Thursday 22 July 2010

Portraits For Bloomberg Businessweek, and a response.


Nouriel Roubini

A few weeks ago, I received a very nice commission from Bloomberg Businessweek to provide six portraits for a piece they were running about renewed pessimism amongst America's most eminent financial forecasters. Thanks to Richard Turley for the art direction.

A week or so later I received a post on this blog about the illustrations, from someone who seemed upset by them. He seemed particularly annoyed by the one of Meredith Whitney (shown below). I thought it was interesting enough to post up again here. After the illustrations you can read the post, followed by my response.



Meredith Whitney


Robert Prechter


James Grant


Gary Shilling



jim@larkinvestments.com said...
Barry,

Not certain you are responsible for the ugly, angry orange illustrations in the Bloomberg piece on Da' bears. If so, just wanted you to know that a few of us are clear that painting people's skin an angry orange color is still character assassination.

Using illustrations to paint people ridiculous is a lewd act of artistic prostitution.

Those who care about fairness might compare her picture on page 43 with your illustration on page 54.

Want to reach me, to cuss back?
jim@larkinvestments.com

19 June 2010 06:21
Delete
Delete


Blogger Barry Falls said...

Hi Jim

Thanks for your comments. First of all, I don't really want to cuss you back, as I'm not interested in that sort of thing. You're quite entitled to your point of view, however strange it may be.

While I can't refute your suggestion that I'm an artistic prostitute - I'm a commercial artist that sells my time and skills for money after all - I must take issue with you suggesting that I'm out to assassinate anyone's character.

If you look through work that I've done in the past, you'll see that very often I depict all sorts of people with coloured faces; red faces, yellow faces, orange faces, even blue and green faces. This is just part of my style, and not an attempt to assassinate the character of the person that I'm depicting. I'm sorry that you don't like it, but I can't help but be surprised by how strongly you feel. Furthermore, I would suggest that if someone's character could be successfully assassinated by a simple drawing with an orange hue, then that person's character ought to toughen up a bit. I'm sure Meredith Whitney will survive.

Thanks again for your comments, it's always nice to hear from a fan.

warm regards,
Barry Falls

22 July 2010 11:30

2 comments:

William Peterson said...

Haha- great response Barry!

Evan S. said...

This guy Jim knows nothing about art. And why is he all up in your face?

Anyway, enjoyed this post. Thanks Barry.