Robert S. Grossman

Died March 1, 1940 – March 15, 2018,New York, New York

College: Berkeley
Major: Fine Arts

Widow: Ms. Elaine Louie
19 Crosby Street
New York, NY 10013-3102
212-925-1965
bob@robertgrossman.com
robertgrossman.com

Children: Alexander, 1966; Michael, 1954; Leila, 1971; Anna, 1980
Grandchildren: miles, 1998; dandara, 2001; lyra, 2002; aliya, 2006

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/robert-grossman-illustrator-who-caricatured-presidents-and-designed-airplane-poster-dies-at-78/2018/03/20/19b8209c-2c4c-11e8-8ad6-fbc50284fce8_story.html?utm_term=.79734a9ccaa9

Robert Grossman, a prodigious illustrator and caricaturist who created a surreal movie poster for “Airplane!” and used the airbrush as an artistic lance, lampooning presidents from Richard M. Nixon to Donald Trump in gorgeous magazine covers and acerbic comic strips, died March 15 at his home in Manhattan. He was 78.

Mr. Grossman was found dead on Friday morning and was believed to have died of congestive heart failure the previous night, said his son Alex Emanuel Grossman.

A painter, cartoonist, sculptor and artist of the airbrush, Mr. Grossman designed book and record covers and contributed illustrations to a ream of publications, including Rolling Stone, Time, Mother Jones, the Nation, the New York Observer and New York magazine.

He created a comic about a black superhero (Captain Melanin) in the 1960s; received an Academy Award nomination in 1978 for “Jimmy the C,” a claymation short in which President Jimmy Carter sang Ray Charles’s version of “Georgia on My Mind”; and devised the promotional poster for the 1980 satirical disaster film “Airplane!,” painting a jetliner whose fuselage had somehow twisted itself into a knot.

Yet, he was best known as an equal-opportunity caricaturist, targeting cultural figures from Playboy founder Hugh Hefner (partially obscured by a comically large pair of breasts) to tennis player Jimmy Connors (drawn as an infant sticking his tongue out on the court), and tweaking presidents regardless of their political party.

A 1972 magazine cover by Mr. Grossman, caricaturing President Richard M. Nixon and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger. (Robert Grossman)

Mr. Grossman transmogrified Ronald Reagan into a Mickey Mouse-like “Ronald Rodent,” painted Carter as an overall-wearing hayseed, and in 2005 drew a controversial cartoon of “Babe Lincoln” for the Nation, inspired by a biography that argued Abraham Lincoln was gay.

He seemed to have a particular fondness for Nixon, who swept into office just as Mr. Grossman’s career was taking off in the late 1960s. For one Watergate-era cover of Britain’s Sunday Times Magazine, Mr. Grossman depicted the president as an overflowing faucet, water plunging out of his steely nostrils. For National Lampoon, he imagined Nixon as an eggplant-nosed Pinocchio, with a Jiminy Cricket-like Henry Kissinger perched atop his proboscis.

While Mr. Grossman’s work was frequently incisive, cartoonist Drew Friedman wrote by email, it also had a whimsical quality that “set him apart from most of his best contemporaries, among them David Levine and Edward Sorel, who were masters at playing up the grotesque.”

In part, the whimsy was a result of Mr. Grossman’s favored tool, the airbrush, which allowed him to effectively sculpt three-dimensional figures out of paint or ink. The technique was later adopted by humorists such as Terry Gilliam of Monty Python, although at the time Mr. Grossman first picked up an airbrush — as a child at his father’s silk-screen printing shop in Brooklyn — the device was not widely used in the art world.

“He made the airbrush an expressive medium, where before it was just an objective tool that commercial artists used to add dimension or take things out of an illustration,” said Steven Heller, a former New York Times art director who co-chairs the MFA design department at the School of Visual Arts in New York. “What Bob did was create a style that just jumped off the page.”

Robert Samuel Grossman was born in Brooklyn on March 1, 1940. His mother worked as a bookkeeper for his father, who painted in his spare time and instilled an appreciation of fine art in Mr. Grossman and his siblings.

Mr. Grossman said he turned toward humor in the 1950s reading Mad magazine, which “appeared like a nearly divine revelation,” he told the Tennessean newspaper. He befriended the magazine’s founding editor, cartoonist Harvey Kurtzman, while studying at Yale University, where he edited the Yale Record humor magazine and graduated in 1961.

A detail of the movie poster designed by Mr. Grossman for “Airplane!” (1980). (Robert Grossman)

One of his designs for the Record, a parody cover of the “Yew Norker,” apparently helped him get a job at the New Yorker magazine, where he said he worked “as a sub-assistant cartoon editor” before becoming a freelance illustrator.

His marriages to Donna Lundvall and Vicki Morgan ended in divorce.

Survivors include his partner of 24 years, Elaine Louie; three children from his first marriage, Michael Grossman Rimbaud and Alex Emanuel Grossman, both of Manhattan, and Leila Grossman of Nashville; a daughter from his second marriage, Anna Grossman Pedicone of Manhattan; two brothers; and five grandchildren.

At the time of his death, Mr. Grossman had just completed an illustrated novel about the “Great Moon Hoax” of 1835, in which the New York Sun reported that winged beings lived on the surface of the moon. Titled “Life on the Moon,” the book is scheduled to be published in 2019.

Mr. Grossman had also written a comic strip, “Twump and Pooty,” lampooning Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. The serial followed in the tradition of his series about O-man (a heroic President Barack Obama) and Cap’n Bushy (a flying squirrel modeled after President George H.W. Bush).

He said he just couldn’t resist using fake names for his strips’ famous protagonists.

“The cowardly strategy of not calling people by their right names has been employed since the first fool told a funny story about a bear named Hairy, to avoid getting his head cut off by King Harry,” Mr. Grossman told the Atlantic in 2012.

“And it might possibly be funnier than drearily calling a spade a spade. The art of caricature enchants me for its similar ability to combine truth and falsehood in a strangely appealing way.”

remembers:
Yes, he will be missed. Made my life at Yale more enjoyable.

Nick

n.nobbe@verizon.net

————

Major talent….

And a very nice gent.

Victor Miller

vicmill1@comcast.net

—————

Sorry to learn about your friend.

May he Rest In Peace.

Dianna

ddudley48@yahoo.com

——————

I was very familar with Grossman’s work, if not his name. His clever caricatures were nonpareil!

Hedi

hedibutler@aol.com

—————-

Thanks so much for sharing this with me, Ted! I was/am a fan of Grossman’s work but admit I had no idea how MUCH he had created so brilliantly.

Jan

milbrat42@yahoo.com

————————-

On 2018Apr 17, at 12:07 PM, alex emanuel <alexemanuel@gmail.com> wrote:

Thank you for getting back to me Ted, I wrote Andy back as well. I look fwd to receiving those emails! Best, Alex

Alex Emanuel

SAG-AFTRA, AEA Actor. Writer. Director. Producer. Musician. Artist.

Alex Emanuel’s Website

http://imdb.me/alexemanuel

—————————-

On Tue, Apr 17, 2018 at 11:16 AM, Andrew Block <akbscb@aol.com> wrote:

Alex,

This is Andy Block, another Yale classmate of your dad’s who was a class treasure. I did not know him at Yale, but became a friend when the class asked him to draw a cartoon of me that was presented upon my completion of a ten year class presidency in 1996. I invited him to present at the Chicago Humanities Festival five years later after seeing him present at one of our five year reunions in New Haven. He was outstanding and was very well received by a most appreciative audience. Every reunion, he would give the class a cartoon of Handsome Dan that would be featured in our reunion book. They were all masterpieces, showing his extraordinary wit and wisdom which were spot on as we aged together.

I had the pleasure of recognizing Bob’s contributions to 1961 at our 55th reunion in 2016 when we honored him with a special gift given to distinguished classmates for their service to our class. I believe that he has drawn something for us every year since the beginning of time!

Since I was the one in recent times to do the asking, we talked at least every five years and he would always say yes, even in 2016 when he had some serious health issues. There was always humor, warmth and very appealing irreverence in his voice. I will miss these conversations and 1961 will miss his brilliance. He was a true giant, and a very gentle one at that. I will send you a copy of his characterization of me for which he apologized by making my hair too gray!! He offered to darken it, but I rejected his kindness as I have now grown into it!

How wonderful that you will keep him alive! I think of him daily as his genius is in my office and when I see his drawing, I just smile and say, thank you Bob.

With great admiration for your dad,

Andy

Sent from my iPhone

—————————————-

On Apr 17, 2018, at 3:38 PM, ted ledbetter <tedled@aya.yale.edu> wrote:

… good to hear from you, Alex … thanks for your thanks … glad to share with Bob and with you

… i have added you to my personal private email-list … feel free to comment and/or question anytyme

… best wishes for your projects

———————

On 2018Apr 13, at 6:58 PM, Robert Grossman <art@robertgrossman.com> wrote:

Ted, this is Alex, Robert Grossman’s son. Wanted to thank you. Dad has forwarded me emails from you for years and I’ve always enjoyed reading them. Please keep in touch, I’m trying to keep his art alive via here (new email art@robertgrossman.com) and I can also be reached at alexemanuel@gmail.com. I’m hoping to have retrospective book and show for him as well as a documentary, a personal project of mine. Thank you for your long friendship with Dad. Best, Alex Emanuel Grossman

On Fri, Apr 13, 2018 at 11:40 AM, ted ledbetter <tedled@aya.yale.edu> wrote:

t———— nowHere ————- doo-it-myCelf

To: tedled’s email list (health / wellth / fun / tek / freedom)

———- since 2006 ———— for spiritual beings piloting physical bodies

tedled’s notes: Bob Grossman was a personal friend. We met as classmates in Hendrie Hall, a center for creative students like Bob at the Yale Record humor magazine upstairs and me at WYBC AM&FM student managed&operated Yale Broadcasting Company downstairs. He often emailed me his feedback to my Friday emails in recent years. I will miss his good spirit and whimsical arts.

Here’s what was sent to all our classmates recently:

From: Lou Allyn <lallyn@snet.net>

Subject: Robert Grossman March 1, 1940 – March 15, 2018

Date: 2018Apr 9 at 6:11:58 AM CDT

To: <tedled@aya.yale.edu>

Reply-To: Lou Allyn <lallyn@snet.net>

<340ed831-03a7-4ad5-a80e-2ae3028dad50.jpg>

TO ALL CLASSMATES

Dear Theodore,..

Robert Grossman, illustrator who caricatured presidents

and designed ‘Airplane!’ poster, dies at 78

———————————— END ———————————-

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——————————————————————————

Robert Grossman (1940-2018) was a New York based illustrator whose work has been seen in the New York Times, The New Yorker, The Nation, Sports Illustrated, Rolling Stone and many other publications.

www.robertgrossman.com

#robertgrossmanart

—

Alex Emanuel

SAG-AFTRA, AEA Actor. Writer. Director. Producer. Musician. Artist.

Alex Emanuel’s Website

http://imdb.me/alexemanuel

Theodore Ledbetter remembers:
Bob Grossman was a personal friend. We met as classmates in Hendrie Hall, a center for creative students like Bob at the Yale Record humor magazine upstairs and me at WYBC AM&FM student managed&operated Yale Broadcasting Company downstairs. He often emailed me his feedback to my Friday emails in recent years. I will miss his good spirit and whimsical arts.