhibit Opens . In: New York Times . April 8, 1926.