R. O. Blechman
Encyclopedia
R. O. Blechman is an American
animator
, illustrator
, children's-book
author, graphic novel
ist and editorial cartoon
ist whose work has been the subject of retrospectives at the Museum of Modern Art
and other institutions. He was inducted into the Art Directors Hall of Fame in 1999.
Blechman's best-known works include the book The Juggler of Our Lady
(1953), television commercials for Alka-Seltzer
(1967) and other products, the animated PBS special Great Performances
: The Soldier's Tale, and numerous covers for The New Yorker
magazine.
, New York City
, New York
, and attended the High School of Music and Art and Oberlin College
, where he drew cartoons for the student newspaper
, The Oberlin Review
. Henry Holt
published his first book, The Juggler of Our Lady, a Christmas
retelling of the medieval legend, in 1953. A nine-minute animated short by Al Kouzel and Gene Deitch
, produced for Terrytoons
in 1958 and narrated by Boris Karloff
, earned a BAFTA Award nomination for Best Animated Film.
After being drafted into the United States Army
and serving in Asbury Park, New Jersey
, he was invited by animator
John Hubley
to join the advertising studio Storyboard Inc., where Blechman learned animation. He expanded into spot illustration and sequential-panel illustration for such magazines as Harper's Bazaar
, Trump
, Punch
, Esquire
, Humbug
, Theater Arts, and Show
; a humorous print campaign for Capezio
shoes; and drawings for Irving Trust
bank, The New School
, and D'Orsay perfumes, among others. His 1967 TV commercial for Alka-Seltzer
, for which he created the storyboard
and drawings, "remains a classic of American advertising".
During the 1970s, Blechman penned Vietnam War
editorial cartoons for the liberal alternative weekly The Village Voice
. That same decade, he produced the PBS Christmas television special
Simple Gifts (1977) which used his segment along with those of fellow illustrators Maurice Sendak
, James McMullan
, Seymour Chwast
, and Charles B. Slackman. In 1978 or 1979, Blechman founded the commercial-animation studio The Ink Tank.
Blechman directed 1984 PBS special The Soldier's Tale, an animated, one-hour adaptation of composer
Igor Stravinsky
's and playwright
C. F. Ramuz's theater piece L'Histoire du Soldat. The special won the Emmy Award
for Outstanding Individual Achievement - Animated Programming. The Museum of Modern Art
mounted the retrospective "R. O. Blechman and The Ink Tank: A Celebration", beginning on January 17, 2003.
Blechman wrote and illustrated the 2007 children's book
Franklin the Fly; and wrote the book Dear James: Letters to a Young Illustrator. His graphic stories are collected in Talking Lines. The French publisher Delpire published a collection of his artwork for the series "Poche Illustrateur", and his graphic novel
Georgie
, lived on Central Park West
in Manhattan
through 2003, moving that year to their weekend home in Ancram, New York
. They have two sons: Nicholas, at an unspecified time the art editor of The New York Times
Book Review; and Max, a graduate of the Sorbonne
, edited the collection Revolutionary Romanticism: A Drunken Boat Anthology
Emmy Awards and nomination
Video
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
animator
Animator
An animator is an artist who creates multiple images that give an illusion of movement called animation when displayed in rapid sequence; the images are called frames and key frames. Animators can work in a variety of fields including film, television, video games, and the internet. Usually, an...
, illustrator
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...
, children's-book
Children's literature
Children's literature is for readers and listeners up to about age twelve; it is often defined in four different ways: books written by children, books written for children, books chosen by children, or books chosen for children. It is often illustrated. The term is used in senses which sometimes...
author, graphic novel
Graphic novel
A graphic novel is a narrative work in which the story is conveyed to the reader using sequential art in either an experimental design or in a traditional comics format...
ist and editorial cartoon
Editorial cartoon
An editorial cartoon, also known as a political cartoon, is an illustration containing a commentary that usually relates to current events or personalities....
ist whose work has been the subject of retrospectives at the Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
and other institutions. He was inducted into the Art Directors Hall of Fame in 1999.
Blechman's best-known works include the book The Juggler of Our Lady
Le jongleur de Notre Dame
Le Jongleur de Notre Dame is a religious miracle story by the French author Anatole France, published in 1892 and based on an old medieval legend. Similar to the later Christmas carol The Little Drummer Boy, it tells the story of a juggler turned monk who has no gift to offer a statue of the Virgin...
(1953), television commercials for Alka-Seltzer
Alka-Seltzer
Alka-Seltzer is an effervescent antacid and pain reliever first marketed by the Dr. Miles Medicine Company. It was developed by Treneer in Elkhart Indiana. Alka-Seltzer is marketed for relief of minor aches, pains, inflammation, fever, headache, heartburn, sour stomach, indigestion, and hangovers,...
(1967) and other products, the animated PBS special Great Performances
Great Performances
Great Performances, a television series devoted to the performing arts, has been telecast on Public Broadcasting Service public television since 1972...
: The Soldier's Tale, and numerous covers for The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
magazine.
Life and career
Oscar Robert Blechman, whose professional name transposes the initials of his first two given names, was born in BrooklynBrooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
, 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...
, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, and attended the High School of Music and Art and Oberlin College
Oberlin College
Oberlin College is a private liberal arts college in Oberlin, Ohio, noteworthy for having been the first American institution of higher learning to regularly admit female and black students. Connected to the college is the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, the oldest continuously operating...
, where he drew cartoons for the student newspaper
Student newspaper
A student newspaper is a newspaper run by students of a university, high school, middle school, or other school. These papers traditionally cover local and, primarily, school or university news....
, The Oberlin Review
The Oberlin Review
The Oberlin Review is a student-run weekly newspaper at Oberlin College that serves as the official newspaper of record for both the College and the town of Oberlin, Ohio. It was first published in 1874, making it one of the oldest college newspapers in the nation...
. Henry Holt
Henry Holt
Henry Holt , was a book publisher and author.Henry Holt was born in Baltimore, Maryland on January 3, 1840.He graduated from Yale in 1862....
published his first book, The Juggler of Our Lady, a Christmas
Christmas
Christmas or Christmas Day is an annual holiday generally celebrated on December 25 by billions of people around the world. It is a Christian feast that commemorates the birth of Jesus Christ, liturgically closing the Advent season and initiating the season of Christmastide, which lasts twelve days...
retelling of the medieval legend, in 1953. A nine-minute animated short by Al Kouzel and Gene Deitch
Gene Deitch
Eugene Merril "Gene" Deitch is an American illustrator, animator and film director. He has been based in Prague, capital of Czechoslovakia and the present-day Czech Republic, since 1959. Since 1968, Deitch has been the leading animation director for the Connecticut organization Weston...
, produced for Terrytoons
Terrytoons
Terrytoons was an animation studio founded by Paul Terry. The studio, located in suburban New Rochelle, New York, operated from 1929 to 1968. Its most popular characters included Mighty Mouse, Gandy Goose, Sourpuss, Dinky Duck, Deputy Dawg, Luno and Heckle and Jeckle; these cartoons and all of its...
in 1958 and narrated by Boris Karloff
Boris Karloff
William Henry Pratt , better known by his stage name Boris Karloff, was an English actor.Karloff is best remembered for his roles in horror films and his portrayal of Frankenstein's monster in Frankenstein , Bride of Frankenstein , and Son of Frankenstein...
, earned a BAFTA Award nomination for Best Animated Film.
After being drafted into the United States Army
United States Army
The United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...
and serving in Asbury Park, New Jersey
Asbury Park, New Jersey
Asbury Park is a city in Monmouth County, New Jersey, United States, located on the Jersey Shore and part of the New York City Metropolitan Area. As of the 2010 United States Census, the city population was 16,116. The city is known for its rich musical history, including its association with...
, he was invited by animator
Animator
An animator is an artist who creates multiple images that give an illusion of movement called animation when displayed in rapid sequence; the images are called frames and key frames. Animators can work in a variety of fields including film, television, video games, and the internet. Usually, an...
John Hubley
John Hubley
John Hubley was an American animation director, art director, producer and writer of traditional animation films known for both his formal experimentation and for his emotional realism which stemmed from his tendency to cast his own children as voice actors in his films.- Biography :Hubley was...
to join the advertising studio Storyboard Inc., where Blechman learned animation. He expanded into spot illustration and sequential-panel illustration for such magazines as Harper's Bazaar
Harper's Bazaar
Harper’s Bazaar is an American fashion magazine, first published in 1867. Harper’s Bazaar is published by Hearst and, as a magazine, considers itself to be the style resource for “women who are the first to buy the best, from casual to couture.”...
, Trump
Trump (magazine)
Trump was a glossy magazine of satire and humor, mostly in the forms of comic-strip features and short stories. It was edited by Harvey Kurtzman and published by Hugh Hefner, with only two issues produced in 1957...
, Punch
Punch (magazine)
Punch, or the London Charivari was a British weekly magazine of humour and satire established in 1841 by Henry Mayhew and engraver Ebenezer Landells. Historically, it was most influential in the 1840s and 50s, when it helped to coin the term "cartoon" in its modern sense as a humorous illustration...
, Esquire
Esquire (magazine)
Esquire is a men's magazine, published in the U.S. by the Hearst Corporation. Founded in 1932, it flourished during the Great Depression under the guidance of founder and editor Arnold Gingrich.-History:...
, Humbug
Humbug
Humbug is an old term meaning hoax or jest. While the term was first described in 1751 as student slang, its etymology is unknown. Its present meaning as an exclamation is closer to 'nonsense' or 'gibberish', while as a noun, a humbug refers to a fraud or impostor, implying an element of...
, Theater Arts, and Show
Show (magazine)
Show is a bi-monthly magazine, founded and published by Sean Cummings in 2005. Show is geared toward young urban men and showcases glamour photography of female pin-up models from around the world...
; a humorous print campaign for Capezio
Capezio
Capezio is the trading name of Capezio Ballet Makers Inc, a specialist manufacturer of dance shoes, apparel and accessories.-History:Ballet Makers, Inc., of Totowa, New Jersey, was founded in 1887 by Salvatore Capezio....
shoes; and drawings for Irving Trust
Irving Trust
Irving Trust was a bank headquartered in New York City, and the principal subsidiary of the Irving Bank Corporation. Between 1913 and 1931, its headquarters was in the Woolworth Building; after 1931, until it was acquired by Bank of New York, its headquarters was located at One Wall Street, at...
bank, The New School
The New School
The New School is a university in New York City, located mostly in Greenwich Village. From its founding in 1919 by progressive New York academics, and for most of its history, the university was known as the New School for Social Research. Between 1997 and 2005 it was known as New School University...
, and D'Orsay perfumes, among others. His 1967 TV commercial for Alka-Seltzer
Alka-Seltzer
Alka-Seltzer is an effervescent antacid and pain reliever first marketed by the Dr. Miles Medicine Company. It was developed by Treneer in Elkhart Indiana. Alka-Seltzer is marketed for relief of minor aches, pains, inflammation, fever, headache, heartburn, sour stomach, indigestion, and hangovers,...
, for which he created the storyboard
Storyboard
Storyboards are graphic organizers in the form of illustrations or images displayed in sequence for the purpose of pre-visualizing a motion picture, animation, motion graphic or interactive media sequence....
and drawings, "remains a classic of American advertising".
During the 1970s, Blechman penned Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
editorial cartoons for the liberal alternative weekly The Village Voice
The Village Voice
The Village Voice is a free weekly newspaper and news and features website in New York City that features investigative articles, analysis of current affairs and culture, arts and music coverage, and events listings for New York City...
. That same decade, he produced the PBS Christmas television special
Television special
A television special is a television program which interrupts or temporarily replaces programming normally scheduled for a given time slot. Sometimes, however, the term is given to a telecast of a theatrical film, such as The Wizard of Oz or The Ten Commandments, which is not part of a regular...
Simple Gifts (1977) which used his segment along with those of fellow illustrators Maurice Sendak
Maurice Sendak
Maurice Bernard Sendak is an American writer and illustrator of children's literature. He is best known for his book Where the Wild Things Are, published in 1963.-Early life:...
, James McMullan
James McMullan
James McMullan is an illustrator and designer of theatrical posters.Born in Tsingtao, China, where his grandparents had emigrated from Ireland as missionaries for the Anglican Church, he and his mother fled to Canada at the onset of World War II. In 1944, he enrolled at St. Paul's Boarding School...
, Seymour Chwast
Seymour Chwast
Seymour Chwast an American graphic designer, illustrator, and type designer.Chwast was born in Bronx, New York, and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Cooper Union in 1951. With Milton Glaser, Edward Sorel, and Reynold Ruffins, he founded Push Pin Studios in 1954...
, and Charles B. Slackman. In 1978 or 1979, Blechman founded the commercial-animation studio The Ink Tank.
Blechman directed 1984 PBS special The Soldier's Tale, an animated, one-hour adaptation of composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....
's and playwright
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
C. F. Ramuz's theater piece L'Histoire du Soldat. The special won the Emmy Award
Emmy Award
An Emmy Award, often referred to simply as the Emmy, is a television production award, similar in nature to the Peabody Awards but more focused on entertainment, and is considered the television equivalent to the Academy Awards and the Grammy Awards .A majority of Emmys are presented in various...
for Outstanding Individual Achievement - Animated Programming. The Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
mounted the retrospective "R. O. Blechman and The Ink Tank: A Celebration", beginning on January 17, 2003.
Blechman wrote and illustrated the 2007 children's book
Children's literature
Children's literature is for readers and listeners up to about age twelve; it is often defined in four different ways: books written by children, books written for children, books chosen by children, or books chosen for children. It is often illustrated. The term is used in senses which sometimes...
Franklin the Fly; and wrote the book Dear James: Letters to a Young Illustrator. His graphic stories are collected in Talking Lines. The French publisher Delpire published a collection of his artwork for the series "Poche Illustrateur", and his graphic novel
Graphic novel
A graphic novel is a narrative work in which the story is conveyed to the reader using sequential art in either an experimental design or in a traditional comics format...
Georgie
Personal life
Blechman and his wife, Moisha Kubinyi, the daughter of painters Doris Hall and Kálmán KubinyiKálmán Kubinyi
Kálmán Mátyás Béla Kubinyi was an influential etcher, engraver and enamelist and a member of the so-called Cleveland School, a number of relatively prominent artists in Northeast Ohio that existed from about 1910 to 1960.Kubinyi was a modernist whose interpretations of the machine age through “ash...
, lived on Central Park West
Central Park West
Central Park West is an avenue that runs north-south in the New York City borough of Manhattan, in the United States....
in Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
through 2003, moving that year to their weekend home in Ancram, New York
Ancram, New York
Ancram, New York is a town in Columbia County, New York, United States. The population was 1,513 at the 2000 census. The town was named after a location in Scotland.The Town of Ancram is in the eastern part of the county.- History :...
. They have two sons: Nicholas, at an unspecified time the art editor of The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
Book Review; and Max, a graduate of the Sorbonne
Sorbonne
The Sorbonne is an edifice of the Latin Quarter, in Paris, France, which has been the historical house of the former University of Paris...
, edited the collection Revolutionary Romanticism: A Drunken Boat Anthology
Awards and honors
- AdweekAdweekAdweek is a weekly American advertising trade publication that was first published in 1978....
Illustrator of the Year, 1983 - AIGAAiga‘Aiga is a word in the Samoan language which means 'family.' The aiga is the family unit of Samoan society and differs from the Western sense in that it consists more than just a mother, father and children. The Samoan family, also referred to as an 'extended family' is based on the culture's...
Design Archives: The Soldier's Tale poster in category Promotional Design and Advertising, 1984 - Inductee, Art Director's Hall of Fame, 1999
- National Cartoonists Society Milton Caniff Lifetime Achievement Award, 2011
Emmy Awards and nomination
- 1983 Nomination: Outstanding Individual Achievement - Graphic DesignGraphic designGraphic design is a creative process – most often involving a client and a designer and usually completed in conjunction with producers of form – undertaken in order to convey a specific message to a targeted audience...
and Title Sequences: Nicholas Nickleby (syndicated), R.O. Blechman, Seymour ChwastSeymour ChwastSeymour Chwast an American graphic designer, illustrator, and type designer.Chwast was born in Bronx, New York, and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Cooper Union in 1951. With Milton Glaser, Edward Sorel, and Reynold Ruffins, he founded Push Pin Studios in 1954...
, Andy Ewan, graphic designers - 1984 Award: Outstanding Individual Achievement - Animated Programming: The Soldier's Tale (PBS), R.O. Blechman, director
External links
- Official blog at Huffington Post
Video
- "The Hand of R.O. Blechman" on Animation World Network Television