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.


© 2021. All content on this blog is protected by international copyright laws All images are copyrighted © by Steve Brodner or assignee. Apart from fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act, the use of any image from this site is prohibited unless prior written permission is obtained. All images used for illustrative purposes only


 Steve Brodner

 John Kerry Unbound
For The National Journal

Hungry Hungry Elephant, Mother Jones
American Illustration 2013

 How Will History Judge the Trump Presidency?
Vanity Fair

Gov. Dumpty
for The Nation

 Freud
The Chronicle of Higher Education

Fredi Gonzlez
For Atlanta Magazine

For The Progressive

Chris Christie
Fortune Magazine

 Buffoon Tycoon Baboon
for The Nation

 BIDEN - THE DAY AFTER

Bank of America’s Ken Lewis and his toxic Merrill Lynch dinner
for The Atlantic Monthly

Alec Baldwin Murals
for One Night Only

 Sound of Sarah
for The New Yorker

Safety Last,
for The Nation. Selected by the American Illustration jury

Ryan at Table

 Reservoir Runners
for The New Yorker

PRIDE
for The Village Voice

Point 45
for The Nation

 Pino

Obamalloon

Obama at the Breach
for The Nation

 Mitch’s Inauguration
for The Nation

Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko; imagining the Wall St. sequel.
for the NY Times

 Koch Brothers, from “Who Wants to Kill the Electric Car This Time?”
for the Sierra Club magazine

 Jurassic Year
for the Washington Post

Will Smith, His World, and Ours
for Newsweek

White Christmas
for the L.A. Times

 Unraveling
for The Nation

Trump gang

Trump Cabinet

 Trump and Clinton in the Media
for the New York Times

 The Trump Ring
for the Wall Street Journal

 The Sharpie Image
for the L.A. Times

The Pope
for The New Republic

 The Illustrated Man

The Court of Donald 
for the L.A. Times

152-Parents of 545 migrant children





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