Posted Feb 16, 4:11 PM
Gallery: Drew Friedman's Chosen People
It was some years back, and Friedman had finished a magazine illustration depicting movie producer Harvey Weinstein. "I drew him real fat, with these pockmarks and everything," Friedman said in a recent call from Pennsylvania. "I thought, 'Why did I do this? He's probably a nice guy.'
"When the drawing came out, he bought the piece, so there you go. And now, we know he's not such a nice guy. So that worked out."
Friedman's caricatures sometimes honor, sometimes skewer, his subjects. The artist -- whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, the New York Times, the Village Voice and Readers' Digest -- has published his 12th book, "Drew Friedman's Chosen People" (Fantagraphics Books, 136 pp., $19.99), which collects more than 120 caricatures of the famous and the obscure, the forgotten and the never-known, the old and the older.
Caricature subjects include Steve Jobs, Larry David, Bob Dylan, Keith Richards and Whoopi Goldberg. There are plenty of the old-timey entertainers that Friedman is so enamored of, such as Al Lewis, Shemp Howard, Groucho Marx and Bela Lugosi.
Some were commercial assignments, such as Hillary Clinton dressed as Wonder Woman (from "back in more innocent times"), which Friedman did for the New York Observer. Counter to what you might assume, there are no depictions of President Donald Trump.
"That's sort of on purpose," said the New York City native, 59. "I've drawn him many times over the years, from the time he was a real estate developer. But not lately. I was kind of tired of it. I thought I'd give people a break. I'm online every day, and there are so many artists who draw him, so many Photoshopped images of him. I can't really compete with it all."
Friedman wrote brief bios of his caricature subjects in the back of "Chosen People." In the one for Woody Allen, he implies that the filmmaker swore off writing for the Observer after it published Friedman's caricature of him.
Explained Friedman: "Fifteen or 20 years ago, Woody Allen wrote a piece for the New York Observer about his lifelong love of the New York Knicks. The late (editor) Peter Kaplan assigned me to draw the cover. I did this really in-your-face drawing of Woody as a sports reporter, with lots of freckles. When the piece came out, Woody's sister, who is also his producer (Letty Aronson), called Peter Kaplan and told him that Woody was very upset by this drawing, and that 'He will never work for you again.' Peter felt bad; he was a huge Woody Allen fan. He called me up and he was very upset. But then he said, 'You know, (expletive), it's a great drawing.' "
The caricatures are presented alphabetically, which provides for some odd pairings on facing pages. Friedman is certainly the first artist to put Steve Bannon, the former Breitbart News chairman and White House strategist, next to Bobby Barber, an obscure, diminutive comic actor from long ago.
"I actually felt bad about that," Friedman said of the pairing. "I felt bad for Bobby Barber. He was this funny guy who did a million movie and TV show appearances. Abbott and Costello used him. I love him. I felt bad that he was next to Bannon, that he had to face that."
Friedman's stuff is fun to view on the web, though you couldn't see him drawing for online exclusively. His work almost has to be printed. But the medium of print has been so embattled, so threatened, over the past decade. People are always talking about the death of print.
"It sounds sexy, 'the death of print,' but I don't believe it," the artist said. "In my bio in the back of book, I write, 'His work has appeared in Raw, Weirdo, Heavy Metal, National Lampoon, Spy, the Village Voice and many other publications that no longer exist.' I can't see doing art for online. To have that physical object -- it means something. I'll die out with that."
Following is more of my interview with Friedman:
Q. In "Drew Friedman's Chosen People," the caricatures are presented alphabetically, which ties your hands in a sense; you can't control which caricatures go next to each other. But you do have facing spreads of, for instance, Bob Dylan and Robert Crumb, so that the art is not interrupted. Please talk about the puzzle in putting "Chosen People" together.
A: Puzzle is a good word. Like, there were two Lou Jacobi's (caricatures). But they didn't fall together, so my editor (Eric Reynolds) did some finagling. When the book was just about complete, he said, "I need one more. If you could give me somebody whose last name begins with a Z, that would be perfect. Then, I wouldn't have to shuffle pages around." So I'm thinking, I did Frank Zappa. Who else is there? Then it dawned on me: George Zucco. That was a perfect way to end the book. It begins with Forrest J Ackerman and ends with George Zucco.
Q. Some caricatures you drew "just for fun," as Merrill Markoe says in her introduction. But a lot of them were commercial assignments.
A: Some of the ("just for fun" caricatures), I'd never drawn before. But some of the assignments still applied to the "Chosen People" title. I wouldn't do somebody I wasn't somehow drawn to. I've said a polite "no" to some assignments -- young actors or TV shows that I'm not aware of. Not that I admire everyone I've ever drawn. Some, I have not. I'm not necessarily a fan of Steve Bannon or Kathie Lee Gifford or Rudy Giuliani.
Q. You wrote brief bios of your caricature subjects in the back of the book. Two of the bios are already outdated. You say that Bannon was still White House chief strategist "as of this writing," which was fairly prescient of you. Also, you have a Kevin Spacey caricature, but in the bio, you don't mention the trouble he's in. Does it feel like the world is moving too quickly?
A: I kind of called it with Bannon. With Kevin Spacey, there was time to slip something in about his being accused of sexual assault, but we left it out. We decided to just leave that alone. The face is what matters most. And people have commented that I kind of captured what was going on beneath the surface. Even if it's just a raised eyebrow or something subtle, the face tells what's beneath the surface. It's tricky. It's hard to be topical. It's easier to stick with deceased celebrities (laughs).
LOOKING AHEAD
A documentary titled "Drew Friedman: Vermeer of the Borscht Belt" is in the works from director Kevin Dougherty. Said Friedman: "He's been working on it for the past year. He's taking his time. What I've seen looks really good. He has access to film me here at my studio. He's interviewed Mike Judge, Merrill Markoe, my dad (Bruce Jay Friedman), and some artists -- Barry Blitt. (Robert) Crumb might do it, but he (Dougherty) would probably have to go to France."
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