![]() ![]() He can also be forgiving in those assessments. Sorel can be unsparing in his assessments, including assessments of himself. He does a great job of intertwining personal and professional stories, as well as relating the politics of the period from his concise viewpoint. Sorel is a wonderful storyteller, as will come as no surprise to those who know his work, especially the more comic-strip style narrative pieces. ![]() They were making money and moving to a more expensive studio space, but Sorel was not content with the way things were going, and left Push Pin in the mid-1950s, striking out on his own. The studio eventually hired a representative, Warren Miller, which allowed Sorel to devote himself fully to illustration. Glaser, who had been in Italy, returned to New York and would soon join the studio, though Sorel was not initially enamored with the idea. Below is an example of Sorel’s illustrations from the Almanack.Īround this time, Sorel and Chwast set up The Push Pin Studio, with Sorel acting as the studio’s rep, meeting with art directors, trying to drum up work. It would be quite a few years before Sorel’s drawing process changed, helping to free him from those drawing constraints. The shape-based approach to drawing that had been drummed into him as a student was making him miserable. Sorel writes about the pains it took to create the illustrations for The Push Pin Almanack. By the third issue of the Almanack, Ruffins, who had worked with Chwast and Glaser at Cooper, was brought on board. So began the creation of The Push Pin Almanack, a parody of a nineteenth century almanac. At Esquire, Sorel became reacquainted with Chwast, and the two men made plans to create a promotional piece to help generate freelance illustration work. Once Sorel graduated from Cooper Union, he landed a job in the bullpen of an advertising agency, followed up by a job at Esquire magazine for nearly twice the money. He did, however, meet peers at Cooper Union who were later to become his partners at the Push Pin Studio: Seymour Chwast, Reynold Ruffins and Milton Glaser. Sorel writes that by the time he left Cooper Union he no longer knew how to draw. This was during the time of the second generation of Abstract Expressionism and the schools were pushing a more abstract, shape-based approach to the arts. The love for drawing that Sorel developed early on in life was not only not encouraged in high school and college, but was quashed. Sorel writes quite a bit about his schooling, at both the High School of Music and Art in Harlem, and Cooper Union. ![]() That love of comic strips clearly continued into his later work, as you’ll see later in the post. Sorel would listen to radio programs, drawing cartoons and comic strips. Though he was sick, Sorel could draw, and drew all sorts of images on the white cardboard that were placed in shirts from the laundry. In the mid-1930s, Sorel suffered a case of double-pneumonia and was bedridden for nearly a year. There is clearly a lot to unpack here, but one can imagine a connection when Sorel later wanted to change his last name from his father’s Schwartz, choosing the last name of the character Julien Sorel, from The Red and the Black by Stendhal, who “…was a sensitive young peasant who hated his father, was appalled by corruption in the clergy…and was catnip to every woman he encountered.” Sorel related his childhood fantasy of pushing his father off a train platform in front of an oncoming train. He describes his father Morris as “…stupid, insensitive, grouchy, mean-spirited, fault-finding, and a racist”. Sorel’s father, on the other hand, was the opposite. Sorel dearly loved his mother Rebecca, describing her in the beginning of the book as “…warm, upbeat, beautiful…” Sorel went on to describe the unconditional love she had for him, which allowed Sorel to confide in her. In Profusely Illustrated, Sorel offers an unvarnished look at his life, from growing up the son of Jewish immigrants in the Bronx, to an artist who found his visual and intellectual voice. While this is not a review of Sorel’s book, I will refer to the memoir as a way of helping to highlight him as one of the best damn pen and ink illustrators of the past 60 years, deserving of both printed and digital ink praise. Let’s take a moment to revel in the ink-slinging goodness that is Edward Sorel, whose wonderful memoir, Profusely Illustrated, was published by Knopf in 2021 during the height of the pandemic, so did not garner the attention it deserved. ![]()
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