Comments on: vintage cutaway illustrations

vintage cutaway illustrations

madamjujujive — Sun, 03 May 2009 17:55:29 -0800

Frank Soltesz was a master of fascinating cutaway illustrations depicting "modern businesses" in the '40s and '50s - from hotels and hospitals to breweries, grocery stores, and more. (via Telstar Logistics Blog)

See also: Frank Soltesz - Storyteller and a biographical site by his son, which includes examples of his other styles of illustration, too.

By: billypilgrim

billypilgrim — Sun, 03 May 2009 18:03:12 -0800

Wow, these are great. I love the sad fellow sitting alone in the boiler room in the basement of the hotel.

By: Elmore

Elmore — Sun, 03 May 2009 18:03:41 -0800

If you could slice through my eyes and back into my brain you would see how much I love this stuff. Insanely awesome.

By: HopperFan

HopperFan — Sun, 03 May 2009 18:09:18 -0800

I love these, too - they were great for playing pretend.

By: orme

orme — Sun, 03 May 2009 18:09:30 -0800

If you could slice into the back of MY brain, you'd find corkboard there, keeping the temperature just right.

By: bendybendy

bendybendy — Sun, 03 May 2009 18:17:32 -0800

Having been born well after these ran, I'm not sure how they'd worked their way in to the back of my brain, but I recognized them right away. Maybe an old elementary teacher still had them up on her walls in the 70s. Whenever Bruce MaCall's done the cover of the New Yorker, I somehow knew he was evoking and playing off these illustrations. Also, Richard Scarry seemed to take some ideas from these. Really amazing pieces of visual communication.

By: HuronBob

HuronBob — Sun, 03 May 2009 18:26:21 -0800

Nice post... this is what the internet is good at!

By: mrzarquon

mrzarquon — Sun, 03 May 2009 18:29:20 -0800

Wow this is awesome. And thanks for reintroducing me to telstar, I remember reading their post on work vehicle impersonation for free parking.

By: carter

carter — Sun, 03 May 2009 18:40:37 -0800

Very cool. They're in my brain as well!

By: dr_dank

dr_dank — Sun, 03 May 2009 18:43:56 -0800

bendybendy:Having been born well after these ran, I'm not sure how they'd worked their way in to the back of my brain, but I recognized them right away. Same here. I'm googling for proof, but I seem to remember seeing similar cutaways in MAD Magazine.

By: tellurian

tellurian — Sun, 03 May 2009 18:48:36 -0800

Very nice. See also L. Ashwell Wood.

By: orthogonality

orthogonality — Sun, 03 May 2009 18:58:11 -0800

The hotel Necker cubed me at first.

By: rmmcclay

rmmcclay — Sun, 03 May 2009 19:08:10 -0800

The cutaways are wonderful. Thank you for introducing me to Frank Soltesz.

By: marxchivist

marxchivist — Sun, 03 May 2009 19:10:52 -0800

These things are great, thanks. I used to try and draw stuff like this when I was a little kid.

By: doobiedoo

doobiedoo — Sun, 03 May 2009 19:11:02 -0800

These are pretty awesome, but I keep wondering if we will ever do cut aways with the same sort of zeal again. Businesses and buildings today seem so networked and distended that a telling, compact cut away would be rare.

By: not_on_display

not_on_display — Sun, 03 May 2009 19:46:18 -0800

Seconding the "reminded of Richard Scarry" comment, plus some of Mad Magazine's stuff.

By: Marisa Stole the Precious Thing

Marisa Stole the Precious Thing — Sun, 03 May 2009 19:49:33 -0800

I like how, in the first link, way down at the bottom, in the basement, is one guy sitting in a chair in an empty room. I love this.

By: carter

carter — Sun, 03 May 2009 19:56:44 -0800

doobiedoo: there's always cruise ships.

By: dogrose

dogrose — Sun, 03 May 2009 20:00:54 -0800

So wonderful! And clearly sources for ye olde skoole Mad Magazine and the ever-wonderful Jimmy Corrigan. Or so it seems to me.

By: stbalbach

stbalbach — Sun, 03 May 2009 20:05:33 -0800

c.f. David Macaulay (`The Way Things Work`, 'Castle`, `Cathedral`. etc..)

By: jedicus

jedicus — Sun, 03 May 2009 20:13:41 -0800

Some material/a link dump related to the entities that commissioned or assisted in the production of the cutaway illustrations: A history of Armstrong Cork Selections from the 1944 Brewers Almanac [pdf], published by the United States Brewers Foundation, predecessor organization to the Beer Institute A 1926 edition of the National Retail Dry Goods Association Bulletin The history of the American Association of Meat Processors, successor organization of the American Frozen Food Locker Association The history of the Building Owners and Managers Association International [pdf], successor organization of the National Association of Building Owners and Managers The history of the International Association of Refrigerated Warehouses After that it mostly gets kind of boring, with most of the organizations either still extant or not having very good history pages.

By: twoleftfeet

twoleftfeet — Sun, 03 May 2009 20:14:26 -0800

This is clearly nothing more than a Pepsi Blue astroturfication for ARMSTRONG'S INDUSTRIAL INSULATION. Shame on you.

By: flapjax at midnite

flapjax at midnite — Sun, 03 May 2009 20:22:15 -0800

Great stuff. Thanks for the post, madamejujujive.

By: dogmom

dogmom — Sun, 03 May 2009 20:26:28 -0800

Oh I used to love this kind of thing. Although, now that I think about it, being born in '71, I have no idea where I would have seen them. I do remember just drinking in every little detail and trying to draw my own. Thank you so much for giving these back to me!

By: sourwookie

sourwookie — Sun, 03 May 2009 21:12:17 -0800

I came in to suggest a Richard Scarry mashup with these bwo see already that two others name dropped him. Why? Is it the isometric view or something? (I so wanted to see gerbils diving little cars through that brewery)

By: frobozz

frobozz — Sun, 03 May 2009 21:20:51 -0800

Def. reminds me of some Richard Scarry, plus I think there was a book called "What Makes It Go?" in the 70s from a different author that had cutaways of ocean liners and things that this puts me more in mind of. Or maybe it was a Scarry book that had the ocean liner. Anyway, I love these, esp. the grocery store one showing the butcher shop inside it. I met a meat dept. manager who reminisced about when he started out working in grocery stores there were halves of beeves hanging up in the back, and as the years went by they kept getting smaller portions of meat to cut. I look forward to looking more closely at some of the other ones.

By: jal0021

jal0021 — Sun, 03 May 2009 21:21:25 -0800

These make me want to dig out my old copy of SimTower.

By: ocherdraco

ocherdraco — Sun, 03 May 2009 21:47:02 -0800

I remember seeing similar things when I was growing up. As for the Richard Scarry mashup idea, it's sort of already been done: Jill Barklem's Brambly Hedge books (particularly "The Secret Staircase") show cutaways of buildings made out of trees and tree stumps and inhabited by mice. I was totally fascinated by them as a child. The Angelina Ballerina books do cutaways, too, I think. There. Your "small furry mammal" + cutaway fix should be taken care of now.

By: crapmatic

crapmatic — Sun, 03 May 2009 22:17:33 -0800

Holy cow, frozen locker plants... it boggles my mind that such places existed. I sure won't be taking my $150 chest freezer for granted anymore.

By: ROU_Xenophobe

ROU_Xenophobe — Sun, 03 May 2009 22:18:54 -0800

I love the sad fellow sitting alone in the boiler room in the basement of the hotel. That's Scruffy. The janitor. Scruffy ain't sad. Scruffy's got his pornography.

By: stinkycheese

stinkycheese — Sun, 03 May 2009 22:27:00 -0800

Wonderful pictures, and a great blog (Telstar Logistics) to wit. Thanks very much!

By: dhartung

dhartung — Sun, 03 May 2009 22:57:31 -0800

Scruffy would be a boiler room operator (a title that persists, although often in use for Glengarry Glen Ross Kevin Spacey roles). It may not have been full of excitement, but it was certainly full of ... pressure. If you don't keep a boiler in an optimal range, it can explode. I really think that Al Jaffee took inspiration from these. They were instantly familiar to me, even though they were likely obsolete by the time I encountered them. The title plate, especially, seems to have inspired the MAD Fold-In title plates, at least in language.

By: Harald74

Harald74 — Sun, 03 May 2009 23:34:55 -0800

I also immidiately tought of that cruise ship link, carter! As for cutaways of fictional stuff, see also Wil Huygen's and Rien Poortvliet's Gnomes for a few. That's a wonderful book overall, too.

By: madamjujujive

madamjujujive — Sun, 03 May 2009 23:56:36 -0800

Thanks for all the great in-thread links and comments. Some of my favorite recent uses of cutaways are in Royksopp's Remind Me and this updated version of Little Red Riding Hood. Cutaways are also often used in comics - see Inside the Baxter Building - and in technical illustrations - these wartime technology illustrations come to mind, such as this or this. Cutaways also have a long tradition in anatomical art On another matter, I was just searching and found this post - coincidence that someone else would post this same topic tonight, and with the same verbiage! He also lifted Rumple's post pretty much verbatim ... grrrr.

By: flapjax at midnite

flapjax at midnite — Mon, 04 May 2009 00:15:31 -0800

I was just searching and found this post... RED ROOM: Where the ~~witers~~ plagiarists are.

By: stinkycheese

stinkycheese — Mon, 04 May 2009 00:25:22 -0800

Wow. That's pretty shameless.

By: tellurian

tellurian — Mon, 04 May 2009 00:56:42 -0800

Dennis Shay - Being handsome, talented, rich, and famous hasn't been all bad. - The reality.

By: Rumple

Rumple — Mon, 04 May 2009 01:17:09 -0800

Yes, Dennis Shay is a bit of a plagiarist. In fact, Dennis Shay's entire blog is pretty much lifted from metafilter. It doesn't really bother me that Dennis Shay copied my post without attribution but it might bother some people and since I am still up in the middle of the night I think I will just make this complaint about the author, Dennis Shay.

By: pracowity

pracowity — Mon, 04 May 2009 01:32:42 -0800

Dennis Shay's next blog entry: "Yes, Dennis Shay is a bit of a plagiarist. In fact, ..."

By: madamjujujive

madamjujujive — Mon, 04 May 2009 01:45:48 -0800

Seems that Dennis Shay may be a member named fautedemieux - this member has only made one comment in three years.

By: Kirth Gerson

Kirth Gerson — Mon, 04 May 2009 02:09:31 -0800

Neat, but in that grocery store one, just what did those truck drivers think they were doing when they parked like that?

By: Marisa Stole the Precious Thing

Marisa Stole the Precious Thing — Mon, 04 May 2009 02:20:47 -0800

Yes, Dennis Shay is a bit of a plagiarist. Also: All posts are © their original authors. So ... has anyone tried talking to this guy?

By: Kirth Gerson

Kirth Gerson — Mon, 04 May 2009 02:59:01 -0800

MeTa Shay is better discussed there, I think.

By: pracowity

pracowity — Mon, 04 May 2009 04:11:50 -0800

So. About them there cutaway pictures. I love stuff like this. Cutaways from extinct white America. White men are everywhere in hats and coats, or they have their sleeves rolled up so they can work shoulder to shoulder with other white men. White women are dressed up (compared to today) for a trip to the grocery, or they're in hairnets (and still in dresses) and working shoulder to shoulder with other white women. White babies are quarantined. Black people don't get sick, don't shop, almost don't exist. Black men are waiters waiting obediently on white men and women in the restaurant but otherwise are absent. I haven't found any black women or children yet.

By: adipocere

adipocere — Mon, 04 May 2009 04:40:07 -0800

*hisses at Marisa, then grunts* No talk ... only kill *draws his thumb across his throat, then pads stealthily towards the Red Room*

By: Rumple

Rumple — Mon, 04 May 2009 10:31:03 -0800

I haven't found any black women or children yet. That's interesting pracowity, when even the laundry workers in the hotel are white, it goes beyond a representation of some illustrator's normative views of the world.

By: pracowity

pracowity — Mon, 04 May 2009 11:47:35 -0800

I'm sure Soltesz was dishing out what he knew his corporate clients wanted. The Negroes may have been much more than token on the factory floors, but the Armstrong boss certainly didn't want his clients to associate Armstrong with anyone other than folk like the bread coming out of that cutaway bakery.

By: dirtynumbangelboy

dirtynumbangelboy — Mon, 04 May 2009 16:47:26 -0800

i want these as posters so badly i can taste it.

By: xod

xod — Mon, 04 May 2009 17:00:06 -0800

In Species of Spaces, OuLiPoian Georges Perec describes the apartment structure of his novel, Life: A User's Manual. Inspired in part by a Saul Steinberg illustration of an apartment building with the facade removed, it is ten floors high and ten rooms, including stairwells, wide. Dennis Cooper discusses Perec's use of the 10 x 10 grid, the Knight's tour, the concept of the infra-ordinary and other elements of Perec's work here.

By: rongorongo

rongorongo — Wed, 06 May 2009 03:15:26 -0800

Thanks for those links about "Life: A User's Manual" xod. For those who have not read it the apartment he described had a cut-away front elevation like this and the knights tour - by which each successive chapter moved from one apartment to the other looked like this. The amazing thing to me is that the book is a great read in its own right: I only discovered about its hidden puzzles years after reading it (and never knew the sequence was a Knight's Tour).

By: xod

xod — Mon, 11 May 2009 10:00:12 -0800

I've never seen those diagrams before, rongorongo, thank you!