The Theatrical Caricatures of Al Hirschfeld (No. 34)

The Theatrical Caricatures of Al Hirschfeld (1928-2003)

REVIEW BY R.C. HARVEY:

(from The 100 Best Comics of the Century! in The Comics Journal #210, 1999)

For at least the last half of the century, one name has dominated the field of theatrical caricature in America. Although he stands virtually alone now, Al Hirschfeld is the last of a breed that proliferated in the earliest years of this century, prospered with the burgeoning of magazine journalism, and reached its apotheosis in the '20s and '30s, particularly in the pages of Vanity Fair, which gloried in full colour celebrity caricatures.

Hirschfeld emerged from the pack when he began concentrating on theatrical caricatures for New York newspapers in 1928; since 1943, exclusively for The New York Times. Some of his earliest efforts evoke the geometric patterning of Miguel Covarrubias (with whom the young Hirschfeld shared a studio in the 1920s), the lilting line of Al Frueh as well as a penchant for using the full figure to capture a likeness, and the embellishing complexities of Ralph Barton. 

But Hirschfeld soon developed his own distinctive style, and for pure, flowing, linear expression, no one has matched him. And in his cartoon tableaux of the cast and ambiance of a production, he achieves symphonic compositions of line, mass, texture, and shape, masterpieces in black-and-white, and in rendering action, particularly, in incomparable line achieves its ultimate expressiveness, where single lines coil and springing imitation of the performers' motion. 

Says the artist: "The problem of placing the right line in the right place has absorbed all of my interests across these many years... I am still enchanted when an unaccountable line describes and communicated the inexplicable."

OBITUARY BY PHILIP HAMBURGER:
(from The New Yorker, 2 June 2003)
Al Hirschfeld, the great caricaturist, was to have reached the magic age of one hundred on June 21st. Myriad celebrations were planned, the culmination to be the renaming of the Martin Beck Theatre the Al Hirschfeld Theatre. Death stepped in on January 20th, when Al died at home in his sleep. But, since Hirschfeld was Hirschfeld, only the centerpiece of the festivities will be gone. The Martin Beck will become the Hirschfeld on June 23rd. Since I can no longer talk to Al (we talked all the time), I have done the next best thing: I have had a chat with his wife, Louise Kerz Hirschfeld, a beautiful woman in her sixties. She came to see me the other day, and it was obvious that she has inherited one of Al’s most mysterious traits: regardless of traffic or municipal mayhem on the streets, Al always managed to park exactly where he wanted to park, right in front of where he was going. One might consider this some sort of extraterrestrial intervention, or just good luck, but whatever it was it always worked.

Mrs. H. was eager to talk about Al. Hiding her sorrow, she seemed calm and collected. “He felt so tired that Sunday that I suggested he stay in bed. This was not easy for Al. He lived for his work, and the notion of not climbing to the fourth floor of our lovely house on East Ninety-fifth Street, and sitting back in his old barber chair, and beginning to draw seemed strange to him. But he followed my advice. He was propped up against the pillows and making strange circular motions with one empty hand - circles and lines and dots and faces. He was drawing something: we will never know what."

"Al always said that he had been down every street in the city of New York, with a special, odd affection for the borough of Queens," she went on. "He always had special ways of getting out of the city - weird shortcuts from the Harlem River Drive, through a crowded commercial district, and onto the New York State Thruway. He loved to point out a cliff he used to climb as a boy on what is now the Harlem Drive. In the old days, his closest friends were Brooks Atkinson, drama critic of the Times, Alexander King, the writer, and Paul Osborn, whose plays he loved. But his favorite writer of all was Thoreau, and we printed a Thoreau passage on the funeral program that read, in part, 'There was an artist... who was disposed to strive after perfection... As he made no compromise with Time, Time kept out of his way and only sighed at a distance because he could not overcome him."

"Al never talked about death - he made no plans, none of that. He lived for every day. He once did a great drawing of Houdini - all bound and chained - and I often felt that Al was like Houdini, bound and chained to his work, from which he would miraculously emerge. Theatre totally fascinated and consumed him. His favorite plays were Long Day’s Journey Into Night and Death of a Salesman. Of course, he knew O’Neill - the two of them would haunt the jazz spots on Fifty-Second Street. The fact that a theatre was to be named in his honor almost overwhelmed him. Arthur Gelb, the Times eminence, and I went and told him the news. ‘It’s a great honor, but I won’t speak,’ he said. ‘Just take a bow.’ To see Al at a theatre was an uplifting experience. He became like a boy. The look of expectancy on his face before the curtain rose simply cannot be described."

"He didn’t ever want to be bored. Hence, he was always trying for something new. If you asked him what was his favorite drawing, he would always say, ‘The last one that I did.'"

FURTHER READING:

Al Hirschfeld Foundation