MATT HIRSCHFELD: NEXT IN LINE

Anyone familiar with movie stars and the artists that depict their personal style with a flourish of their own will no doubt be familiar with Al Hirschfeld. I’ve always been a big fan of Hirschfeld and recently I came across a new artist named Matt Hirschfeld (who may be a relation.)

After visiting his web site www.matthirschfeld.com, I would have to say he's pretty good! Take a look at this picture; it’s homage to Martin Scorcesse’s “Gangs of New York.” What I dig about it is that like Al, Matt is of course showing character in his personalities’ faces (see the DiCaprio in particular to see what I mean) but more than that, he’s telling a story in this piece. He’s interpreting the various Burroughs’ uprisings as the chaos leading to the birth of a great nation, almost like the unstable creative energy flow involved in the violent accouchement of a planetary star.

Something that always struck me as unique and cool about Al Hirschfeld is that he reflected the milieu of his era. I’m thinking of his ‘World Leaders’ from 1962 with its portraits of Kennedy, Chiang Kai Sek, Castro, Kruschev, etc. Like Al, Matt’s been doing this same thing. I checked out his picture of Rudy Giuliani where he cleverly manages to portray the calculating seriousness that lies under the winning façade of the smiling funny man that cracked up viewers on Saturday Night Live.

Matt’s managed to capture some of Tinseltown’s heavyweights and concoct a narrative of our own time via his Oscar creations. Look at “Crash”, “The Departed”, and most recently, “No Country for Old Men”. Did Matt somehow have an inkling that his choices were going to win the best picture? I checked out his blog and he says he always has been able to predict the Academy Award winner before it happened. Either he’s pretty lucky, he’s lying, or like Al, Matt Hirschfeld really does have his finger on the pulse of society. I’m going to go with number 3, but someone else please weigh in here.