This is part of a series on people who, renowned for other accomplishments, have also been cartoonists– some professional, some amateur
Francisco de Asis Javier Cugat Mingall de Brue y Deulofeo (1900–1990), better known by his stage name Xavier Cugat, was the prime big-band maestro of Latin American music: rumba, mambo, cha-cha.
He was also a professional cartoonist and illustrator all his life.
Cugat and his band at New York’s Waldorf-Astoria hotel. One of his trademarks was conducting while holding a Chihuahua dog.
Born in Catalonia, Spain, Cugat moved with his family to Havana, Cuba, when he was three. A trained violinist and arranger, he packed up and moved to Los Angeles, where he worked as a cartoonist for the Los Angeles Times newspaper during the day and played in a band at night.
This is a neat reversal of the usual situation of an artist working a day job and cartooning in his free time.
Greta Garbo
After a few years of playing smaller clubs in the Los Angeles area, Cugat got his big break when he and his band played the prestigious Coconut Grove nightclub in 1928. His style of music caught on; in the ’30s and ’40s he was nicknamed “The Rumba King” because of his popularization of that dance.
But despite all his success in concerts, records, radio, movies and (later) television, Cugat never quit drawing, providing humorous covers for several of his own record albums, publishing collections of his star caricatures and even producing an illustrated curtain for Grauman’s Chinese Theatre.
His caricatures are spare and assured, reminiscent of those of Al Hirschfeld. Below are some radio comedians:
An album cover:
A painting done for his personal pleasure:
Finally, a self-portrait:
In previous installments of this series on part-time cartoonists (with more to follow), we saw a talented amateur in Enrico Caruso, and a skilled dilettante in G.K.Chesterton.
Cugat stands out because he remained a professional cartoonist all his life, taking his graphic work as seriously as his music.
For which I tip my hat…and dance a few steps…cha-cha-cha !
Cool essay!
Thanks, Russ!
I hope people still listen to that school of Latino music. It’s wonderful stuff!
Another delightful contribution to this splendid series!
I’d wondered if Cugat could be described as “of the school of Al Hirschfeld”; as it turns out, they both took after…
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Miguel Covarrubias was one of the most famous artists of his day, but chances are you’ve never heard of him. Caricaturists know his work- Al Hirschfeld studied under Covarrubias and shared a studio with him in 1924. He spoke of Covarrubias’ talent in the same breath as Daumier and Hogarth. Ethnologists and archaeologists know the name of Covarrubias as well. His analysis of pre-Columbian art and the culture of Bali led to books on the subject that have become classics. And his reputation as an anthropologist rivalled any of his peers in that field. Illustrator, caricaturist, anthropologist, author and educator… It’s high time you knew about Covarrubias too!
At the age of nineteen, Miguel Covarrubias, already a renowned caricaturist in his home country of Mexico, emigrated to New York City. He was an instant sensation, and his illustrations began appearing in New Yorker and Vanity Fair. Fellow Mexican artist, Diego Rivera described his illustrations as “those caustic but implacably good-humored drawings which, fortunately for his personal safety, people have been misled into calling caricatures. In Covarrubias’ art there is no vicious cruelty, it is all irony untainted with malice; a humor that is young and clean; a precise and well defined plasticity.”..
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http://cg.kelvinchu.com/?p=305
(That “irony untainted with malice” is another factor that made Hirschfeld so popular; did anyone ever take offense at being rendered by him?)
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Miguel’s artwork and celebrity caricatures have been featured in The New Yorker and Vanity Fair magazines. The linear nature of his drawing style was highly influential to other caricaturists such as Al Hirschfeld…He immediately fell in love with the Harlem jazz scene, which he frequented with Rosa and friends including Eugene O’Neill and Nickolas Muray. He counted many notables among his friends including Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes and W.C. Handy for whom he also illustrated books. Miguel’s caricatures of the jazz clubs were the first of their kind printed in Vanity Fair. He managed to capture the spirit of the Harlem Renaissance in much of his work as well as in his book, Negro Drawings.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_Covarrubias
See, also: http://face2face.si.edu/my_weblog/2012/06/miguel-covarrubias-caricatures-of-the-jazz-age-and-the-harlem-renaissance.html
When he was 66, Cugat married the 20-year-old “cuchi-cuchi” sexpot Charo:
http://0.tqn.com/d/gameshows/1/0/r/A/-/-/gameshowawards23.jpg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRmZzekrpDA
…and much public amusement ensued when he suffered a heart attack on their wedding night!
Thanks for the info, Mike.
Yes,Miguel Covarrubias was a giant in the field of illustation and caricature…hmmm…you say he was also an anthropologist? A perfect candidate for the series!
About Cugat and Charo…we can add Carmen Miranda and so many others to the list of Latino artists who played up to clichés of merry Latinos, not to mention non-Latinos like Bill Dana and his José Jimenez comic persona.
There’s a discussion on another HU thread about “blackface” in entertainment.
May I propose the neologism “Latinoface”? For faking entertainment that comforts mainstream Anglo clichés about Hispanics?
Take Cugat’s gimmick of conducting while holding a Chihuahua dog.
Cugat was born in Spain and grew up in Cuba and the United States. What in God’s name was his link to a Mexican Chihuahua dog? None -except, for his Anglo clientèle, them Hispanics are all alike.
Some of those caricatures might be his gentle revenge on such oafishness…
Sometimes referrred to as brownface I believe….
Dead link, man! Must search…
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Brownface can refer to:
* A variant of blackface, involving ethnic impersonation of South Asians, non-white Middle-Easterners, or non-white Latinos
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownface
Hmm! That’s awfully imprecise!
At least http://brown-face.com/ sticks to Latinos… (See the “Yellowface!” “Arabface!” etc. links at bottom…)