See How The Foremost ‘50s Pulp Fiction Illustrator Anticipated Fake News In This Unusual Museum Show

A new exhibition of Künstler’s pulp magazine and book illustrations, running through November 17th at the Heckscher Museum of Art, reveals how adept Künstler was at compressing outlandish midcentury genre stories into watercolor and gauche paintings. The show also has resonance in the present, as current events are increasingly fabricated.

Künstler’s jobs – like those of pulp fiction authors he worked with – often started with an editor’s aidea for a climax scene that was as implausible as it was dramatic. Implicit in the assignment was that the depiction should be realistic, as men’s genre magazine stories were meant to read as if they were nonfiction.

For a skilled pulp writer such as Puzo, that required hours of library research as groundwork for folding outrageous events into historical fact. For Künstler, the illusion of veracity was more literal. For instance given a World War II scenario – such as an enemy tank plunging off a sabotaged drawbridge – Künstler would have his son build scale models that he’d paint from life.

Of course the pulp vernacular allowed for – and really demanded – exaggeration of the central action. This was all the more necessary because editors considered intricate detail to be a mark of good value. Centuries of narrative painting tradition provided the needed methods, ranging from backlighting to exaggerated perspective.

The stock use of these techniques in paintings and movies made them so familiar that viewers scarcely registered the manipulation, much as authors could frontload interpretation with literary conventions ranging from analogy to repetition. It also helped that illustration was frequently enlisted in mainstream magazine journalism. Künstler himself was frequently hired by Newsweek, for which he depicted unphotographed events such as Patty Hearst’s 1975 court arraignment.

Künstler ultimately transitioned from pulp fiction illustration to historical painting of American warfare (though not before he created the cover art for Puzo’s bestselling Godfather series). The fact that Künstler was able to make this career shift is not surprising, since many of the same research and technical skills are required for both occupations. Still the slippages between fact and fiction are telling, because they suggest the ease with which people can be duped – a phenomenon that could not be more timely in the present epidemic of fake news.

Looking at Künstler’s pulp fiction illustrations and the stories they animated, we can define some of the qualities of factual distortion still effective today, from the artful blending of truth and falsehood to the duplicitous use of dramatic techniques so traditional they’re essentially imperceptible. And because Künstler’s illustrations are no longer likely to fool anyone, they can perhaps help us to see through current news stories too good to believe.

When Mario Puzo was hired to write fiction for pulp magazines such as Male and Men, he was shocked to find out that the illustrations were finished before he had a chance to begin. It wasn’t just about efficiency. The primary reason was that the pulps Puzo wrote for had Mort Künstler as an illustrator, and Künstler’s action-packed pictures often established the punchiest moments in Male and Men narratives. 

A new exhibition of Künstler’s pulp magazine and book illustrations, running through November 17th at the Heckscher Museum of Art, reveals how adept Künstler was at compressing outlandish midcentury genre stories into watercolor and gauche paintings. The show also has resonance in the present, as current events are increasingly fabricated.

Künstler’s jobs – like those of pulp fiction authors he worked with – often started with an editor’s aidea for a climax scene that was as implausible as it was dramatic. Implicit in the assignment was that the depiction should be realistic, as men’s genre magazine stories were meant to read as if they were nonfiction.

For a skilled pulp writer such as Puzo, that required hours of library research as groundwork for folding outrageous events into historical fact. For Künstler, the illusion of veracity was more literal. For instance given a World War II scenario – such as an enemy tank plunging off a sabotaged drawbridge – Künstler would have his son build scale models that he’d paint from life.

Of course the pulp vernacular allowed for – and really demanded – exaggeration of the central action. This was all the more necessary because editors considered intricate detail to be a mark of good value. Centuries of narrative painting tradition provided the needed methods, ranging from backlighting to exaggerated perspective.

The stock use of these techniques in paintings and movies made them so familiar that viewers scarcely registered the manipulation, much as authors could frontload interpretation with literary conventions ranging from analogy to repetition. It also helped that illustration was frequently enlisted in mainstream magazine journalism. Künstler himself was frequently hired by Newsweek, for which he depicted unphotographed events such as Patty Hearst’s 1975 court arraignment.

Künstler ultimately transitioned from pulp fiction illustration to historical painting of American warfare (though not before he created the cover art for Puzo’s bestselling Godfather series). The fact that Künstler was able to make this career shift is not surprising, since many of the same research and technical skills are required for both occupations. Still the slippages between fact and fiction are telling, because they suggest the ease with which people can be duped – a phenomenon that could not be more timely in the present epidemic of fake news.

Looking at Künstler’s pulp fiction illustrations and the stories they animated, we can define some of the qualities of factual distortion still effective today, from the artful blending of truth and falsehood to the duplicitous use of dramatic techniques so traditional they’re essentially imperceptible. And because Künstler’s illustrations are no longer likely to fool anyone, they can perhaps help us to see through current news stories too good to believe.