Vincente Minnelli was doing this in the late 30s and throughout the 40s, being frequently praised for it in press at the time for his dedication to overseeing the scripting process from the beginning, to conceptualizing musical numbers, staging choreography, set design, lighting, costumes, et. al. He was even routinely reprimanded for breaking the production studio taboo of staring through the viewfinder for extended periods of time while shooting. But he's only one of many directors since at least the 1920s who were widely known for micro-managing their vision from pencil to screen.
I didn't disagree, I just said I'm not sure about it — mainly because I have no idea what they meant by the film's "artistry" since the term is extremely broad and vague. But if they meant it like you've defined it here (a hands-on approach to art and scenario design during productuon), then yeah I'd most definitely disagree since that hasn't been significantly rare since shortly after the Ford Model T debuted.
Fair points all, and thank you for the knowledge on Minnelli, which I hadn't learned about before. That said, Minelli's achievements are more evolutionary in a directorial sense as far as technique, and maybe a bit less so as far as art direction in the way I mean. I may not be articulating my meaning well enough.
Scott elevated both science fiction and horror in a way that he achieved a level of detail and vision that hadn't previously been reached. He does owe some of this to Moebius as far as the creature and alien ship/world building is concerned, but his almost obsessive attention to tiny details really created a sense of realism that wasn't seen in the genres before. He did even more of this on
Blade Runner. He achieved this by almost taking over the art direction position completely, much to the chagrin of the guy holding that position at the time. Some examples would be the complex level of detail of the interior of the Nostromo when compared to say The Discovery in
2001, or in
Blade Runner, Scott insisting on having printed instructions on the parking meters, which could never be legibly read on camera.
If you have examples of people who had used these techniques before him, which may well exist, I would love to check out their work, if only to see the progression before his work, and to check out what had perhaps influenced him to attempt to elevate these concepts/approaches.
Just quickly, to illustrate that i am apparently not alone in thinking along these lines. I did a quick google search and very quickly ran across several articles on Scott, and his approach to art direction and vision in these films:
A Visual Analysis of Ridley' Scott's Alien Series