Al Hirschfeld left thousands of artistic works, but no artistic heirs.
The Hirschfeld Century: Portrait of an Artist and His Age by David Leopold; Alfred A. Knopf; 320 pages; $40.00
As the painter Paul Klee saw it, a line was simply “a dot out for a walk.” In the case of Al Hirschfeld (1903–2003), that walk lasted 86 years, every one of them a triumph of perception and draftsmanship. The doyen of theatrical caricaturists is currently being celebrated in two ways, one on walls, the other between cloth covers. The New York Historical Society has opened its autumn season with an exhibit of Hirschfeld’s drawings and paintings, produced over nearly nine decades—longer than Picasso’s creative period. And while it’s true, as comedian George Burns observed, that “Hirschfeld was no Picasso,” he added, “but then, Picasso was no Hirschfeld.”
Just before World War I, the Hirschfeld family moved from St. Louis to New York. Developing an interest in sculpture, young Al took a few courses at the National Academy of Design. One day he came to the realization that “sculpture was just a drawing you could trip over in the dark.” Turning to illustration, the wunderkind immediately caught on, freelancing posters for silent movie studios, among them Goldwyn, Selznik, and Universal Pictures. Within a few years he became noted for an elegant use of light and shadow and for sketches of celebrities who seemed to be in perpetual motion. Nearly a century later, Laurel and Hardy still caper merrily, Charlie Chaplin grins manically, Norma Shearer emotes lyrically—each recognizable, yet exaggerated in a new style.
Looking back, Hirschfeld once remarked, “The whole trick in art is to stay alive. If you live long enough, everything happens, the drawing improves, life improves.”
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