You know Al Hirschfeld’s work, even if you don’t know his name. For over three generations, Hirschfeld has been the man responsible for those lean, crisp, curving celebrity caricatures that turn up in newspapers, advertisements, and posters. Despite very dissimilar styles, Hirschfeld – like Norman Rockwell - was a very American illustrator. And now, unfortunately, he’s joined Rockwell in the afterlife, just one year away from his 100th birthday.
Each of Hirschfeld’s caricatures spoke volumes about both the artist and his subject, and there’s little point in attempting to even begin to unravel their meanings. However, Hirschfeld’s clear, economic style can and should be an inspiration to animators. The artists behind Disney’s Aladdin, for example, partially based the Genie on Hirschfeld’s rubbery creations. Hirschfeld’s style took decades to refine, and like the masters of Japanese woodprints, proves that simplicity is anything but simplistic, and that a properly posed drawing can be more animated than most animated television shows.
Hirschfeld himself was an astute, if infrequent, animation critic. He once blasted Walt Disney for creating Snow White. To Hirschfeld, Disney’s use of live actors in reference footage, and reliance on cute, contrived situations was the wrong approach for animation to take. A similar debate exists today over the verisimilitude of computer animation, and animation’s status as a children’s entertainment medium.
I knew Hirschfeld through the New York gallery that exhibited and sold his work. Each week, as I waited for my bus to take me home, I’d look and see what new prints or drawings were being displayed in the window. I was always grateful and never disappointed. Even if I live to Hirschfeld’s age, I think I will always feel the same way about his drawings. Here’s hoping that, right now, Hirschfeld is creating caricatures of Carl Barks and Chuck Jones in the great drawing board in the sky.
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