Behind the Cover: Bernard Barton

[reviews_and_ramblings]

Bernard Barton was a noted magazine and advertising illustrator.

Barton began his career after leaving his poster art duties for the Army Signal Corps at the end of World War II. His first paperback covers were for Bantam, in 1948 and 1949. His next assignments in the field included covers for the outstanding lines of Avon and Popular Library (1949-1952), before he departed for the newly formed house of Ace (1952-1958).





Most of Barton's cover work was executed in gouache on board. It clearly demonstrated Barton's mastery of his medium, he used pastels to achieve the velvety softness of the various fabrics.

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Adultery in Suburbia

[(Anonymous)]

I love Adultery in Suburbia, amazing what you could get away with in those days. We really have become prudes

Mick

http://www.MykolaDementiuk.com
Lambda Literary Awards Winner 2009/Bisexual Fiction
"Mykola Dementiuk deserves the title of the Bard of Times Square" from Reviews by Amos Lassen

Bernard Barton, illustrator, my father.

[marinman39]

Elisa, My brother and I, the only children of Bernard Barton, and stunned, amazed and most pleased to find your blog on our father. We had no idea, until 48 hours ago,that you could find ANY of his work on the internet.

So our first question is, where did you get his biographical information? We want to know if there is more to learn about him, since we clearly only know part of his story (surprise!!)
.
Specifically (and example), we had seen only one of his pulp fiction covers, to a novel by someone called Ellory Queen that he just happened to save and keep at our home. So everything you show is new to our eyes. I was born at the end of 1950, my brother in mid-1953, and he told us as teenagers that he only did the pulp fiction covers before we were born, or were just little kids, before he went on to better (and better paying) illustration.

A few basic bio facts: He was born in NYC in 1920,grew up in the Bronx, he knew he wanted to be a professional artist when he was 10, even though he had never met an artist, and wasn't sure there was such an occupation. By age 12, he told people he was a professional artist. He was very cosmopolitan at a young age after that. He contested for something like 20 slots in art and illustration at Cooper Union in Manhattan in 1938 with something like 8,000 applicants, and was accepted, and nearly finished his degree before getting drafted, like everyone else, right after Pearl Harbor. He then completed his degree requirements in illustration right after the war at Cooper Union, but not before getting into Officer's Candidate School in early 1945, and getting very physically strong. He played jazz drums before the war, and a little after, and our inherited and beaten drum set that remained into the 1960's was, according to him, once owned by Chick Webb.

His illustration was always very commercial, and for a time he worked for the "Mad Men". He did a two page foldout (centerfold?), client Sony Corp, in late 1960 or 1961, featured in Look Magazine, of Santa pointing to the entire lineup of hot new Sony transistor radios (the Apple devices of their time) arranged around the Christmas tree. Working in a much looser, slightly more impressionistic style in the early 1970's, did an Annual Report front cover for the Getty corporation. J Paul Getty, now of museum in LA fame, called my father, via the ad agency, and praised his effort.As far as we know, virtually all of his ad agency work is lost forever, for the originals were always owned by the agency, destroyed soon after publication, and he almost never made reproductions. We hope we are wrong about their all being gone. He frankly thought of most of them as paychecks, not great accomplishments, even though as kids and teenagers,we knew they were very good for what they were.

Some of his best work, in our opinion, was in quick sketches drawn at beaches, at resorts, at places where he would observe people relaxing and having a good time. He could draw an amazing human likeness in 45 seconds, something he had been trained to do since the age of 10, a talent not developed anymore. Some people would gasp at how much of their essence he captured in such quick sketches.

He lived in Westport, CT, from 1954 until his death in 1993, was married from 1948 on to our mother, Barbara (Silber) Barton, and considering he never had a salaried job after the Army in 1945, and never did anything but art-work, earned a good living, at least through mid 1970's, then continued to work on smaller assignments. He once was president of the Westport Artist's Club, which was semi-famous organization in the 1940's through 1960's.

His younger son, David, is a professional artist too, Fine Arts Degree Cornell Univesity albeit works in a different style and genre.

See http://www.zhibit.org/bartonarts for bio and samples of his works.

I hope you contact us, would love to converse on how you found these early Bernard Barton works. We have since uncovered some later pulp fiction covers besides the ones you list that go up to 1963. One from 1963 would have SHOCKED us (at least a little)at the time, since it reveals an inner raciness our seemingly plain-vanilla father didn't convey to his sons. But so informed, we are now more proud of him :).