Transition: The Line Kings Exit The Stage

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By Peter Plagens

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Al Hirschfeld, 99, was to the art of caricature what... Al Hirschfeld was to the art of caricature. The man who showed up at Broadway openings in a long black coat, black hat and Moses-like white beard to sit in the dark and draw was incomparable. His drawings (Hirschfeld thought "caricaturists" were people like Picasso and Matisse) of such luminaries as Carol Channing and Zero Mostel seem to us the real persons, with the celebrities themselves uncannily managing to resemble what Hirschfeld drew.

The artistic prodigy arrived in New York City at the age of 11 so that he could get the proper training for his talent. But it was in Bali in the 1930s that Hirschfeld first encountered Asian art--particularly shadow puppets--that eliminated color and left, he once said, "the image of pure line." Back in the States Hirschfeld had a brief fling with political art. But he quickly realized that he had, as he put it, a much greater affinity for Groucho Marx than for Karl. In 1945 his daughter Nina was born, and her printed name--disguised as folds in a movie star's gown or the wild hair of an orchestra conductor--appeared in almost every drawing Hirschfeld made thereafter. He created an estimated 7,000 drawings in his 80-year career. His pre-MTV celebrities, he said, "all knew what they looked like." But Hirschfeld knew it even better.

A heartbroken World War II U.S. Cavalry officer stands beside his broken jeep--the 20th century's replacement for his horse--and, averting his eyes, prepares to administer the coup de grace: a shot through the hood from his pistol. That memorable cartoon exemplifies the sardonic, but always empathetic and never bitter view of soldiers and war that Bill Mauldin gave to America in the collection "Up Front With Bill Mauldin," which won him, at the age of 23, the first of two Pulitzer Prizes. Mauldin was also known for his duplicitous Dickie Bird, which he invented to caricature Richard Nixon. But most likely Mauldin, 81, will be remembered for capturing the weary, almost cynical but far from unpatriotic attitude of the GI in the last great war with a clear cause he was asked to fight.

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