It’s springtime. Flowers are blooming, birds are singing, and even the Brooklyn-Queens expressway seems to hum with refreshed energy. Indoors, away from the sunshine and reverie, Maira Kalman’s work brings springtime to bookshelves and computer screens, even in the dead of winter.An established force in design and illustration, Maira Kalman so perfectly evokes the joy and humor that best suits the season. I’ve been looking back at her work with a much deeper consideration in recent weeks, finding that when someone’s work often greets you on the cover of the New Yorker, its easy to forget its artistic merit. Kalman’s work in design, photography, and nearly performative illustration all seems effortless. Her brilliant use of color and type is overshadowed by her spirit and whimsy. Her illustrations evoke the rainbow-hued vistas of Hockney’s Hollywood Hills and recent Yorkshire landscapes, and her portraits evoke Alice Neel at her brightest and most telling.
Kalman was born in Tel Aviv and raised in Riverdale, New York. She taught herself art and illustration, forming an idiosyncratic style free of rules or limitations. Her lack of training perhaps also led to her freedom to move between media: her illustrated version of Strunk and White’s Elements of Style is just as popular as the umbrellas and watches she designed with her husband, Tibor Kalman, for the MoMA. Her New Yorker covers are bright, intelligent, and inviting, and her series of columns for the New York Times (The Principles of Uncertainty and The Pursuit of Happiness) have invited praise from all over the world. There are fabric designs, clothes for Isaac Mizrahi, opera set pieces…Kalman approaches every medium with color, intelligence, and humor.
Like Saul Steinberg, Kalman treads the fine line between art and illustration, her sense of humor only serving to complicate matters further. Some would argue that hers is not high art and would not warrant display in museums. Others would say that her painterly images, her intelligent use of photography and text, and her general aptitude for expression would put her on the same pedestal as the greatest American artists.
Perhaps Kalman’s path to canonization as an artist will follow that of Alexander Calder. Calder was first associated with humorous newspaper columns, too, only to be viewed now as a major figure in the development of modern American art. Kalman would also qualify for such a rise in the ranks, and I look forward to betting on her odds.
