| Issue #28, October 6, 2006 |
Jules Feiffer
I hate to leave you without a thing to do this weekend, but with Halloween and some other things coming up this month we’re going ahead to late October. The event that’s grabbed my attention has turned out to be an interesting collision of elements from my educational life. I found it in the School of Visual Arts alumni magazine, or maybe it was one of their e-mails. Jules Feiffer, esteemed professor at my other, now non-existent grad-school alma mater, Southampton College, will be speaking at the School of Visual Arts on Thursday, October 26. If you don’t know of Jules Feiffer, the man is above all things a social satirist, but for him that comes in many forms. His political cartoons had a 41-year run in the Village Voice and won him a Pulitzer. His playwriting has won him numerous awards. His most notable play, Little Murders, was made into a film and he wrote the screenplay for, among others, Carnal Knowledge, directed by Mike Nichols and starring Jack Nicholson and Art Garfunkel. In 1961 Feiffer won an Academy Award for his animated short, Munro. Heck, he wrote the screenplay for Popeye starring Robin Williams – I didn’t know that before researching this article and I had a class with the man.
Feiffer is focusing mainly on writing and illustrating children’s books these days. He’s not a young man, and this speaking appearance is to fall in conjunction with “The Masters Series: Jules Feiffer,” an annual award exhibition held at the Visual Arts Museum that will provide an in-depth retrospective of his 50-year career. The show will include works on paper, watercolors, cartoon strips, illustrations, and posters from film and stage productions. His latest book, The Long Chalkboard and Other Stories (Pantheon) written by his wife, Jenny Allen, and illustrated by Feiffer hits shelves on the 10th of this month, and Mr. Feiffer will be signing copies at the close of his lecture. There will also be a catalogue available with an interview by noted design authority Steven Heller. Heller is the chair of the School of Visual Arts MFA Design Department and the author or editor of over 70 books on graphic design.
I can say with authority that when he made it to class Jules Feiffer was an engaging professor with a breadth of experience from which to learn. His class “Humor and Truth” at Southampton College was always fun and delved into ideas of what is funny and how to accomplish humor in a simple way. My best example of this is our first assignment. He asked that we bring in something funny we had recently read. I, like some others in the class, tried to be impressive and brought in a piece by David Foster Wallace that described a famous writer lying by the pool, fat and reading crappy magazines in the hot sun. Jules just wanted a simple joke. A “Why did the chicken cross the road” kind of thing. I felt stupid, but he had a point. It was a refreshing break from what had become the MFA standard of literary pretense. To me this anecdote sums up Jules Feiffer – he gets to the meat of what is funny and absurd without all the noise and posturing that young writers often attempt to produce. His sparse drawings are also reflective of this.
My experiences at both the School of Visual Arts and Southampton College were positive. Jules Feiffer added a nice lesson and helped develop another piece of my varied education. If you like art or writing or both, it would be a wise decision to go see his show and hear him speak. Maybe even buy his new book. Definitely buy the catalogue. A show like this won’t be coming around again for a long time, and though he makes his way to the Hamptons regularly, you might not get an opportunity to meet and hear this accomplished man anytime in the near future.
The Jules Feiffer Lecture and Book Signing are on Thursday, October 26, 6:30 p.m. at 209 East 23 Street in the 3rd floor, Amphitheater. “The Masters Series: Jules Feiffer,” is on view at the Visual Arts Museum from October 24 – December 2. The show and lecture are free and open to the public.
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