Ken Fallin
Encyclopedia
Ken Fallin is an American illustrator
and caricaturist. His first big break was in 1983 doing the posters and advertising for the popular satirical revue Forbidden Broadway
. In 1987, he was commissioned by the Boston Herald
to do a celebrity caricature every week in the Sunday theatre
section.
Fallin has illustrated roughly 500 notable people for the Wall Street Journal, including President Barack Obama
, Paul Newman
and Tim Russert
for Peggy Noonan
's memorial of the newsman in the paper.
His Forbidden Broadway posters promoted the show in London
, Tokyo
and Sydney
.
Outside of entertainment, Fallin developed relationships with corporate clientele, particularly American Express
, which engaged him on several national media campaigns as well as private work. Belvedere Vodka hired him to turn famous icons like the Playboy Bunny
and Quentin Tarantino
into bottles of the alcohol
. Other clients have included HBO, Showtime and Walt Disney Productions.
students. His father Aubrey enlisted as a Marine
in World War II
and fought on Iwo Jima
; his later career was in veterinary medicine
.
Fallin attended Robert E. Lee High School in Jacksonville
and graduated from Emerson College
in Boston, Massachusetts in 1974.
Wanting to become an actor, Fallin moved to New York City, where he approached the writer of Forbidden Broadway
about ideas for the show. From that initial meeting, Fallin's involvement with the show and the design of its poster art would last over twenty years.
He attended the Art Institute of Boston and Parsons School of Design, and studied drawing under famed cartoonist Mort Gerberg
. He currently lives in New York City
.
, Broadway theatre
, network television and, most notably, in print for publications such as In Style
and the Wall Street Journal. He considers legendary caricaturist Al Hirschfeld
as a major influence, and mimicked his style early in his career for the Forbidden Broadway
work. Other influences include the German "degenerate
" portrait artists of the 1920s, Aubrey Beardsley
, Frank Gehry
, Eero Saarinen
, Richard Avedon
, Irving Penn
, and Dame Edna Everage
.
, and caricaturist Al Hirschfeld
’s work defined that genre early on. The producers of the show wanted Fallin's posters to resemble Hirschfeld's style to spoof his famous pen and ink drawings.
The show's success meant Fallin's work was shown in London
, Los Angeles
, Tokyo
, and Sydney. In 2009, Fallin completed work on the third London revival of "Forbidden Broadway", as well as illustrations for a new book on the lyrics from the show.
In 2006, Fallin presented Tony Award
–winning costume designer
Alvin Colt
with a portrait on his 90th birthday.
Broadwayworld.com announced in September 2009 that Fallin would contribute to the site a sketch of a musical theater star each week.
Print
In 1994 Fallin began doing illustrations of sports figures for the Wall Street Journal, which led to him doing the 1994 Winter Olympics
for the paper. He was subsequently asked to submit caricatures for the lifestyle and business sections. After he submitted an unsolicited portrait of the recently-deceased Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.
, he began work drawing famous citizens for their obituaries.
to sketch all of the company's vice presidents, which were to be projected behind them at a corporate banquet. The relationship with the credit card company continued when in 1990 they commissioned Fallin for several nationwide print ad campaigns in the United States
. One included Amex's salute to famous restaurants and chefs, whom he illustrated. For another corporate client, he turned the Playboy bunny
, Quentin Tarantino
, and the U.S. World Poker Tour
champions into bottles of Belvedere Vodka. Other corporate work has included Hong Kong Disneyland
and BMG Records.
Illustrator
An Illustrator is a narrative artist who specializes in enhancing writing by providing a visual representation that corresponds to the content of the associated text...
and caricaturist. His first big break was in 1983 doing the posters and advertising for the popular satirical revue Forbidden Broadway
Forbidden Broadway
Forbidden Broadway is an Off-Broadway satirical revue conceived, written and directed by Gerard Alessandrini. The original version of the revue opened on January 15, 1982 at Palsson's Supper Club in New York City and ran for 2,332 performances. Alessandrini has rewritten the show over a dozen...
. In 1987, he was commissioned by the Boston Herald
Boston Herald
The Boston Herald is a daily newspaper that serves Boston, Massachusetts, United States, and its surrounding area. It was started in 1846 and is one of the oldest daily newspapers in the United States...
to do a celebrity caricature every week in the Sunday theatre
Theatre
Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...
section.
Fallin has illustrated roughly 500 notable people for the Wall Street Journal, including President Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
, Paul Newman
Paul Newman
Paul Leonard Newman was an American actor, film director, entrepreneur, humanitarian, professional racing driver and auto racing enthusiast...
and Tim Russert
Tim Russert
Timothy John "Tim" Russert was an American television journalist and lawyer who appeared for more than 16 years as the longest-serving moderator of NBC's Meet the Press. He was a senior vice president at NBC News, Washington bureau chief and also hosted the eponymous CNBC/MSNBC weekend interview...
for Peggy Noonan
Peggy Noonan
Peggy Noonan is an American author of seven books on politics, religion, and culture and a weekly columnist for The Wall Street Journal...
's memorial of the newsman in the paper.
His Forbidden Broadway posters promoted the show in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, Tokyo
Tokyo
, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...
and Sydney
Sydney
Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...
.
Outside of entertainment, Fallin developed relationships with corporate clientele, particularly American Express
American Express
American Express Company or AmEx, is an American multinational financial services corporation headquartered in Three World Financial Center, Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States. Founded in 1850, it is one of the 30 components of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The company is best...
, which engaged him on several national media campaigns as well as private work. Belvedere Vodka hired him to turn famous icons like the Playboy Bunny
Playboy Bunny
A Playboy Bunny is a waitress at the Playboy Club. The Playboy Clubs were originally open from 1960 to 1988. The Club re-opened in one location in The Palms Hotel in Las Vegas in 2006...
and Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Jerome Tarantino is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and actor. In the early 1990s, he began his career as an independent filmmaker with films employing nonlinear storylines and the aestheticization of violence...
into bottles of the alcohol
Alcohol
In chemistry, an alcohol is an organic compound in which the hydroxy functional group is bound to a carbon atom. In particular, this carbon center should be saturated, having single bonds to three other atoms....
. Other clients have included HBO, Showtime and Walt Disney Productions.
Background
On November 11, 1948, Kenneth Aubrey Fallin was born to Velma and Aubrey Fallin. His mother taught elementary school and worked with special needsSpecial needs
In the USA, special needs is a term used in clinical diagnostic and functional development to describe individuals who require assistance for disabilities that may be medical, mental, or psychological. For instance, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and the International...
students. His father Aubrey enlisted as a Marine
United States Marine Corps
The United States Marine Corps is a branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for providing power projection from the sea, using the mobility of the United States Navy to deliver combined-arms task forces rapidly. It is one of seven uniformed services of the United States...
in World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
and fought on Iwo Jima
Iwo Jima
Iwo Jima, officially , is an island of the Japanese Volcano Islands chain, which lie south of the Ogasawara Islands and together with them form the Ogasawara Archipelago. The island is located south of mainland Tokyo and administered as part of Ogasawara, one of eight villages of Tokyo...
; his later career was in veterinary medicine
Veterinary medicine
Veterinary Medicine is the branch of science that deals with the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of disease, disorder and injury in non-human animals...
.
Fallin attended Robert E. Lee High School in Jacksonville
Jacksonville, Florida
Jacksonville is the largest city in the U.S. state of Florida in terms of both population and land area, and the largest city by area in the contiguous United States. It is the county seat of Duval County, with which the city government consolidated in 1968...
and graduated from Emerson College
Emerson College
Emerson College is a private coeducational university located in Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1880 by Charles Wesley Emerson as a "school of oratory," Emerson is "the only comprehensive college or university in America dedicated exclusively to communication and the arts in a liberal arts...
in Boston, Massachusetts in 1974.
Wanting to become an actor, Fallin moved to New York City, where he approached the writer of Forbidden Broadway
Forbidden Broadway
Forbidden Broadway is an Off-Broadway satirical revue conceived, written and directed by Gerard Alessandrini. The original version of the revue opened on January 15, 1982 at Palsson's Supper Club in New York City and ran for 2,332 performances. Alessandrini has rewritten the show over a dozen...
about ideas for the show. From that initial meeting, Fallin's involvement with the show and the design of its poster art would last over twenty years.
He attended the Art Institute of Boston and Parsons School of Design, and studied drawing under famed cartoonist Mort Gerberg
Mort Gerberg
Mort Gerberg is an American cartoonist whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, Playboy, and Publishers Weekly, among other magazines...
. He currently lives in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
.
Career
Fallin's career has spanned work in advertisingAdvertising
Advertising is a form of communication used to persuade an audience to take some action with respect to products, ideas, or services. Most commonly, the desired result is to drive consumer behavior with respect to a commercial offering, although political and ideological advertising is also common...
, Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
, network television and, most notably, in print for publications such as In Style
In Style
InStyle is a monthly women’s fashion magazine published in the United States by Time Inc. Along with advertising, the magazine offers articles about beauty, fashion, home, entertaining, charitable endeavors and celebrity lifestyles. Launched in 1993 , InStyle currently has a circulation of 1.7...
and the Wall Street Journal. He considers legendary caricaturist Al Hirschfeld
Al Hirschfeld
Albert "Al" Hirschfeld was an American caricaturist best known for his simple black and white portraits of celebrities and Broadway stars.-Personal life:Born in St...
as a major influence, and mimicked his style early in his career for the Forbidden Broadway
Forbidden Broadway
Forbidden Broadway is an Off-Broadway satirical revue conceived, written and directed by Gerard Alessandrini. The original version of the revue opened on January 15, 1982 at Palsson's Supper Club in New York City and ran for 2,332 performances. Alessandrini has rewritten the show over a dozen...
work. Other influences include the German "degenerate
Degenerate art
Degenerate art is the English translation of the German entartete Kunst, a term adopted by the Nazi regime in Germany to describe virtually all modern art. Such art was banned on the grounds that it was un-German or Jewish Bolshevist in nature, and those identified as degenerate artists were...
" portrait artists of the 1920s, Aubrey Beardsley
Aubrey Beardsley
Aubrey Vincent Beardsley was an English illustrator and author. His drawings, done in black ink and influenced by the style of Japanese woodcuts, emphasized the grotesque, the decadent, and the erotic. He was a leading figure in the Aesthetic movement which also included Oscar Wilde and James A....
, Frank Gehry
Frank Gehry
Frank Owen Gehry, is a Canadian American Pritzker Prize-winning architect based in Los Angeles, California.His buildings, including his private residence, have become tourist attractions...
, Eero Saarinen
Eero Saarinen
Eero Saarinen was a Finnish American architect and industrial designer of the 20th century famous for varying his style according to the demands of the project: simple, sweeping, arching structural curves or machine-like rationalism.-Biography:Eero Saarinen shared the same birthday as his father,...
, Richard Avedon
Richard Avedon
Richard Avedon was an American photographer. An obituary published in The New York Times said that "his fashion and portrait photographs helped define America's image of style, beauty and culture for the last half-century."-Photography career:Avedon was born in New York City to a Jewish Russian...
, Irving Penn
Irving Penn
Irving Penn was an American photographer known for his portraiture and fashion photography.-Early career:Irving Penn studied under Alexey Brodovitch at the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art from which he was graduated in 1938. Penn's drawings were published by Harper's Bazaar and he...
, and Dame Edna Everage
Dame Edna Everage
Dame Edna is a character created and played by Australian dadaist performer and comedian, Barry Humphries, famous for her lilac-coloured or "wisteria hue" hair and cat eye glasses or "face furniture," her favorite flower, the gladiola and her boisterous greeting: "Hello Possums!" As Dame Edna,...
.
Broadway
Forbidden Broadway is a show that satirizes musical theatreMusical theatre
Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...
, and caricaturist Al Hirschfeld
Al Hirschfeld
Albert "Al" Hirschfeld was an American caricaturist best known for his simple black and white portraits of celebrities and Broadway stars.-Personal life:Born in St...
’s work defined that genre early on. The producers of the show wanted Fallin's posters to resemble Hirschfeld's style to spoof his famous pen and ink drawings.
The show's success meant Fallin's work was shown in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
, Tokyo
Tokyo
, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...
, and Sydney. In 2009, Fallin completed work on the third London revival of "Forbidden Broadway", as well as illustrations for a new book on the lyrics from the show.
In 2006, Fallin presented Tony Award
Tony Award
The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Theatre, more commonly known as a Tony Award, recognizes achievement in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual ceremony in New York City. The awards are given for Broadway...
–winning costume designer
Costume Designer
A costume designer or costume mistress/master is a person whose responsibility is to design costumes for a film or stage production. He or she is considered an important part of the "production team", working alongside the director, scenic and lighting designers as well as the sound designer. The...
Alvin Colt
Alvin Colt
Alvin Colt was an American costume designer. Colt worked on over 50 Broadway shows.His first job was in a theatrical fabric house, he also worked on painting scenery during the summer. On the Town was the first Broadway show he worked on in 1944...
with a portrait on his 90th birthday.
Broadwayworld.com announced in September 2009 that Fallin would contribute to the site a sketch of a musical theater star each week.
1994 Winter Olympics
The 1994 Winter Olympics, officially known as the XVII Olympic Winter Games, was a winter multi-sport event celebrated from 12 to 27 February 1994 in and around Lillehammer, Norway. Lillehammer failed to win the bid for the 1992 event. Lillehammer was awarded the games in 1988, after having beat...
for the paper. He was subsequently asked to submit caricatures for the lifestyle and business sections. After he submitted an unsolicited portrait of the recently-deceased Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.
Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.
Douglas Elton Fairbanks, Jr. KBE was an American actor and a highly decorated naval officer of World War II.-Early life:...
, he began work drawing famous citizens for their obituaries.
Corporate
Fallin was first hired by American ExpressAmerican Express
American Express Company or AmEx, is an American multinational financial services corporation headquartered in Three World Financial Center, Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States. Founded in 1850, it is one of the 30 components of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The company is best...
to sketch all of the company's vice presidents, which were to be projected behind them at a corporate banquet. The relationship with the credit card company continued when in 1990 they commissioned Fallin for several nationwide print ad campaigns in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. One included Amex's salute to famous restaurants and chefs, whom he illustrated. For another corporate client, he turned the Playboy bunny
Playboy Bunny
A Playboy Bunny is a waitress at the Playboy Club. The Playboy Clubs were originally open from 1960 to 1988. The Club re-opened in one location in The Palms Hotel in Las Vegas in 2006...
, Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Jerome Tarantino is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and actor. In the early 1990s, he began his career as an independent filmmaker with films employing nonlinear storylines and the aestheticization of violence...
, and the U.S. World Poker Tour
World Poker Tour
The World Poker Tour is a series of international poker tournaments and associated television series broadcasting the final table of each tournament. It was started in the United States by attorney/television producer Steven Lipscomb, who served as CEO of WPT Enterprises , the firm that...
champions into bottles of Belvedere Vodka. Other corporate work has included Hong Kong Disneyland
Hong Kong Disneyland
Hong Kong Disneyland is located on reclaimed land in Penny's Bay, Lantau Island. It is the first theme park located inside the Hong Kong Disneyland Resort and is owned and managed by the Hong Kong International Theme Parks. The park opened to visitors on 12 September 2005...
and BMG Records.
External links
- Ken Fallin official website
- Trixie & Kenny, Fallin's blog for his alter egoAlter egoAn alter ego is a second self, which is believe to be distinct from a person's normal or original personality. The term was coined in the early nineteenth century when dissociative identity disorder was first described by psychologists...
"Trixie" - Bernstein & Andriulli, artist's representatives