There was a time when printing technology had improved faster that photography.  It was cheaper, and easier, to print something that an artist had painted than to try to accurately match a photograph in a mass market publication.  McAuley (Mac) Conner’s work is an example of the type of work that was produced to supplement everything from advertisements, to pulp stories and lead articles.

In many ways this style of art epitomizes the stylized North American lifestyle that continues to define art and fashion today.  You have more than likely seen references to the art and fashion today.  Mac Conner just passed his one hundredth birthday.  By all accounts, he’s been working hard since the mid-1930s.

The Museum of the City of New York is mounting an exhibit from today through to January 19, 2015.  The exhibit is co-sponsored by the Modern Graphic History Library at Washington University in St. Louis and the Rockwell Center for American Visual Studies