Artist of the day: Artist of the Day, February 12, 2021: Steve Brodner, an American illustrator, caricaturist, journalist, author, educator, lecturer, and political commentator (#1205)

Friday, February 12, 2021

Artist of the Day, February 12, 2021: Steve Brodner, an American illustrator, caricaturist, journalist, author, educator, lecturer, and political commentator (#1205)

Steve Brodner (1954) is an illustrator, caricaturist, journalist, author, educator, lecturer, and political commentator, is accepted in the fields of journalism and the graphic arts as a master of the editorial idiom.

After winning the 1974 Population Institute Cartoon Contest for his cartoon and getting his BFA at Cooper Union in 1976, Brodner became the editorial cartoonist for The Hudson Dispatch in Union City, New Jersey, beginning a freelance illustration career that would span over four decades. By 1977 art director Steven Heller of The New York Times Book Review began tapping him for illustration assignments.

In 1981 he became a regular contributor to Harper’s Magazine with the monthly feature, “Ars Politica”, a name given it by Lewis Lapham, Harper’s editor.

In the late 1980s, as media became more critical of the popular Ronald Reagan, more magazines and newspapers commissioned Brodner to contribute. These included The National Lampoon, Sports Illustrated, Playboy, and Spy.Brodner has covered twelve national political conventions through visual essays for Esquire, The Progressive, Harpers, the Village Voice and others.

In 1988, Esquire brought him in as an unofficial house artist doing portraits, caricature, art journalism, and a monthly full-page political cartoon “Adversaria”. Since then he has worked for most major publications in the US and Canada.

His article, “Plowed Under”, a series of portraits and interviews with Midwestern family farmers abandoned by Reagan Era policies, ran in The Progressive, a mecca for US political art at the time.

The first Bush administration led to and increase in opportunities in popular media from caricaturing the desperate, ineffectual president George H.W. Bush . . . . . . to portraits of anti-Gulf War demonstrators. His book “Davy Crockett” was animated and produced in 1992, narrated by Nicholas Cage.

As the Clinton Era drew near, Brodner was featured in more and more major political publications, from Mother Jones to the Village Voice. Tomorrow’s News Tonight was a free-wheeling weekly cartoon, syndicated in alternative weeklies across the country.

Brodner covered Ollie North’s Virginia Senate Campaign for The New Yorker in 1996, the first stop of which was a gun shop. At the New Yorker he contributed cartoons, portraits, journalism, satire of many kinds.

In 1996 Brodner was a commentator in PBS’s Frontline documentary about the presidential election, “The Choice”, in which he commented and drew on camera.

Many projects followed, including climbing Mt. Fuji for Outside Magazine in 1997 and pieces focused on the epidemic of gun violence in the U.S. around this time, continuing into the 2000s for The Village Voice, The Nation, and Philadelphia Magazine.

His eight-page profile of George W. Bush appeared in the October ’98 issue of Esquire. Traveling for 10 days with the future candidate, Steve saw and reported on the attitude and political circle that would shape American history in the 00’s. At the New Yorker he illustrated his own pieces as well as those of contributing writers included Andy Borowitz, John Lee Anderson, Joe Klein, David Remnick and many more. His 1999 cover was an early comment on the 2000 presidential race between Al Gore and George W. Bush.

After the September 11th attacks, Steve Brodner made an independent film on the missing from the photos he took wandering the city and attending memorials. “September, 2001” was shown in conjunction with the Sundance Film Festival, 2002.

Steve made guest appearances on a variety of shows around this time, such as This Week with George Stephanopoulos, The Leonard Lopate Show, PBS Chicago, etc.

In 2007 he engaged in the first web-film series to be linked to a major magazine. “The Naked Campaign”, a series of thirty-three short videos with corresponding magazine art, documented the campaign that resulted in the election of Barack Obama.

In the summer of 2016 he covered both political conventions for the Village Voice, with art going live on social media.

In May, 2017 Viacom commissioned him to paint three murals for a “One Night Only” tribute to Alec Baldwin that decorated the stage of the Apollo theater in NY for the Paramount TV presentation.

His historical pages were seen in the LA Times and Tablet magazine concerning the surprising origins of Memorial Day, Mothers Day, the first Jewish settlement in New York, etc.

In addition to his editorial work, Steve Brodner is currently illustrating animation pieces for ABC Disney’s The Alec Baldwin Show.

Throughout his career Steve Brodner expanded his illustration boundaries by originating, writing, editing and designing his own articles for publication.

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