Biography
David Stone Martin (né David Livingstone Martin) was born in Chicago, IL in 1913. He was the son of a Presbyterian minister and had no formal art training as a youth, although he spent many hours looking at paintings in the Art Institute. When he was older, He took graphic design classes at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and worked as an assistant to Ben Shahn. He helped Shahn to create murals for the 1933 Chicago World's Fair and on other assignments. His painting "Untitled (Logger)" shows how strong Shahn's influence was at the time, in terms of both style and subject matter.
In the depths of the Depression, Martin was hired as a staff artist at the Tennessee Valley Authority, eventually being promoted to the post of Art Director. He married the artist Thelma Marguerite Durkin in 1934 and had two children, sons Stefan (b.1936) and Tony (b.1937). He completed a Post Office mural, "Electrification" (1940) for Lenoir, TN. Thelma also received a commission for a Post Office mural, "Wild Boar Hunt," (1942) in Sweetwater, TN. She later shifted her interests to photography.
After the United States entered World War II, Martin became the graphics arts director for the Office of Strategic Service and the art director for the Office of War Information. His recruiting poster "Above and Beyond the Call of Duty" was widely distributed. And he was hired by Life Magazine as an artist/correspondent.
Martin moved to New York in 1944 and became a regular at the Café Society in Greenwich Village. There he met and became involved with the singer Mary Lou Williams. She introduced him to Moe Asch, who owned the record label on which Williams recorded, and Asch immediately hired Martin as his art director. Thus began a long and enormously productive specialty for Martin - the design of record album covers.
Martin's association with Asch lasted through 1949. Thereafter he worked with producer Norman Granz, whom he had also met at the Café Society. Martin had teaching jobs at the Brooklyn Museum School of Art in 1948 and the Workshop School of Advertising and Editorial Art in 1950.
Aided by representation from Lester Rossin Associates, which began in the 1940s, Martin's freelance career exploded, and he worked for a number of record labels, CBS television and Lincoln Center, while also producing cover art and illustrations for Time and other national magazines. The quality of his work was recognized in numerous prizes and awards.
Many of Martin's professional associations were long-lasting. He produced album covers for Mary Lou Williams from 1944-1970. And he did album covers for Norman Granz's various record labels from 1949-1969, creating over 400 covers in the course of his career.
His personal life was somewhat less stable. His marriage to Thelma, disturbed by his public involvement with Mary Lou Williams, ended in 1954. The next year he married the actress Gloria Olga Sokol, with whom he had a daughter, Rio. That marriage ended in 1961, and Martin took a third wife, Cheri Mae Landry, in 1965. That marriage lasted until Martin's death in 1992, by which time he was living in New London, CT.
Critical Analysis
Martin's signature style was derived from Ben Shahn, but grew to be very recognizable in its own right. Martin's tool of choice was a crow quill pen, which he used like a brush, drawing fine lines as appropriate, but using pressure to create heavier lines. As he noted, the pens weren't designed for this sort of use, but the results were quite striking. He would add to his line drawings occasional black areas and a wash of color, typically restricted to no more than three hues. The results of Martin's crow quill drawings were so recognizable as to be referred to as "the DSM line."
Enthusiasts for Martin's work compared his approach to that of the jazz musicians themselves. And his style had a major impact on how other artists approached the creation of album covers. It is clear, however, that Martin was a person who was in the right place at the right time, as photographs of the artist at a table in the Café Society make clear. In that sense Martin's art is very much the art of a particular place and a particular time.
Murals
- Lenoir City, Tennessee - Post Office: Electrification
References
- David Stone Martin (Wikipedia).
- David Stone Martin (Discogs).
- David Stone Martin (Eye-Likely).
- David Stone Martin (Prabook).
- David Stone Martin (Modernism in the New City).
- Craig McCann, David Stone Martin Illustrating the 1950’s, Fish Ink Blog July 11 (2022).
- Myrna Oliver, David Stone Martin; Acclaimed Illustrator, Los Angeles Times March 8 (1992).
- Leif Peng, David Stone Martin: "...unusual pictures, vitalized by many strange textures", Today's Inspiration October 16 (2008).
- Leif Peng, David Stone Martin: Early Days, Today's Inspiration October 14 (2008).
- David Stone Martin: Jazz Visualized (American Jazz Museum).
- The Music Aficionado, Jazz Album Covers by David Stone Martin, The Music Aficionado November 3 (2021).
- Pianist & Composer Mary Lou Williams, Illustrator David Stone Martin (Ephemera Press). Exhibition from February 13 - March 26, 2013.