Since I had done an "Atlas Shrugged" menu board, as a Rand fan I wanted to do one based on her architectural tale, "The Fountainhead." The hero of "Fountainhead," played rather awkwardly by an aging Gary Cooper in the movie, is Howard Roark. He's a flame-haired (red hair for heroes!) tall, angular architectural demigod, loosely based on Frank Lloyd Wright, who designs modernist buildings with lots of cantilevers and big windows in them. I found a perfect image in a fashion magazine which I adapted into a younger, prouder, non-filmic Roark, looking up at the skyscrapers he has designed. I tried to do the writing in the "Wright" typeface he used on many of his buildings and publications. I inscribed the motto of this piece at the bottom of the little cityscape to the lower left. It reads, "Skyscrapers: the shape of man's achievement on earth." Quoted from Ayn Rand, who insists on the "man" language as she believed that women should not design or build skyscrapers, but worship and be the wife of the man who does. This is one of my favorite menu boards of the whole set, and my most successful Rand illustration.
Howard Roark is markers on posterboard, 21" x 13", winter 1979.
1 comment:
This is great! I really love this
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