The Hirschfeld Century
Portrait of an Artist and His Age
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
I am down to a pencil, a pen, and a bottle of ink. I hope one day to eliminate the pencil.
Al Hirschfeld redefined caricature and exemplified Broadway and Hollywood, enchanting generations with his mastery of line. His art appeared in every major publication during nine decades of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, as well as on numerous book, record, and program covers; film posters and publicity art; and on fifteen U.S. postage stamps.
Now, The Hirschfeld Century brings together for the first time the artist’s extraordinary eighty-two-year career, revealed in more than 360 of his iconic black-and-white and color drawings, illustrations, and photographs—his influences, his techniques, his evolution from his earliest works to his last drawings, and with a biographical text by David Leopold, Hirschfeld authority, who, as archivist to the artist, worked side by side with him and has spent more than twenty years documenting the artist’s extraordinary output.
Here is Hirschfeld at age seventeen, working in the publicity department at Goldwyn Pictures (1920–1921), rising from errand boy to artist; his year at Universal (1921); and, beginning at age eighteen, art director at Selznick Pictures, headed by Louis Selznick (father of David O.) in New York. We see Hirschfeld, at age twenty-one, being influenced by the stylized drawings of Miguel Covarrubias, newly arrived from Mexico (they shared a studio on West Forty-Second Street), whose caricatures appeared in many of the most influential magazines, among them Vanity Fair. We see, as well, how Hirschfeld’s friendship with John Held Jr. (Held’s drawings literally created the look of the Jazz Age) was just as central as Covarrubias to the young artist’s development, how Held’s thin line affected Hirschfeld’s early caricatures.
Here is the Hirschfeld century, from his early doodles on the backs of theater programs in 1926 that led to his work for the drama editors of the New York Herald Tribune (an association that lasted twenty years) to his receiving a telegram from The New York Times, in 1928, asking for a two-column drawing of Sir Harry Lauder, a Scottish vaudeville singing sensation making one of his (many) farewell tours, an assignment that began a collaboration with the Times that lasted seventy-five years, to Hirschfeld’s theater caricatures, by age twenty-five, a drawing appearing every week in one of four different New York newspapers.
Here, through Hirschfeld’s pen, are Ethel Merman, Benny Goodman, Judy Garland, Mickey Rooney, Katharine Hepburn, the Marx Brothers, Barbra Streisand, Elia Kazan, Mick Jagger, Ella Fitzgerald, Laurence Olivier, Martha Graham, et al. . . . Among the productions featured: Fiddler on the Roof, West Side Story, Rent, Guys and Dolls, The Wizard of Oz (Hirschfeld drew five posters for the original release), Gone with the Wind, The Sopranos, and more.
Here as well are his brilliant portraits of writers, politicians, and the like, among them Ernest Hemingway (a pal from 1920s Paris), Tom Wolfe, Charles de Gaulle, Nelson Mandela, Joseph Stalin, Winston Churchill, and every president from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Bill Clinton.
Sumptuous and ambitious, a book that gives us, through images and text, a Hirschfeld portrait of an artist and his age.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
After spending 25 years immersed in the work of Al Hirschfeld (1903 2003), an artist who made some 10,000 drawings during his life, Leopold (Hirschfeld's Hollywood) has carefully assembled a diverse collection of 366 works spanning the artist's 82 year career, from the landscapes he painted in North Africa, Bali, and Tahiti to his more recognizable portraits of countless celebrities. This lively biography documents the evolution of Hirschfeld's distinct line during each decade in his work for movie studios, Broadway productions, newspapers, and magazines and contains many interviews with the artist, revealing the amalgamation of influences, including other artists and cultures, that helped to shape his "distinctly American form of drawing." Though the comprehensive text primarily centers on the professional life of the artist, Leopold also manages to recreate the dizzy exhilaration of Broadway and the film industry in the early 20th century at a time when celebrity culture was just beginning to emerge, and when Modernism was simultaneously being injected into the theatre, music, and Hirschfeld's work. Best of all are Leopold's passionate descriptions of Hirschfeld as an entirely nonjudgmental humanist who gave up landscape painting in favor of portraiture to create a uniquely democratic art. "While many people saw the films or the Broadway productions," writes Leopold, "even more saw Al's artwork." This monograph is a diverting study of a towering figure in 20th-century illustration. Illus.
Customer Reviews
AMAZING MUST HAVE FOR THE HIRSCHFELD FAN
I purchased the paper book version of this gem before I got this one.I was nearly ecstatic, looking through everything that was so many rare and beautiful hirschfeld pieces- and ow having the digital version on my ipad is like an even greater experience! EACH PIECE seems to fall right into your lap, at a zoomable size that enables the reader to see the FULL DETAILS of Hirshcfelds dynamic work. This book is Loaded with new treasures and is sprinkled with a few of those beloved well known sketches all through out- making this one incredible book!