The Hirschfeld Century

May 25, 2015
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.

May 15, 2015
A richly illustrated study of the artist who richly illustrated publications, marquees, and other venues for eight decades. Al Hirschfeld (1903-2003) was, in the words of museum curator Leopold, "a visual journalist who 'reported' what he saw, with no interest in picking winners or losers, but looking for character whether it was expressed in word, music, or movement, which he would then translate into his signature line." That signature line, swooping and evocative, could not be mistaken for the hand of any other, and so influential was Hirschfeld that, in Leopold's witty assessment, after he drew the Marx Brothers, the troupe "started to look more like Al's drawings, rather than the other way around." A favorite of Franklin Roosevelt and Frank Sinatra alike, Hirschfeld lampooned and japed, and though he tried his hand at serious work-some of his early pieces on display here resemble Chagall, while others clearly borrow from Gauguin and perhaps less clearly from Covarrubias-it is his whimsical show-business portfolio for which he is best remembered, and particularly his broad-stroke portraits of Laurel and Hardy, Milton Berle, and other stars of a bygone era. (Yet he kept himself current: two of Hirschfeld's final portraits portrayed Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia and comedian Jerry Seinfeld.) As Leopold notes in this critical but by no means arid study of the art, Hirschfeld was extraordinarily prolific, completing more than 10,000 pieces over a long life. He was a "Zelig-like character in a good bit of cultural history of the twentieth century." He was good-natured about it, too, joking that he supported the capitalist system as a machine "so sloppily and benevolently conceived that even I could wind up owning a house." An intelligent, carefully representative look at Hirschfeld's work that ably shows why the artist deserves to be remembered today.

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Starred review from July 1, 2015

Editor Leopold spent 20 years documenting Hirschfeld's life and work (1903-2003), visiting the artist in his studio and then working for the Hirschfeld Foundation. The artist seems to have drawn or painted everyone who was anyone in the performing arts during the 20th century. The result of Leopold's research is a brilliant volume that offers not only a scholarly evaluation of Hirschfeld's work but also a highly enjoyable study of caricature, Broadway, Hollywood, and the century's performers. While Hirschfeld is best known for his black-and-white caricatures and outstanding use of "line," this title includes many color works, displaying his superb technique. He created 10,000 drawings in his lifetime; clearly Leopold had to make many judgement calls. Still, there is an embarrassment of riches here as readers are taken decade through decade of the world of performance. Both iconic images and the obscure are included. Such personalities as Laurel and Hardy, Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra, and others are immediately recognizable, but the image of Congressman Claude Pepper in the shape of the state of Florida, as well as that of former U.S. vice president Spiro Agnew, may come as a surprise. VERDICT Highly recommended for those interested in the performing arts, American culture, and the art of drawing and caricature.--Susan L. Peters, Univ. of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from June 1, 2015
Al Hirschfeld's performing-arts caricatures, which enlivened the pages of the New York Times for 75 years, are ebullient works of fine art, what with the precision and vivacity of his line, vivid articulation of his subjects' personalities, and virtuoso rendering of motion. Born in St. Louis in 1903, Hirschfeld died in 2003, having spent his long, exuberantly productive life attending opening nights and drawing dynamic portraits of each era's defining stars of stage, film, and television. With perpetual curiosity, a passionate work ethic, and a seemingly unquenchable thirst for assignments, the prolific Hirschfeld also created movie posters, magazine covers, postage stamp designs, and book illustrations. Curator David Leopold has been immersed in all things Hirschfeld for 25 years and now presents a gloriously illustrated, decade-by-decade account of the work and life of the irrepressible caricaturist, or, as Hirschfeld preferred, characterist. Given his trust in chance and spontaneity, it's fitting that Hirschfeld's first drawing was published after it was fished out of a wastepaper basket at Goldwyn Pictures where, at 17, he was working as a gofer. Hirschfeld's career took off and never stopped as he embraced the ever-changing arts world with an almost childlike sense of wonder, ultimately creating a visual history of the twentieth century's performance milestones. Leopold emulates the economy and fluidity of Hirschfeld's drawings in this star-studded, anecdote-rich, critically clarifying, and thoroughly enlightening portrait of the portraitist.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)