Q: When is a social satirist also a children’s book author, a Pulitzer prize-winning cartoonist, a playwright, a novelist, an Oscar-winning animated filmmaker, and a screenwriter? 

A: When his name is Jules Feiffer.

New York’s fall cultural landscape seems to belong to this consummate New Yorker. In conjunction with the release of The Long Chalkboard and Other Stories (Pantheon), a book by his wife, the journalist and standup comic Jenny Allen, which he illustrated, Feiffer will be making frequent appearances around town through December. Next week Mr. Feiffer will be honored by the School of Visual Arts, which is hosting a Masters Series exhibition, a retrospective of his 50-year career. The opening reception is Tuesday, October 24, from 6 to 8 pm.

For me, Feiffer’s Modern Dancer, a character that often showed up in his Village Voice comic strip, defined New York’s Boho life when I moved here in the late 1960s. So it was great fun to meet the master at reading he did with Jenny Allen at The New York Times’ ‘Great Read in the Park’ last Sunday. When the Q & A came around, my hand went up. “What was your inspiration for the Modern Dancer,” I asked.

“This is a question I’m often asked,” he replied — and went on to give a hilarious account of the various ways in which he broke his mother’s heart by leaving home in 1953, renting his own apartment, and if that weren’t bad enough, making his first purchase a bed instead of a desk. All this leading up to introducing the girlfriend who shared that bed, a modern dancer whose persona and scraggy looks inspired the character. “Over time,” he said, “as girlfriends came and went, and times changed, the dancer morphed into a version of myself.” (A recent morph appears above left.)

No wonder! This character personified the talk-y New York existential angst of the 50s and 60s, fueled by the Bomb, the Cold War, the sexual revolution, the U-2 incident, the civil rights movement, women’s lib, Sputnik, peaceniks, presidents and everything else that could make a person neurotic. This was the style that handed schtick on a silver platter to some notable standup comics that followed. Think Woody Allen and Bob Newhart, live — before they settled into their film and TV incarnations.

But that’s just a small window onto the worlds of Jules Feiffer. His prize-winning comics, which ran in the Voice for over 40 years, also had the distinction of being the first to be published in The New York Times. Among his credits as a dramaturge are Little Murders, an Obie-winning black comedy adapted as a 1971 film starring Eliot Gould. He wrote the screenplays for Carnal Knowledge (1971) and Popeye (1980). In 1961 he won an Academy Award for his animated short, Munro, about a four-year-old child who is accidentally drafted into the Army.

Since giving up his syndicated comic strip in 2000, Feiffer has concentrated on writing and illustrating books for children. His most recent, A Room With a Zoo (2005), was inspired by his 11-year-old daughter, Julie.

The exhibition at SVA, which runs through December 2, shows the evolution of the artist’s drawing style, from the anxious inkwork of the Voice strips to the lush charcoal drawings he made for The Long Chalkboard And Other Stories. Comprised of close to 200 drawings, the show also includes some theatrical posters, promo ads and animated shorts. A handsomely illustrated catalog, with an in-depth interview with the artist
by Steven Heller, rounds out
the package.

When asked the other day about his drawing process, and how he decides on what medium is right for a project, Feiffer said, “For me, it’s all about the immediacy of the line and capturing the emotion of the moment. The text and image must work together. Even a gorgeous illustration, if it doesn’t complement the text, is a failure.”

Feiffer Dancing, ©2006 Jules Feiffer, courtesy Visual Arts Gallery.