The art of celebrity caricature

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), July, 1998 by Wendy Wick Reaves

Utilizing sophisticated wit and stylish mockery caricaturists aim their satiric at entertainers and other public figures, capturing their personalities and character traits in a gently skewed manner.

The art of caricature--the distortion of the face or figure for satiric purposes--has a long tradition in Western art. For centuries, comically exaggerated portrayals have served the purpose of ridicule and protest, probing beneath outward appearances to expose hidden, disreputable character traits. In early-20th-century America, however, a young generation of caricaturists deployed a fresh approach, inventing a popular new form of portraiture. They chose for their subjects the colorful, rather than corrupt, personalities of the day. Their epigrammatic likenesses, transformed by a modem aesthetic and a detached, sophisticated wit, appealed to an audience hungry for emblems of the emerging urban culture.

During the height of its vogue between the two world wars, caricatures of the famous permeated the press and graced New York City cafe walls, theater curtains, silk dresses, and cigarette cases. Unlike editorial cartoonists, caricaturists did not attempt to expose, analyze, or criticize. "It is not the caricaturist's business to be penetrating," caricaturist Ralph Barton insisted, "it is his job to put down the figure a man cuts before his fellows in his attempt to conceal the writhings of his soul." These artists highlighted the public persona, rather than probing beneath it, reconstructing exaggerated components with a heightened sense of style and an antiseptic sting.

Modern caricature exploited the new appetite for celebrity, already whetted by the developing mass media. The nature of fame had changed profoundly in the previous generations. Notability no longer was based solely on achievement, heroism or villainy, or "character." Accomplishment became less important than the extended publicity or reputation generated from it. Consequently, fame no longer was tied to traditional areas of attainment. The baseball hero, striptease star, and mother of quintuplets could compete with the warrior prince and theologian in the pantheon of the famous.

Caricature portraits featured that critical audience-building ingredient, "personality." The word had come to connote a colorful, original combination of attributes that attracted public notice, "the glitter that sends your little gleam across the footlights," as actress Mae West called it. A compelling, magnetic theatricality was the principal evidence of this heightened quality of distinction. As novelist Theodore Dreiser pointed out, old-time virtues such as honesty, fairness, or knowledge did not suffice. In addition to innate talents, one needed "the vital energy to apply them or the hypnotic power of attracting attention to them." Everyone needed personality, advice books counseled, in order to make a difference. The artist, scientist, journalist, or socialite--like the performer--had to strut a bit upon his or her stage.

The developing mass media made celebrity faces and reputations familiar. Aided by various technological innovations, information about the famous became increasingly standardized. Newspapers and magazines, already reaching a mass public by the turn of the century, increasingly relied on syndication services and press agents for non-news features and photographs. Everyone saw the same stories and rotogravure pictures of those in the news. Motion pictures, newsreels, recordings, and eventually radio publicized identical celebrity images throughout the nation.

Out of this familiarity grew besotted fans, marketable fads, and unprecedented renown. Pajamas, perfume, soap, and cigars were named after Broadway beauty Billie Burke, and stores sold copies of her slim-fitting gowns and red-gold curls. An exaggerated set of character traits defined each celebrity, which no one wanted to contradict. Caricature, like the early gossip columns, provided a way to laugh at peccadillos and well-known eccentricities without destroying the larger-than-life heroes, geniuses, bad boys, and ingenues.

The new stars of the era learned how to capture the expanding audiences provided by new media technologies. Operatic tenor Enrico Caruso made his first audio recordings in 1902. The managing director of New York's Metropolitan Opera, along with many of Caruso's fans, heard his legendary voice for the first time through the phonograph. The Marx Brothers, along with many other show business acts, moved from stage to film. Cowboy performer Will Rogers parlayed his laconic, wise-cracking vaudeville act into a career that encompassed Broadway, syndicated columns, magazine articles, movies, books, and radio broadcasts. "Us birds that try to keep before and interest the public have various ways of doing it," he wrote. "The more you do anything that don't look like advertising the better advertising it is."

In New York, the changing nature of fame led to a flowering of cafe society after World War I, a social elite defined by publicity, rather than pedigree. Rebelling against private, class-bound social rituals, the post-war generation turned towards public entertainments where the Old Guard met and mingled with emerging celebrities from the theater and the press. Newly respectable moving pictures, vaudeville shows, sporting events, and theatrical extravaganzas attracted audiences of mixed sex and class, while restaurants and roof gardens extended the fantasies of the Great White Way late into the night. Cafe society luminaries often were the target of the caricaturist's pen, but since the recognizable distortions celebrated their renown, they came to appreciate what etiquette writer Emily Post once called the "delicious publicity."