Friends
• Sam Norkin is a famous artist whose drawings of actors and plays appear in newspapers and magazines around the country. While growing up, he attended high school with a couple of friends who later became actors. One of his indulgences at work is to put the faces of his friends in one of his drawings whenever possible. Sometimes, this can be difficult. When his friend Salem Ludwig was performing a bit part in An Enemy of the People, he appeared in only one scene: a town meeting that featured the entire cast. In order to get Salem into his drawing, Mr. Norton drew the town meeting and included all the members of the cast. (He featured his friend prominently in the foreground.)
• Harold Ross liked author and cartoonist James Thurber and defended him. Once, an artist stalked into Mr. Ross’ office and demanded, “Why do you reject my works and publish a fourth-rate artist like Thurber?” Mr. Ross replied, “You mean a third-rate artist.”
Gays and Lesbians
• Lesbian cartoonists have an advantage over other lesbians. When Linda Sue Welch, creator of Out of the Darkness, comes out to her friends, she gives them a booklet of her cartoons to look at, and she tells them, “Here are some visual aids to help you with this.”
• A gay man was stuck in traffic, so he started reading Alison Bechdel’s cartoon book Spawn of Dykes to Watch Out For. Hearing a horn blowing, he looked up and saw two women in a nearby car pointing to his book and giving him a thumbs-up sign.
Gifts
• Food writer Diane Root met Pablo Picasso once due to her maternal uncle, Robert Albinelli, who fired the great artist’s ceramics in the kiln and never cracked a vase or a plate. One day when she was young, her father ordered her, “Get dressed up. We are going to meet a great man.” That great man, of course, was Picasso, whom she sat next to and who told her, “I’ll show you how you can turn a woman into a goat, and a goat into a woman.” He then demonstrated as the patrons of the restaurant silently watched from a distance. However, Ms. Root says, “This demonstration should have come with a caveat, though; every lightning-fast line Picasso drew was punctuated by the purloining of something from my plate. This staccato performance proceeded sans missing a beat: squiggle, snatch; scrawl, grab; jot, pinch; doodle, filch; draw, steal.” Picasso then drew and drew on the paper, covering nearly every inch. Picasso knew that the piece of paper was valuable, and he knew that the eyes of the patrons of the restaurant — and the eyes of the waiter — were on him and the drawings. His sense of humor was impish, and after the table had been cleared, and the espresso served, he began to destroy the paper with the drawings in between sips of espresso. (His silent audience was silent no more. They groaned.) Ms. Root says that the process was “sip, slash; sip, slit; sip, scratch; sip, tear; sip, rip. The masterpiece was soon a pile of tiny pieces.” However, one piece of the paper remained — the piece that had Goat-Woman on it. When young Diane left the restaurant, she had two gifts from Picasso in her pink-plastic little-girl purse: some neon bonbons and the drawing of Goat-Woman.
• Peter Paul Rubens was a diplomat as well as an artist. In early 1603, the Duke of Mantua started Mr. Rubens’ diplomatic career by sending him to Spain. Because the King of Spain was a powerful figure who could cause trouble for the various regions of Italy, the rulers of these Italian regions found it wise to keep on his good side. The Duke of Mantua sent the King of Spain a gift: a team of three pairs of matched horses and a chariot equipped with springs. In addition, the Duke of Mantua sent a gift to the Duke of Lerma, who was very important in the Spanish court: a number of paintings that were reproductions of masterpieces. The paintings became wet during the journey, but Mr. Rubens used his gifts as an artist to touch them up as needed. Unfortunately, two were so damaged that they had to be thrown away, so Mr. Rubens used his artistic genius to paint as a replacement an original work of art that was much admired by the Spanish court. The Duke of Lerma was very much pleased by the gifts of the paintings, including the reproductions, although he thought that they were originals, not reproductions. Mr. Rubens, being a good diplomat, did not correct the Duke’s error.
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Copyright by Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
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THE COOLEST PEOPLE IN ART
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