What happened to car artwork that caused transition to photographs. A fella offers a alternative view using Pontiac. Examples: '68's and '71's, side by side, in Fitz/Kaufman art and photos.
Basic argument seems to him that the cars looked better (e.g., more accurate, crispier, etc) in photos vs art. Plus, the "exaggeration" of art renderings (length, width, styling cues) that dominated the 60's was losing appeal as '70's approached --even Pontiac was doing both art and photos.
Me? i still like the art.
source:
1967-72 Pontiac Firebird shows limits of ad illustrations - Indie Auto
The 1968's
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The 1971's
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Did shift to photos partly reflect a turn to ‘realism?’
Quality of execution obviously matters for both illustrations and photographs. For example, I suspect that the side-view illustrations shown in this post were not penned by Fitzpatrick because they lack the dynamism of illustrations attributed to him (go here for a portfolio of his work with Pontiac as well as other brands).
That said, I can also see why photographs came to dominate marketing materials during the 1970s. They may have been less flashy than the best Fitzpatrick and Kaufman illustrations, but they looked more accurate.
That may have mattered more as the market shifted to smaller cars, whose styling didn’t lend itself as well to the almost inevitably distorted proportions of an illustration.
One might even argue that the societal convulsions of the 1970s contributed to a turning away from the-sky-is-the-limit aspirations of the 1960s to a certain hunkered-down realism.
Whatever the reasons, marketing for the 1967-72 Firebird shows the evolution of an automaker from illustrations to photographs. As gorgeous as Fitzgerald and Kaufman’s work could be, shifting toward realism strikes me as a good move when it came to the Firebird.
