Behind the Lines

EDWARD SOREL’S COVER ART for his book Profusely Illustrated pictures him at a drawing board, pen poised in his right hand. In all other respects, as we learn from the narrative’s autobiographical details, he was an unapologetic lefty, committed to progressive causes, often functioning as a contemporary Hogarth or Daumier when he had the right (left) forum at hand.

At 92, Sorel is taking stock, not only of his life and work but also the society amidst which he’s been working. He notes at the outset that he sought to “save a few of my drawings from the oblivion that awaits most protest art and ... magazine illustrations,” and so we have 177 such pieces enshrined here – all the more admirably considering that, as Sorel explains later, the book was put together during a time when coronavirus shutdowns limited his access to library-stored originals, leaving his photographer-son Leo the task of photographing many of them from tearsheets. You’d never know it. The reproductions look terrific.

He also promises to “offer up an explanation for how the United States ended up with a racist thug in the White House. My belief is that it was made possible by the criminal acts committed by the twelve presidents who preceded Trump.” This promise is depressingly fulfilled as we regularly veer from his own well-told tale to incisive White House visits, beginning with Truman’s red-baiting tactics.

Not that non-presidents are overlooked. John Foster Dulles, one of the architects of the country’s descent into foreign-policy hell, features in a page that contrasts his devious behavior with that of the Hollywood-manufactured heroes that Sorel and the rest of society grew up with. In fact, Hollywood was a potent influence, as the artist acknowledges, thanks to his obsessive movie-going as a youngster and devotion to the character actors who gave those movies their spines.

This book’s endpapers sport a beautiful pastel of the cast of “Casablanca” in stylish caricatures that rank with the best of Al Hirschfeld and David Levine, and some of Sorel’s most memorable work conflates politics and Hollywood. “The Watergate Shootout,” from a 1972 Ramparts issue,  assembles Nixon, Haldeman, Dean, and the rest of the posse in a pose straight out of “Angels with Dirty Faces.” And Nixon returns to co-star with Chairman Mao, both pictured in tails, in “Swingtime in Peking.” There’s also Gerald Ford in “Son of Frankenstein,” and Jimmy Carter walking the treacherous thoroughfare in “High Noon” for Time, and the list goes on, often just paying tribute to the movie stars themselves.

Classic art also offers inspiration. Emanuel Leutze’s iconic “Washington Crossing the Delaware” got the Sorel treatment with – guess who? – Nixon at the helm, and Gustave Doré’s “Moses Breaking the Tablets of the Law” inspired one of Sorel’s own favorites, this one turning all of the pictured participants into dogs, with suitably altered commandments. It’s an inviting tradition, echoing Thomas Nast’s appropriation of a Jean-Léon Gérôme painting to draw attention to a 19th-century tragedy with politics at its heart.

Sorel’s telling of his childhood and early art training has the assured wit of great humorists like S.J. Perelman and H. Allen Smith, and it’s fascinating to visit his early years of working to crack the Manhattan art market. He notes that his three years at Cooper Union atrophied his drawing skill, what with its emphasis on non-representational design, so that when he and classmate Seymour Chwast founded Push Pin Studios in 1954, it was Chwast and Milton Glaser (another classmate) who created the art while Sorel brought in the assignments. He left soon after to pursue a freelance career, and is perhaps too dismissive of some of his early work – record jackets, for example, that, while they bear no resemblance to Sorel’s later styles, fall right in line with what could be considered the “house style” of the time, as practiced by the likes of Jim Flora.

In terms of gaining recognition, Sorel’s big break came in 1966 when Esquire asked him for a cover portrait of Sinatra. The singer had declined a photo request, so it was up to the artist to create an image that would resonate with a Gay Talese exposé. Here we see the seemingly mad rush of Sorel’s freehand lines reveal an unmistakable visage. “It was full of energy and caught Sinatra’s disdain for the flunkies that surrounded him,” Sorel writes. “That Esquire cover changed my career.”

And sent him into a few distinct directions. There’s Sorel the cartoonist, given space for single- and multi-panel works in the Village Voice, The Nation, and others, eventually breaking into the hallowed pages of The New Yorker. His strips tend to be charmingly self-effacing, with himself the seeming butt of the jokes even as a larger issue sneaks by – again, shades of Perelman.

There’s Sorel the satirist, jabbing his pen at politicians and other oligarchs in their criminal pursuits of enrichment, and even when a classic painting or movie poster isn’t the model, Sorel’s composition is as powerful as his caricature. And there’s Sorel the painter, a slew of New Yorker covers paying witness to his prowess at evocative art. Although a recent cover by Ronald Wimberly does an adequate job of honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., it hardly bears comparison to Sorel’s cover from 1999, where the artist’s knowledge of classical art and skill at visual storytelling combine to inform the painting with heartbreaking passion.

Any artist dependent on the desires of periodical editors will have seen many shifts in fortune over the years, but Sorel has gained respect and reputation enough to rarely, it seems, lack for work. And to even be choosy about it. “I never submitted another idea for a gag cartoon,” to The New Yorker, he writes, “after Robert Mankoff became the cartoon editor and brought in a motley crew of cartoonists who drew even worse than he did.” That was in 1997, and it signaled a notable slide in the quality both of the drawings and the gags that continues to this day.

But Sorel’s work has transcended any single marketplace. He painted the magnificent murals that appear on the walls of the Waverly Inn in Greenwich Village and midtown’s (now-shuttered) Monkey Bar. And he not only collects his drawings into books, he also produces original titles such as Mary Astor’s Purple Diary, published in 2016, which brings together his love of vintage movies and his skill at pen-capturing their essence. Astor’s celebrated affair with playwright George S. Kaufman, an unlikely satyr, led to a custody-battle trial that made headlines in 1936 – and some of those headlines lurked beneath the linoleum Sorel pulled off the floor in a newly acquired home. Which is as good an excuse for an excellent book as I can think of.

Sorel’s pen-and-ink style displays a unique approach to hatching wherein a seemingly crazed flurry of strokes resolves into features and texture, somewhat in the manner of Edward Gorey or Ronald Searle, with a sense of classical portraiture lurking in the frantic-seeming composition. He knows how to grab the viewer’s eye and send it around the page, and he has the comic sensibility to plant gags on his pages that yield their magic in slow reveal, making it worth your while to spend extra time with his drawings. Which is why your purchase of this book isn’t just to enjoy a brief diversion: it’s an art investment.