Visual Futurist the Art Life of Syd Mead Full
"Visual Futurist" Syd Mead's exhibition debuts at LCAD
By MARRIE STONE
"There are more people in the earth who make things than at that place are people who think of things to make."
–Syd Mead (1933-2019)
Syd Mead might exist the well-nigh prodigious artist you've never heard of. Unless you're in the film industry, or otherwise well-versed in industrial concept design, his proper name may not wait familiar. His work, still, will. Mead's imagination dreamed up the worlds portrayed in Blade Runner, TRON, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Aliens, Time Cop, 2010, Short Circuit, Johnny Mnemonic, Mission Impossible-3, Elysium and, most recently, Blade Runner 2049.
He earned the championship "Visual Futurist" for skilful reason. Trained as an artist and spending the first half of his career creating production and architectural designs for corporate clients, Mead shortly became known for his ability to visualize the time to come and render it in astonishing detail. As Richard Taylor (Effects Supervisor for TRON) once said of Mead, "His illustrations remind yous of something yous've never seen before."
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Courtesy of Syd Mead, Inc.
"Visual Futurist" Syd Mead (July 1933 – December 2019)
Mead'southward first loves, since age 3, were fine art and cars. "My parents left me lonely but to draw. I drew from the time I could hold a pencil and, correct from the very first, I was fascinated with scenarios. In effect, I was creating my ain world," Mead said in his documentary, Visual Futurist: The Art & Life of Syd Mead. His images were full of cars with people waving out the windows. He kept drawing fifty-fifty while serving in the Army in Okinawa and sent his sketches to John Reinhart, chief designer at Ford Motor Company, who urged Mead to get a degree from the Art Center School in Los Angeles (now the Art Middle College of Design, Pasadena). Afterwards Mead graduated with corking distinction in 1959, he went to work for Ford.
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Courtesy of Syd Mead, Inc.
Syd Mead "Watch" cover (1979)
Mead's threescore-year career saw him working for a cord of corporate clients, illustrating books and catalogues, rendering architectural and concept designs and contributing to the redesign of some iconic Japanese toys. When the film industry constitute him, Mead sunk his mind into science fiction, building entire futuristic worlds with but a paintbrush and his imagination.
Todd Smith, chair of Laguna College of Art & Design (LCAD) Entertainment Design Section, selected Mead'southward traveling exhibition "Progressions" for installation at the LCAD Gallery. "Progressions" features roughly 30 works from Mead'south collection and represents the full arc of the artist'south career. The retrospective includes more than 50 years of artwork, from Mead'southward academic days to contempo works produced before he died.
Visitors are invited to download a costless app from Mead'southward website (www.sydmead.com) that allows them to collaborate with the art. Rotate and view Mead's vehicles in three dimensions, and experience original line drawings and rough colour drafts to show the progression of work, from rough pencil sketches to the last product. I piece of original art – "Shoulder of Orion" – was produced exclusively for this exhibition. Information technology'southward accompanied by line drawings and color rough art.
"'Progressions' is a title chosen by Mead to acknowledge the progression of his creative skill level, technique and pattern sense from his early days at Art Middle College of Design right up to January 2012 when he completed "Shoulder of Orion," a gouache rendering created exclusively for this exhibition," said Roger Servick, business manager for Syd Mead, Inc. "He personally selected 50 examples to represent his favorite works. Most are here today at the LCAD Gallery, in Laguna Beach, not far from what was once his studio in Capistrano Beach for many years where many of these were created."
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Courtesy of Syd Mead, Inc.
"Hypervan Profile" past Syd Mead (Gouache), 2005
Smith first encountered the exhibition while driving in Glendale in 2012. He saw a sign outside Wood Lawn Cemetery advertising the show and drove straight there. "I couldn't believe what I was seeing," said Smith. "All the work was so good. And seeing it in person, seeing his castor work in person, it'southward so different than seeing it in books. Information technology stuck with me."
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Courtesy of Syd Mead, Inc.
Syd Mead appears at the opening reception of "Progressions" at the Forest Lawn Museum in 2012
It took ten years, but Smith finally has an opportunity to show Mead's exhibition in his abode gallery in Laguna. "It's a great opportunity for everyone in Laguna to come across this work. For high schoolhouse students interested in the industry, it'south a good educational tool to see what the industry is like, how people used to work and what's possible. It gives people a take a chance to come across what y'all tin actually do with this medium in industrial design and illustration in general."
"This medium" is known as gouache, and Mead was a master of it. Gouache is an opaque watercolor that's been used for at least 12 centuries. It's heavier, denser and more opaque than traditional watercolor, resulting in a flat launder which gives the painting a matte cease. While the images have a rich depth, it's incredibly hard to get a consistent color. Here's where Mead'due south genius lies.
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Syd Mead'south "Mobilage" (Gouache), 1985
"Learning to paint in gouache helps students amend their digital painting skills. It's challenging and it can be frustrating to learn. But once they get into information technology, they start to see the benefits of it," Smith said.
For non-technicians, there'south nevertheless a lot to learn from Mead about creativity and imagination. Fans of Mead's piece of work might know him best for his inventive and visionary transportation designs. Mead loved vehicles – sleek racecars, opulent yachts, private jumbo jets, futuristic trains, space-historic period buses and intergalactic ships. You proper name it, and Mead drew it. And so he dreamed up things no one had ever imagined. The key to Mead's concept cars was their internal consistency with their environment. The world he drew effectually his vehicles had to support his designs.
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Courtesy of Syd Mead, Inc.
Syd Mead's "Megacoach" (Gouache), 2010
"If you create a visual film of something in an alternate world, information technology should look that way for a reason," Mead said. "If information technology'south consistent, people will like it better than if it's discordant. A lot of my argument with futurists is they skip the logic of why they're doing what they're doing. It doesn't look similar it fits." Yous have to be philosophical about information technology, he said. To reinforce his point, Mead referred to scientific discipline fiction as "reality ahead of schedule."
Over the form of his 86 years, Mead gave inventiveness a lot of thought. "Here's the core thing about creativity," Mead said in an interview. "Y'all accept to exist 3 people: (1) the person who's creating the idea to solve the problem; (2) the technician solving the problem with a technique or format that'due south usable; and (3) the person offstage who's watching those other 2 people doing what they do. If you lot can't detach yourself from what you're doing – equally a sort of surveillance uber-mentality – you're not going to practice good piece of work because you get besides fascinated with what yous're doing. That's the mistake. Hubris kills."
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Syd Mead's "Disaster at Syntron" (Gouache), 1978
It'due south piece of cake to believe some folks are born with wild imaginations. Possibly fantastic scenarios only effortlessly spring to their minds. Mead pushed against that supposition. "Imagination is essentially memory," Mead said in a 2016 interview for the documentary, Closer Than We Think. "It'south recording and memorizing what you've seen and so you have feel. Imagination is the creation of putting those elements together in different combinations. That is truthful whether you lot're writing music, mathematical code, or new formulas. It's a procedure of arranging cognition into new formats. That's imagination."
Though Mead passed away in 2019, he left backside some solid advice for students. "The communication I would give to those entering the field of design – remember everything you see. Fill up your mind and have your own catalogue of triggers. Everything from natural shapes and forms and colorations to mechanicalness. You have to be able to pay attending to the technical aspect, but within the purlieus of imaginative invention. If you can successfully invent your style around the trouble, you've won the game."
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Courtesy of Syd Mead, Inc.
"Hypervan and Crimson" (Gouache), 2001
Even equally Mead watched technology advance at exponential rates during the last few decades of his life, and witnessed its bear upon on social club, he remained optimistic nearly the future.
"The future is a composite," Mead said. "It represents what everybody is doing, what they want to do, what they can practice and our societal will to practise it. The hereafter is all of us going together somewhere. We don't really know where. Just you try to conform information technology so when you get there, information technology's squeamish. Who wants a total cesspool of trouble and worry?
"I've been defendant of creating a sleeky, chrome-plated future. People who take a dim view of society accuse me of stealing their lowered expectations."
Mead said he remained an optimist because more smart people are working on solutions to difficult bug than e'er earlier. "What drives the futurity is the quest of man intellect wanting to investigate its own curiosities and wanting solutions to unanswered questions," he said.
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Courtesy of Syd Mead, Inc.
Syd Mead's vision of a future Bugatti (1957), painted while still a pupil at the Fine art Center College of Design
Before passing peacefully in his domicile on December xxx, 2019, Mead's final words were: "I am done here. They're coming to accept me back."
Blade Runner, of course, was based on the 1968 Philip Thou. Dick novel, Exercise Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. Which makes i wonder what Mead dreamed well-nigh. "Progressions" provides an opportunity to see for yourself, to peek within the mind and imagination of one of the 20th century's great visionaries.
"Progressions" will be on display at the LCAD Gallery, located at 374 Ocean Ave., from Thursday, Feb. iii through Sunday, March 27. A reception was held on Thursday, February. 3 at 6 p.m., in conjunction with the First Thursdays Art Walk. For more data, visit their website at https://www.lcad.edu/community/lcad-gallery/lcad-gallery or contact the gallery at 949.376.6000, ext. 289.
For more data nearly Syd Mead and his legacy, visit his website at https://sydmead.com.
Source: https://stunewslaguna.com/index.php/arts/19666-visual-futurist-syd-mead-s-exhibition-020422
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