What Happened in 1992
Sixty years after Hirschfeld's first portrait of David O. Selznick, the artist draws him again on the occasion of a new biography.
Contributes his last film poster artwork, for the screen adaptation of Noises Off.
Montblanc establishes the Foundation d'Enterprise Montblanc de la Culture to support and honour modern-day patrons of the arts who have given their time, energy and money in order to encourage cultural life to flourish. One of its first receipents is Hirschfeld, along with I.M. Pei, Robert Wilson and Catharine Denuvue.
Johnny Carson's retirment is commerated with a Hirschfeld drawing in the New York Times. When Jay Leno is chosen as the new host of The Tonight Show, Time marks the milestone with a Hirschfeld drawing on its cover.
Disney relases the animated film Alladin in which the Genie is based on Hirschfeld's drawings.
Featured Images From 1992
Decade: 1990
Albert Hirschfeld knows just how he’ll celebrate his 90th birthday on Monday. After a long day at the drawing board (he works seven days a week), he and his wife, Dolly, will be first-nighters, as is their custom. That evening just happens to be the opening of the revival of Camelot on Broadway, “and I’m going to pretend that the cast party is for me,” he says.
In a way, each first night is a party for this man, who has attended virtually every Broadway opening since the late 1920s. There will, of course, be formal nonagenarian observances for this conjuror of line and perspective whose caricatures have been appearing in the drama pages of The New York Times for 66 years.
…These days the artist still composes in an antique Koken barber chair to a north-lighted studio in his brownstone on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. The walls are teeming with Hirschfeld drawings, lithographs and posters, as well as a stark placard that states, “Remember it was an actor who killed Lincoln.”
Mr. Hirschfeld has dashed off an average of three drawings a week for the last 70 years, and his portraits have themselves become part of the heritage of the American theater, from his concise renderings of everyone from the Lunts to Mary Martin, Noel Coward and Gertrude Lawrence, to his most recent portraits of the casts of Tommy, Kiss of the Spider Woman and Angels in America.
But he never presumed to take himself all that seriously. For years, Mr. Hirschfeld delivered his weekly drawing to The Times wrapped in brown paper upon which was inscribed the warning, “Do not fold, bend, stomp on or dunk in hot chicken fat.”
…The artist, who uses a Gilotte Crowquill pen, says his line “has gotten sparer and sparer through the years, paring down to the absolute essentials.” “I’ve always been fascinated by the way in which a simple line can communicate its message,” he adds. “But I can’t say that I understand anything more about it than I did 70 years ago.”
Glenn Collins, New York Times 6/18/93
