Harvey Kurtzman attended the High School of Music and Art (later merged with the High School of Performing Arts to establish the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts).
College/University
Gallery of Harvey Kurtzman
200 Willoughby Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11205, United States
Harvey Kurtzman took classes at the Pratt Institute.
Gallery of Harvey Kurtzman
30 Cooper Sq, New York, NY 10003, United States
Harvey Kurtzman attended the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art.
Career
Gallery of Harvey Kurtzman
Will Elder and Harvey Kurtzman
Gallery of Harvey Kurtzman
Harvey Kurtzman
Gallery of Harvey Kurtzman
Harvey Kurtzman
Gallery of Harvey Kurtzman
Harvey Kurtzman
Gallery of Harvey Kurtzman
From left to right: Harvey Kurtzman, Will Elder, a Playboy bunny, and Jack Davis.
Harvey Kurtzman attended the High School of Music and Art (later merged with the High School of Performing Arts to establish the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts).
Harvey Kurtzman was an American cartoonist, artist, editor, educator, and author. He helped create and found Mad magazine.
Background
Harvey Kurtzman was born on October 3, 1924, in Brooklyn, New York, United States. He was the son of David and Edith Kurtzman. His parents were Russian-Ukrainian Jewish, though his father converted to Christian Science. When Harvey was four his father refused to treat a bleeding ulcer and just prayed to be cured, as his church taught him. He died. Harvey's mother placed her children in an orphanage for three months until she found a job as a hatmaker. She remarried a brass engraver who was active in trade unions. His stepfather encouraged his artistic abilities. Harvey had a brother, Zachary, and a half-brother, Daniel.
Education
Harvey Kurtzman took classes at the Pratt Institute and the Brooklyn Museum and attended the High School of Music and Art (later merged with the High School of Performing Arts to establish the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts), where he met Will Elder, with whom he would collaborate for the rest of his life. Kurtzman attended Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art on scholarship at night while he worked a number of day jobs before finding his niche with a comic book art shop whose clients included Classic Comics, the publisher of literary classics in comic book form. He quit Cooper Union and concentrated on improving his comic book style.
As Harvey Kurtzman’s work began appearing in a number of titles, he was drafted into the army, where he spent his two years creating visual training aids. When he was released, Kurtzman freelanced, producing strips for newspapers and his popular "Hey Look!" strip for Timely Comics (later Marvel Comics). In 1950 Kurtzman began working for E.C. Comics, published by William M. Gaines. E.C. series titles like The Vault of Horror and Tales from the Crypt stirred up the 1954 congressional fuss over comics that resulted in the Comics Code. Kurtzman’s work for E.C. consisted primarily of the realistically drawn and well-researched war comics popular during the Korean War period. His depiction of war was not glamorous. His war stories, which show the waste of human life, were usually drawn by E.C. artists Elder, John Severin. Wallace Wood, Jack Davis, and George Evans. Kurtzman drew some of his own artwork, but he spent most of his time writing, researching, and laying out four stories each month. Unlike most publishers of the time, Gaines allowed his artists to sign their art, which reflected the pride in their work.
In 1952 Gaines agreed to let Kurtzman publish Mad, and the first issue was dated in October, featuring a spoof of Superman as a coward. The comic also turned Archie of Riverdale High into a drug pusher, typical of the way Mad first parodied other comic books. Soon, however, it was focusing on popular culture, including movies, television, and advertising, and it became fully developed as a magazine. Kurtzman stayed with E.C. just a few more years, leaving when he and Gaines had some differences about the direction of Mad. Kurtzman next worked on a number of unsuccessful titles, including Trump for Playboy publisher Hugh Hefner.
Kurtzman produced Help! from 1960 to 1965, and this long-running comic featured a who’s who of celebrity writers, including Arthur C. Clarke and Ray Bradbury. Dozens of stars lent their images and words to the publication, including Dick Van Dyke, Gloria Steinem, Allen, John Cleese, and others. He paid the sum of five dollars for work he published in his "Public Gallery" section, and many of the cartoon artists who went on to become stars in their own right were first published here. Among these are Crumb, Gilliam, Hank Hinton, Joel Beck, Jay Lynch, Jim Jones, Skip Williamson, Dennis Ellefson, Don Edwing, Stew Schwartzberg, and Gilbert Shelton.
Kurtzman’s breakout strip was created for Hefner. Beginning in the October 1962 issue of Playboy, Kurtzman, and Elder, sometimes with help from Davis, Russ Heath, and Frank Frazetta, created the hip, sexy strip titled "Little Annie Fanny," which featured a buxom blonde who was often drawn topless and who was nearly as recognizable as Hefner’s famous "bunny." The "Annie" strip appeared in the back of Playboy and was famous for its beautiful artistry, although some detractors viewed it as sexist. The strip ran front 1962 to 1988 and was revived in 1998 with story and art by Ray Lago and Bill Schorr. Dark House Comics released a two-volume collection in cooperation with Playboy that contains all of the "Little Annie Fanny" strips. The first volume covers 1962 to 1970 and takes Fanny through the swinging 1960s with the Beatles, the sexual revolution, psychedelic drugs, civil rights, and the race for space. The book includes characterizations of Barry Goldwater, Frank Sinatra, J. Edgar Hoover, and the entire Green Bay Packers football team. The second volume includes strips that feature Ralph Nader, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Star Wars, and the women’s movement. Both volumes include production art published for the first time and tributes to the cartoonists, led by Kurtzman and Elder, who produced this two-and-a-half decade sensation.
Nuts! was published in two volumes in the mid-1980s and was aimed at ten-to sixteen-year-olds. For several years, Kurtzman worked on a "Flash Gordon" strip, the installments of which are collected in one volume that also includes an interview with Kurtzman and some of his rough sketches. Jungle Book is a collection of stories that were too racy to print in Mad when it first hit the stands. Published in 1959, this was possibly the first comic book for adults, and it was brought back into print twenty-five years later. One of the characters of Jungle Book was revived for Help!, and Goodman Beaver is a collection of those strips.
Kurtzman authored his book, My Life as a Cartoonist. Written for children, this volume takes readers through the process of creating a "one-page joke" and discusses the skills necessary for drawing cartoon art, skills that include story creation, pacing, and lettering. Kurtzman, who was fourteen when he first had a cartoon published, reveals here how the gap-toothed Alfred E. Neumann came to be the Mad mascot.
Aargh! to Zap!: Harvey Kurtzman's Visual History of the Comics, for which Kurtzman collaborated with Michael Barrier, begins with cartoons of the 1930s. By the 1980s Kurtzman was suffering from Parkinson’s disease, and he died of liver cancer in 1993. Denis Kitchen, a founder of Kitchen Sink Press, which published collections of Kurtzman's work, was named executor of Kurtzman’s estate. As Denis Kitchen Publishing, he reprinted Kurtzman’s graphic novel The Grasshopper and the Ant, a hip version of the Aesop fable that may also be an allegory of Kurtzman’s own life. Between 1973 and 1990, until health forced him into retirement, Kurtzman shared his wisdom and experience with the students at New York's School of Visual Arts, where he taught "Satirical Cartooning."
Harvey Kurtzman's main graphic influences were Rube Goldberg, Will Eisner, Milton Caniff, Chester Gould, Harold Foster, E. C. Segar, Alex Raymond, Al Capp, Thomas Nast, Wilhelm Busch, Caran d'Ache, H.M. Bateman, Bill Holman, and V.T. Hamlin. His love for parody and satire was mostly shaped by Eisner's 'The Spirit' and Capp's 'Li'l Abner'. The anarchic comedy of The Marx Brothers and self-reflexive cartoons of Tex Avery and Looney Tunes influenced him as well.
Quotations:
"Teenagers are people who act like babies if they're not treated like adults."
Personality
Harvey Kurtzman enjoyed making rather shy personal appearances at comic conventions in the States, and once in London.
Quotes from others about the person
The New York Times: "[Kurtzman was] one of the most important figures in postwar America."
Anthony Bourdain: "Harvey Kurtzman, like Charlie Parker or Jimi Hendrix or William S. Burroughs, changed the whole landscape of his craft."
Robert Crumb: "He is as good as any cartoonist in history that I know of."
Interests
Artists
Rube Goldberg, Will Eisner, Milton Caniff, Chester Gould, Harold Foster, E.C. Segar, Alex Raymond, Al Capp, Thomas Nast, Wilhelm Busch, Caran d'Ache, H.M. Bateman, Bill Holman, V.T. Hamlin
Connections
In 1948 Harvey Kurtzman married Adele Hasan. They had four children: Cornelia, Elizabeth, Meredith, and Peter.