Boris Artzybasheff's Machinalia illustrations

The ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive has just posted a gallery of terrific illustrations from the 1950s by illustrator Boris Artzybasheff.

In his introduction to the section titled "Machinalia" in his book As I See, Boris Artzybasheff says, "I am thrilled by machinery's force, precision and willingness to work at any task, no matter how arduous or monotonous it may be. I would rather watch a thousand ton dredge dig a canal than see it done by a thousand spent slaves lashed into submission. I like machines."

Link

[#1 posted by reallyexcellentdude , May 29, 2008 10:03 AM]

reminds me of woodring

[#2 posted by Enochrewt , May 29, 2008 10:39 AM]

Ok, wtf. Who wouldn't want to see machines do the work instead of slaves?

That being said, slick stuff.

[#3 posted by Jed Alexander , May 29, 2008 10:42 AM]

Artzybasheff is a much overlooked treasure. He left a legacy of amazing illustration. He's also done a number of beautiful Time covers---More stuff here:

http://www.eisnermuseum.org/_artzybashoff/main.html

Also "As I See" has fallen into the public domain, and before Titan brought it back, this guy was keeping it alive:

http://www.kenspublishing.com/show.php?authorID=166

he charges a little more, but his operation is worth supporting. He's trying to keep a lot of long out of print illustration books available on an print-on-demand basis.

[#4 posted by Takuan , May 29, 2008 10:45 AM]

any place I've worked or seen, there isn't much anthro-animistic machine art. You go painting eyes on the excavator and one day you start thinking it'll run itself or not hit you like a friendly draft animal. Or you start making sacrifices to it.
Ships is different, them you want to take care of you.

[#5 posted by Takuan , May 29, 2008 10:55 AM]

thanks Jed! You put a name to some of the images I'd stored and lost. Artzybasheff! In my mind, I'd ascribed a few to Escher. Thanks again.

[#6 posted by Avram , May 29, 2008 12:35 PM]

And, as I see from following Mark's Amazon link, Artzybasheff's As I See is coming back into print! Talk about burying the lede!

[#7 posted by Stefan Jones , May 29, 2008 1:10 PM]

This is great stuff. The machines are like . . . golems, maybe? Domestic animals?

I particularly like the faces of the soaking pit covers, shown above.

[#8 posted by mokudan , May 29, 2008 4:50 PM]

Other posters have mentioned both Escher and Woodring...those are exactly the two who came to mind when I saw this! Very cool.

[#9 posted by Charlie , May 29, 2008 7:34 PM]

He also did a great series of ads for the Lycoming corporation in the 1950's. I've posted them on my site:
http://blog.modernmechanix.com/tag/boris-artzybasheff/

[#10 posted by jonom , May 30, 2008 2:04 PM]

The book coming from Titan is the Ken's Publishing version but properly printed instead of on-demand (colour laser).

I reset the type for Ken before he shipped it off to Titan.

[#11 posted by Takuan , May 30, 2008 2:13 PM]

Thanks Charlie, great stuff!