"Mae West," Miguel Covarrubias, ink and gouache for The New Yorker, May 5, 1928. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

 

Celebrity Caricature in America

by Karla Klein Albertson

WASHINGTON, D.C. - "Celebrity Caricature in America," a new exhibition at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery in Washington, focuses on lampooning portraits of some of the Twentieth Century's most famous faces. The art of caricature, a relative of both cartoons and portraiture, exaggerates the most characteristic physical features of well-known public figures: Harpo's fuzzy hair and impish grin, Mae West's curves, or Charles Atlas's mighty biceps. The resulting sketch produces a familiar image, even more quickly recognizable than a photograph of the subject.

Although there had been political cartoons throughout the Nineteenth Century, the emphasis on popular entertainers, artists, and non-political public figures was a new development. "I think in the early Twentieth Century, this kind of caricature was thought of as very fresh and different," explains the woman who put the show together, curator of prints and drawings Wendy Wick Reaves. "That's what all the art critics were saying. They really recognized it as something new."

She continues, "There were great political cartoonists working simultaneously, but these portraits had more to do with a celebration of fame. This really was the beginning of a celebrity culture that we're dealing with now, which came out of the mass media in the early Twentieth Century." Caricature found a home not only in the newspapers, but also in fashionable magazines like Vanity Fair and The New Yorker which covered the glamorous entertainment industry.

Frequent Vanity Fair contributor Miguel Covarrubias (1904-1957) caught the essence of two women when he paired the voluptuous fan dancer Sally Rand and angular modern dance pioneer Martha Graham in a drawing for the December 1934 issue, as part of his "Impossible Interview" series. In the accompanying mock dialogue, written by humorist Corey Ford, stripper Sally equates their art by insisting they were" ...just a couple of little girls trying to wriggle along." Gangster Al Capone and Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes were another odd couple from this artist's pen.

Caricature portraits also illustrated The New Yorker's weekly essay series, "Profiles." Paolo Garretto (1903-1989) drew a massive Charles Atlas seated at his desk before a tiny telephone in the January 4, 1942, issue. Muscle-builder Atlas became a marketing celebrity before infomercials by offering to change men's lives with a "dynamic tension" course he sold through the mail.

Reaves notes, "When I wrote the book accompanying the show, I was pretty focused on the artists. But when I started doing labels for the exhibition, I was also looking at how the celebrities created their public personas, because they were the stars who figured out how to work with the new rules of the mass media. Will Rogers, for example, was very media savvy. He had this wise-crackin', rope-twirlin' vaudeville act which he parleyed into Broadway, film, radio, recordings, and a syndicated column."

Increased media attention to celebrity figures also had a familiar downside. The curator remembers several revealing quotes she discovered during her research. "I found a consciousness of the damaging effects of the new media spotlight. Enrico Caruso said something like, `If I'd known the high price of celebrity, I would have remained in the chorus.' And Noel Coward remarked, `It's all a question of masks, really, brittle painted masks. We all wear them as a form of protection, modern life forces us to. We must have some means of shielding our timid, shrinking souls from the glare of civilization.'"

Among the most dramatic illustrations in the exhibitions are the sweeping group caricatures, such as Will Cotton's 1929 version of the famous Algonquin Round Table, entitled "The Thanatopsis Pleasure and Inside Straight Club." Rich in literary figures like George S. Kaufman and Dorothy Parker, the luminaries also include Irving Berlin and the ubiquitous Harpo Marx. Elsewhere in the show are Ralph Barton's multi-celebrity 1927 Vanity Fair contribution, "Tuesday Night at the Cocoanut Grove," which was also reprinted as a dress fabric design.

Although eminently worthy of museum attention, collectors have discovered that nothing could be more complimentary to their Twentieth Century entertainment or sports memorabilia than caricatures of the famous figures involved, such as William Auerbach-Levy's 1929 "Babe Ruth." Caricatures from magazine illustrations and covers can be found at any book and paper show. For a bit more money, enthusiasts can buy the original prints and drawings from art galleries in New York and Los Angeles.

Animation collectors will be especially pleased with the attention given by the exhibition to the art cels from 1930s Disney cartoons, which featured caricatured Hollywood stars. "Mickey's Gala Premiere" (1933) includes Will Rogers, Katharine Hepburn, W.C. Fields, and all the Marx Brothers; "Mickey's Polo Team" (1936) offers comedians Laurel and Hardy and Charlie Chaplin.

With a few exceptions, such as Al Hirschfeld's notable drawings, the demand for caricature waned after World War II. The style used by the most popular artists of its heyday had modern art touches borrowing heavily from Cubism and Art Deco which seemed dated after mid-century. Reaves observes, "Hirschfeld writes a lot about how there just wasn't anywhere to go with caricature. It wasn't a big part of publishing anymore. I think it just went out of fashion slightly. By mid-century a much more sardonic, darker kind of humor was in style."

The vagaries of aesthetic taste make Hirschfeld's survival and success even more remarkable. The exhibition catalogue publishes many of his efforts, including a January 22, 1928, drawing of the comedian Harry Lauder for The New York Times. Always up to date, the 94-year-old artist's tribute to Jerry Seinfeld appeared on the cover of T.V. Guide in early May during the show's finale week. It was the most recent of Hirshfeld's 37 covers, which date back to portraits of Edward R. Murrow and Lucille Ball in the 1950s.

Daily appearances on television by politicians, athletes, and entertainers - whether on stage or in court - seem to have transformed the relationship of celebrities to their public. Today's young caricaturists do work that is more personality-based than judgmental, a mugging Mick Jagger for Rolling Stone or a quickly glimpsed drawing of the assembled cast before an episode of Saturday Night Live.

The companion book to the exhibition, Celebrity Caricature In America by Wendy Wick Reaves, was published by the Yale University Press in association with the National Portrait Gallery. The hardbound volume is available for $45 through commercial bookstores or directly from the museum shop.

"Celebrity Caricature in America" continues through August 23 at the National Portrait Gallery, 8th & F Streets N.W. in Washington, D.C. Telephone 202/357-2700.