MacCauley “Mac” Conner is an illustrator noted for his work in the mid-20th century, in particular at the height of his popularity and influence in the 1950s.

His style bridged the realism of early 20th century illustration, the flattened, graphic mid-century modern style with which he is most associated, and the more rendered approach of traditional romance novels and genre fiction. Much of his best known work was done in gouache, a common medium among deadline-bound illustrators — prized for its matt surface and fast-drying qualities — before it was displaced by acrylic and later digital media.

A new exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York, “Mac Conner: A New York Life“, celebrates his work, concentrating on his 1950s style. The show is being promoted by drawing parallels between the fictional 1950s advertising and design agencies of the Mad Men television series and the real agencies of the era like the one Conner co-founded.

The museum’s website includes a gallery of images from the show, and you will find the same images repeated in other mentions on the web. The images on the museum’s site are relatively small, however. The largest and best reproductions of them are on the site of the English newspaper The Guardian (click in the upper right of the images in their slideshow to enlarge them).

It’s not easy to find other resources on Conner’s work, but there are a few. Notable is a Pinterest board posted by Georgette Cartwright Nichols on which the images may be small, but you get a broader cross-section of his styles. The images include romance covers and location paintings of landmarks here in Philadelphia, where Conner graduated from the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art, which later separated into the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Philadelphia College of Art (now the University of the Arts).

“Mac Conner: A New York Life” is on view at the Museum of the City of New York until January 19, 2015.

Mac Conner is currently 100 years old. He was able to attend the opening of the show, and will turn 101 in November.

[Via Wired]

Ever since I was old enough to stare goggle eyed at them in children’s books, or in my fathers Popular Science magazines, I have always loved cross-sections, exploded views and cut-away illustrations.

There’s something magical about seeing the inside and outside of a complex structure or vehicle simultaneously, like penetrating the surface of reality with super-human vision.

Stephen Biesty is an English illustrator whose cut-away and exploded illustrations are among the most fascinating and well done I’ve ever encountered. Often done in ink and watercolor, his drawings project enormously complex subjects with a directness and clarity that make them immediately understandable. This is, I think, one of the less well known strengths of illustration, the ability to communicate complex ideas visually with striking effectiveness, and Biesty is a master of that skill.

While many of the cut-away illustrations you are likely to encounter elsewhere are straightforward longitudinal cross-sections, Biesty takes on even more daunting challenges, carving complex objects like steamships or locomotives into multiple slices, or joining interior and exterior views of architectural landmarks in a single Escher-like view.

Unfortunately, Biesty’s website does a poor job of presenting his work. While there is a good selection of his images in various categories, they are only presented at a modest size, with any appreciation of their fascinating detail limited to a wretched excuse for a zooming feature that restricts your view to a little floating box.

The best I can suggest is to make a Google Images search, and use the Search Tools option to set the image size to “Large“.

Biesty has authored several very popular books, the best known of which are Castle and Stephen Biesty’s Incredible Cross-Sections.