Catalog Of Interest… The Masters Series: Edward Sorel
Here’s a terrific catalog issued at the time of Edward Sorel‘s Fall 2011 exhibit at the Visual Arts Gallery. After a three page intro by the illustrator, James McMullan, Mr. Sorel takes charge of the rest of the catalog, giving us a mini-autobiography along with examples of his work from various stages of his career, including a cover he did for his high school publication, The Quill.
Here he is talking about his beginnings as a New Yorker cover artist:
“In 1992, Tina Brown took over editorship of The New Yorker, and chose one of my sketches for her first cover. At the precocious age of 62 I had hit the Big Time. In a fever of activity I began doing gag cartoons, full-page illustrations, covering the New York cultural events, writing and illustrating autobiographical memories, and of course drawing more and more covers — seven or eight a year. Best of all, my covers showed a degree of spontaneity that I had been trying to achieve for years.”
One of my favorite catalog pages is the below sampler of Ed’s cover art for various magazines, including, of course, The New Yorker.
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Notes:
*I was disappointed I could not find an online seller where Spill readers could purchase a copy of the Master Series catalog, but that shouldn’t stop anyone from continuing to search.
*The link to the official Edward Sorel website seems broken.
*Here’s his Spill A-Z entry:
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Edward Sorel (self-portrait above from a strip appearing in The Nation following the death of Marlene Dietrich. Drawing used by permission of Mr. Sorel). Born 1929. New Yorker work: 1990 – . All of Mr. Sorel’s books are of great interest; Unauthorized Portraits (Alfred A. Knopf, 1997) is particularly essential as is his memoir, Profusely Illustrated (Alfred A. Knopf, 2021).