Al Hirschfeld's Portraits

May 5, 2004 5:30 PM

The Hirschfeld Follies: A charming and generous gallery of Al Hirschfeld's portraits from The New York Times, spanning from 1928 to 2002 (registration required), indexed by date, person and show. Are there any outstanding young contemporary caricaturists out there who are doing good work (not necessarily in the theatre) we old-timers should know about? [Be sure to accompany with plep's great post on American cartoon and caricature and PeteyStock's January 2004 obituary post. And while you're at it, if you'll excuse the immodesty, my own David Levine post, with a (superb) still-working link.]
posted by MiguelCardoso (7 comments total)

Oops, that'll teach me not to blow my own trumpet: here's the corrected link for the Levine post, which has, btw, very good in-thread links to other caricaturists.
posted by MiguelCardoso at 5:43 PM on May 5, 2004

An NYT link you don't have to register for? Cool!
(And the Hirschfeld archive is great too... How many "NINAs" can you find?)
posted by wendell at 6:00 PM on May 5, 2004

Hirschfeld's a great fuckin' artist. A lot of contemporary illustrators were influenced by him.
posted by Miles Long at 6:38 PM on May 5, 2004

I'd submit C.F Payne as the leading contemporay caricaturist. 1, 2, 3 Being very detailed, with a strong Norman Rockwell influence, his work is of a opposing nature to Hirshfeld's incisive line - it may even be the type of caricature that I've read Hirshfeld disapproving of. But Payne seems to be one of the few illustrators today who is able to provide an alternative to the celebrity photography that dominates magazine graphics, as there's a quality to his paintings - call it photographic but it's not really that - that has the same substantial look to it that a photograph has, such that he can actually carry the cover of a major magazine like Time or Sports Illustrated.
posted by TimTypeZed at 7:54 PM on May 5, 2004

Zach Trenholm does a good job getting to the essence of somebody's likeness.
posted by edlundart at 7:58 PM on May 5, 2004

Hey, thanks TimTypeZed! I'd seen his work often but, as so often (depressingly; unfairly; stupidly) happens I'd never bothered to remember C F Payne's name. In the Levine thread you also commented in, Matteo reminded us of the terrific talents of Tullio Pericoli.

I really like the work of Nick Garland. There's a good database of other (older) British cartoonists here. There's also this astonishing guy who does covers for The Spectator and caricatures for the TLS, name starts with a W but I need time to find out exactly what it is - typical!

On preview: edlundart, Trendholm is fantastic - and Hirschfeldesque! Thanks too!
posted by MiguelCardoso at 8:09 PM on May 5, 2004

There's something of Hirshfeld's magic touch in the caricatures of David Cowles: the ability to capture a likeness with a dot and a couple squiggly lines. I'm only familiar with him from seeing his drawings in Entertainment Weekly, where he seemed to have a regular gig.
posted by TimTypeZed at 12:03 AM on May 6, 2004