 Photo by Hillary Harvey |
R.O. Blechman has been a major force in the field of illustration since the publication of The Juggler of Our Lady: A Medieval Legend in 1953, at the age of 22. For the past 30 years, Blechman has owned a house in the Columbia County hamlet of Ancram for 30 years—he and his wife Moisha moved in fulltime three years ago. Blechman's illustrations have appeared on 19 covers of the New Yorker, and also in the pages of Rolling Stone, the New York Times, and many other publications. His corporate clients have included Perrier, Alka-Seltzer, Enron, and IBM. Branching into animation, Blechman opened his own studio, The Ink Tank, in 1979. His hour long animated version of Igor Stravinsky's L'Histoire du Soldat was broadcast on PBS's "Great Performances" and won an Emmy for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Animation Programming." The Museum of Modern Art presented a retrospective of his animated films in January 2003.
Blechman has had one-man exhibits in New York, Paris, and Munich and his work is in the collection of The Museum of Modern Art, the Library of Congress, and Chase Manhattan Bank. In 1983 he was named Illustrator of the Year by Adweek and in 1999, he was elected to the Art Director's Hall of Fame. Blechman is currently working on an animated feature version of Nathaniel West's A Cool Million, a satiric Horatio Algeresque story set in the Depression.
Blechman's drawings are part of a group exhibit, "SKH/Political," which will be shown at SKH Gallery of Fine Art and Crafts in Great Barrington November 11 through December 1, with an opening reception on November 11, from 5 to 7pm. (413) 528-3300. Portfolio at www.roblechman.com.
—Brian K. Mahoney
 Fuel Shortage, the New Yorker, 1974 |
 Eustacia Tilly, the New Yorker, 1992 |
 Mother's Day, the New Yorker, 1990 |
R.O. Blechman on his work:
The Juggler of Our Lady
I did a graphic novel in college. (Who the hell knew what a graphic novel was at that point?) It was about the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. Kids think big, you know. It was shown to a publisher who said that they couldn't do much with the Roman Empire, it doesn't sell many books, but suggested I do something with a holiday theme. So I asked a friend of mine if he knew of any holiday-related material. And he said, "What about that medieval fable The Juggler of Our Lady?"
 Overpopulation, 1983 |
So one night, the year after I left college, I sat down at my kitchen table in Manhattan and wrote and drew the book. To my amazement, it got published. It was such an untypical book at the time—it was an adult picture book and it received extraordinary acclaim. I don't whether it was worth it or not—it threw my career for a loop. For the next 10 years I could hardly work. Success at an early age can be very disruptive; you're not ready for it. Instant success at any age can be difficult to handle, but when you're 22 years old, it can derail a career. It was only 10 years later—after a decade of intense freelance work—that I resumed doing what are now called graphic novels.
