Author of “The Art of the Hollywood Backdrop” – alongside Richard M. Isackes - Karen L. Maness is a visual artist, designer, large-scale painter, historian and educator at the University of Texas. She was kind enough to talk with me about her research, the history of scenic art, and more.
Thanks so much for talking with me, Karen. The book you co-authored with Richard M. Isackes – The Art of the Hollywood Backdrop – is such a fascinating insight into scenic art, as well as being filled with beautiful images. May I start by asking what appealed to you about these backdrops and led to the book?
A lifelong infatuation with painting. My love of monumental painting and art practice led me to my profession as a scenic artist. As a scenic artist, I inherently understood the experience of painting at a large scale, collaboratively, under extreme time constraints. In my twenties, I trained in 19th-century atelier-style observational painting. Within the Hollywood backdrops painted for mid-century motion pictures, I saw both. These paintings revealed the artists' command of colour, value, architectural drawing, and atmospheric light, coupled with an efficient, collaborative theatrical mark-making style. I was hooked, drawn to the subject, the artists, their approach to painting, and the history of the art form.
In 2012, the opportunity arose to program a Los Angeles area USITT (United States Institute for Theatre Technology) conference session celebrating the West Coast Scenic Artist. Having trained in Southern California, I wanted to celebrate the phenomenal scenic artists of film, TV, Themed Attraction, and live productions. The Art Directors Guild and then-president, Tom Walsh, connected me with (Pat DeGreve), head of painting for CBS Television, and (Michael Denering) veteran motion picture Warner Bros. The session was a visual feast and a love letter to the artists who led me to this profession. The ADG was a phenomenal partner in opening the doors and imagery to this world and history of motion picture scenic art.
As digital technology had supplanted the work of Hollywood's scenic artists, Walsh and The Art Directors Guild saw the need to chronicle the history and contributions of their members. The ADG recorded our panel session and shared, "We've been looking for a person to tell this story, and we think it's you." My colleague Richard Isackes and I partnered to co-author the book
I'm incredibly grateful for this opportunity to chronicle and learn from Hollywood motion picture scenic art history and connect with the artists. It was a gift to celebrate the Herculean efforts of their collaborative teams. They achieved incredible illusions with paint and hundreds of yards of muslin. If they did their job well, their work was invisible.
You uncovered such great archival images in The Art of the Hollywood Backdrop. From my understanding, many scenic artists weren’t even given screen credit at the time. How were these scenic artworks regarded back then?
Scenic art has had such a mixed history in film. At the earliest stages, backdrops were very obvious. They were coming out of the tradition of vaudeville on stage. Painted theatrical illusions were created but needed refinement to pass as reality. There are stories about MGM's Art Director Cedric Gibbons hating the backdrops because the paintings were unconvincing. He hid backdrops behind plants, curtains, anything. He just loathed them.
It was a Scotsman, George Gibson, who changed the game of scenic art in Hollywood. Gibson came to MGM in 1936, working with special effects departments on matte painting, glass painting, etc. So convincing was his work that MGM contracted Gibson to lead the Scenic Art Dept. Gibson's artists became a fully integrated illusion-creating team, capable of replicating far-off locations directly on sound stages. Gibson's standard of painting made backdrops so convincing that directors occasionally shot straight into them, with no diffusion, as Hitchcock did for the Mount Rushmore fight scene in North by Northwest.
It sounds like, even though they weren’t very publicly known, within the industry they did have a certain reputation?
They were well regarded and well paid among the artists within the studios and recognized as critical members of the art department. Yet they remained as unseen as any other below-the-line artist in the art department. Everyone was invisible, not just the scenic artists. It was the nature of this system at the time. When the studio system dissolved, the legacy, ability, and art form training began to break. Fewer people knew how to do this work, and the work required to sustain the training of new generations of artists dried up. During the boom of the studio system, scenic artists produced so many painted backdrops that they became experts, developing a shorthand and efficiency for executing realism at a large scale quickly. After the studio system broke up, that training lineage was almost lost.
What kinds of logistical issues did these scenic artists have to deal with?
Many! From lighting, film colour, etc. I know during The Wizard of Oz (1939), the backdrop with the flying monkeys in the distance had to be repainted due to appearing too green. Here is where the story is muddled. There were multiple factors, but Duncan Spencer [the scenic artist] was colourblind. But the camera was reading the incorrect colour on the screen. So they had to adjust the paint according to what was able to be captured on camera.
Today, we rediscover these challenges in trying to recreate them. DPs so seldomly have to light actual painted backdrops that they put too much light on them. They're treating them like you might translucent light or a vinyl light, which you need a lot of light to push through, and things get really blown out.
Issues also arose before MGM created its phenomenal paint studio. The scenic artists were on scaffolding, and different scenic artists on each level of scaffolding might result in (as described in the book) a pine tree that looks different from the same pine tree from level to level! And artists who had never painted from observation before even knew what that tree species looked like.
It's dangerous too. Hanging off of such scaffolding resulted in deaths. Later, they were able to build a factory for painting, which still stands today in Culver City. They could paint four hundred feet of backings at 40 feet tall at all times. A cut in the ground allowed the painting to move up and down easily while the artists stood safely on a level surface. Plus, they used reducing lenses, so they could pull back far enough to get a sense of what that image would look like on stage. Frequently the artists worked outside of the scenic studio. The Warner Bros. artists frequently split teams keeping one team on the paint frame and a second team painting directly on a soundstage to keep up with production demands. These artists were masters of illusion, creating convincing settings and perspectives on curved surfaces.
The decline of scenic art seems to coincide with the decline of Hollywood’s Golden Age. Once New Hollywood steps outside of the studios and onto the street. Obviously, it’s more complicated than that, but did that bid for ‘realism’ interfere with studio stages? Even though, as you say, the scenic artists wanted their backings to be realistic.
Yes, it did. Although scenic art declined when the studio system collapsed in the 1970s, in the 1980s, there was a rebirth of painting. Directors moved back onto soundstages and to control their worlds. It created unending work for a new generation of artists. One example of the essential shift back to the sound stage was Die Hard (1988). That film proved you could be outside, in downtown LA, on a soundstage. The scenic artists tried new effects with backdrops, puncturing holes in the drops to feed LED/Tracer lights through the surface, creating the illusion of traffic movement for a broader sense of realism.
Like the Volume stages of today, where the set and light are stable, you can shoot all day! During the 1980s, Warner Brothers took a leading role in motion picture scenic art. Teams who had come up through MGM and Fox formed with JC Backings, competing against the Warner Bros. Scenic Artists for work. These scenic artists worked nonstop from the 1980s to around 2004, up to 16-hour days at times to meet the demand. In 2004, all began to change when the first large-scale print happened.
Die Hard 2 (1990) was a big development in matte painting and digital technology. How did the advancement in digital VFX impact scenic art?
It ultimately supplanted the need for it. Some scenic artists transitioned over and made that leap to digital painting.
However, what excites me today - and excited me about Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004) - was the magical integration of digital manipulation and painted spaces. There's just a different feel to environments shot in camera. It works very well when it's obvious, like for Lemony Snicket. But it also works successfully in other ways.
I spoke with [Production Designer] Nathan Crowley and one of his lead scenic artists about how painted backdrops and cutouts still find their way into 21st-century films. For Tenet (2020), the team used rolling backdrops for a car chase and a backdrop as a set extension. Independence Day (1994), made when the digital support studios were all booked out. So they looked to old techniques. Outside the jets during the flying sequences through the canyon is another rolling backdrop.
I'm excited to share that there's so much more that I have uncovered in my research since the publication of the last book. More stories deserve telling, and many more artists deserve recognition now that people know of the art form. Their families are entrusting me to do just that.
I was about to ask whether you were working on a follow up publication.
A few are gestating! The more I research and pull at threads of history, the more phenomenal imagery, stories, and people appear. I'm excited to help them be seen and remembered. Equally, I am eager to help awaken new artists in the 21st century, to imagine other ways to do their work, and to understand that digital tools are just one of their tools. Asking first, what are the most effective ways to tell your story? Whenever we get new tools, we lean in to play with them and see what they're like. I'm excited for people to have a broader understanding of the visualization tools. Audiences hold a renewed desire to see built worlds shot in camera, as evidenced by Baby Yoda and the string of summer 2023 blockbusters Barbie, Oppenheimer, and Mission Impossible.
The tangibility really appeals to people, it’s almost the feeling that they could do it too. Not to diminish the skill that goes into it! But it becomes a lot more familiar, I think.
In my classes, half of my students have not touched a paintbrush. Either ever or in years and years. It is our responsibility as educators to encourage students to be digitally and analogue fluid, developing a language set to explore and imagine what's next in art and culture. I endeavour to ensure the preservation of knowledge held within these painted backdrops. Fortunately, I work directly with motion picture painting research and an original collection of motion picture backdrops from MGM at the University of Texas at Austin in my courses - I want to ensure that this knowledge lives on. I feel like the conduit.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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