Caricatures, Collages, Assemblages
A flagpole penis. A shrink’s couch in a pocket. A haloed spider. Did LSD lead Lou Hirshman to abandon caricaturizing the famous? Was his second period a psychedelic trip? Did he make high art or “high” art? In this FICTIONAL, TONGUE-IN-CHEEK story, Hirshman swims with dolphins to the other side of the other ocean.
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In this second Posthumous Interview, more than 30 years after Lou Hirshman’s death, the irreverent comedian Groucho Marx – the subject of one of Hirshman’s finest pieces parodying one of filmdom’s funniest entertainers – comes to life as he banters his way through the artist’s take on humor. Groucho’s quirky quips meet Hirshman’s witty art. […]
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INTRO: In 1938 when Catherine Littlefield, the force behind the Philadelphia Ballet, got wind that Lou Hirshman had done her in an unflattering caricature, she hunted him down, tore up the sketch and gave him a resounding slap. She also gave the press something to write about. The star of the show? Hirshman’s sore cheek. […]
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In the late-1940s, Lou Hirshman, once a student at the precursor of the Samuel S. Fleisher Art Memorial in Philadelphia, became one of its teachers – and later its faculty director. We reprint a Fleisher blog post, in which the revered art school, administered by the city’s Museum of Art, rediscovers one of its own. […]
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In 1962, an engineer and struggling inventor with the unlikely name of Ermal Cleon Frazer went on a picnic with his family. A secret alcoholic, Frazer had brought a six-pack of Budweiser but forgotten a can opener. In frustration, he began stomping on the cans, salvaging only a few drops of his beloved brew. As […]
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This is the first in an irregular series of posthumous interviews that Hirshman’s son conducted with his father more than three decades after the artist’s death in 1986. SON: I appreciate you taking the time for this interview. LOU: Time is what I have. What do you want to know? SON: As this is the […]
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You are walking by a stream, look down, see something shiny and fish it out – it’s a diamond. You are suddenly rich because you have found this “found object.” Like that diamond, a dime under a rug, discovered when sweeping the floor – while it won’t make you wealthy – is also a found […]
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In May 2015, Stephen Kroninger, a well-known American collagist, gave a talk at New York’s prestigious Society of Illustrators titled “12 Legendary Caricaturists You’ve (Probably) Never Heard Of.” Among them was Lou Hirshman. The presentation was reviewed in the online publication “Forward”.
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HIRSHMAN ON YouTube: This is a wonderful presentation given by illustrator Stephen Kroninger in May 2015 at New York’s Society of Illustrators on “12 Legendary Caricaturists You‘ve, (probably), Never Heard Of”. The segment on Hirshman starts two-thirds of the way through the two-hour talk at 1:17. […]
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Here is part 2: The blog Unexpected Philadelphia is publishing a two-part series on one of the city’s own – Lou Hirshman, an artist who lived nearly his entire life in the City of Brotherly Love. Part Two looks at Hirshman’s second main period – collages of everyday life rather than caricatures of the famous. […]
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