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Amazing Unearthed Artwork From Real Life "Mad Man" Weston Emmart
By
Jen Carlson
Published Jun 3, 2013
Modified Jun 3, 2013
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Courtesy of Alex Emmart
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By
Jen Carlson
Published Jun 3, 2013
Modified Jun 3, 2013
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Last week Redditor Mighty Tanaka—aka Alex Emmart of Mighty Tanaka Gallery—posted his grandfather's WWII drawings on the site. The late Weston Emmart's illustrations were quickly passed around the internet, and can all be seen here. But what did the young talent do after the war? The outlines of Emmart's life story are actually quite similar to Mad Men's Don Draper—after the war, he got into the advertising game and was an ad man at Ogilvy & Mather in Manhattan. His grandson Alex has now shared parts of his life from that era with us.
Alex tells us, "My grandfather worked at Ogilvy & Mather for 35 years after the war and was considered an original 'Mad Man.' [He] loved to create, he had this uncanny ability to think of something and then be able to articulate it into physicality through a variety of mediums. He was an artist in the truest sense of the word, yet very seldom ever sought the recognition that accompanies it. He was passionate about his craft and always had a number of projects that he was working on, nearly up until the day he passed away."
Click through for a look at Weston's work at Ogilvy & Mather—he drew the Pink Panther for a variety of commercials as well as the Sugar Crisp bear. Alex has also shared some more from Weston's WWII works, and video of Weston looking at his sketchbook drawings again before he passed away.
As an interesting aside: the above was filmed by Carter Emmart, Alex's uncle and Weston's son, who happens to also be the Director of Astro-Visualization in the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History and creator of The Known Universe.
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Jen Carlson
Jen Carlson is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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