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Steve Brodner: The Q&A

By Peggy Roalf   Monday November 4, 2013

Art Journalist, illustrator, caricaturist, film maker, and all around swell fellow, Steve Brodner has been a friend of DART since before there was a DART. In fact, he was my “celeb interview" for the single-issue precursor to this newsletter, back in 2005, when his book Freedom Fries was published. Steve presents Illustration Next, tomorrow at 7 pm, at the Third Floor Amphitheater at SVA, as part of Illustration Week, so here's a preview:

You live in New York City, originally from Brooklyn. As an artist, what are some of your favorite things about living and working here?

I love the energy, diversity of the place. People everywhere, from everywhere, each with a story to tell, showing parts of it as they go. I draw them wherever I can.

How and when did you first become interested in art and illustration?

I was always an artist. I was drawing pictures for my friends when I was 7 years old. I became a satiric artist in reaction to the 60's and the strong tide of political activism. Also at that time I was put into a religious school. My dislike for any kind of orthodoxy began there. It showed itself in drawings that, you might say, were not very polite.

 The Top Pop 100 for Entertainment Weekly. Pop musicians painted in their respective years of triumph [detail]. See final and sketches. Kory Kennedy, AD.

How and when did you first become interested in art and illustration?

I was always an artist. I was drawing pictures for my friends when I was 7 years old. I became a satiric artist in reaction to the 60's and the strong tide of political activism. Also at that time I was put into a religious school. My dislike for any kind of orthodoxy began there. It showed itself in drawings that, you might say, were not very polite.

What was your first commercial assignment?

Drawing spot illustrations for a fitness handbook, in 1970! Two years later I was doing a weekly cartoon for a local Brooklyn newspaper. And haven't been out of print since then. 41 years. Woof! 

What is your favorite part of the creative process? 

All of it. Every step. The thinking, the feeling, the drawing, the painting. The solving of problems. What I don't like At ALL is having to make decisions for a publication that will hurt the art. But that is a part of this biz. You are continually reminded that illustration is for the larger project. You fight for the best work to get through, but work closely with your designers and editors. That's the gig.

Do you keep a sketchbook? How do you keep track of ideas for your illustration work?

YES! The ideas flow and are saved, but by accident. I am a bad curator, thinking only about the next thing.

What is the next thing, this very minute?

This very minute: A year-end opener and 5 spots for GQ all due Friday. A cover for National Journal due Monday (when I teach so it'll be Sunday night). Finish a chapter on Woodrow Wilson for a project on the presidents. Due? Last week. Also 3 pitches for a wonderful online magazine called Tablet. Having coffee with the editor tomorrow. Almost ready, it's 10pm. I'll sleep on Saturday!

Is there any other profession you secretly wish you had pursued?

I would have been useful as a teacher. What I do at SVA is very gratifying. I have tremendous admiration for people who walk into tough neighborhoods and change the lives of kids. Seems miraculous to me. They are our true heroes I think.

 Mad Men of Climate Change. Top Climate Deny-ers, for The American Prospect. Mary Parsons, AD. See details.

What are you reading?

Wilson by A. Scott Berg (working on a project on the presidents). Also War and Peace and War by Peter Turchin; Washington: A Lifeby Ron Chernow; The Age of Insight by Eric Kandel; On Looking by Alexandra Horowitz. Just finished Ulysses, this summer, at last. I wonder why it takes me so long to finish a book!

Where do you get your news?

The New York Times, Washington Post, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Mother Jones, The Nation, The American Prospect, Democracy Now, Twitter (following my favorite journalists), Sulia (a new discovery), Think Progress, Tom Dispatch, The Economist, PBS, NPR. I wonder why I am so goddamned pissed off!

What was the last political event you attended and what did you take away from it?

Marching against the Keystone XL pipeline, last May, in New York. A sharp looking crowd serenading the president outside the Waldorf. He backed off XL right after, but don’t thank me! It was nothing, really. Drawing a picture can be a political event.

What are some of your favorite places/blogs/websites for inspiration?

As above; all MSM media now online as well. Also love to see what my colleagues are doing on Drawger, DART, Daily Heller, DesignTAXI, etc.

Who/what are some of your strongest influences?

Any kind of effective art, especially art that tells a strong story. This can be a film, an opera, a short story, graphic novel . . . or an illustration: Films by John Ford, Preston Sturges, Fritz Lang, Hitchcock, Keaton, Chaplin, Cocteau, Wells, Kazan, Godard, Almodovar, Kurosawa, Folman's Waltz with Bashir. In theater: Brecht, Beckett, Albee, Miller, Williams, Sondheim. Music: Stravinsky, Beethoven, Mozart, Ricard Strauss, Rachmaninoff, Mendelssohn(!), Painters: Cezanne, Matisse, Picasso. German expressionists, NY School. Graphic artists from 19th and 20th century including but not limited to all great caricaturists and satirists. Writers: Joyce, Swift, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Steinbeck, Fitzgerald, Vidal, Roth, Lethem, Chabon etc. Radio: This American Life.

 The New Obama Cabinet. Imagined as Vanity Fair spread. For The Washingtonian, Michael Goesele, AD.

Where do you teach—and what do you like best about teaching?

The School of Visual Arts in New York. Teaching puts me in touch with people who have less experience but great energy. They take away the former and I the latter.

What advice would you give to a young artist/illustrator who is just getting noticed?

Be true to yourself. In your free time only make art you love. And see where what you love will find a market. This is hard but the result can be delirious happiness. Which describes my life . . . from time to time.

Steve Brodner has been a satiric illustrator for 35 years. Born in Brooklyn, NY in 1954, graduated Cooper Union in 1976, he got a cartooning job on a small newspaper, The Hudson Dispatch, in Union City, New Jersey. In 1977 The New York Times Book Review began tapping him for illustration assignments. This launched his freelance career. Read the rest.


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