I'm not going to discuss any of the alligations and accusations directed at Mr. Allen here and their impact on the legacy of this prolific writer/comedian/director.
I'm not informed nor is this relevant to this post.
It's just that in my recent interest in caricatures I came across the work of very different, yet all very talented artist and I wanted to compare their styles based on the same subject.
With his attitude and features, Woody Allen has created something of a modern "Maschera da Commedia dell'Arte", and this gave a lot of latitude to caricaturists.
The first in our series is Jack Davis, renowed and prolific illustrator from the 50sto the 2000s. Active in comics (various EC and warren titles, not to mention MAD MAgazine) advertising, movie posters and more, Jack Davis has been possibly the most famous "big feet" artist for decades.
This is a detail from his poster from Allen's Bananas.
As much as I love Davis, I have to say his take on allen is possibly the weakest of the bunch.
I'm not diminishing his work at all, Jack Davis had a knack for posters and humourous illustrations for sure ans d his works exude personality. If anything, Davis' personality is coming maybe too strongly across. It is almost like he drew a JAck Davis character that appears to share some feature with Woody Allen (the thick rimmed spectacles, the unkempt hair, the long nose).
Akin in style to Jack Davis, but arguably more gifted a portraitist is Mort Drucker.
Hard to pick one out from the two, but I'd go for Drucker for this reason.
This ensemble portrait gallery is clear evidence of that.
Another well known caricaturist is David Levine, whose pen-and-ink crosshatching is reminiscent of satirical prints of older centuries.
Differently from Davis and Drucker, Levine's characters do not have to live in an environment or to interact much with other people, props or background.
therefore the artist can have a lot of liberty with proportions and with the degree of detail he wants to put in to it.
And to the opposite side of the spectrum, we have Al Hirshfield, to this day possibly one of the classiest and most refined charicaturists of the twentieth century.
Hirshfield worked hard to distill the essence of his subjects in a few, elegant lines.
This tradition of of great stylisation is still alive today, thanks to artists like the argentinian Pablo Lobato, and his amazing poppy and yet constructivist portraits.
But comics can do stylization too.
Check out how Woody Allen, who has been the subject of a syndacated stryp for quite some time, has been synthetized to a few pen strokes by cartoonist Stuart Hample.
I'm not informed nor is this relevant to this post.
It's just that in my recent interest in caricatures I came across the work of very different, yet all very talented artist and I wanted to compare their styles based on the same subject.
With his attitude and features, Woody Allen has created something of a modern "Maschera da Commedia dell'Arte", and this gave a lot of latitude to caricaturists.
 |
As much as I love Davis, I have to say his take on allen is possibly the weakest of the bunch.
I'm not diminishing his work at all, Jack Davis had a knack for posters and humourous illustrations for sure ans d his works exude personality. If anything, Davis' personality is coming maybe too strongly across. It is almost like he drew a JAck Davis character that appears to share some feature with Woody Allen (the thick rimmed spectacles, the unkempt hair, the long nose).
Akin in style to Jack Davis, but arguably more gifted a portraitist is Mort Drucker.
Hard to pick one out from the two, but I'd go for Drucker for this reason.
This ensemble portrait gallery is clear evidence of that.
 |
| Mort Drucker |
 |
| David Levine |
therefore the artist can have a lot of liberty with proportions and with the degree of detail he wants to put in to it.
And to the opposite side of the spectrum, we have Al Hirshfield, to this day possibly one of the classiest and most refined charicaturists of the twentieth century.
Hirshfield worked hard to distill the essence of his subjects in a few, elegant lines.
 |
| Jack Davis |
 |
| Pablo Lobato |
But comics can do stylization too.
Check out how Woody Allen, who has been the subject of a syndacated stryp for quite some time, has been synthetized to a few pen strokes by cartoonist Stuart Hample.
 |
| Stuart Hample |
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