Jules Feiffer

Noted cartoonist, playwright, and author Jules Feiffer has been the face of American satire for sixty years. First gaining notoriety for his longstanding comic strip in the Village Voice, for which he won a Pulitzer Prize, Feiffer's energetic drawing style has become as recognizable as his acerbic, anti-establishment wit targeting everyone from Greenwich Village intellectuals to Henry Kissinger. Feiffer's lengthy career has encompassed several self-reinventions, including turns as a novelist, a children's book author and illustrator, and a writer for stage and screen---the latter venture resulting in an Academy Award for best short film for Munro (1961).This pen and ink drawing from 1980 features a favorite subject of Feiffer's, Richard Nixon. The president's glowering visage often appeared in comics for the Village Voice as well as independent portraits like this one. Paying particular attention to Nixon's eyebrows and jowls, Feiffer defines the former president's features through a series of frantically scribbled lines and shadowy washes. A vocal opponent of the war in Vietnam, Feiffer created some of his most devastating comics in response to Nixon's personality and policy during his time in office and after his resignation.