*Woody Allen On Tour- "Vicky Cristina Barcelona"

Click On Title To Link To Wikipedia's Entry For Woody Allen.

DVD REVIEW

Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Scarlett Johansson, Rebecca Hall, Javier Barmen, Penelope Cruz, directed by Woody Allen, 2008

I have been reviewing Woody Allen productions in this space over the past year or so. I have highly rated such old Woody classics as “Annie Hall, “Manhattan” and “Radio Days”, those memorable films with New York City its trials, tribulations and traumas as an epicenter. I have also given mixed reviews to some of his later productions like “Manhattan Mystery” and others based in other geographic locales (“Purple Rose Of Cairo”, etc.). I was, however, fully prepared to fulsomely praise the film under review, “Vicky Cristina Barcelona”, after having heard the hype about Penelope Cruz’s performance as, Maria Elena, the talented estranged artsy wife of the central male character, Juan Antonia (Javier Bardem), a Spanish avant guarde artist. After viewing the film Ms. Cruz's performance was certainly Oscar-worthy. Nevertheless the overall production falls flat. And here is why.

Woody Allen has created an important cinematic niche for himself as a performer, director, writer and producer in that netherworld of the alienated modern urbanite, especially of distracted women unsure of their place in the world and their ability to navigate it with (or without) a man. The classic examples of such angst and confusion were various film vehicles created for Diane Keaton (“Annie Hall”) Mia Farrow (“Broadway Danny Rose”, “Stardust Memories”) and along the way Woody himself, his doubts and his inhibitions (in about six billion of his films starting with “Take The Money And Run”). Here Woody has gathered the old familiar concerns about sexual inhibitions, the vacuity of upper middle class suburban life, the eternal problems with the opposite sex and various social conventions like bisexuality, adultery, threesomes and the like. All very familiar Woody material, although not always set in Barcelona.

With the above-mentioned exception of Ms. Cruz the other characters are Woody’s stock and trade of late: young woman with various personal and social problems, with or without Woody as conduit. The truly beautiful and talented Scarlett Johansson is wooden here as Cristina. The lesser known actress, Rebecca Hall, playing Vicky's role is the same. In the end I did not care whether the two women (or three, if we include Ms. Cruz) got their issues resolved, or not. That is not a good sign in a Woody Allen film where in earlier, better film , if nothing else, we are at least left wondering about their fates. Woody, come back to your New York hearth and home with all its tangled energies, excitement, enigmas and hangups. There you are “king of the hill”. Leave Europe for the kids.

*On The Anniversary Of The Execution Of The Rosenbergs- E.L. Doctorow's Fictional Treatment "The Book Of Daniel" And Sidney Lumet's Film "Daniel"

*On The Anniversary Of The Execution Of The Rosenbergs- E.L. Doctorow's Fictional Treatment "The Book Of Daniel" And Sidney Lumet's Film "Daniel"


Repost

Commentary- June 2, 2009


This June marks the 56th Anniversary of the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg by the American state. I have defended the Rosenbergs elsewhere in this space, including a review last year of a film documentary by Rosenberg granddaughter, Ivy Meerpol, titled "Heir To An Execution".(Check Archives). Directly below are some remarks made in additional to that review in light of a flurry of controversy around their names that surfaced in the Fall of 2008. This year I have chosen to review E.L. Doctorow's 1971 fictional treatment of some aspects of the case and the film based on the book. Needless to say I stand by my defense of this heroic radical couple. Justice still awaits in their case.

*****************

Commentary made in addition to a September 14, 2008 review of a film documentary by Rosenberg granddaughter, Ivy Meerpol, in this space.

Honor the Heroic Soviet Spies Julius Rosenberg, Ethel Rosenberg and Morton Sobel

In the commentary above I alluded, somewhat obliquely, to the Verona Tapes-the decoded Soviet transmissions from World War II- as an earlier American governmental source for the proposition that Julius Rosenberg was providing scientific information of some sort to the Soviet Union during that period. Recent news has highlighted the possible truth of that assertion. First the release of classified grand jury testimony in the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg case mentioned above. Also the assertion by convicted Rosenberg co-conspirator Morton Sobel that he passed scientific information to the Soviets during that period. More recently, in some interviews in The New York Times, the Rosenberg children (Meeropols), after having spend their adulthoods trying to build a case for their parents’ innocence have seemingly come to the position that their father, at least, was indeed working for the Soviets.

Let’s be clear here. For those who saw military defense of the Soviet Union, Stalinist warts and all, as an internationalist socialist duty until its demise in the early 1990’s the question of honoring Julius and Ethel Rosenberg has not hinged on their guilt or innocence of the charges of aiding the Soviet Union leveled by the American government. Nor has it hinged on opposition to the death penalty, although we are opposed to that barbaric punishment. The question has always been, if not openly then otherwise, the service they were in a position to provide to the first workers state. In the interest of “muddying the waters” we have never earlier proclaimed them, as we have with Kim Philby and his Cambridge cohorts, Richard Sorge or Leopold Trepper, heroic Soviet spies. Now, apparently, we can openly acknowledge our debt at last to Julius and Morton Sobel. The case remains unclear about Ethel although we honor her as a soldier of the revolution as well. Some little piece of historic justice is finally possible in their cases.

I would add here that although I had spend a fair portion of my life as a military defender of the Soviet Union and the other workers states of East Europe while they existed that, as a practical matter, that defense never got beyond the propaganda stage. Apparently, Julius Rosenberg and Morton Sobel, in their attempts to defend the interests of the Soviet Union as they saw that duty, were in a position to do more. Although the political gap that separated us was, at times drawn in the blood of our murdered comrades at the hands of the Stalinist henchman that they defended, they acted as soldiers of the revolution here. That is the why of honoring them in this space.

Finally, I have mentioned before that I have always liked the idea of Julius organizing in the 1930’s in behalf of freedom for the jailed militant labor leader Tom Mooney while at City College of New York (CCNY). As those who follow this space know the late Professor Irving Howe, the social democratic founder/editor of Dissent also was at CCNY during this period as an anti-Stalinist socialist who was won to Trotskyism, for a moment, during this same period. He, along with a fair number of others recruited from the Socialist Party milieu at CCNY dropped out of the Socialist Workers Party (the main organized Trotskyist organization in America at the time) over the question of defense of the Soviet Union when it mattered in the late 1930’s. I pose this question- When the fight for socialism is on the line who do you want with you- Julius Rosenberg or Irving Howe? To ask the question is to give the answer. The Rosenbergs and Sobel were not our people- but they were our people.


*********************

Book/ DVD Review

This review is being used for both book and DVD versions of Doctorow's work as the central points to be made in regard to both works are similar. The film starring Timothy Hutton as Daniel and directed by the acclaimed Sidney Lumet fairly closely hems to Doctorow's story line. Hutton does an excellent job as Daniel. Obviously, such dramatic moments as the attempts to run away from the state authorities by the Rosenberg children after their parents' arrest, the touching visiting scenes by the children in the prison just prior to the executions, the executions and the tragic fate of one of the children (in the book, not real life) get more attention than in the book. But that is cinematic license, and here is not overplayed.

The Book Of Daniel, E.L. Doctorow, Random House, New York, 1971

Daniel, starring Timothy Hutton, directed by Sidney Lumet, DVD release 2008

At first blush the Rosenberg Cold War Soviet espionage case of the 1950's, that ended in the execution of both Julius and Ethel Rosenberg by the American state despite a worldwide campaign to save their lives, would not appear to be a natural subject for fictional treatment. Unlike, let us say, Kim Philby and the various Cambridge spies the Rosenbergs' biographies and political profiles do not have the stuff of larger than life drama. Moreover, whatever their efforts were on behalf of the defense of the Soviet Union, as they saw it, the details do not jump out as the makings of a spy thriller. And the well-known historical novelist (`Ragtime", Loon Lake", etc.), E.L. Doctorow, does not go into any of that material. What Doctorow has attempted to mine, and I think within the parameters that he has set himself successfully so, is the effect that the political actions of the Rosenbergs had on their children at the time, on their children's futures (in state custody and later adopted privately) and on the trauma of being the "heirs to an execution" in adulthood. Add to that the biblical implications ("The Book Of Daniel") that Doctorow weaves into his story and that is more than enough material for one novel.

Naturally, the question of the fate of the children of famous (or infamous, as the case may be) is a fair subject for treatment, fictional or otherwise. There is a whole flourishing body of literature concerning this topic. What makes the Rosenberg children distinct (a boy and girl, rather than the real two boys, fictionally named Daniel and Susan Issacson here) is that they were son and daughter to parents who in the eyes of the American state and significant parts of the American population were traitors. Not a good way for young kids to develop their self-esteem. That struggle, placed in the context of the traumas over personal identification which were rift as they grew to adulthood and that helped define the 1960's the time of the action of this story, drive the main themes of the story. The interlocked questions of life in the academy (Daniel is something of a professional graduate student), life on the political streets (Susan has chosen a psychologically dangerous way to cope with her heritage by going full-bore into the left-wing political activity of the period) and coming to grips, successfully or not, with their legacies give the plot substance.

Aside from Doctorow's main themes of exploring the thorny question of the responsibility that parents have for their children, either as parents or as political people, the last part of the book where Daniel, as a coping mechanism if nothing else, begins to get "political" provides some interesting (for the time) theories about what happened in the Rosenberg case. The themes of "good Jew, bad Jew" (as shown by the large cast of Jewish characters in the trial process), the alleged inadequacies of the defense, the scarcity of government evidence (the Rosenbergs were convicted of that old stand-by "conspiracy"), the nature of the early Cold War period and the personal and political limitations of the Rosenbergs themselves get a full workout here. In the end though, as I mentioned in a commentary reviewing Rosenberg granddaughter Ivy Meerpol's film, "Heir To An Execution", concerning the personal characters of the Rosenbergs they did their duty as communists, as they saw it. For that they deserve all honor. And someday some real justice to clear their names.

*From The Archives-On The Anniversary Of The Execution Of The Rosenbergs- E.L. Doctorow's Fictional Treatment "The Book Of Daniel" And Sidney Lumet's Film "Daniel"

Click On Title To Link To The Rosenberg Fund For Children.

Commentary- June 2, 2009

This June marks the 56th Anniversary of the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg by the American state. I have defended the Rosenbergs elsewhere in this space, including a review last year of a film documentary by Rosenberg granddaughter, Ivy Meerpol, titled "Heir To An Execution".(Check Archives). Directly below are some remarks made in additional to that review in light of a flurry of controversy around their names that surfaced in the Fall of 2008. This year I have chosen to review E.L. Doctorow's 1971 fictional treatment of some aspects of the case and the film based on the book. Needless to say I stand by my defense of this heroic radical couple. Justice still awaits in their case.

*****************

Commentary made in addition to a September 14, 2008 review of a film documentary by Rosenberg granddaughter, Ivy Meerpol, in this space.

Honor the Heroic Soviet Spies Julius Rosenberg, Ethel Rosenberg and Morton Sobel

In the commentary above I alluded, somewhat obliquely, to the Verona Tapes-the decoded Soviet transmissions from World War II- as an earlier American governmental source for the proposition that Julius Rosenberg was providing scientific information of some sort to the Soviet Union during that period. Recent news has highlighted the possible truth of that assertion. First the release of classified grand jury testimony in the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg case mentioned above. Also the assertion by convicted Rosenberg co-conspirator Morton Sobel that he passed scientific information to the Soviets during that period. More recently, in some interviews in The New York Times, the Rosenberg children (Meeropols), after having spend their adulthoods trying to build a case for their parents’ innocence have seemingly come to the position that their father, at least, was indeed working for the Soviets.

Let’s be clear here. For those who saw military defense of the Soviet Union, Stalinist warts and all, as an internationalist socialist duty until its demise in the early 1990’s the question of honoring Julius and Ethel Rosenberg has not hinged on their guilt or innocence of the charges of aiding the Soviet Union leveled by the American government. Nor has it hinged on opposition to the death penalty, although we are opposed to that barbaric punishment. The question has always been, if not openly then otherwise, the service they were in a position to provide to the first workers state. In the interest of “muddying the waters” we have never earlier proclaimed them, as we have with Kim Philby and his Cambridge cohorts, Richard Sorge or Leopold Trepper, heroic Soviet spies. Now, apparently, we can openly acknowledge our debt at last to Julius and Morton Sobel. The case remains unclear about Ethel although we honor her as a soldier of the revolution as well. Some little piece of historic justice is finally possible in their cases.

I would add here that although I had spend a fair portion of my life as a military defender of the Soviet Union and the other workers states of East Europe while they existed that, as a practical matter, that defense never got beyond the propaganda stage. Apparently, Julius Rosenberg and Morton Sobel, in their attempts to defend the interests of the Soviet Union as they saw that duty, were in a position to do more. Although the political gap that separated us was, at times drawn in the blood of our murdered comrades at the hands of the Stalinist henchman that they defended, they acted as soldiers of the revolution here. That is the why of honoring them in this space.

Finally, I have mentioned before that I have always liked the idea of Julius organizing in the 1930’s in behalf of freedom for the jailed militant labor leader Tom Mooney while at City College of New York (CCNY). As those who follow this space know the late Professor Irving Howe, the social democratic founder/editor of Dissent also was at CCNY during this period as an anti-Stalinist socialist who was won to Trotskyism, for a moment, during this same period. He, along with a fair number of others recruited from the Socialist Party milieu at CCNY dropped out of the Socialist Workers Party (the main organized Trotskyist organization in America at the time) over the question of defense of the Soviet Union when it mattered in the late 1930’s. I pose this question- When the fight for socialism is on the line who do you want with you- Julius Rosenberg or Irving Howe? To ask the question is to give the answer. The Rosenbergs and Sobel were not our people- but they were our people.


*********************

Book/ DVD Review

This review is being used for both book and DVD versions of Doctorow's work as the central points to be made in regard to both works are similar. The film starring Timothy Hutton as Daniel and directed by the acclaimed Sidney Lumet fairly closely hems to Doctorow's story line. Hutton does an excellent job as Daniel. Obviously, such dramatic moments as the attempts to run away from the state authorities by the Rosenberg children after their parents' arrest, the touching visiting scenes by the children in the prison just prior to the executions, the executions and the tragic fate of one of the children (in the book, not real life) get more attention than in the book. But that is cinematic license, and here is not overplayed.

The Book Of Daniel, E.L. Doctorow, Random House, New York, 1971

Daniel, starring Timothy Hutton, directed by Sidney Lumet, DVD release 2008

At first blush the Rosenberg Cold War Soviet espionage case of the 1950's, that ended in the execution of both Julius and Ethel Rosenberg by the American state despite a worldwide campaign to save their lives, would not appear to be a natural subject for fictional treatment. Unlike, let us say, Kim Philby and the various Cambridge spies the Rosenbergs' biographies and political profiles do not have the stuff of larger than life drama. Moreover, whatever their efforts were on behalf of the defense of the Soviet Union, as they saw it, the details do not jump out as the makings of a spy thriller. And the well-known historical novelist (`Ragtime", Loon Lake", etc.), E.L. Doctorow, does not go into any of that material. What Doctorow has attempted to mine, and I think within the parameters that he has set himself successfully so, is the effect that the political actions of the Rosenbergs had on their children at the time, on their children's futures (in state custody and later adopted privately) and on the trauma of being the "heirs to an execution" in adulthood. Add to that the biblical implications ("The Book Of Daniel") that Doctorow weaves into his story and that is more than enough material for one novel.

Naturally, the question of the fate of the children of famous (or infamous, as the case may be) is a fair subject for treatment, fictional or otherwise. There is a whole flourishing body of literature concerning this topic. What makes the Rosenberg children distinct (a boy and girl, rather than the real two boys, fictionally named Daniel and Susan Issacson here) is that they were son and daughter to parents who in the eyes of the American state and significant parts of the American population were traitors. Not a good way for young kids to develop their self-esteem. That struggle, placed in the context of the traumas over personal identification which were rift as they grew to adulthood and that helped define the 1960's the time of the action of this story, drive the main themes of the story. The interlocked questions of life in the academy (Daniel is something of a professional graduate student), life on the political streets (Susan has chosen a psychologically dangerous way to cope with her heritage by going full-bore into the left-wing political activity of the period) and coming to grips, successfully or not, with their legacies give the plot substance.

Aside from Doctorow's main themes of exploring the thorny question of the responsibility that parents have for their children, either as parents or as political people, the last part of the book where Daniel, as a coping mechanism if nothing else, begins to get "political" provides some interesting (for the time) theories about what happened in the Rosenberg case. The themes of "good Jew, bad Jew" (as shown by the large cast of Jewish characters in the trial process), the alleged inadequacies of the defense, the scarcity of government evidence (the Rosenbergs were convicted of that old stand-by "conspiracy"), the nature of the early Cold War period and the personal and political limitations of the Rosenbergs themselves get a full workout here. In the end though, as I mentioned in a commentary reviewing Rosenberg granddaughter Ivy Meerpol's film, "Heir To An Execution", concerning the personal characters of the Rosenbergs they did their duty as communists, as they saw it. For that they deserve all honor. And someday some real justice to clear their names.

***Films To While Away The Class Struggle By-The Other (Non-"Beat") New York Writers’ World Of The 1950s- "New York In The 1950s"

Click on the headline to link to a "YouTube" film clip of a movie trailer for "Pluck" that is about New York in the 1950s and serves as background for the review below.

DVD Review

New York In The 1950s, Dan Wakefield, Gay and Nan Talese, Norman Mailer, James Baldwin, and many other authors who came of age in the 1950s, 1999

I have prattled on endlessly about the role of the beat writers and poets and their hangers-on, led by the trio of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs, in leading the breakout from mainstream American society, literary society at least, in forming my own cultural tastes and that of many of my generation, the Generation of ’68. That "beat" cultural movement, in my mind rightly or wrongly, is forever associated with New York City, and particularly Greenwich Village. And that is where the question of taste comes in for, except for short periods, the beat movement was as much a part of the San Francisco scene of the 1950s as that of New York. Moreover, there is another group of writers, as portrayed in this interesting, short film documentary that can claim, and do claim, for themselves the role of avant guarde anti-establishment New York writers. The names James Baldwin, Dan Wakefield, Norman Mailer, come quickly to mind, as do the “Village Voice” and Irving Howe's social democratic journal “Dissent”.

I have detailed elsewhere my own feeling of suffocation with the cultural morass of the 1950’s, although I was too young to articulate that angst even in a caricature James Dean-like “Rebel Without A Cause” way. That period was exemplified by the stolidity of the Eisenhower administration. Nevertheless other little clots of people, who had come of age in the 1940s and who were molded by the Great Depression of the 1930s and the sacrifices of World War II, were interested in breaking out of the cultural straight jacket but also interested in making a name for themselves in the serious literary world. Those who succeeded are the writers who for the most part make up this film, led by those named authors above. I might add as this is a somewhat older film that since its production a number of those writers, and they were mainly writers here, the poets tended to go with the beats, have passed on, including recently, J.D Salinger, who I was surprised to note influenced and was a model for many of those who spoke in the film.

I mentioned the “Village Voice” and “Dissent” above, and it was those small relatively small publications that sustained these writers who came from all over America, even from the wilds of Indiana (Wakefield), to make their mark in the American cultural capital. Their reasons were as varied as any other group but to parody an answer that bank robber, Willie Sutton, gave when asked why he did robberies- that’s where the publishing houses are (or were). Surprisingly many of these writers, unlike the beats, went to work writing copy, or what not, in the medium somewhere in order to make the connections. So that is one thing that separates this group from the beats.

More than one writer interviewed here did, as Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne did, make there mark in New York and then moved on. For, as all interviewees seemingly agreed upon, the cultural oasis of New York of the 1950’s had a defining, and finite, moment. Later other cultural movements, movements that I am more familiar with, and not necessarily driven by writers took center stage. Still this film, and the archival footage that made up most of the backdrop, did its job in evoking a certain ‘feel’ for the period. Moreover, some of the negative issues involved with a movement based in the “corrupt” city in the 1950s: the excessive alcohol consumption and partying that formed part of the writerly ethos; the definite second- class citizenship of women; and the high burn-out rate, are addressed here. All in all this is a good presentation centered on the writers themselves. Still, I always think of that famous photograph of a cigarette-smoking Jack Kerouac, a heaven-bent, dream-like Allen Ginsberg and a blasé-posing William Burroughs when I think of New York. The “beat” habit is hard to break.

Note: Much of this film is driven by the anecdotes and storytelling of author Dan Wakefield, who is the central speaker here, and who helps to fill in the “back office” details of this period. I never would have known about his personal and professional (as a writer) connection to Dorothy Day’s Catholic Worker movement that formed the backdrop for one of his early book without his mentioning it as well as a host of other little arcane facts like that. Good job.

*Films to While Away The Class Struggle by-“Old Man River Keeps Rolling Along”-The Work Of Paul Robeson

Click on the title to link to an American Left History blog entry of a book reviewing the life of Paul Robeson as background for this film review>

February Is Black History Month

Recently I have begun to post entries under the headline- Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By-that will include progressive and labor-oriented songs that might be of general interest to the radical public. I have decided to do the same for some films that may perk that same interest under the title in this entry’s headline. In the future I expect to do the same for books under a similar heading.-Markin

DVD Review

Portrait Of An Artist, Paul Robeson, The Criterion Collection, 2007

Paul Robeson’s name can be found in many places in this space for his extraordinary (untutored) vocal talents singing songs of freedom, of the struggle for human dignity and for artistic effect (Emperor Jones, etc.). The most famous, or from a leftist perspective, infamous use of that instrument was the Peekskill (New York) concert of 1949 where he, his fellow progressives, including Communist Party members and sympathizers, literally had to fight off the fascistic locals in the throes of the post-World War II Cold War “red scare” that dominated my childhood and many others from my generation of ’68.

But that skill hardly ends the list of talents that Paul Robeson used in his life: scholar, All-American football player (at one point denied that honor because of his politics0, folklorist, actor, and, most importantly, political activist round out the main features. This Criterion Collection series of four discs concentrates on his film career (and other short biographic and memory pieces) especially the early work where he had to play groveling, simple-minded blacks and did so against type (his ever present black and proud type). I will give a short summary below to show the range of his work, although his real role as Shakespeare’s Othello, done on the stage, is by all accounts, his definitive work, as is, to my mind Emperor Jones for his film work.

That said, Paul Robeson, and I were political opponents on the left. Whether he was a member or just a sympathizer of the Stalinized Communist Party (or to use a quaint work form the old Cold War days, fellow-traveler) he nevertheless, if one looks closely at his speeches and comments stayed very close to the American Communist Party "party line" of the times (whatever that was, or rather whatever Moscow called for), including the ritualistic denunciation of Trotskyites as counter-revolutionaries, etc. He, however, was an eloquent spokesman for blacks here in America and internationally, a speaker against the Cold War madness, and a fighter for national liberation and anti-colonial struggles a kindred spirit. Moreover, unlike others, including poet Langston Hughes and novelist Richard Wright no “turncoat” and held his ground despite its effect on his career, his ability to earn a living, and his ability to leave America. Thus, he, along with the anarchist Emma Goldman, is one of those contradictory political characters from the past that I have a “soft” spot for. Paul Robeson’s voice and presence, in any case, with this comprehensive retrospective (and others) will always be there. I wish, wish like hell, he could have been with us when the deal went down and communists had to choose between Stalinism and Trotskyism.
********
Emperor Jones, a classic Robeson performance is the main feature of the first disc. It is almost painful to watch this brilliant Eugene O’Neill play brought to the screen in 1933 for its language (the ‘n’ word), it depiction of blacks, in the cities and the jungle as servile or loony, and merely the white man’s fodder and for its primitive cinematic effects. But Paul Robeson IS Emperor Jones. No amount of fool talk, bad dialogue, didactic scripting can take away the power of his performance, foolishly tempting the fates, and the white man, or not. This is a powerful black man, period. His singing, especially of Water Boy, of course, needs no comment from me.

The other part of this disc is a sequence short piece on his life and times, as well as the effect hat he had on then up-and-coming young black actors and singers like James Earl Jones and Ruby Dee. This is a good short biographic sketch, although I find it hard to believe that throughout the various comments the fact of his association with the American Communist Party is no mentioned by anyone or I did not hear it mentioned by the narrator once. Robeson is characterized as merely a black social activist. This is a disservice to his memory, and a form of historical distortion that I have found elsewhere (notably in a Howard Zinn tribute documentary done by Matt Damon).The American Communist Party, our left-wing political enemy or not, was part of the working class movement in this country, at some points an important part, and to deny that is to deny our left-wing history. No, this falsification by omission will not do.

***The New York Review Of Books" Graphic Artist Extraordinaire David Levine Passes Away

Click on the title to link to a "Daily Beast" obituary for the great graphic artist from "The New York Review Of Books", David Levine.

Markin comment:

Many a smile came around this blogger's face when thumbing through the pages of the "The New York Review" over the years seeing how David Levine skewered the famous, and not so famous. The big question, however, is what will next year's calender look like. I have come to depend on Levine's creations to spruce up my office space.


David Levine, Biting Caricaturist, Dies at 83

His death, at New York Presbyterian Hospital, was caused by prostate cancer and a subsequent combination of illnesses, his wife, Kathy Hayes, said.

Mr. Levine’s drawings never seemed whimsical, like those of Al Hirschfeld. They didn’t celebrate neurotic self-consciousness, like Jules Feiffer’s. He wasn’t attracted to the macabre, the way Edward Gorey was. His work didn’t possess the arch social consciousness of Edward Sorel’s. Nor was he interested, as Roz Chast is, in the humorous absurdity of quotidian modern life. But in both style and mood, Mr. Levine was as distinct an artist and commentator as any of his well-known contemporaries. His work was not only witty but serious, not only biting but deeply informed, and artful in a painterly sense as well as a literate one; he was, in fact, beyond his pen and ink drawings, an accomplished painter. Those qualities led many to suggest that he was the heir of the 19th-century masters of the illustration, Honoré Daumier and Thomas Nast.

Especially in his political work, his portraits betrayed the mind of an artist concerned, worriedly concerned, about the world in which he lived. Among his most famous images were those of President Lyndon B. Johnson pulling up his shirt to reveal that the scar from his gallbladder operation was in the precise shape of the boundaries of Vietnam, and of Henry Kissinger having sex on the couch with a female body whose head was in the shape of a globe, depicting, Mr. Levine explained later, what Mr. Kissinger had done to the world. He drew Richard M. Nixon, his favorite subject, 66 times, depicting him as the Godfather, as Captain Queeg, as a fetus.

With those images and others — Yasir Arafat and Ariel Sharon in a David-and-Goliath parable; or Alan Greenspan, with scales of justice, balancing people and dollar bills, hanging from his downturned lips; or Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. carrying a gavel the size of a sledgehammer — Mr. Levine’s drawings sent out angry distress signals that the world was too much a puppet in the hands of too few puppeteers. “I would say that political satire saved the nation from going to hell,” he said in an interview in 2008, during an exhibit of his work called “American Presidents” at the New York Public Library.

Even when he wasn’t out to make a political point, however, his portraits — often densely inked, heavy in shadows cast by outsize noses on enormous, eccentrically shaped heads, and replete with exaggeratedly bad haircuts, 5 o’clock shadows, ill-conceived mustaches and other grooming foibles — tended to make the famous seem peculiar-looking in order to take them down a peg.

“They were extraordinary drawings with extraordinary perception,” Jules Feiffer said in a recent interview about the work of Mr. Levine, who was his friend. He added: “In the second half of the 20th century he was the most important political caricaturist. When he began, there was very little political caricature, very little literary caricature. He revived the art.”

David Levine was born on Dec. 20, 1926, in Brooklyn, where his father, Harry, ran a small garment shop and his mother, Lena, a nurse, was a political activist with Communist sympathies. A so-called red diaper baby, Mr. Levine leaned politically far to the left throughout his life. His family lived a few blocks from Ebbetts Field, where young David once shook the hand of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who became a hero, as did his wife, Eleanor. Years later, Mr. Levine’s caricature of Mrs. Roosevelt depicted her as a swan.

“I thought of her as beautiful,” he said. “Yet she was very homely.”

As a boy he sketched the stuffed animals in the vitrines at the Brooklyn Museum. He served in the Army just after World War II, then graduated from Temple University in Philadelphia with a degree in education and another degree from Temple’s Tyler School of Art. He also studied painting at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, and with the Abstract Expressionist painter and renowned teacher Hans Hofmann.

Indeed, painting was Mr. Levine’s first love; he was a realist, and in 1958 he and Aaron Shikler (whose portrait of John F. Kennedy hangs in the White House) founded the Painting Group, a regular salon of amateurs and professionals who, for half a century, got together for working sessions with a model. A documentary about the group, “Portraits of a Lady,” focusing on their simultaneous portraits of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, was made in 2007; the portraits themselves were exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery.

Mr. Levine’s paintings, mostly watercolors, take as their subjects garment workers — a tribute to his father’s employees, who he said never believed that their lives could be seen as connected to beauty — or the bathers at his beloved Coney Island. In a story he liked to tell, he was painting on the boardwalk when he was approached by a homeless man who demanded to know how much he would charge for the painting. Mr. Levine, nonplussed, said $50.

“For that?” the man said.

The paintings are a sharply surprising contrast to his caricatures: sympathetic portraits of ordinary citizens, fond and respectful renderings of the distinctive seaside architecture, panoramas with people on the beach.

“None of Levine’s hard-edged burlesques prepare you for the sensuous satisfactions of his paintwork: the matte charm of his oil handling and the virtuoso refinement of his watercolors,” the critic Maureen Mullarkey wrote in 2004. “Caustic humor gives way to unexpected gentleness in the paintings.”

Mr. Levine’s successful career as a caricaturist and illustrator took root in the early 1960s, when he started working for Esquire. He began contributing cover portraits and interior illustrations to The New York Review of Books in 1963, its first year of publication, and within its signature blocky design his cerebral, brooding faces quickly became identifiable as, well, the cerebral, brooding face of the publication. He always worked from photographs, reading the accompanying article first to glean ideas.

“I try first to make the face believable, to give another dimension to a flat, linear drawing; then my distortions seem more acceptable,” he said.

From 1963 until 2007, after Mr. Levine received a diagnosis of macular degeneration and his vision deteriorated enough to affect his drawing, he contributed more than 3,800 drawings to The New York Review. Over the years he did 1,000 or so more for Esquire; almost 100 for Time, including a number of covers (one of which, for the 1967 Man of the Year issue, depicted President Johnson as a raging and despairing King Lear); and dozens over all for The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Rolling Stone and other publications.

Mr. Levine’s first marriage ended in divorce. Besides Ms. Hayes, his partner for 32 years whom he married in 1996, he is survived by two children, Matthew, of Westport, Conn., and Eve, of Manhattan; two stepchildren, Nancy Rommelmann, of Portland, Ore., and Christopher Rommelmann, of Brooklyn; a grandson, and a stepgranddaughter.

“I might want to be critical, but I don’t wish to be destructive,” Mr. Levine once said, explaining his outlook on both art and life. “Caricature that goes too far simply lowers the viewer’s response to a person as a human being.”