Ben's Passion for Prints and Miscellaneous Musings on Art
Prints and other visual art
Every time I hear any bit of A Rhapsody in Blue, George Gershwin’s magnum opus, I just have to stop and listen. It’s magical. And while I didn’t grow up with it, the segment set to it from the 2000 remake of Fantasia, feels very on target too. So here it is–Gershwin, as rendered by Al Hirschfeld. There was a gala done of his music in 1980 in NJ, for which Hirschfeld drew a cover for the program, with Sarah Vaughn and Thomas Michalak both participating.
While Hirschfeld is most famous for his drawings of Broadway shows, he did not confine himself to the theater. Movies, music, and other celebrities were also often featured. Today’s piece is a Hirschfeld drawing of Eugene Ormandy, perhaps the longest serving conductor of a major orchestra in the US. Ormandy’s tenure with the Philadelphia Orchestra was more than 40 years. He was a big personality, and remarkably by today’s standard, no scandalous abuse of power has been revealed more than 30 years after his death. I think Hirschfeld’s rendition of him is beautiful in and of itself, whether you know anything about him or not. It was drawn for a magazine cover, and even though I think the cover clutter distracts, the colors and proportions look better in context, so I show it both isolated and on the magazine cover.
A couple of weeks back, I posted a print by Grandville–a lithograph, hand colored after printing, of a satire on the bourgeois of France in the early 19th century. This was one of a large series he did of human figures with the heads of animals, many of which are charming, some of which are grotesque. I think there are enough interesting ones to continue post them here from time to time.
Today’s print might be compared to Peter Rabbit, with Farmer McGregor promoted to Colonel. . Enjoy!
While my new passion is mostly for prints, it spills over a bit into other 2d art–including drawings and paintings. Today, I’m going to feature a caricature by Al Hirschfeld. Hirschfeld did miraculous line drawings of scenes from shows (mostly Broadway, but some film too), as well as performers and other well-known people. His drawings typically were on the first page of the NY Times Arts and Leisure section every Sunday, and they are marvelous. Here is his drawing of Man of La Mancha, a musical that is loosely based on the novel Don Quixote.interwoven with a loosely interpreted life of Miguel de Cervantes (author of Don Quixote). This drawing is from the original 1965 production starring Richard Kiley starring Richard Kiley (2328 performances, followed by 4 Broadway revivals to date and a film version), and this caricature was eventually used as cover art for the Playbill in later years of the original run.
