Illustrating the Moxie of Broadway
Matt Logan
Matt Logan’s illustration for the Broadway production of “Red.”
By ERIK PIEPENBURG
Published: August 18, 2010
ACTORS covet them. Producers dream of them. Marvin Hamlisch even composed a musical about one. On Broadway, the word “lines” means different things to different people.
Multimedia
Interactive Feature The Line King’s Heirs
To the theater illustrator Al Hirschfeld, lines told stories. A single stroke bestowed elegance on a clown. A thicket of swirls became an elaborate costume. Swoops made an actor’s feet fly.
Hirschfeld, whose artwork was synonymous with theater coverage in The New York Times for decades, was an exhaustive chronicler of almost every Broadway show and personality of the 20th century. Gish, Gielgud, Minnelli, Streisand - he drew everyone, and everyone wanted to be drawn by him.
Several living artists still document that Broadway energy, including Richard Baratz, whose celebrity caricatures line the walls of Sardi’s, and James McMullan, whose posters have cataloged the seasons at Lincoln Center. But since Hirschfeld’s death in 2003, at the age of 99, there has been no clear heir apparent to his title as Broadway’s go-to illustrator.
Not that the pad-and-pencil tradition of drawing Broadway is extinct. (Shrinking, yes, but not dead.) The artist Victor Juhasz, referring to Hirschfeld, writes: “His work was clearly distinctive but by no means the final statement on Broadway illustrations.”
The art of today’s theater illustrators and caricaturists is featured regularly in magazines, playbills and online. (With the exception of the work of Mr. McMullan, however, most show posters these days are photographed or done using computer software, not drawn.) Most lucratively, their pieces are given out in limited editions as gifts on opening or closing nights, or are commissioned for private collections. (Corporate gigs help pay the rest of the bills.)
More examples of these illustrators' works are available in an interactive feature at nytimes.com/theater.
VICTOR JUHASZ
What essentially drew me to theater stuff was that it was a great departure from what I normally do. I do more sarcastic, ironic caricature, political, opinionated stuff. Here was a chance to focus on imagery for imagery's sake. The point of view would come as a result of the atmosphere that I was trying to put into a painting, even though it doesn't show itself in a lot of the more serious work I do. I draw inspiration from Otto Dix and George Grosz and Lucien Freud, people who could catch this atmosphere about each of their subjects. I love going to the theater, but I tend to be more inclined toward the more serious, meaty fare.
MATT LOGAN
I fight when people ask me to put color in a picture. I love color, but I'm more intrigued by the relationship between black and white and space. That's something Al Hirschfeld did so beautifully, especially as his artwork changed during different phases. The more spare it was, I found, the more moved I was. A line with a hand at the end of it can give you just enough to envision an arm. But if you put color to it, then it becomes about the sleeve rather than the gesture. I would never put myself in the same field as Hirschfeld. I look at him with such awe. It's a language he created. We just try to learn to speak that language in our own way.
ROBERT RISKO
My work is stylized, angular, retro, minimalist shapes, with roots in Cubism. When I was growing up outside of Pittsburgh, Warhol was an icon by that point, in the early '60s. In that area the steel mills were thriving, and a manufactured look, things that were plastic, was the aesthetic of the day. Whether it be airbrushed illustrations of welding machines or Warhol's repetitive Campbell's soup cans, it was all about the manufactured look, which is something I always try to achieve. In the digital age, when a manufactured look is so easy to do, you always have to leave a sign that it was done by human hand. There has to be some imperfection somewhere. There needs to be a playful spirit in it.
JUSTIN ROBERTSON (SQUIGS)
I don't do a lot of over-the-top, crazy exaggeration in the caricatures. It's not wild illustration. I try to focus more on subtleties. I think a lot of it is trying to keep my eyes open and pay attention when looking at someone. I'm a people pleaser, so I'm always trying to make it accurate. It's not about lampooning for me. It's about celebrating a likeness and a persona and the hard work that goes into what theater is. Onstage it can seem magical, but we know how much work goes on behind that. Theater and caricature are a culmination of everything I like.
i used to illustrate for the new york native's theatre column on the boards and acquarian arts weekly below 13th when i was in high school and beginning college. did black and white line and a lot of crosshatching and texture for tone. it was fun making roughs in the dark house or while richard interviewed people, but a real bitch to get the sorry amount of money promised. literally had to hunt people down and make a scene for a lousy $15 or $25. it was appalling. if you publish the work, and tell the person how talented they are, then you should pay them. bitching i want my money, made me feel like shit.