Caricaturist Al Hirschfeld was born on this day in 1903 (he died about five months short of 100 in 2003.) He caricatured a lot of famous people in his lifetime, including...
He actually looks a bit more approachable in the photograph, but then he liked to exaggerate.
His caricatures were so good!
ReplyDeleteI'll show more of his stuff in the future, Mitchell.
DeleteExaggeration is essential to the art of cartooning.
ReplyDeleteAbstract art for the masses, David.
DeleteHi, Kirk!
ReplyDeleteHappy 122nd birthday in heaven to caricaturist Al Hirschfeld! Your b-day tribute reminds me of childhood when I frequently encountered caricaturists offering their artistic services at the York Fair and on the boardwalks of Jersey, Delaware and Maryland seashore towns. In 1962, my parents came back from a vacation in Hawaii with caricatures rendered for them by a Hawaiian artist. They had the whimsical images framed and hung them on the wall of our basement game room.
I'm returning with my next post tomorrow, Sunday, and invite you to visit if at all possible. Have a great weekend, good buddy Kirk!
Nowadays, Shady, there are computer and phone apps that let you caricature yourself with a click, which makes the hand drawn caricaturing of old even more impressive.
DeleteNew to me. But shame he never made it to 100. Reminds me of Betty White, she nearly made it to 100.
ReplyDeleteAnanka, All in the Family producer Norman Lear made it to 101, The Mouse and the Motorcycle author Beverly Cleary all the way to 104, and Broadway producer George Abbott (Pal Joey, Damn Yankees) was a whopping 107 when he died in 1995. As far as I know, none of them suffered from dementia either.
DeleteHe was an absolutely brilliant caricaturist -- such economy of line! He could capture a subject's essence in only a few strokes of his pen! I love all his work.
ReplyDeleteDebra, Hirshfeld was the definitive caricaturist, the gold standard to which all others are measured.
DeleteHi Kirk, Hirschfeld illustrated several of S.J. Perelman's books, and they also did some traveling together, so they were able to caricature each other simultaneously , variously in drawings and words.
ReplyDelete--Jim
Jim, I dimly remember once taking one of those books out of the library.
DeleteI'd love it if you featured more of his work in a future post, tyia.
ReplyDeleteBoud, there's this (you might have to enlarge the image):
Deletehttps://wwwshadowofadoubt.blogspot.com/2012/09/quips-and-quotations-algonquin-round.html