What Happened in 1986
The cover of Michael Feinstein's "Live at the Algonquin" album features a Hirschfeld portrait.
After drawing Brideshead Revisted, WNET commissions a drawing of Spencer Tracy and katharine Hepburn in Woman of the Year.
For the Kennedy Center Honors, Hirschfeld draws a group portrait of Lucille Ball, Yehudi Menhuin, Jessica Tandy, Hume Cronyn, Ray Charles, and Anthony Tudor
The Museum of Broadcasting (now the Paley Center for Media) commissions a drawing of veteran television producer and write Norman Lear surrounded by his creations.
Frank Ferrante's performance is so convincing that Hirschfeld's drawing of him in Groucho: A Life In Revue becomes an iconic portrait of the legendary comedian.
Featured Images From 1986
Decade: 1980
…For half a century now, Al Hirschfeld has been turning out these uncanny wonders, joyous masterpieces of theatrical caricature, in a drab attic studio, his stubby body perched in an old barber chair he bought 35 years ago in the Bowery, arching over a drawing board cross-hatched with a zillion Exacto grooves.
It’s been a hectic time for Hirschfeld –five shows open soon, plus the new TV season, which means a dozen deadlines in ten days for the The New York Times and TV Guide, his main outlets.
He just back from Baltimore, where he saw a preview of Jean Kerr’s new play and, a sketch pad in his lap, feverishly drew a rough draft of the stars, working in the spillover light from the stage. He rips a page off a thick pad on which he’s scribbled primitive versions of Gilda Radner and Sam Waterson in pencil.
…His ambition, still, is to reveal the most personality in the fewest strokes. “The anatomy isn’t interesting to me. I try to stay away from eye-ear-nose-and-throat likenesses. A big nose, you make it bigger –but that’s witless. What I try for is how he seems.”
…’I’m still involved with the mystery of line and what it can do. I’ve found no formulas; it’s difficult not fall back on what you did before. All I know is to keep paring it down, eliminating, until it’s pure line that communicates.
