Volume 67, Issue 8

Here Lie Al Hirschfeld (99) and the
Art World (’03) R.I.P.
by Menachem Wecker

To say that the art world has lost a giant, albeit a gentle one who never wielded the pen as abusive lance but instead as sympathetic microscope, is an understatement.  Al Hirschfeld was so much more than a genius; he was an artist.  A St. Louis boy who made it big in New York, the artist rose to the occasion from a house without gas, electricity or running water to the razzle-dazzle halls of Broadway, in which he watched more shows than any person ever has, or likely will.  Along the way, he stopped to play semi-pro baseball, to tap dance and to play the piano.  The paradigm of the Renaissance man, Hirschfeld’s life came to a close after 99 productive years. 

He had a gift for human likeness, for drawing the human soul.  He reminds us of Daumier - perhaps Toulouse-Lautrec and more recently Thomas Nast, Edward Sorel and David Levine, and yet how minimalistic his drawings are!  His very few lines, formed in such an elegant painterly fashion, with his trademark “Nina”s embedded throughout, have achieved their place on a smart pedestal in the caricature Hall of Fame, nay in the artistic canon.  In an attempt to dedicate his artwork to his daughter (born in 1945), Hirschfeld hid the name Nina many times in his drawings, subsequently leaving a number beside his signature corresponding to the number of “Nina”s hidden.  He was a regular Waldo magician, and so difficult were his challenges, that the air force was known to train pilots in the art of distinguishing ill visible bomb sites by testing their ability to discover the “Nina”s. 

Hirschfeld’s death comes shortly after an invitation from the American Academy of Arts and Letters to join the illustrious club, and a call from Washington informing him that he would receive the National Medal of Arts.  These honors led the artist to remark, “If you live long enough, everything happens.”  Hirschfeld certainly lived up to that statement and we are tremendously lucky that he lived so long and made so much happen.  The entire art world bids adieu to a tremendous inspiration that can never be regained. 

Perhaps the most famous pieces are the ones depicting the Marx Brothers and the Beatles.   With elaborate V shaped legs throwing a playful light on Abbey Road and painstaking attention to details in the musical notes serving as background to the Marx brothers, Hirschfeld turns these two cultural sensations into powerful aesthetic symbols, not easily forgotten. 

In David Levine (1975), Hirschfeld depicts his fellow caricaturist with a wide face and characteristic Jewish nose, in a very similar conception to Levine’s own compositions.  Frank Sinatra (1979) depicts a pair of magnificent lips hanging beneath an X shape carved into the face; one can almost feel the lips singing.  It is isolated features that oftentimes turn out to be Hirschfeld’s greatest success: Andre Agassi’s bald head mimicking his tennis racket, Leonard Bernstein’s eyebrows, an upturned nose in Glass Menagerie, the hydra-like quality and haphazard hair of the Pointer Sisters.  And then there are the Democratic Presidential Candidates 1998: featuring Al Gore, Jesse Jackson, Bruce Babbit, Paul Simon, Richard Gephardt, Michael Dukakis, and Gary Hart.  I know I speak for myself when I say these individuals are best seen as caricatures. 

For those interested in finding out more about Mr. Hirschfeld, his artwork can be at http://www.alhirschfeld.com/artwork/index.html amongst other places, and I drew much of my research from two fabulously written and very informative articles: one by Myrna Oliver in the Boston Globe and one by Richard F. Shepard with Mel Gussow in the New York Times.

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