Al
Hirschfeld
Al Hirschfeld has provided a priceless and unique record
of 20th century American theatre - its plays and actors
- through drawings some call caricatures. The artist,
a self-described "characterist", captures the spirit
and personality of his subject, rather than distort
its figure. He states, "It's a question of distilling
the character. To squeeze out the essence of the character
rather than just plain distortion for distortion's sake."
Hirschfeld
was born in St. Louis in 1903 in a house on Kensington
Avenue in the Central West End. He was interested in
art from early childhood. As a small boy he wanted to
be a sculptor. Later in life he described sculpture
as "a drawing you fall over in the dark."
His
family made it possible for him to study art as a young
boy. When he was 11, an art teacher told his mother
he was too talented for local instruction. His mother
moved the family moved to New York where Hirschfeld
eventually enrolled at the Art Student's League. He
had an early but short career with Samuel Goldwyn Studios,
where his first art assignment was creating ads. Soon
he took a job with Selznick Pictures and by 1921, at
the age of 18, he was their art director. In 1925 his
uncle gave him a ticket to Paris and $500. He spent
six months in Europe and returned to New York intending
to begin a career as a painter. But in December 1926
a sketch he had made of actor Sacha Guitry was published
in the New York Herald Tribune. In two years
his theatrical drawings were appearing in five different
New York newspapers, including the Times, where he has
continued to work for over 70 years.
Hirschfeld's
job was to capture the essence of each play on opening
night and present his drawing to the readers of the
Times the following Sunday. He took notes and
captured concepts and likenesses in the dark by making
notations in a sketchbook that he later assembled into
a finished drawing. Hirschfeld's name has become a verb
of recognition in the theatrical world. To be "Hirschfelded"
is a sign one has arrived. As one critic wrote, "There
are just two forms of fame on Broadway: seeing your
name in lights, and more significantly, to be drawn
by Hirschfeld."
Beginning
in the 1940s, Hirschfeld illustrated books by such authors
as Brooks Atkinson and S. J. Perelman, whom he had met
in Paris and maintained a long collaborative friendship
with. He also produced books he both wrote and illustrated,
including Show Business is No Business, Hirschfeld
by Hirschfeld ; The World of Hirschfeld; Hirschfeld:
Art & Recollection from 8 Decades;. This fall he
has two new books coming out: Hirschfeld's New York
and Hirschfeld's Hollywood.
His
insightful pen and ink portraits obscure a less well-known
talent. Hirschfeld was a consummate artist and painter,
and exhibited skills as an expert lithographer. In 1970,
he issued a set of ten color lithographs in an edition
of 120, and in 1975 an edition of 80 Japanese images.
He held many one-man shows in cities all over the U.S.
and abroad. His drawings, watercolors, lithographs,
etchings and sculptures are in private collections and
the permanent collections of major museums as diverse
as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern
Art, Whitney Museum, Harvard University's Fogg Museum
and Israel's Hamima Museum, The Library of Congress,
and the St. Louis Art Museum.
In
1943 he married one of Europe's most famous actresses,
Dolly Haas. Their daughter, Nina, was born in 1945 and
Hirschfeld put her name on a poster in the background
of the theatrical drawing he did that day. Thereafter,
the flowing lines of N I N A were worked into his drawings,
often in the folds of drapery or strands of hair. It
became a game he played with his audience. In 1960 he
began appending a numeral after his signature to tell
his fans how many NINA's were hidden in a drawing.
Much
has been made of Hirschfeld's use of line. In his work
during the Thirties and Forties, there was more use
of tones and splatters to create texture, and of solid
blacks. Over the years the work has become simpler and
more direct. Hirschfeld's skill was honed to remove
anything extraneous to give us, with the most graceful
of lines, extraordinarily perceptive insights into his
glamorous subjects.
In
the Fifties and Sixties there were more and more NINA's
and more and more theatrical images. He's done covers
for Time, Rolling Stone and more TV Guides than any
other artist.
In
1991 he was the first artist in history to have his
name on an U.S. postage stamp booklet. This was so successful
that in 1994 the U.S. Postal Service commissioned him
to create two new series of Hirschfeld stamps: Silent
Film Stars and Comedians.
In
1996, The Line King, an Academy Award nominated documentary
video of his life, was released and later excerpted
on American Masters PBS. In 1998, at the age of 95,
he married Louise Kerz, a theater historian. He still
works as he has for over 50 years, sitting in a barber
chair behind a drawing table in his upper East Side
townhouse. Louise Hirschfeld gave this poem by Henry
David Thoreau to the artist on his 92nd birthday:
There
was an artist
Who was disposed to strive for perfection.
His singleness of purpose and resolution,
And his elevated piety endowed him,
Without his knowledge,
With perennial Youth.
As he made no compromise with time,
Time kept out of his way,
And sighed at a distance,
Because it could not overcome him.
On June 24th Al Hirschfeld will turn 98 years old and
exemplifies an artist "with perennial Youth". It is
with much pride and privilege that ARTS FOR LIFE confers
this Lifetime Achievement award to Al Hirschfeld for
Theatrical Drawing and Caricature.
Biography-June 17, 2001.
