Comments on: Who drew these????!?

Question: Who drew these????!?

ostranenie — Fri, 22 May 2009 09:00:48 -0800

Redux: I'm looking for the name of an artist who drew for Commodore Magazine in the 80s. Now with examples and a name (Baxter).

His artwork was outrageous, intense, distorted, usually three- or four-distinctive-colored (example: black, blue, white) postmodern depictions of games or concepts. (The one that stands out in my mind was an article called "The Roar of the Grease, the Smell of the Crowd." I think it was a racing game you type in the code for to be able to play.) He did various other pieces around the magazine as filler pieces. Lots of high-contrast hard edges, jumps-off-the-page drop shadows, spirals, lightning bolts, implied movement/vibration and other frantic things.

I've never seen anything like it before or since. The closest thing would probably be Run Wrake's earlier stuff (the Gang of Four video and the FSOL video) but this Baxter's work made much less use of color and more out-of-control motion and general chaos in his technique. He also used a lot of patterns instead of colors.

But all that aside I love his work and if he's still drawing, I want to at least tell him that. I'm also looking for other artists that use similar techniques or even a name for this style.

The signature looks like "Baxter."

Thanks!

By: dhartung

dhartung — Fri, 22 May 2009 16:04:03 -0800

Well, best thing I could try was to download a torrent of 34 issues of the magazine. I didn't find any illustrator credits in any of the issues I checked, though (I did find artwork examples, so if you want more that's one place to go).

What I did find was that the Art Director of the magazine was Robert C. Andersen, who is probably this Bob Andersen on LinkedIn. He'd probably be able to tell you who the artist was, especially if there were a professional interest.

I'm not sure I'd call it quite so distinctive -- there's an obvious kinship with "crazy" 80s art for MTV and such. Pretty dated nowadays, in any case, so either the artist has moved on or changed names and/or styles of work.

By: ostranenie

ostranenie — Wed, 27 May 2009 12:18:33 -0800

Bob Andersen wrote me back - It was Art Baxter and it looks like he's toned it down considerably (which is a shame). Thanks!