Robert Grossman

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Robert Grossman (born 1940 in New York City) is an American painter, sculptor, filmmaker, and author.

Contents 1 Introduction: An illustrator with a global presence 1.1 "AIRPLANE!" 1.2 "Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers" 2 Career overview 2.1 Painter 2.2 Sculptor 2.3 Filmmaker 2.4 A logical third step 2.5 Author 3 Special Honors 4 Early days 5 These days 6 The future 7 Notes 8 References 9 External Links

[edit] Introduction: An illustrator with a global presence

It would be hard to dispute that most Americans have at one time or another seen Robert Grossman's artwork. Opportunities have been ample; since his professional debut in the 1960s, his work has appeared over 500 times on the covers of various national magazines.^[1]

However, a significantly smaller group of people know the name and person behind the images. The fame and fortune of artists are notoriously mercurial; Grossman's personal profile is demonstrably due a raise.

[edit] "AIRPLANE!"

To the right is a decidedly odd image of an airplane, which has burned itself into the memories of most Westerners. "AIRPLANE!" (the 1980 film comedy - and perennial favorite - directed by Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, and Jerry Zucker) grossed $83,000,000 in 1980 dollars in the U.S. alone, on an investment of 3-odd million. VHS and DVD rentals to date have totalled $40,610,000. This figure also completely excludes world-wide earnings.^[2]

Anyone who has seen the poster or DVD case of the wildly successful "AIRPLANE!" has seen a very fine example of the art of Robert Grossman. As suggested, those "anyones" have circled the globe, at the time of this writing, for 26 years. ^{[3] [4]}

(It appears Grossman's name is forever destined to be mentioned in the same breath with "air": note that his most famous image, an airplane, was rendered with an airbrush.)

[edit] "Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers"

Anyone who has come into contact † with the album "Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers" , by the experimental comedy group The Firesign Theatre (continuously in print on Columbia Records since its 1970 release), is familiar with Grossman's quartet of caricatures of the group's members.^[5] The painting depicts the Firesign players as animal / human hybrids, with the animal portions signifying each member's Zodiacal sign (each was born under a Fire Sign).

† Please note: author makes no intended or implied reference here to contact "high".

[edit] Career overview

Ceaselessly toiling in the field of illustration since the 1960s, Grossman has amassed an impressive, enormous body of work, much of which has appeared in TIME, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, The Nation, The New Republic, National Lampoon, and The New York Times Sunday magazine (he has painted covers for each). His work has appeared in books for children, books decidedly for adults, and very close to everyone in between.

(An archive dedicated to gathering all of this work together, for the study and enjoyment of the online public, is under construction and will launch in mid-2007.)

[edit] Painter

Throughout his career, Grossman has employed an airbrush (he favors compressed air over piston) in order to render the lushly sculptural forms which are his paintings' most readily identified characteristic. Since with an airbrush Grossman may lay in areas of shadow and light with either crisp or exceedingly soft edges, the shapes he renders possess a startling degree of verisimilitude.

He is also an accomplished painter of portraits in oil, though this is a pursuit Grossman has reserved primarily for his own relaxation and enrichment.

[edit] Sculptor

The understanding of form and volume which informs his two-dimensional work finds further expression in his ongoing series of sculptural "busts" (many of which can be viewed at Grossman's portfolio website ). Grossman sculpts these in red modeling clay, then brings his usual painterly understanding of color to the multi-hued veneer he applies to the pieces. Unlike his paintings, which may take on any subject under the sun, the sculptures have been primarily a medium for Grossman's unusually sophisticated sense of caricature. "Notables" from all areas of endeavor and/or celebrity have been featured.

[edit] Filmmaker

During the 1980s, Grossman produced a number of animated television commercials under the "Grossman Brothers" banner. ^[6] An air-conditioner ad featuring a miserable, suddenly melting pet dog, is particularly hilarious.

Grossman's preferred technique has been replacement animation. As the George Pal web site explains: "(It is) a technique in which multiple puppets (or multiple parts of puppets) are made to represent each action desired. For instance, rather than making a soft, malleable head for a character in order to represent facial expressions and speech, the character has numerous heads which, when animated in the proper sequence, "speak" anything or show any emotion. This technique was also used on The Nightmare Before Christmas." ^[7]

[edit] A logical third step

The films are a logical third step in Grossman's artistic evolution:

From uncannily life-like, sculptural, two-dimensional paintings,

To three-dimensional painted sculpture,

To a step beyond the third dimension: sculpture that moves in time and space.

[edit] Author

Grossman has long created multi-panel comics, drawing upon the barbed, verbal wit that has endeared him to clients looking for a sharp, satirical outlook. However, these comics are by no means the full extent of his output as an author. To name but one example, Grossman supplied "The Nation" with an essay, written from an artist's perspective, on Art Spiegelman's now-classic graphic novel MAUS:

"[S]oon one is marveling at the amount of fear, hope, love and pathos that can emerge from a sketch of a mouse's head scarcely a half-inch high....[Spiegelman] promises us a sequel and I, for one, can't wait. I hope he is scurrying. The most affecting and successful narrative ever done about the Holocaust." ^[8]

[edit] Special Honors

Grossman received a 1977 Academy Award nomination for "Best Animated Short Film" for Jimmy The C (James Picker, Robert Grossman and Craig Whitaker, producers; Motionpicker Productions). ^[9]

In 1979, Galerie Vontobel (Zurich, Switzerland) showcased Grossman's art in a solo exhibition.

His sculpture and paintings in oils have been widely exhibited in numerous group shows.^[10]

[edit] Early days

Robert Grossman originally hails from Brooklyn, NYC. His father, Joseph Grossman, was a display artist who gave his son his earliest training. The elder Grossman also sent Robert to Saturday morning art classes at the Museum of Modern Art, in Manhattan, NYC.

Finishing up public school in Brooklyn, Grossman went on to attend Yale University. There he was the editor of the "Yale Record", known as "America's Oldest College Humor Magazine" (predating the "Harvard Lampoon" by four years).^[11] In 1961, Grossman graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Fine Arts.

An early job was a very respectable one: young Grossman secured a position as design assistant at the venerable "New Yorker" magazine. Before long, however, Grossman lit out on his own, beginning the free-lance illustration career for which he is now known.^[12]

[edit] These days

As years have passed, the changes in Robert Grossman's artwork have been subtle, but unmistakable. Having begun by eschewing the merest hint of a drawn line in favor of pure juxtaposition of values, he later began to more openly incorporate the playful, sure sense of line that had always been there beneath the surface. Apart from this evolution in rendering strategy, his work has displayed a remarkable consistency; surveying four decades of Grossman creations, one finds that "the awkward, early work" and the "tired, later work" simply don't exist.

[edit] The future

As mentioned, Grossman has a well-maintained and entertaining "portfolio" website.^[13]

At a separate website, which may be accessed through his main site, T-shirts bearing Grossman's designs are available.

As noted above, a third website, an online gallery of Grossman images from every stage of his career, is under construction, and will go online in Summer, 2007.

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

• Brief biography at askart.com
• The Nation, Grossman's contributor bio and partial archives page.
• Posteritati Poster Sellers, NYC
• Old and new Rolling Stone Covers, offered as posters by barewalls.com
• National Lampoon cover (1975), at "Mark's Very Large National Lampoon Site"

[edit] External Links

• The Best Of The Latest, at Mr. Grossman's Portfolio Website
• His "The Nation" contributor's page

• National Lampoon cover (1972), at "Mark's Very Large National Lampoon Site"
• "Back In The U.S.S.R." art (1969)