Sunday 22 August 2010

CELEBRATION V: THE ART OF RALPH McQUARRIE (UPDATE)


Whilst perusing the CV dealers area, I brought this lovely postcard with unused poster art from EMPIRE. The back information credits the art to Ralph McQuarrie. I've never seen this particular film evocative image before so I thought I'd post it. (23/8/2010 UPDATE: John Scoleri at DREAMS AND VISIONS PRESS has kindly sent me a note (see below comment) to say that this isn't Ralph's work, and that it was incorrectly credited. Anyone out there got any info on who may have done this fine piece? Perhaps Tom Jung?).

I hope anyone who went to CV had a chance to look at the terrific gallery of Ralph's superb artwork (which included rare trace element sheets of his SW art that Ralph had kept since 1975/76) and picked up the excellent accompanying book, plus the two high quality daily trading cards of him at work on EMPIRE (one available from the exhibition itself and the other from the DREAMS AND VISIONS PRESS dealer stand).

It wasn't just STAR WARS fans who regularly popped in to admire the gallery - George Lucas himself, always a fan of Ralph's work, gave it a look over on the Saturday am, prior to his THE MAIN EVENT appearance and the conventions opening, to look at many rare pieces he hadn't seen in years.

We all owe Ralph so much for the visual success of the Classic STAR WARS SAGA, and STAR WARS AFICIONADO sends him continued best wishes.

1 comment:

John Scoleri said...

It was great to see you in the gallery! The response was overwhelmingly positive, and we were fortunate to not only have George (he actually came through on Friday morning - he toured a good portion of the show with his entourage then), but also Gary Kurtz, Lorne Peterson, and Jon Berg. Dave Filoni even snuck over just after the show closed on Sunday to check it out before it was dismantled.

One quick note on the postcard - that's not Ralph's art. We like to think that while working on The Art of Ralph McQuarrie we corrected a lot of the erroneous attributions in the digital archives, but there's a lot of product out there incorrectly labeled as Ralph's work (not to mention a fair amount of Ralph's art sans attribution).