Bernie Fuchs, Portrait of an illustrator.

March 31, 2024

By Mary Anne Guitar (1962)

Editor’s Note: Illustrator Bernie Fuchs was barely thirty years old when he was named “Artist of the Year" by the Artists Guild of New York in 1962. In spite of his youth, Bernie Fuchs is quite influential in his field of commercial art. Recently, he joined the Guiding Faculty of the Career Course of Famous Artists School. With his wife and three children, he lives in Westport near the School. A short time ago, Mary Anne Guitar interviewed him for Famous Artists Magazine.

Interviewer: Did you decide early—in high school, say—to become an artist?

Fuchs: No. As a matter of fact, I was aspiring to be a musician, but I did draw a lot in those days.

Interviewer: Who decided that you should go to Washington U. and become an artist?

Fuchs: My mother did.

Interviewer: Did you give up your interest in music when you went to school?

Fuchs: Well, I played trumpet in a dance band all through school. I still fool around. As a matter of fact, I got a new trumpet for Christmas this past year.

Interviewer: What was the most important thing you got out of art school?

Fuchs: It kept me working. That’s what it does for you. You get interested and you apply yourself.

Interviewer: Did you do any free-lance work while you were in college or work summers in the art field?

Fuchs: I guess my first commercial art job was the summer after freshman year, in a toy factory where they made hand puppets. There was a girl who had graduated as a sculptor, and she made the moulds for the faces and then the blank heads would travel down a conveyor belt. They had to be sprayed with a base coat of white paint. I was one of the ones who did that. I never did work up to the best job; at the end of the line there was a guy who would paint on the faces. I wanted to do that, but they would not let me. Between my junior and senior years, I worked in an art studio. I was a mat boy, but they would let me do other things. The place reeked of rubber cement and benzine, but it was an experience. Then, in my senior year, along with some other students, I did storyboards for an educational TV station. They wanted all kinds of crazy things done. I don’t think anybody got paid, and the station finally went broke, but it was fun.

Interviewer: When you were in school you must have been very much aware of the top illustrators. Who were your favorites?

Fuchs: I liked A1 Parker and, of course, Austin [Briggs]. My idols were the whole Cooper Studio crowd. I think Jon Whitcomb worked for them.

Interviewer: Did you hope someday to work for Cooper? Fuchs: Oh yes. But that was a pretty far-fetched dream for an art student.

Interviewer: How did you get your first full-time job after finishing school?

Fuchs: A graduate of Washington U. came down from Detroit, where he ran an art studio, and looked over student work. He invited a friend of mine who was interested in illustrating automobiles to come up to Detroit and bring his samples. I went along with him. We were offered three jobs and accepted the best one in a studio there. There was so much work in Detroit in those days it was unbelievable.

Interviewer: I understand that painting cars and the backgrounds for them requires a special technique. Did you have trouble picking it up?

Fuchs: I learned. You had to learn or get out. Painting people in behind the steering wheel or on the seats was known as “stuffing cars.” It was difficult work. Some guys were just great at it. There were assignments of all types in Detroit, not just passenger cars. I did a lot of little spots in the beginning-tractors and machinery. You do these things well and suddenly you’re doing cars.

Interviewer: YOU worked in this, your first real studio, for about two years and then started your own studio. You were only 23 at the time. How did you have the courage, and what made you do it?

Fuchs: I didn’t start it all by myself. There were six of us, the nucleus of the studio, and we were urged to do it by one of the top salesmen who organized our new studio. Immediately we were the hottest thing in town. We really flew for two or three years. As for why we did it, every one of the guys had his own dream. One of them wanted to own his own home, for example. I said that I wanted to go to New York and become an illustrator.

Interviewer: YOU mean after you had put aside enough money?

Fuchs: Not just that. The studio could provide me with contacts in New York. Our salesmen went there because we worked with McCann and J. Walter Thompson, the big agencies which were based in New York. They could show my work to New York clients, and that way I was able to break in. Finally, I decided to move my family East.By then I was married with two children. The studio decided that since I was going they might as well have a New York office.

I bought a house in Westport and worked out of that New York office for a time. Then I quit the studio and started free-lancing. It seemed time to break the tie.

Interviewer: What was your first editorial job in New York?

Fuchs: Actually, the first one came while I was still in Detroit. Herb Mayes, then editor of Good Housekeeping, saw an ad I had done. (His art director claimed he saw it first.) He asked me to illustrate a story for the magazine. When Mayes went to McCall’s, he got me to work for him there.

Interviewer: YOU make it sound so easy and effortless. How difficult is it, really, to attract attention and clients so you can free-lance with security?

Fuchs: If kids get out of school and have something the art director hasn't seen before, he’ll grab it. The whole field is wide open. They are waiting for something different.

Interviewer: In your own experience, what is the most difficult stage in working out a picture?

Fuchs: Getting the idea, that’s the hard part. I try to find the thing in the story—whether it is an incident, a portrait of a character, a symbol or whatever—that I feel is most worth translating into a picture. My aim is not merely to decorate the page but to make illustrations that will contribute to, and perhaps heighten, the meaning, drama and emotion of the words. Sometimes this is easy. More often, it is not. Sometimes the art director will supply the picture idea, and even prescribe just how he would like to have it arranged. But usually he is interested in what the artist has to say and is glad if he can come up with something better. Of course, you should get personally involved with the picture. You have to search if something doesn’t hit you personally. Then you have to search for that involvement. And it may not be there.

Interviewer: Must you illustrate the content of the story quite literally or can you illustrate a scene that is suitable but not necessarily described by the author?

Fuchs: If you are illustrating fiction you can take a character from the story and put her in a setting that might not be described by the author but which could belong to the story. If your choice is appropriate this license is permissible. The title or opening sentence can also give you an idea for illustration.

Interviewer: Have you ever been given a story to illustrate which simply didn’t interest you? You couldn’t get involved with the characters or the situation. What did you do then?

Fuchs: I sometimes tell the art director that I can’t think of anything. It does happen. I suggest that he get another artist. I hate to do it, though, because he may not call on me again. The opportunities don’t come along that frequently.

Interviewer: In searching for the idea, you undoubtedly call upon your own observations of the life around us. Do you think the illustrator must be “a noticer,” observant of the clothes, manners, look of his time?

Fuchs: If you are not observant you are lost to begin with.... You go to parties. You know what’s happening. What you pick up can’t always be reflected in your work, but it is important that you keep your eyes open.

Interviewer: DO you go to museums, collect art? Who are your favorite painters?

Fuchs: I hardly ever get to museums as much as I’d like to, except when I am in Europe. I don’t collect art, and I don’t really have any favorites. I like Bonnard and Vuillard, though.

Interviewer: Many illustrators use the camera as a research tool to help them pin down detail for their pictures. I know that you do. In fact, one knowledgeable observer has said, “What’s unique about Bernie is that in his hands there’s not that direct photographic copy that sometimes shows in an illustration. There is a vitality to the thing that is very different, very evident. He conveys the impression that he draws directly from the source.” How helpful is the camera to you?

Fuchs: Taking pictures not only gives me the visual details I need, but it gets me involved in the situation and the scene. The camera takes it down. It is a thing to use. I don’t have total recall. I don’t think anybody does. When I get home I can picture you in my mind, but I can’t remember well enough to draw you. We used to have sessions in Detroit late at night when we were working on a job. We would take a break and go into the mat room and three or four of us would gather around a table and somebody would say, “Remember so-and-so?” It would be a Grade B actor in the 40’s. And we’d all say, “Sure, sure. I remember. What did he look like?” We’d stand around the tissue and try to draw him. You had him there, in your head, but you couldn’t put him down. That’s why I use models. I photograph them doing things that the characters in a story are doing. When I work from the photographs, I can remember how they moved and looked, because I was there. When I am asked to draw somebody who is well known, like President Johnson, it seems important to me to meet him, to see him in person. It always helps to meet somebody. Then you can use your camera to record your impressions of him.

Interviewer: When you were invited by the Amalgamated Lithographers of America to paint President Kennedy, did you work that way?

Fuchs: Yes. I went to the White House and I met him. Of course, the impression he gave you was tremendous. He was the handsomest, healthiest-looking man. Seeing him was an unbelievable experience. He always had a tan and his eyes were blue, and the whites of his eyes were so white. That’s what I tried to get without making him look like a movie star.

Interviewer: YOU have painted John Kennedy several times, most particularly for the Look serialization of the Theodore Sorensen book and the John Hancock ad you did on the anniversary of his death. I understand the ad brought the greatest response they ever had to one of that series.

Fuchs: That was because it was of Kennedy, not because I did it.

Interviewer: Can you explain why magazines turn to artists as well as photographers when they want to illustrate a nonfiction piece? Is it because the illustrator can heighten the drama of an event, not simply document it?

Fuchs: I was chosen to do these assignments because I was an illustrator. You think of pattern and dramatic quality, not a literal reproduction of reality. But the drama is put in by the person who sees it. You really have a physical reaction to a painting of an important person because of all you know about him.

Interviewer: There is a feeling of strong pattern in much of what you do. I remember one picture of Kennedy and his father. There was no distraction. You felt the power of the man immediately. Can you describe the way you use pattern?

Fuchs: Pattern is another word for composition. It is something to hang a picture on. You get an idea of pattern; sometimes it is an object or the way a person sits, something you would like to paint. I’m always looking for a place to start. Sometimes the pattern just happens while you are looking for something else.

Interviewer: What makes a picture work? Is it the relationship it bears to the story, the response it evokes, or the quality of the art?

Fuchs: I guess it is all of these combined, with the balance tipped perhaps to the better picture. But if it doesn’t illustrate the story, you’ll hear about it. The people you are selling it to are usually aware of what the story is about and want that illustrated. It has to do that job.

Interviewer: Have you ever had a problem satisfying both the client and yourself? Any conflict with art directors?

Fuchs: The very first time I ever held out for something I believed in, I won. I turned in a rough for an advertisement, one I liked. The client gave it back and suggested other ideas I might try. I didn’t like any of them—too corny. I didn’t know what else to do with the picture and so I told them if they didn’t like my version, maybe they should get another artist. I didn’t hear from the art director for a couple of weeks and I thought that’s what they had done. Then he called me and said, “You can do it your way.” After the ad was published, they had a big response to it. All of a sudden I was a hero.

Interviewer: IS the conflict usually centered on a difference of opinion about the concept of the picture or do you ever disagree about technique?

Fuchs: YOU can. I once submitted a sketch for an ad, and my agent brought it back with instructions from the ad director to tighten it up. I told the agent to tell him that if I were to do anything to this, I would do the finish twice as loose.

Interviewer: DO you ever compromise?

Fuchs: Sure. Everybody gives. You give on both sides. You learn from people you work for. You try to take three steps forward and only two back. In some way you develop. What gets you, though, is when they want you to do something like the things you did five years ago. They haven’t seen what you can do or, if they have, they don’t want it.

Interviewer: DO you think editorial art influences advertising art or vice versa?

Fuchs: It used to, but now I think advertising influences editorial.

Interviewer: What is the best and the worst thing about being an illustrator?

Fuchs: Being one of the fortunate ones, I think the best thing is that you can run your own life. But it’s still work. Some mornings you are able to wake up and say something swinging. Most mornings it’s hard to go in the next room and get to work. I have very bad self-discipline. Once you start a picture, you have to go the distance. Whether you are good or not, you go there. If you get all the way to the end, you give it a try and hope it sells.

Interviewer: Can you imagine yourself in any other field? 0

Fuchs: I would like to work with the movies. I don’t know if I will ever take the chance. It’s exciting to put together movement and sound, though.

Interviewer: What about the ever-threatening problem of getting stale? Are you worried that you will paint yourself out because your work is in such demand?

Fuchs: That’s your fight for survival. Each job you do has to be a little bit more exciting than your last. This is always in the back of your mind on every new job—to improve and experiment and be a little bit different than you were before.